SOME OLD MEMORIAL DAY STUFF
Send a salami to the troops.
Memorial Day:
'Salamis, not bombs'
By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / May 29, 2011
Since I live in North Central Indiana I use every opportunity I can to import bagels from Chicago. In the past I have publicly defined socialism as including “bagels for all” (particularly garlic or onion ones). Also I have written about the political economy of the bagel , arguing on good authority that during periods of intense class struggle workers have used day old bagels as weapons against the ruling class.
On a recent visit to a Chicago area bagel bakery, I came across a big sign in front that puzzled me. The sign said:
Naborhood* Bagel and Delicatessen
Join Naborhood and
the USO Sending
A Salami to the Troops
(*Fictitious name.)
My first reaction was to laugh. This sign sounded pretty funny. But on
reflection I began to ask myself what it meant. I began to think of different
responses to the question and, after I sent out a picture of the sign, some of
my friends offered their views on the subject as well.
One interpretation, the patriotic one, suggests that the delicatessen wishes to
mobilize all its customers to support our troops in Afghanistan. From a
delicatessen point of view, sending salamis is a way that it could support the
troops. Salamis could reflect support for the troops alone or for the troops
and the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.
Another, perhaps more neutral, interpretation is about selling salamis, using
the patriotism in the old neighborhood to make a few extra bucks. Since the
salamis they sell are really good, it could entice troops and Afghan peoples to
want more salamis. Before you know it, they could be hooked on them. Who knows:
bagels could be next. But this view, I think, is unfairly harsh in its
evaluation of the motivations of the delicatessen; too economistic.
Finally, it can be argued, and frankly this was my first thought, that the
delicatessen saw the U.S. war in Afghanistan as a mistake that had to be ended
as soon as possible. The salami, from this perspective, was a metaphor for a
“dud,” a smelly, greasy, and heavy food that can lead to ulcers or heartburn.
The 10-year war in Afghanistan therefore was a colossal heartburn in the body
politic. (One of my friends wrote that Bush and Obama already had sent Afghanistan
the salami.)
This intellectual puzzle, I realized, reflects the various ways in which the
sign could be interpreted. Perhaps the delicatessen owners wanted to create a
mental construct that could be appreciated by every side of the issue.
That is classic American politics. I bet the Democrats and Republicans who are
debating resolutions on the war in Afghanistan in Congress right now would love
to come up with a metaphor like this. Maybe Congress should pass an
appropriations bill, HR 111: The U.S./Afghanistan Military Nourishment and
Rehabilitation Act, or the Send Salamis to Afghanistan Act.
This Memorial Day, as we reflect on the pain and suffering that our wars have
caused, perhaps we would all agree that sending salamis overseas is preferable
to sending drones and bombs.
WORKERS' MEMORIAL DAY, 2014: WHAT WORKERS NEED
Harry Targ, Sunday, April 27, 2014
Progressive America Rising via Diary of a Heartland Radical
The stench is vomit-making as never before. The fat and plucks, the bladders and kidneys and bungs and guts, gone soft and spongy in the heat, perversely resist being trimmed, separated, deslimed; demand closer concentration than ever, more speed. A helpless, hysterical laughter starts up. Indeed, they are in hell; indeed they are the damned. Steamed, boiled, broiled, fried, cooked. Geared, meshed.
In the hog room,108 degrees. Kerchiefs, bound around their
foreheads to keep the sweat from running down into eyes and blinding, become
saturated; each works in a rain of stinging sweat. Almost the steam from the
vats seems cloud-cool, pure, by contrast. Marsalek falls. A heart attack. (Is
carried away, docked, charged for the company ambulance.) Other hearts pound
near to bursting. Relentless, the conveyor paces on.
Slow it, we got to slow it. (Tillie Olsen, Yonnondio: From the Thirties, 1974)
American
workplaces from the dawn of the industrial revolution to the recent past were
living hells for workers.
Novelist
and essayist Tillie Olsen described working conditions in meat-packing plants
in the 1930s. Others have written about auto assembly lines, mines, textile
assembly plants, and food-processing plants. Analysts such as Harry Braverman,
in Labor and Monopoly Capital (1974), pointed out that employers
have usually sought to control the minds and motions of workers. Profit-making
has been seen as tied to controlling every movement of workers, the speed-up of
production, and cutting costs for health and safety. After years of labor
mobilization, the Occupational Safety and Health Act passed in 1970 to begin to
address the problem of how dangerous it was to go to work each day.
Every
April 28, workers across North America assemble to remember those workers who
died or were injured on the job. Workers’ Memorial Day, initiated in the United
States by the AFL-CIO in April, 1989, celebrates the inauguration of the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (1970). Workers’ Memorial Day is
about remembrances, reviews of progress toward safety and health, and
re-commitment to making the workplace safer.
In
April, 2013 the AFL-CIO issued its annual data-based report, “Death on the Job:
the Toll of Neglect,” to review the current state of worker health and safety,
given the administration of OSHA rules initiated over forty years ago. “Since
that time, workplace safety and health conditions have improved. But too many
workers remain at serious risk of injury, illness or death as workplace
tragedies continue to remind us.” These tragedies have occurred in mines, oil
refineries, fertilizer plants, meat-packing plants, manufacturing facilities,
and on construction sites.
The
AFL-CIO report indicated that 4,693 workers were killed on the job in 2011 (13
workers per day). Over 3.8 million work-related injuries were reported with
unofficial estimates of such injuries doubling or tripling that total.
Particular sub-groups, such as Latino workers and those born outside the United
States, experienced excessively high injury rates, presumably because of their
fears of raising safety concerns within the workplace.
The
report indicated that workplace inspections had decreased over the years
because of budget constraints limiting the hiring of inspectors. Given the
numbers, federal OSHA employees could be expected to investigate a workplace
once every 131 years and state OSHA inspections can be expected every 76 years.
Penalties for workplace violations also are inadequate to deter violations.
The
Report indicated that budget allocations for OSHA must be dramatically
increased, more laws must be passed to regulate the complex reality of
workplace dangers, and worker rights to protest dangerous conditions at the
workplace must be strengthened.
This
year, Workers’ Memorial Day events will highlight demands to address
contemporary issues of concern such as
-defending
the OSHA process from political campaigns to reduce workplace regulations.
-requiring
employers to establish work-site safety and health programs with worker
participation to address enduring hazards.
-adding
safeguards against respiratory diseases from silica, combustible dust, and
Black Lung.
-protecting
workers who seek to challenge workplace safety hazards, particularly for
immigrant workers.
-passing
more legislation such as the Protecting America’s Workers Act to expand
protection for workers not yet covered by OSHA rules.
-increasing
worker voices on the job including creating an environment that would allow
workers to freely choose to form unions.
Earl
Cox, Community Services Liaison, Northwest Central Labor Council, Indiana
AFL-CIO, concluded as he announced the 2014 event that legislators must be made
aware of workplace health and safety “…so when a vote comes up to slash funding
for OSHA, they vote to protect workers and not corporate interests.” The
AFL-CIO believes that “safety laws and regulations don’t kill jobs—but unsafe
jobs kill workers.”
(For those living in Tippecanoe County, Indiana Workers’ Memorial
Day events will occur April 28, Inside the Depot, Riehle Plaza, Lafayette at
5:15 p.m.)
REMEMBER THOSE WHO
PROTESTED WAR ALSO!
"In a society where it is normal for human beings to
drop bombs on human targets, where it is normal to spend 50 percent of the
individual's tax dollar on war, where it is normal...to have twelve times
overkill capacity, Norman Morrison was not normal. He said, 'Let it
stop.' "(a gravesite speech by John Roemer at the funeral of Norman
Morrison quoted in Hendrickson, Paul. The Living and the Dead. New York:
Alfred Knopf, 1996).
On November 2, 1965, Norman Morrison brought his daughter with him to the Pentagon.
Outside the office of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Morrison set
himself on fire to protest the escalating war in Vietnam. His daughter, Emily,
somehow was passed to others and survived the flames. Morrison, however, died
as he had lived, protesting the bombing of villages in South Vietnam, killing
innocent men, women, and children.
I was part of an educational tour to Vietnam last March. We were taken to a
powerful museum, known as the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. On the
second floor an exhibit featured images of international solidarity with the
Vietnamese people during the American war. Included there was a framed copy of
an American newspaper account of Morrison’s self-immolation. Earlier, in Hue,
we had seen an exhibit of the automobile used by a Buddhist Monk, Thích Quảng Đức,
who killed himself in protest of the brutality of the Diem regime in South
Vietnam. Presumably this act inspired Morrison’s tragic protest.
I had forgotten Morrison’s dramatic act, and the acts of several others who
bravely sacrificed their bodies and lives to oppose the murderous war in
Vietnam. Today, Memorial Day, 2011 I thought about Morrison, the exhibit at the
Vietnamese Museum, and parallel acts of self-sacrifice.
First, on reflection, I am in awe of the courage and self-sacrifice of the acts
of these brave and principled people. Yet, I wish they had not made the
ultimate sacrifices they did and had put their courage and willingness to
sacrifice to the long-term struggles of the peace movement to end war.
However, I believe we must “take back” Memorial Day from those who celebrate
war, see sacrifice only from those who kill and die, and ignore the bravery of
the men and women everywhere who fight to end war. We mourn those who were sent
off to fight in ignoble wars in the name of the United States. Also we must
declare Memorial Day as a day to remember all the Norman Morrison’s who have
said “no” to war and empire.
