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Whatever Happened to Courage?
By Charles Sullivan
03/07/06 "ICH"
-- - -For me, one of the most valuable lessons taught
by history is that from time to time people rise up and fight back
against horrible tyranny and against impossible odds. There are many
examples: Shay’s Rebellion, the battle of Matewan, and the battle of
Blair Mountain, the Ludlow Massacre, the Haymarket Strike and, more
recently, the race wars that culminated in the 1960s. Many of these
struggles, conspicuously absent from our history texts, are
connected to labor disputes, when workers were forced to organize
and to strike for more humane working conditions, including the
eight hour work day. Massive strikes have played a significant role
in the economic and social history of the U.S. Thus it is no
coincidence that America has the bloodiest labor history of any
industrialized nation. How a people react to oppression and
injustice says much about what kind of people and, indeed, what kind
of nation they are. In those responses is revealed the national
character.
Throughout much of our history, so inhumane and utterly deplorable
were working conditions that workers frequently had to resort to the
strike—a strategy that remains labor’s most effective and
underutilized tool to this day. In the past, companies routinely
hired armed thugs to prevent workers from meeting and organizing
unions. Despite the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, workers did
not have the legal right to form unions until Roosevelt’s ‘New
Deal.’ Belonging to a union could cost you everything. Not belonging
to a union assured one’s fate as an indentured servant of the
company. The notorious Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency has a long
history of terrorizing workers on behalf of the company bosses.
Intimidation, threats, beatings, lynchings and shootings were
commonplace during the industrial revolution. Those who demanded the
eight hour work day, better wages and the right to form unions faced
grave and palpable danger. Organizers often lived short but intense
lives. It required courage to stand up to the company thugs and to
fight for justice. Those who did were called reds and communists by
their capitalist oppressors.
Even though the workplace remains the site of gross injustice and
tyranny, few of us today can image the atmosphere of oppression and
intimidation that once prevailed. By the grace of courageous but
otherwise ordinary individuals, workers organized themselves against
company tyranny; and we gained the eight hour work day, the forty
hour work week, the end of child labor, better wages, vacation from
work and more humane working conditions. These gains were not given
through the benevolence of the company bosses—they were won through
enormous self sacrifice, obtained by sweat and blood, and often
through armed rebellion.
Reading accounts of American labor history causes me to marvel at
the character and courage of those who fought for social and
economic justice against incredible odds. Quite literally, those men
and women risked their lives for one another, and many brutally
oppressed women and men died for the cause of ending industrial
slavery. Not only were union organizers menaced by the company goon
squads, they were often beaten and killed by the police, and the
National Guard. The real form of government a nation has is revealed
by which side its law enforcement takes when insurrections around
issues of social justice arise. Traditionally, the police and the
militia have been called forth to defend the oppressors—the wealthy
and the powerful—from the oppressed who demand social justice. Thus,
we know beyond all doubt what kind of government we have and who
runs it—a practice that continues to this day, as demonstrated in
the civil rights marches of the sixties and in contemporary anti-war
protests.
The most striking trait exhibited by those who risked their lives
for just causes was their unflinching courage in the face of
horrible oppression and colossal odds—something that is strikingly
absent from the comparatively safe times of the present. What is it
about the women and men who fought the Felts Detective Agency, the
local police (owned by the company bosses) and the militia that is
absent from the comparatively feeble protests of today? Have we as a
people become too soft and comfortable? Or is it that the injustice
has not yet reached our limits of tolerance? Is it that we believe
the propaganda that is fomented in the print media, and over the
electromagnetic airwaves that saturate our slumbering minds? Is it
that we are willing to look the other way while our government
perpetrates crimes against nature and humanity, so long as our
material comforts are not threatened? Have we become so narrow and
self serving that we no longer care about the welfare of others? Or
does America no longer produce people of mettle?
Why do we tolerate the kind of government we now have? Why do we
allow it to rape and plunder the earth that provides the sweet gift
of life, and divvy up the profits among the rich? Why do we sit by
quietly and allow the invasion and occupation of sovereign nations
by the armed forces? Why do we allow our government to fleece the
poor by providing eternal welfare to the rich? Why do we allow this
government to represent the interest of the wealthy by neglecting
the needs of the many? Why do we allow those in power to stealthily
pilfer our civil rights, our hard won liberties with hardly a
whimper of indignation or protest? How do we allow our government to
cripple and assassinate democratic governments all over the world
and call it democracy? How do we allow those in power to steal our
elections without filling the streets with massive and unrelenting
protests? How do we allow the practice of extraordinary rendition to
occur under our watch? Why do we tolerate the intolerable while
keeping a smile on our bright faces? Why do we allow the charade of
the neocon agenda to continue and offer little more than token
resistance? What does it take to make us angry and indignant to the
point of rebellion? I could go on indefinitely.
Our predecessors in the labor and civil rights movements chose to
die on their feet rather than live on their knees by bowing down to
unjust authority. They would not allow themselves to be intimidated
into submission even by armed goon squads under the employ of the
company bosses. Not only did they stand on their own two feet, erect
like real citizens—they stood for the principles that this country
was supposedly founded upon. They fought and died for them. If there
are no longer causes worth fighting and dying for, surely life is
not worth living. As Dr. King pointed out, this is spiritual death.
Are we a nation that is experiencing spiritual death?
Without courage and self sacrifice in the public interest, there can
be no justice. The future will be forged by putting our professed
beliefs to the test of action. What good is faith that cannot be put
into action for the common good? As surely as day follows night,
justice follows courage. Let each of us ask ourselves : What are we
made of? What, if anything, do we stand for? There are no safe
positions of neutrality. Which side are you on? Are we creating the
kind of history that will make our great grandchildren proud? Is it
the kind of history that will inspire them to be free; or is the
kind of history that will assure their servitude to the masters of
war?
It is far better to fight and die for just causes, even against
impossible odds, than to live in the perceived safety of
indifference and complacency that characterizes our time. Our dance
of life on this earth is short. We seriously delude ourselves if we
think there is safety in capitulation to unjust authority. Our
spirits thirst for justice. The organizing principle of life itself
is not competition—survival of the fittest; it is mutual
cooperation, looking out for the welfare of others. This is what
makes life worth living. The public interest is a far nobler cause
than private wealth and industrial slavery.
Charles Sullivan is a photographer, social agitator, and free lance
writer living in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. He welcomes
your comments at
earthdog@highstream.net
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