By Peter Burton
I spent three interesting months in the US between April and the end of June this year. I was last there in 1992. Post 9/11 there are a lot more American flags around on houses, buses, trains etc. Airline workers have suffered in the fallout. One pilot I spoke to told me he had taken a $ 75,000 pay cut last year, the justification being less people travelling post 9/11. He told me “Retirement could not come quick enough for the older pilots”.
In California, Big Arnie has united public sector workers in opposition to him and his policies. Lacking the guile of many other bourgeois politicians, he has made the mistake of attacking all public sector workers at the same time. He refers to them as “special interest groups”. The phrase has come back to haunt him, as public sector trade unionists have adopted it on their placards and in speeches.
Schwarzenegger has made attacks on pensions, workers compensation for industrial injuries, pay, and also ripped up agreements on contracts. This has particularly angered California’s state nurses who follow him all over the US protesting everywhere he goes.
Schwarzenegger is also criminalising the homeless, pressurising police to make sure those sleeping rough are moved on between 11pm and 7 am.
It is really shocking to see the huge numbers of of homeless people and the close proximity of dying homeless people with displays of ostentatious wealth. One of my first experiences of California was seeing a black man lying face down on a pavement in front of a posh wine bar in San Francisco. The wine bar opened out on to the street as it was a hot summer’s evening. The man was a few feet away from those eating and drinking, but no one looked at him. This is the most common response.
The more assertive homeless people now beg in the cafes and restaurants and there is often confrontation between shop workers and the homeless and a lot of embarrassment all round.
Schwarzenegger’s attacks on workers culminated in a 25,000-strong protest in the Californian state capital of Sacramento on 25 June. It was the biggest demonstration in Sacramento's history with many being first time protesters.
While in the US I witnessed many other protests: a strike by California State university’s workers for a pay increase and a decent contract; a well organised protest by the main anti-sweatshop campaign Global Exchange inside San Francico City Hall — organised like a military operation — to end sweatshop labour in the city; an ongoing two year strike by Chicago hotel workers; and a well organised campaign to get a one-hour workers’ rights slot on KPFA radio in San Francisco.
One of my most heartening experiences took place in Santa Cruz during a week long labour video festival. Before showing a number of films made by the students of University College of Santa Cruz, trade union officials addressed about 200 of the colleges students.
The week before the film-showing, students had walked out of classes in solidarity with a one day strike by the college workers for better contracts and pay. The college authorities had called in the police who were heavy handed with the students. The college authorities were making a general crackdown, there had been an increase in student protests over military recruitment on campus.
One of the trade union officials declared a hunger strike to get the name of the college official who had contacted the police and the names of the police who had been particularly heavy handed with the students. He got rapturous applause from the student audience.
Other films that week served as a bridge between local issues and campaigning by activists. One film, How to stop Walmart, was shown in Watsonville on a Saturday night to around 150 people. It led to a discussion about the practicalities of preventing Walmart setting up in the town. Naomi Klein’s film about the occupation of the Argentian factories, The Take, was shown to an audience of about 300 in Santa Cruz and this was followed by a discussion with the workers who had been instrumental in the occupation movement.
I also witnessed 200 people give a standing ovation to Basra oil workers who had been on a speaking tour of the US. The oil workers were clearly moved. They said they had many of their stereotype images of Americans dispelled.
It may be patchy right now, but there is clearly a different America to that of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al. My experiences proved to me once again that there is no such thing as a bad nation, a bad people.
Good images of the Santa Cruz tent university and police arrests can be viewed at www.bobfitchphoto.com and the Santa Cruz indymedia site. A film about my three months in America, including all the events I write about here, will be out at the end of the year. Contact me for a DVD copy via Solidarity (solidarity@actionforsolidarity.org.uk).