Socialist Action /May 2002
What Did your Hometown Paper Report?
By CHARLES WALKER
Did news of last month's Italian general strike make the front page of
your hometown paper? My guess is probably not. I don't say that just because
my hometown Oakland, Calif., paper limited itself to printing three sentences
from a wire report on page 8.
And I don't say that because another daily I read, the San Francisco
Chronicle ("Northern California's Largest Newspaper"),
didn't do much better when it carried nine sentences from the same wire
report and far from the front page. (Given San Francisco's sizable Italian
population alone, it's hard to conclude that the Chronicle's editors figured
that the story had only limited interest, right?)
But what about the other daily paper I read, The New York Times?
You know, the paper that seems to serve as a template of sorts for many
U.S. papers of all sizes. You guessed it, didn't you? The Times also didn't
find a place on its front page for the largest labor demonstrations and
workers' protests in Italy in at least 20 years.
Not that The New York Times didn't do much better than the two
local papers I mentioned, it certainly did. But in its own way it put down
the importance of the turnout of millions of Italian workers and their supporters
by relegating the news to page three with a quarter page article from Rome,
under a black and white photo of massing crowds.
Why do I say that The Times is disrespectful? Because on the same day,
on its front page, in the prestigious "above-the-fold" location,
the editors ran a color photo of scores of New Yorkers spending "their
lunch hour taking the sun."
Clearly, the sophisticated, cosmopolitan Times was telling its readers,
as well as many editors around the country, that the Italian workers' effort
to counter their government's attack on their hard-won job security wasn't
all that important to U.S. corporate press lords.
There are emerging movements around the world that are challenging the
so-called neo-liberal assault on workers' living standards, the environment,
and national independence. For now, those movements are mankind's best hope
for escaping from the "race to the bottom" that's driven by capitalism's
competitive pathologies.
The Italian general strike is as much a part of the anti-globalization
phenomenon as the Seattle demonstrations, the Argentine assemblies, and
the like. What's more, the Italians seem from here to constitute at present
a major part of the largest, broadest, and most dynamic sector of the movements
ignited by the sharpening capitalist crisis. Remember, the Italian unions
have mobilized millions of workers, not once, but twice in the past few
weeks!
It's not clear to what degree the union leaders are responding to pressures
from the ranks and to what degree they are inspiring and arousing their
memberships. But there can be no doubt that the primary defensive organizations
of Italy's workers, the unions, are where they belong-and that's out in
front and in the streets.
Moreover, their general strike has received backing from unions in other
countries. For example, the British Trades Union Congress notified the media
and the Italian government of its support "for the three national trade-union
centers who have called an eight-hour general strike against government
plans to remove workers' protections against unfair and arbitrary dismissal."
In Finland, the three major unions that represent a majority of workers
in that nation also notified the Italian government that they backed the
"legitimate demands of the unions."
Swedish unions, too, expressed their support for the strikers, recognizing
that "the protest was not just against the Italian government but against
the policies of right-wing governments around Europe," reported AP
(April 16).
And what did the AFL-CIO say about the Italian general strike and in
messages of solidarity? Did they suggest ways that U.S. organized labor
could support the Italian workers? For example, did the federation's president,
John J. Sweeney, propose that U.S. unions mass in front of the Italian government's
offices in this country, if only for the immediate purpose of getting the
news of the attack on the Italian workers onto the front pages of the corporate
press and into the consciousness of all American workers?
I keep checking the AFL-CIO website's section of speeches, news releases,
and testimony for some evidence of the federation's support for the Italian
workers and I've got to tell you that I've turned up nada. The AFL-CIO's
web page couldn't be less informative about the Italian general strike if
the strike hadn't happened at all.
We've heard that the AFL-CIO has mended its ways and that it's no longer
the foreign policy lapdog of the government that it was under George Meany
and his handpicked successor, Lane Kirkland. If that's true, shouldn't Sweeney
give the world's workers, including the Italian working class, some unmistakable
evidence that Sweeney and Co.'s "New Voice for Workers" is a voice
for workers' solidarity across the world? And wouldn't that make the corporate
press sit up and take notice?
Socialist Action /May 2002 |