Broadcast 2/18/2010 at 10:07 AM EST (7 Listens, 2 Downloads, 405 Itunes)
The Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show Podcast

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Bill Fletcher, Jr., is the Chairman of the Board of Directors for the International Labor Rights Forum, Executive Editor of The Black Commentator and founder of the Center for Labor Renewal. A longtime labor, racial justice and international activist, he is the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum, a national non-profit organization organizing, educating and advocating for policies in favor of the peoples of Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. Fletcher is also a founder of the Black Radical Congress and is a Senior Scholar for the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC.


Fletcher is the co-author (with Fernando Gapasin) of Solidarity Divided, The Crisis in Organized Labor and A New Path Toward Social Justice (University of California Press). He was formerly the Vice President for International Trade Union Development Programs for the George Meany Center of the AFL-CIO. Prior the George Meany Center, Fletcher served as Education Director and later Assistant to the President of the AFL-CIO.

Lessons From Black History: Understanding How Change Happens

If there is one critical lesson from the last year, it is that in the absence of social movements -- and particularly social movements with dynamic and audacious leadership -- political change does not happen in a progressive direction irrespective of the intent of elected leaders.

Many progressives are reluctant to offer criticism because they don't want to be perceived as giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

Particularly in black America, there is an incredible reluctance to raise criticism. It's in response to the racist.... he's received.

58% of Republicans believe he is not a citizen or the facts are unclear enough to raise doubt.


jobs, wrong on healthcare. He needed to have started his position in favor of single-payer, medicare for all. When he swept it aside-- he took it off the table, completely. The majority of the public was in favor.... medicare for all.
Compromise with republicans. They looked at it as sign of weakness....

Incorrect on Afghanistan. We cannot afford to be there. More to the point it's a conflict that will be resolved regionally, through negotiation.

Honduras-- on positive side condemned, but no substantial action taken...



In the first year of the Obama administration, many of the President's supporters have fallen prey to the notion that one great individual brings about change. The level of magical thinking that exists among so many Obama supporters has led to paralysis when, in the face of opposition to his overly moderate policies from the political Right, the Obama administration has repeatedly blinked and not delivered sufficiently on the change that we have believed in.


Instead of putting in place critical accountability measures, he allowed wall street to get away with the damage they had done. This is a major mistake-- a mistake that ironically, the populist right has siezed upon. Progressives needed to be far more....

the Stimulus package was an important step. It just wasn't big enough.

Where many liberals and progressives made a mistake. They did not understand, from the beginning, who Obama was. INstead, they basically created an image that they identified as Obama. Obama is an incredibly intelleigent, eloquent politician who is very much influenced by corporate America.... tends to jump to the middle.

WHile he was influenced by the progressive movement, he was never a progressive activist. HE was a corporate type. That's who he is.
Before the election, I was struck by people giving him a honeymoon period and asked how long of a honeymoon I would give him and I said 24 hours. YOu can't afford to give him ....

First 24 hours after election-- Larry Summers name was floated for treasury secretary... Rahm Emanuel.

There were no significant policy differences between him and Clinton.
If you look at the administration as a whole, there's a continuity from under Clinton. PEople expected

We can tap into some portions of the anger (of the teapartiers) A lot of the anger is against what the wealthy are doing, how they can survive against the welfare of the working people.

On taxes--

I absolutely think that there's a base for progressives to really take this and run with it. But we have to be prepared to criticize the administration and take our lumps. Because at the end of the day, none of these people want to be pushed.

In the progressive movement, there is much too much "magnificent seven thinking." ....
Among progressives, there's a sense that fighting off the oppressors need to be done by hired gunfighters-- by hired by people, by the elite.

WE have to some real serious organizing and engage.... basic grassroots organizing... educational, show that there are solutions, show that the problems are not of their own making. treat unemployment as personal deficiency.

Who are these 50 million people?


bottom up: Effort at AFl-CIO commonsense economic. the idea was to talk with unioin members about what's happening in the economy and to use that to help people to develop a framework35

It's not about posting on facebook, not about a fancy website. All of those electronic media can be used to reinforce messages that are discussed face to face.



Need to engage the victims of current policy, discussion of Paolo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed (strongly recommended)



The Black Freedom Movement's history demonstrated that irrespective of whether there is a "friend" in the White House, the movement itself must have its own independent program and agenda. This agenda must be advanced in such a way that it puts heat on those in power even to the point of being excluded from the halls of power. The Black Freedom Movement, or at least major sections of it, recognized that it does no good to be in the halls of power if all one is doing is collecting autographs.


What we should be doing-- a number of things-- in electoral realm as well as outside of it.
In electoral realm, progressives need to identify conservative democrats who have been serving as a fifth column and move against

The second lesson we can draw from our history is that racism is hard-wired into U.S. capitalism and is not easily removed --

Unfortunately, too many Obama supporters substituted their hopes for a racially altered USA for the reality of a badly fractured USA, where race remains the trip-wire of our politics. That trip-wire cannot be avoided or ignored; it can only be severed at the source. This is done by taking on both the myths and the racist differentials in treatment that have divided this country since European settlers first landed in North America, marched inland removing and annihilating Native Americans, and brought Africans to these shores -- first as indentured servants and later as slaves.

ignoring these lessons is done at our own peril, and the peril of this country's future, which could, rather than be one of hope, end in a right-wing nightmare.


Ehrenreich and Fletcher quote from Nation article
Without a strong left, the alternatives to capitalism are more likely to be nasty than liberating.

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