The first conference of the Southern Faith, Labor and Community Alliance this summer, was hosted by the University of Memphis and attended by several hundred people, black, white, Asian, and Latino. The gathering included ministers, labor supporters, community activists, academic workers, Change to Win and AFL-CIO unions, from eight southern states and far beyond. Among those from Georgia were Booker Lester, on the staff of the Communications Workers of America, District 3, and Rev. Michael Dawson, a member of CWA Local 3204.

In the following essays, Michael Honey provides historical perspective and Alice Bernstein reports on aspects of

the conference.\\

I. Labor & Faith: New Life for an Old Alliance

by Michael Honey

"The problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation and the problem or war, are all tied together."— Martin Luther King, Jr. Ministers, union organizers, workers, and academic labor supporters met for three days in Memphis at the end of July, sponsored by the Southern Faith, Labor and Community Alliance, led by ministers Nelson Johnson and J. Herbert

Nelson. These two African American men are veterans of a successful community-based struggle of 500 low-wage KMart

workers in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1996. In Greensboro, ministers and black community members engaged in economic boycotts and civil disobedience, and went to jail to support union rights and higher wages. Martin

Luther King gave his life in a similar struggle in Memphis in 1968.  Both strikes made the rights of workers a central issue for the black community and for civil rights movements.

Memphis set off a decade of mostly-successful union campaigns among disproportionately black, female, and poor

public employees. Greensboro helped to re-open religion and labor coalitions in the era of downsizing, privatization, and

destruction of unions. Both provided hope for advocates of social movements and community-based unionism. The Memphis conference sought to reinvigorate and reconnect the black church to the struggle of low-wage workers in the South, at a time when the Christian church seems to be failing them. "Much of Christendom is silent on the question of the poor," say conference organizers. "Christianity is increasingly becoming the faith of the empire, an empire that proclaims freedom and democracy on the one hand while enforcing economic tyranny within this country and abroad on the other," and largely standing aside as "the world is plunged into a permanent war culture."

In a critique similar to Dr. King’s, conference organizers say the mega-church has adopted a patriotic "empire theology,"

stressing the acquisition of individual material wealth instead of serving the poor left by the side of the road. King preached that Dives went to hell for abandoning the poor and that we should emulate the Good Samaritan who selflessly served those in need. In the post-Katrina South, in the midst

of multiple disasters induced by militarism and war, nothing could be more important than tying issues together, creating

an organizing strategy, and building a core of people to carry it out, much as King tried to do in 1968. The Memphis conference is but one step in that direction. First in Gary,  Indiana at a conference in March, black organizers re-assessed the strategy of the 1972 Gary conference to move from civil rights to

political power. Gary II called on people

to move simultaneously on all fronts

toward a program for economic survival

for people of color. In Orlando, Florida,

in May, the Coalition of Black Trade

Unionists met for similar purposes, and

both conferences stressed the need to

create an alliance between black labor

and the church.

Without such an alliance, our world

seems doomed by the destruction of the

Bush regime, as each terrible thing leads

to something even worse. The labor

movement is in particularly dire straits

this Labor Day, and the crushing blows

against it have hit the black working

class the hardest of all. A higher percentage

of African American belong to

unions than any other group, and Labor

Department figures show that blacks

held 55% of the more than 200,000

union jobs lost in 2004. The key to turning

this around is creating a broader

vision and a broader movement, say conference

organizers, with spiritual issues

at the center of it, to organize the nonunion

South. The future of black survival

and political power depends upon it.

No single movement or segment of

society—not unions, not civil rights nor

any of the other social movement organizations,

and certainly no single religious

or political group—can mount the massive

grass-roots movement from below

required to confront the massive, accumulating

deficits and setbacks of the

Bush years. But we must start somewhere.

II. The Force of Ethics in American Labor

by Alice Bernstein

The inaugural conference of the

Southern Faith, Labor and Community

Alliance was important in the fight for

unions and social justice, at a time when

Americans are in pain about jobs, healthcare,

and a living wage. The purpose was

to renew-—"resurrect"--the movement

in the South against poverty and racism,

which Dr. King was leading so powerfully

in 1968 when he was assassinated

while fighting for the right of 1,300

black sanitation workers to organize.

The 1968 Memphis Sanitation

Workers Strike succeeded--they got their

union, Local 1733 of AFSCME, and

union membership also increased across

the country giving workers, including

black workers in the South, some of the

dignity and the better wages they had

been denied for so long. Yet today vast

numbers of union jobs have been lost,

and millions of people now have to work

two, and many even three, jobs to make

ends meet.

At the opening session, Rev. J.

Herbert Nelson stated, "In Memphis we

have the zip codes with the highest infant

mortality in the nation, yet there are two

world-class research hospitals here for

children. People who work 40-50-60

hours a week still don’t have enough to

feed their families." He outlined a goal

"to build bridges of hope and possibilities

for labor through a movement of

partnerships," including by educating

young people.

I am a person with a big respect for

unions—my grandfather was an organizer

who died on a picket line in the 1930s,

and I am the wife of a Teamster retiree.

This conference, and an event that preceded

it in Las Vegas, made it clearer to

me than ever that people need to know

what is explained by Aesthetic Realism,

the philosophy founded by the poet and

educator Eli Siegel (1902-78), about

why the economy is in the state it’s in

and what can change it.

The Profit System Has Failed

In May of 1970, after the stock market

fell 300 points, Mr. Siegel gave the first

of over 200 lectures in a series titled

Goodbye Profit System, in which he

explained that profit economics—-the

use of human beings for one’s financial

gain without respecting them-—had

failed. He said:

"The conduct of industry on the basis

of ill will has been shown to be inefficient….

There will be no economic

recovery in the world until economics

itself, the making of money, the having

of jobs, becomes ethical; is based on

good will rather than on the ill will

which has been predominant for centuries….

Ethics is a force like electricity, steam, the atom – and will have its

way."

Evidence of the failure of the profit

system continues right up to this 21stcentury

day. The dependence on war to

build up the economy has failed. And

there is a deep disgust throughout

America about "corporate greed," and

"golden parachutes" for retiring executives,

while workers’ wages, benefits,

and pensions are slashed.

The Cause of Economic Injustice

Aesthetic Realism explains that the

cause of every injustice-—from an

unkind sneer to the brutality of racism

and war—-is contempt: the desire for "a

false importance or glory from the lessening

of things not oneself." Contempt is

at the core of profit economics, which

strips people of their humanity and sees

their labor, even their pain, as a continual

source of profit for a few individuals.

Contempt drives sweatshops and is the

reason "civilized" people countenance

child labor—-as conference attendee

Karah Newton and others in the National

Mobilization against Sweatshops have

witnessed daily.

Every union demonstration, sit-down,

strike, and picket line is a criticism of

contempt–-and a choice for respect!

The Memphis conference included

panel discussions on labor history; current

organizing campaigns; plans for

future campaigns; labor in post-Katrina

New Orleans; and immigrants in the

work force. In the panel on the 1968

Sanitation Workers Strike, what Rev.

Ezekiel Bell said is evidence that both

respect and contempt are in people of all

races: "I was glad to be with men who

were standing for the right thing. If you

are your brother’s keeper, then you ought

to be there-—I felt that way. And in a

meeting of the Memphis City Council I

said, ‘I don’t like rats. I don’t like black

rats and I don’t like white rats. I don’t

like rats!’"

In another panel, Gerald "Gerry"

Hudson, Executive Vice President of

SEIU, and leader of the division which

represents 500,000 nursing home and

home care workers nationwide, spoke

about spearheading not only community

unionism, but global unionism—-to stop

the ruthless exploitation of workers in

other lands. That is the force of ethics,

too.

Yet people in the labor movement

need to see that profit economics is

based on contempt and that it doesn’t

work any more—-which is why the

attempt to save it is so intense and brutal.

This fact is highlighted in working

places in the South, many of which are

run like plantations. The answer is for

people to see that the way our economy

is run has got to be based, not on ill will,

but on good will, on what Mr. Siegel

described as "jobs for usefulness, not for

profit."

"Ethics Is a Force!"—Las Vegas

Unions are large in that force of ethics

which Aesthetic Realism explains. Every

gain for worker dignity, safety, better

wages and benefits meant an increase in

respect-—the money that paid for these

gains could no longer be taken by an

owner for his or her private profit.

Because unions were so successful in

showing that respect has power, too,

there has been a relentless determination

to annihilate them.

Another important labor event this

summer, which I feel has in it what people

in the South and the labor movement

itself are going after, took place in relation

to the union so eminent at the

Memphis conference: the Graphic

Communications Conference of the

Teamsters (GCC/IBT). The Aesthetic

Realism Theatre Company was invited

to present "Ethics Is a Force!-—Songs

about Labor" at the union’s founding

convention in Las Vegas on June 24th.

Hundreds of delegates from North

America learned, through 11 songs and

comments—-by performers including

Kevin Fennell of the American Postal

Workers Unions, and Timothy Lynch,

president of Teamsters Local 1205-—

what Aesthetic Realism explains about

the meaning of labor and the grandeur of

unions. For example, there are these

great sentences by Eli Siegel:

"Labor is the only source of wealth.

There is no other source, except land, the

raw material….Every bit of capital that

exists was made by labor, just as everything

that is consumed is."

And there is this answer to the economic

agony today given by Ellen Reiss

in the international periodical The Right

of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known:

"When the jobs of America are owned

by the people who work at the jobs—-

when the wealth Americans produce

from the American earth and American

factories and offices with American

thought and hands, goes to the people of

America-—there will suddenly be plenty

of jobs and plenty of respectful compensation

for people’s work."

"Ethics Is a Force!" was greeted by

cheers and a standing ovation.

I first learned about the Memphis conference

from Donald Minor of GCC

Local 670C in Richmond, Virginia, a

delegate to the Las Vegas conference. He

called me after seeing "Ethics Is a

Force!" and speaking with a cast member

who told him about my work as a journalist,

Aesthetic Realism associate, and

oral historian. Mr. Minor said to me:

"The Aesthetic Realism presentation was

excellent and opened my eyes to what’s

going on. I want to ask you to go to

Memphis and tell about what happens

and what it means."

Protest at Quebecor—"That Was

Beautiful!"

On the second day of the Memphis

conference, a mass protest took place at

the Olive Branch, Mississippi plant of

the second largest printer in the world,

Quebecor (QW), where magazines like

Sports Illustrated and People, catalogs

for Victoria’s Secret, and more, are produced.

The Mid-South Interfaith

Network for Economic Justice, directed

by Rev. Rebekah Jordan, reported that