Our nation’s traditional farm legislation was designed to protect and promote family farming.

Ironically, most of America’s farm assistance goes to those who don’t need federal aid. Maybe that’s why their class and political allies say they don’t believe in government. After all, they rip off all of us. Why wouldn’t they think everyone who gets federal assistance is ripping off all of us?

Even more ironically, the Farm Bill now working its way through Congress would cut the Food Stamp Program, sending more of our 50% of kids who live in or near poverty to bed night after night hungry.

How can the radical Christian right in their odious piety demand to deny children food when they give billions to agribusiness corporations who care for nothing but their profits?

We need a Food and Farm Bill that includes substantial increases in Food Stamps, decent wages, and the right to organize to the people who deliver the bounty of this rich land – farmworkers, restaurant workers, processors, warehouse folks, truckers, and Walmart workers. Together we must stop starvation in America.

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Image source: Jlantzy (Jamie Lantzy) via Wikimedia Commons

In a turquoise sky

Soft breeze after the storms

Storms come for all of us

But after the storm comes the sweet peace

Peace to you this blessed day.

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*If you wish to share or re-post this poem, please request permission by contacting us here.

And I lie half asleep

Listening to the soft rain on the leaves

Of the wonderful four old growth trees

That bless my backyard and me

They have conspired to bring

The fox, the coon, and the deer

To this old, sweet place and me

I love this morning and I love you

The rain has fallen softly forever

And there have been gentle mornings

Forever and women and men

Have woken these soft mornings

To the softness of the other

I miss your mouth and all the soft places.

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*If you wish to share or re-post this poem, please request permission by contacting us here.

This photo was re-posted with permission by its author.

I will be driving to keep my schedule flexible. I would like nothing more than to add more speeches or trainings or bookstore events while I’m on the road. This would be an excellent opportunity to get me to a Central Labor Council meeting or a local union meeting. If there’s a speaking or training opportunity you know of, contact me here.

On July 18th, I will do a book reading and signing at Schuler Books & Music 1982 Grand River Ave Okemos, MI 48864.

On July 24th, I will speak and sign books at the Steelworkers retirees (SOAR) meeting in Champaign, Illinois. SOAR is an extremely active and very progressive retirees organization. Their members are very active in politics and all kinds of labor issues. Many SOAR members in Illinois came out of those huge steel mills on the South Side of Chicago. Those mills were the site of so many battles that created the American middle class.

On another issue, the dismal failure of European austerity economics and the very slight, but comparative success of the stimulus in America shows how right Dr. Richard Levins and I were in our book, Getting America Back to Work. We’ve had a resurgence in sales as Europe heads toward complete collapse. Due to austerity, more and more people are realizing we have to grow our way out of this economic ditch, and growth requires investment in productive work.

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A strategy is an array of tactics that demonstrates power in a crescendoing manner putting more and more pressure on the employer. We in the labor movement have had to get much more creative and disciplined in the exercise of power and mobilization with the destruction of any effective right to strike.

Community organizations have long been very sophisticated and strategic about wielding power, because they never had the right to strike. Back in 1977 when I first went to work for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), within two weeks I was in a participatory and exciting two hour workshop on tactics of nonviolent direct action taught and facilitated by ACORN founder Wade Rathke. My first organizing mentor, Stephen Holt, who coined the term “Playing Bigger Than You Are” which became the title of one of my books was a master at building a crescendo of power in a campaign for low wage workers.

Last week at the NOLSW Conference in Las Vegas we also talked about how we leverage our power – by working through coalitions and building coalitions. Unions no longer are big enough and have the power to defeat the Financial Elite on our own.

I love teaching and facilitating workshops and discussions on how we can wield and leverage the power we have to build even more power.

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At workshops and trainings that I facilitate, I lead a discussion on this important question.

But by the end of the discussion, I often tell the story of the Greensboro Four. In 1960, just four African-American freshmen from North Carolina A&T sat down at the segregated Greensboro, NC Woolworth’s store lunch counter and ordered coffee. They were of course denied service. Soon they were attacked by racist mobs. Ketchup, mustard, and sugar were poured in their hair. They were degraded in every way. Still they sat there without reacting, allowing themselves to be abused for their action for justice.

The next day those who sat in swelled and continue to swell day after day.

Then the actions spread to other Woolworth’s in other towns, then to other states.

Eventually, Woolworths had to reverse their policy of segregation and open all their lunch counters across America to all people.

More importantly, the Greensboro Four inspired and helped to move more African-Americans and whites of good will into the Civil Rights Movement and the great struggle for racial justice. Those four 18 or 19 year old young students started another opening and branch in the growing Civil Rights Movement and one of the greatest freedom struggles in American history.

The Greensboro Four were part of a great Mass Movement for racial justice in America. They exercised two of the great prerequisites and elements of mass movement – creativity and spontaneity. They asked permission from no one. They thought of a way that just their group of four could move for justice, and they discovered a creative way they could act.

Then just the four of them acted and helped to change America.

Photo: Former F. W. Woolworth Co. store in Greensboro, North Carolina, the site of a now-famous “sit-in” protest by black college students in 1960.

Photo credit: dbking via Wikimedia Commons

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It has been my honor, privilege, and joy to review some of that history this week in speeches and workshops for the leaders of the National Organization of Legal Service Workers affiliated with the United Automobile Workers in Las Vegas.

In my workshops on Mobilization and Coalition building, I’ve had the privilege of reminding these brilliant leaders of the UAW of some of the UAW’s rich history and vigorous struggle for social justice for all Americans.

The UAW not only marched with Dr. King and my brother Rev. James Orange in the civil rights movement of the 1950′s and 1960′s, but funded much of it as well. Walter Reuther the founder and president of the UAW was routinely and often red baited and accused of being a socialist, because this was the period of McCarthyism and right-wing control of the American government.

Without the UAW, the 1963 March on Washington led by A. Philip Randolph would likely not have happened, and Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech may never have been heard.

Though most of us don’t know this, the organizer of that march was A. Philip Randolph’s assistant Bayard Rustin, a gay African American.

And, surely without Walter Reuther and the UAW, President Johnson would not have been able to pass Medicare, Medicaid, and the War on Poverty.

Our American history is full of folks like you and me who in times of despair refused to weaken or give in or give up.

That is why the tattoo on my right shoulder is a quote from Bruce Springsteen, “No Retreat No Surrender.”

Photo: Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C., Leaders marching from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, August 28, 1963.

In the front row, from left are: Whitney M. Young, Jr., Executive Director of the National Urban League; Roy Wilkins, Executive Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; A. Philip Randolph, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, American Federation of Labor (AFL), and a former vice president of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO); Walter P. Reuther, President, United Auto Workers Union; and Arnold Aronson, Secretary of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

Photo credit: This file was provided to Wikimedia Commons by the National Archives and Records Administration as part of a cooperation project.

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I pray you as I write

I pray you peace and love

I pray you faith in the power of the Holy Spirit to protect those you love

I pray you understanding of the journey

I pray you feel my heart for you and those you love

I pray the Holy Spirit who first came as a dove stay with you today lifting your heart and spirit and those of the ones you love

I pray you love like a river

I pray you the peace that passeth understanding

I pray the hard, calloused hands of the Carpenter or Laborer stay on you and the ones you love

I pray you and the ones you love can always feel His Promise to never leave us alone

I pray you and the ones you love Jehovah’s tender mercies and grace freely given

I pray you and the ones you love all the blessings of the Creator of the universe

I pray the ones you love humility and serenity and sweetness of the soul

I pray those you love Divine Understanding of how to be and how to carry themselves

I pray you and those you love to ask the Carpenter every morning how He would walk that day and be that day

I pray joy for you and those you love, joy in a meal, joy in helping others suffering more, joy in being outside, joy in a deeper understanding because of the gift of time to read more deeply

I pray the ones you love the gift of self understanding

I pray you and those you love the ability to love yourself as God loves you

I pray Almighty and All-Loving God hear and answer this sinner’s prayer that came from the deepest place in his heart and soul.

Photo: Young girl prays before eating school lunch of soup, sandwich, milk, and an apple. 1936. Uncredited photographer, public domain.

This conference is committed to:

• the struggle for social justice in America
• joining with our natural allies to fight for justice.
• creating a movement to defend democracy
• rebuilding the absolute right to form unions and bargain collectively
• creating healthcare for all
• creating a society that values people and workers more than it values wealth

It is to the credit of the Legal Services Workers that they know we have to join in alliances and coalitions with folks who share our values. More and more I believe that fundamental human values connect the organizations and people that can create a much more just America – and potentially an America that can lead toward a more just world.

The truth is that the labor movement is no longer strong enough by itself to save democracy and to rebuild itself. We need all our natural allies, all those who share our values, all people of good will, and we need to do our share to build a global movement against unbridled, unfettered capitalism.

We have seen over and over that unbridled, unfettered capitalism is always ultimately destructive. There is no free market and there is no such thing as equality of opportunity.

My speech yesterday was very well received. Folks are buying books fast and furious. I did one workshop yesterday and another today.

I do so love to do this: to speak, conduct workshops, and facilitate people learning from each other by listening to each other.

Please contact me here if you need a speaker or a trainer.

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To the thirsty and open earth

The rain caressed all the tender folds

Fertilizing the earth for summer

And its flowers exploding blossoms

In ecstasy of life and joy and satiation.

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*If you wish to share or re-post this poem, please request permission by contacting us here.

This photo was re-posted with permission by its author.