New Orleans

And, that was a shock.  Oliver was a friend and supporter.  Mayor Morial’s blessing and Oliver’s work on the inside when I ran the multi-union project, HOTROC, for SEIU, the AFL-CIO, HERE, and the Operating Engineers, ended up being the big success of our inside “leverage” campaign with the Piazza de’ Italia public corporation that built the Lowe’s Hotel, the only major post 9-11 property, and now the only union hotel in the city.  Earlier Oliver had been the key we needed when he cast the deciding vote preventing the privatization of the Sewerage and Water Board.  He has been one of our most vocal champions when we fought to raise the minimum wage.  Believe me, if he had been for sale, developers, hoteliers, and the privateers all would have paid way more than $20,000 chump change to take him out of those fights.  So of all the trees to be toppled and fall, the looming, large Councilman Thomas was the surprise never expected and the disappointment most deeply felt and impossible to replace.

When caught with the cookies, Oliver manned up, pled guilty, didn’t rat, and did his time.  We got some letters from him from the fed penitentiary in Atlanta that were moving and well thought out.  Big believers in redemption, when the bizarre news came out that he and his old friend, Anthony Bean, director of a community theater uptown had written a play about all of this, called “Reflections:  A Man and His Time,” I immediately went on line and bought six tickets so we would be well represented from the top (Local 100 ULU’s President Mildred Edmond) to the bottom (the rest of us organizers).

The play was sold out and my guess is that the theater should have cleared $6000 conservatively the night we attended, and that’s a very good contribution and says something about rehab right there.  What do I know about the theater?  Not much, but the play was sprightly up to the intermission.  Some of it was even funny.  The crowd got a tremendous kick out of the satire around the preachers advising and arguing with Oliver before his public announcement.  The second half focusing on his prison time was preachy and boring with one good song, which might mean it was realistic, but it didn’t offer much to most of us already off parole.

A politician slipping and falling and then doing something as public as a play to try and “explain” himself is a rare thing, so it’s hard to judge.  Having read Oliver’s prison letters, I don’t doubt his sincerity, yet watching all of this on a stage inevitably and by definition takes some of the reality out of both insight and contrition.  The sense of “I did wrong” was never diluted, but the play allowed there to be curious mitigations around the inadequate pay in politics, the puny level of the bribe, the generosity shown to needy constituents, the lack of benefit to his family, and the couple of times that problems with racetrack gambling floated out in snippets of dialogue without explanation or amplification, as if the very mention was a trial balloon for an alternate reality.

Some things can’t be explained and Oliver and Bean were sharp enough to not try to defend something that was just plain stupid.  The play also left the future cloudy and confused for our friend and now banned politician.  The very drag of the second act made it hard to believe that there as a clear path for Oliver working with young people, which was part of the hint drifting there.

New Orleans is not like other cities.  Thank goodness!  Former governor Edwin Edwards just came out of jail after a decade as the play was hitting the boards.  Here he maintains a reputation after four terms in office as delightful rouge regardless of the evidence.  In our city Oliver can still be an advocate what needs to be done.  A son of the lower 9^th ward and a long time representative of uptown housing projects and neighborhoods, Oliver can still find a voice speaking truth to power.   He did wrong, and he paid his debt to society.  Now he needs to find a new stage and talk about what he really knows and what really matters.  Maybe that will be with young people, maybe it will be a broader role in helping cement the coalition that continues to try and build real power for the majority of people in this city.

After a slip and fall, what’s most important is finding a sure path to continue on making progress as you make your way.

New Orleans

With the deadline hard on us for emergency claims to be submitted (Close of business on Tuesday 11/23!), I didn’t’ want to start an irresponsible gold rush, if this was nothing more than rumor fueled by alcohol coming from the hands of the same bartenders.  I know not to trust the hometown paper as the ultimate authority on these matters, but all of their storylines had focused on oil workers, fishermen, and others barely staying afloat with graphic photos from the beautiful and damaged bayou country south of the city.  Why were we not seeing pictures of lines trailing out into the streets here in broke ass New Orleans, if money was falling from BP trees, especially in the always hospitality hard luck and humidity summer season?

My daughter – the organizer – felt the issue was that not enough people knew this was possible and were going to apply and get the compensation.   Pressed this week for more information, she confirmed that other conversations with hospitality workers in her haunts, I mean after more outreach and research, she had turned up servers and other “line” workers who had applied and gotten payments also ranging in the thousands of dollars.              Ok, I’m there!

In an abundance of caution I made one more last minute call before spreading the call for hospitality workers to rush the BP pay windows.  I reached out for Darrin Browder, one of the managing directors of the Restaurant Opportunities Center in New Orleans (ROC/NOLa) certain that he would have the down-low.  I missed him on the phone a little after 5PM, but within minutes Darrin was replying via email on his I-phone.  Yes, he had heard the same thing, and, yes, ROC had helped some of their members apply.  No, he did not know of any of their members that had received money yet, but he had also heard the big numbers that I was hearing.  In a further email exchange that evening, Darrin also reported that he knew a number of French Quarter restaurants had gotten anywhere from “hundreds of thousands to millions” of dollars from the BP claims fund.  He was skeptical about a number of them sharing their award with their workforce, but cited Emeril’s as the hero of this story.  The nationally famous restaurant in fact did share the award by giving their entire workforce a check when Emeril received his payment.  (Emeril had a famous misstep after Katrina where he was reported as publicly doubting the recovery, but this is a class move, showing the brother has learned something about live in our fair city!)

Finally to put an even finer point on it, there was a puff piece by Joe Nocera in the Times this morning that I saw as I was writing this, where he reported that he was chowing down with Kenneth Feinberg at one of those $20 per plate, $100 expense account breakfasts at the fancy Carlyle Hotel in New York City, and Feinberg was trying to organize a pity party for himself about how hard his job was giving out the BP $20 billion pot of claims money fairly.  Another fancy pants diner a couple of tables over – love these stories of the big whoops having a “class crises”! – overheard Feinberg’s loud moaning, and loudly yelled and repeated:  “Just.Pay.Them.”  (Buddy, if you read this somehow, send me your name and your breakfast is on Local 100 at Emeril’s!)  The whole bottom line of Nocera’s “talking business” column was “claim up,” “go for the gold,” and the heck with court.  Right on!  That was the final straw for me!

Find the claims office.  Google “Gulf Coast Claims Facility.”  Get your act together with your bank deposits and pay slips, and get your app in Monday or Tuesday rather than diddling around.   Feinberg can have his pity party about his tough job, but if there’s a check for a couple of thousand waiting for you for lost wages and tips and work during the Spill Summer, it’s time to cash in.

Here’s how:

• Through the Website: You can complete the Claim Form online by going to the www.GulfCoastClaimsFacility.com website and selecting “Claim Form.” The online instructions will tell you how to complete a Claim Form and how to submit the form and the supporting documents online.
• By Visiting a GCCF Claims Site Office: You can complete a Claim Form and submit documents in person at one of the GCCF Claims Site Offices, where a Claims Evaluator will help you fill out the form. You may obtain a list of the GCCF Claims Site Offices near you by visiting www.GulfCoastClaimsFacility.com or by calling the GCCF toll free number, 1-800-916-4893. TTY: 1-866-682-1758.

There’s some information on the website that indications a “regular payment” may be available for paperwork by August 2013, so don’t piddle, but there may be some play in this, too.

In the old HOTROC days we would be cranking out the Xerox machine with flyers telling people to CLAIM OIL SPILL MONEY NOW!   We would be making sure workers knew the score and were ready to roll.  In fact that’s not a bad idea.

Stella!  Chaco!  Where are you!!!!  We have work for you on Monday!!!

It’s Santa time!

      

            Even the bright spots crept through some clouds when we would pass massive new school construction blocks away from huge shuttered parochial facilities with fences flapping in the wind.  Bill Covington, an old colleague from the HOTROC organizing drives in New Orleans, was my guide and mentioned there were 11,000 abandoned houses in the city now.  Each one entailed $10,000 in costs to demolish.  The city had announced a multi-year plan to tear down 500 per year.  Gulp.  That would be 22 years of demolition while the inventory would continue to grow and communities would be living with permanent scars.

            I was reminded of Professor Ken Reardon’s conversation with me in Sicily about his efforts to build a center at the University of Memphis to address the crises of mid-sized cities and their future.  I had heard these stories in Springfield, Massachusetts recently and now Buffalo, New York seemed like deja vu.  More than an institute is needed though.  The isn’t an organizing plan yet, and that’s work work and thought.

            Talking about Citizen Wealth that evening to a great group of hardy souls, the frustration kept arising around healthcare and the slow and fragile development of any progressive legislation.  There’s no happiness in Mudville.  We may be close to getting something on healthcare, but no one is talking about “winning” anymore.

            Today’s papers were discouraging.   To reach of Senator Sanders being thwarted from even trying to have a debate about something better is disheartening.  To reach the role of the U.S. Catholic Conference’s willingness to hijack any hope for reform around what now seems to be their single issue (abortion) and to realize that a great, historic advocate for the poor and downtrodden has beyond myopic is depressing.  It isn’t hard to feel the gloating of the Republicans over the success of their “kill reform” at any price strategy.  What the heck?!

            But, just like Buffalo there are still strong rays of hope, though perhaps more mirage than reality.  Seems that more than one can play the amendment game, and Senator Rockefeller from West Virginia had two great cards on the table according to the story in the Times: 

“Senate Democratic leaders said they would probably accept two contentious proposals by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia. One would increase the powers of a proposed new agency to limit the growth of health spending, including payments to hospitals.

The other proposal would require insurers to spend a specified share of premiums — at least 85 percent — on clinical services and activities that improve the quality of care. This would, in effect, limit the profits of insurers.”

Hope springs eternal!

Washington

I stumbled into the fine hall after the ceremony had already begun, taking a seat just behind Jon Hiatt, Sweeney’s long time general counsel at SEIU and now the AFL, who reached out his hand, and Bill Lurye, from New Orleans sitting down the row past Ray Abernathy and Denise Mitchell, the communications wizards I had known so long.

Listening to John read his very personal speech, I could see Ray imperceptibly nodding as he heard the words that he had no doubt helped shape for John as he has so many times before.  In the wake of the Ted Kennedy funeral and the very public expressions of faith, including the revelation of the recent letter from Senator Kennedy that was hand delivered by President Obama to the Pope, John and Ray had obviously decided in this very Jesuit institution to have John speak very comfortably and personally in his own testament to his Catholic faith as part of his service to working people.  Bob Welsh later commented to me at the reception that for all of the thousands of speeches he has heard John give this was the first one he could recall that was so deeply and personally Catholic as a man, rather than as even a Catholic labor leader.

Having long heard the Sweeney standard preamble that recognizes virtually every labor leader in any room where he is speaking, the beginning was more personal and less political as he named every Sweeney relative in the room and only mentioned Rich Trumka, his coming successor, whom I visited with later, and Arlene Holt, who I may have missed in the crowd.  Clearly, I was hearing the end of Sweeney’s political service and something of his transition to whatever his new and more personal service is likely to be.

Reading the program, it was hard to believe that he had been at the AFL-CIO for 14 years.  Could it have been that long?  And, that he had headed SEIU for 15 years.  Was it really that brief?

The President of Georgetown, Dr. John DeGioia, may have captured his recent career better in noting what I would call his “stewardship” in keeping faith in hard times for institutional labor.  Perhaps that subdued and solid note is most apt. Though it’s sad in a sense of what “could have been” to those of us who stood and hollered, as I did as a proud delegate from the New Orleans AFL-CIO and comrade from SEIU for my President as he spoke as the candidate of change and hope to reform and revitalize labor and offered to lead the AFL-CIO in a different direction in New York in that convention, when Sweeney won as a reform candidate there now years ago.  Now, we have a shattered house of labor still trying to find its future, and an AFL-CIO that is still profoundly better than what he found there, I believe, but still not what we had hoped it might have become.

My friends, comrades, brothers and sisters with whom I’ve shared so much were there in full, graying force.  It was good to see Gerry Shea whose path has now crossed and intertwined with mine for 40 years now back to welfare rights.

It was sobering at the reception to visit with Steven Greenhouse, the Times’ labor reporter, and ask him, as one of the most knowledgeable observers from outside the various houses of labor, where he thought the best new organizing was happening in the country, and realize that what used to a casual and easy question, had clearly caught him off guard.   He easily cited for Joe McCartin the stories where he had covered my organizing on his beat, when I directed the HOTROC campaign among hospitality workers in New Orleans as part of the early Sweeney AFL-CIO organizing offense when our shared friend, Kirk Adams, was the AFL’s Organizing Director, and again in Orlando and Tampa when he covered the drives we were running among Wal-Mart workers on a project supported by the AFL, SEIU, and the UFCW, when we were still all together and still trying to break new organizing ground just five years ago until everything split apart in the middle of our work.  On one hand he confessed that his editors weren’t really interested in organizing, but also conceded that there wasn’t much he could find either.  His last big organizing story he said might have been the campaign that I had helped develop and shepherd through as a partnership with ACORN and the UFT to organize the tens of thousands of home child care workers in New York City.  Joe more gracefully changed the subject to the organizing I was doing internationally to create unions of waste pickers in India, but the work there doesn’t explain or excuse the “waiting for EFCA” vacuum in so much organizing here.

Sweeney time and service was being appropriately recognized, and he and his team deserved the thanks for progress made and promised kept, even if there were many dreams unrealized and disappointments on the road.  It was an honor just to be in the room and to be fortunate enough to be there for such a great occasion with some many comrades and friends.  Many if there were more hosts and facilitators like the good, committed Jesuits of Georgetown and the thoughtful wise veterans in the allied trades, like Professor and friend, Joe McCartin, we could still make many of these dreams still come true.