Dow is still a four-letter word to me

“Dow is committed to the principles of democracy and the peaceful transfer of power. Our values – integrity, respect for people, and protecting our planet – are the foundation on which we stand and our values guide our political contributions,” the company wrote.

Ruling Class Splits are important to note and utilize, when possible. But this one is unfathomable. The chemical giant Dow has announced it's suspending all PAC contributions “to any member of Congress who voted to object to the certification of the presidential election.” The suspension will last for one election cycle — two years for representatives and up to six years for senators.

Upon hearing this news, an old San Fernando Valley State College SDS comrade sent me some old clips to remind me of the battles we SDSers waged against Dow, the main manufacturer of napalm and other chemical weapons during the Vietnam War. 

 On May 7, 1966, Daily Breeze reporter Bob Rawitch [my former editor at the SFVC Daily Sundial] sat in on a regional meeting in Los Angeles of a relatively new left-wing group, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). In the next day’s Breeze, he reported on the group’s tentative plans to picket the Dow plant in Torrance and to distribute 5,000 leaflets protesting the use of napalm in the Vietnam War.

The demonstration was scheduled for Saturday, May 28, during the Memorial Day weekend. Two pro-war groups announced plans to counter the SDS protest: the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), and the Victory in Viet Nam Association (VIVA), whose South Bay branch was headed by future congressman Dana Rohrabacher.

Dow plant manager vowed to conduct “business as usual” at the plant during the protest, and Torrance Police Chief Walter Koenig assured residents that the department was equipped to handle “any demonstration disturbance that might arise.”

NO BUSINESS AS USUAL soon became our mantra as we shut down universities across the country in protest of Dow Chemical and the genocidal war from which they were profiteering and still are. 

Fast forward 56 years and we find Dow, their brand threatened by association after last week's MAGA assault on the Capitol, announcing that they were cutting donations to the election deniers.  

Over the weekend, several other large companies — Marriott, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Commerce Bancshares — announced a suspension of donations to members of Congress who voted against election certification. Monday, the list expanded to Amazon, AT&T, Comcast, Airbnb, Mastercard, and Verizonlp. Hallmark has even asked for its money back from two of the senators who opposed certification, Josh Hawley and Roger Marshall. 

But here's the thing. Only those who just fell off the pumpkin truck will buy this sudden corporate about-face. Temporarily cutting-off donations, with a wink and a nod to right-wing PACs, only makes people more aware that these companies have been buying politicians and underwriting Trump and his MAGAs to the tune of millions each year since 2016. And there's little doubt that they've gotten their money's worth. 

Chicago proud: The Resistance started here

Anti-Trump protest at UIC, March 2016. 

Omarosa's tell-all book makes reference to the March 2016 anti-Trump protest which shut down his campaign rally and sent DT scurrying out of town, not to return again. The protest “left a deep scar”, writes Omarosa Manigault Newman. 

According to the Sun-Times:

“There was a lot of blame to go around for the failure of the Chicago event,” she writes. “We blamed the protesters. We blamed law enforcement for not properly managing the situation. We blamed Chicago and its mayor, Obama acolyte Rahm Emanuel, for not supplying adequate security resources. We blamed everything and everyone, except for Donald Trump.”

“When I look back and try to pinpoint the moment when, in my own heart, I adopted an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ mind-set, it was that night in Chicago in March 2016. We all had a bunker mentality . . . I never stopped to ask myself what all this conflict meant for the future of the country. If I acknowledged my role in what was happening, I would have had to come to terms with nearly thirteen years of suppressed doubts and concerns about Donald Trump, and I was simply incapable of doing that at that point.”

Actually, the UIC rally was relatively peaceful (a few scuffles broke out inside the Arena as they always do at Trump rallies). Some 25,000 people gathered peacefully outside the Pavillion immediately following the reports that Trump had slipped into town. Seeing that the few hundred of his supporters would be badly outnumbered by the huge anti-Trump crowd, he called off the rally and split town, tail between his legs.

Writes Omarosa:

“The night of the Chicago rally left a deep scar on my consciousness, and I’d never even reached the city. From my place in the figurative bunker, I came out aggressively to support candidate Trump and believed the argument that the protesters were at fault.”

While the protest, organized by a few student groups, was a great success, it happened despite dire warnings of consequenses from a few frightened Democrats and some in the media.

The Tribune's Ron Grossman, exaggerated the level of violence and implored us to "halt the demonstrations", warning Trump would "profit" from "images of punching and cursing partisans" on the evening news. According to Grossman, "It doesn't matter whose cause is just and whose is not."

But it does indeed matter and there was no "profit" for Trump, writes Omarosa.

 In the aftermath of the botched rally, she says she was instructed to stick to the campaign strategy of “whataboutism” while making the rounds on cable news, pivoting from questions about provoking conflict to attacking Hillary Clinton over the FBI investigation into her emails.

“It was the only thing we had. At that point, we lacked a platform, plans, big ideas about foreign or domestic policy. All we had was Trump’s bluster, the MAGA slogan, and Hillary’s emails.”

Grossman went on to attack, not only the UIC protest, but protest movements in general, including Black Lives Matter and the anti-Vietnam War protests of the '60.

I think it's fair to say that today's Resistance movement against Trumpism was born that day in Chicago. City after city, followed suit right up through the inauguration, and Women's March and today, make it virtually impossible for Trump to travel anywhere outside of his red base areas.

The same hold true for his neo-fascist and white-supremacist supporters.

Let's keep marching people. It won't fall by itself.

1965 in the rear-view mirror

 Students who are revolutionary in spirit... have come up with real social criticism in three phases: the Free Speech Movement, which began as an attack upon the bureaucracy of the large university and turned into a protest against the impersonality of all institutions that, like the government welfare program, have lost contact with the people and values they were designed to serve; the Civil Rights Movement, which began as a campaign for Negro rights and turned into a campaign for eliminating local pockets of poverty; and the Peace Movement, which has begun as a protest against American military involvement in Vietnam and is turning into an attempt to influence all of foreign policy...

...There was also concern for the fact that, in their enthusiasm for the movement, many students were leaving their studies and shuttling back and forth among the campuses of the nation as vagabond dropouts in a vaguely academic orbit. And the unkempt appearance, condescending manner, and frequent acts of civil disobedience of many of the demonstrators added to an impression that this particular lot had spoiled, and that something must be done to keep the rest from being ruined.

-- From "The Price of Peace Is Confusion" by Renata Adler in the December 11, 1965 issue of the New Yorker

WEEKEND QUOTABLES 50 years ago, My Lai...

Journalist Seymour Hersh recounts the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam

Fifty years ago, on March 16, 1968, U.S. soldiers "went from house to house and killed and raped and mutilated, and that just went on until everybody was either run away or killed". -- Democracy Now

Ex-CIA chief John Brennan on Trump

“When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history." -- Guardian

J.B. Pritzker on putting $69.5 million into campaign 

“We simply are trying to make sure that we’re paying the bills in the campaign, and we’re very excited about the opportunity to simply get our message out.” -- Tribune

Vincent Warren, director of the Center for Constitutional Rights

Gina Haspel should be arrested, not promoted, and the Senate, if it has a single shred of respect left for the law, should not confirm her. -- Guardian

Gary Younge

The problem with Democrats looking on Donald Trump’s presidency as a slow-motion car crash is that it concedes they are spectators at a moment when they should be in the driving seat – and that, when we come to survey the wreckage, there will be many innocent victims. -- Guardian

Kate McKinnon doing Betsy DeVos

 Analyzing the merits of public schools and charter schools, McKinnon said: “I don’t like to think of things in terms of school. It should be up to the states. In Wyoming, for example, which has many potential grizzlies, there should be a school for bears. And in Louisiana, crocodile crossing guards. And in North Carolina, stop being trans, and that’s what’s best for them.” 

As for the school shooting issue, she added, “We are working hard to ensure that all schools are safe learning environments for guns.” -- SNL

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Belafonte, 90, tells Carnegie Music Hall audience in Pittsburgh,  “This will be my last public appearance.” 

Harry Belafonte

“We have achieved a lot in my lifetime. Dr King was not about nothing, Eleanor Roosevelt was not about nothing. I think in the final analysis that we shall overcome, because what we did is … we left a harvest that generations to come [will] reap. That they have not yet plowed. That they have not yet harvested.” -- Guardian

Parent at Success Academy Charter

“It’s like a military-style boot camp,” said one of the parents, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. -- N.Y. Daily News

 Prof. Erin Pahlke, Whitman College

...absent sufficient information for parents, choice-based education systems “penalize schools that enroll low-achievers rather than schools that offer poor instruction” and give school leaders a perverse incentive to focus on “making sure your school’s got the best kids” rather than improving school quality. -- The Atlantic

Barbara Ransby, UIC history professor

The Movement for Black Lives is distinctive because it defers to the local wisdom of its members and affiliates, rather than trying to dictate from above. In fact, the local organizers have insisted upon it. -- New York Times

Jimmy Carter

 Asked if Trump was responsible for souring America’s image in the world, he said “he might be escalating it but I think that precedes Trump. The United States has been the dominant character in the whole world and now we’re not any more. And we’re not going to be." -- Guardian  

John McCain

 “One aspect of the (Vietnam) conflict by the way that I will never ever countenance is that we drafted the lowest income level of America and the highest income level found a doctor that would say that they had a bone spur." -- AZ Central

If you think journalists should never challenge statements of generals, I’ve got a great documentary series for you https://t.co/4QuzXyw0OX

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) October 20, 2017

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Taking a knee at Oak Park - River Forest High School

Barry Romo, Vietnam Veterans Against the War

Twenty-two vets a day are killing themselves. And they aren't killing themselves because someone spit on them. They're killing themselves because they can't face the reality of the wars they went through. -- Hitting Left 

 Matthew W. Finkin, Univ. of IL law professor

"There are really no new arguments on this, just a change in the membership of the court, The unions have just been waiting for the other shoe to fall." -- Huge Stakes for Teacher Unions

 Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke

"I know it is really a good news story in terms of our ability to reach people and the limited number of deaths that have taken place in such a devastating hurricane." -- CBS

San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz

"Dammit, this is not a good news story. This is a people are dying story." -- CNN

Rep. Darren Soto (D), first FL congressman of Puerto Rican descent 

“. . . We’ve invaded small countries faster than we’ve been helping American citizens in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.” -- Washington Post

Lt. Gen. Russel Honore (Ret.)

 “The mayor is living on a cot. I hope the president has a good day at golf.” -- Mediaite 

...Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help. They....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2017

You're going straight to hell, @realDonaldTrump.
No long lines for you.
Someone will say, "Right this way, sir."
They'll clear a path. https://t.co/xXfJH0KJmw

— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) September 30, 2017

Burns Vietnam doc jarring our national amnesia

I've only seen bits and pieces of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's 10-part, 18-hour-long documentary series on the war in Vietnam. I watched as much as I could last night, but had to leave the room when the part about the 1968 My Lai massacre came on. Although massacres of Vietnamese civilians like the one in My Lai were not uncommon, we in the anti-war movement didn't learn about it til a year later because of the press blackout. Still, it and the other earth-shaking events from '68 -- the King assassination, cities in flames, the Chicago Democratic Convention protests, and more -- are seared in my memory, along with so many of the images we are revisiting in the Burns/Novick film.

It was these very images, along with TV news reports of dogs and fire hoses used on civil rights marchers coming out of Mississippi and Alabama, that led so many of us to begin making connections and seeing the war as much more than just a mistaken policy of misguided liberals. In 1965, SDS organized the first mass anti-war demonstration in D.C. By 1968, with the war dragging on, the draft, the body counts mounting, the almost-daily images of napalmed villages coming across our screens, we moved beyond just anti-war, to opposition to global imperialism and systemic white supremacy.

I'm not ready yet to offer a full-blown critique of "Vietnam" without seeing more. Many of my friends from back in the day are already going at it, reviving the fierce debate that went on at the time over the nature of the war and how to end it. I think that's fine and I already credit the film with with jarring the national memory -- or maybe I should call it, national amnesia -- about the war, regardless of Burns' perspective. For us educators, it's a teachable moment. For organizers and activists, its a signal to get moving again.

I only wish the same heat, passion, analysis and organization, was taking shape over our current "eternal wars" in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere in the absence of the kind of movement we built back 50 years ago. This, even as Trump, his generals and war profiteers bring us once again to the brink of nuclear war on the Korean peninsula. There are many reasons for this absence. But I'll save that for another post.

Barry Romo

On Friday's Hitting Left show, our in-studio guest will be Vietnam war vet, Barry Romo, a long-time organizer of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Barry helped organize the protest in D.C. where decorated war vets introduced themselves one-by-one, each stating his name and rank, and then threw their medals over the fence, toward the Capital.

His story of how the war transformed him is a compelling one. Tune in Friday at 11-noon CDT, streaming live at Lumpenradio.com.