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franklin roosevelt
In Private Meeting, Sanders Urged Biden to Embrace FDR-Style Agenda
"Democrats seem to think—many of them—that, only if we can explain all that we have accomplished, people will come on board. But that ignores the pain ordinary people are now experiencing," said the senator.
Mar 06, 2024
In a private meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden and his top advisers last fall, Sen. Bernie Sanders urged his former rival in the 2020 presidential race to disregard pundits and strategists deeply embedded in the Washington, D.C. "bubble" who believe the president can ignore the daily economic strife of millions of Americans, and speak candidly to voters who are struggling despite his administration's accomplishments.
As The Washington Postreported Wednesday, the Vermont Independent senator called on Biden to take inspiration from former President Franklin Roosevelt, who won reelection in 1936—three years after he introduced the first New Deal programs—after running a campaign in which he made clear that he would continue fighting for the working class and the 16% of Americans who were unemployed.
According to the Post, Sanders pointed to a portrait of Roosevelt in the Oval Office and quoted his 1936 remark about powerful corporations' and Wall Street's opposition to the New Deal: "Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred."
Sanders told the Post that Biden "has a lot to be proud of" in his first term and that he should continue to "proudly talk about those achievements," including the inclusion of Medicare drug price negotiating power in the Inflation Reduction Act and his push for more clean energy manufacturing.
But Sanders emphasized in the private meeting that neither Biden's accomplishments nor the relatively low unemployment rate change the fact that many working people are struggling to afford essentials as corporations keep prices high for consumer goods and the costs of essentials including rent and childcare rise.
"You have to understand that people can't afford housing. The healthcare system is broken... If you want to get reelected, talk about how you're going to solve and address those enormously important issues."
One of Biden's accomplishments, the expansion of the child tax credit in 2021, pushed child poverty to a record low before it was allowed to expire by Republicans and right-wing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, after which the rate roughly doubled.
Like Roosevelt, Sanders told the president and his advisers, Biden should call out his public enemies and those who are to blame for the suffering of working people.
"You have to understand that people can't afford housing. The healthcare system is broken. The housing system is broken. We have more income inequality than we've ever had," Sanders told the newspaper. "If you want to get reelected, talk about how you're going to solve and address those enormously important issues."
The senator, who has previously pushed Biden to embrace Social Security expansion and proposals to lower drug costs, called on the president to explain to voters an agenda for the first 100 days of his second term if the Democrats win the House and maintain control of the Senate, modeled on Roosevelt's historically productive first 100 days in office.
Expanding Social Security and Medicare benefits to help senior citizens, 23% of whom live in poverty; taxing the estates of the richest Americans; and raising the minimum wage should be agenda items for the beginning of Biden's second term, said Sanders.
"Democrats seem to think—many of them—that, only if we can explain all that we have accomplished, people will come on board. But that ignores the pain ordinary people are now experiencing," Sanders said. "He has got to lay out a progressive agenda that speaks to the needs of working people, and promise if he has a Democratic majority in the House and Senate that he will implement that in the first few months of his term."
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Why Biden's Picket Line Solidarity Is a Big Deal—Even Though It Shouldn't Be
Biden’s UAW picket line visit reflects the fact that the strike by union workers is so popular that the leader of the most pro-capitalist country on Earth believed being seen standing alongside them was politically advantageous. That's historic.
Sep 28, 2023
On Tuesday, Joe Biden became the first sitting U.S. president to join a picket line when he visited striking United Auto Workers (UAW) members outside a GM parts facility in Belleville, Michigan.
“You guys, UAW, you saved the automobile industry back in 2008 and before. You made a lot of sacrifices, gave up a lot when the companies were in trouble,” the president said to picketing workers. “But now they’re doing incredibly well, and guess what? You should be doing incredibly well too.”
The president has voiced support for the UAW’s strike at the Big Three automakers since it began on September 15. But after former President Donald Trump announced plans to hold a campaign rally at a non-union auto parts plant near Detroit — which the media grossly mischaracterized as “Trump standing with striking autoworkers” — Biden was pushed by fellow Democrats to visit a UAW picket line.
As a candidate in 2019, Biden joined workers on picket lines, including striking GM employees. Candidate Bill Clinton also walked a picket line in 1992, as did candidate Barack Obama in 2007. But no president has ever joined a picket line while in office until today.
On the campaign trail, Obama promised workers that, if elected, he would “put on a comfortable pair of shoes” and “walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America” — a promise he never fulfilled. As Obama’s vice president, Biden rebuffed a request from Wisconsin labor leaders in 2011 to join their massive protest against Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s push to curtail public sector union rights.
Biden’s UAW picket line visit reflects the fact that the strike by union workers is so popular that the leader of the most pro-capitalist country on Earth believed being seen standing alongside them was politically advantageous.
“This is absolutely unprecedented. No president has ever walked a picket line before,” labor historian Erik Loomis told the Associated Press.
Labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein similarly told the Guardian, “This is genuinely new — I don’t think it’s ever happened before, a president on a picket line.”
Presidents and picket lines
Almost three years into his term, much ink has been spilled debating whether Biden is living up to his promise to be the “most pro-union president leading the most pro-union administration in American history,” and today’s event will undoubtedly further fuel that discussion.
But what often goes unmentioned is what a low bar it is to earn the distinction of most pro-union president in U.S. history. Far from joining picket lines, most presidents have firmly sided with bosses, if they weren’t bosses themselves.
Twelve U.S. presidents (one in four) were literal slave owners — eight of them while in office. They physically coerced men, women and children to work for them in cruel, excruciating and humiliating conditions with no freedoms and no rights to speak of, let alone compensation.
Several presidents have deployed federal troops to break strikes and crush worker rebellions, including Andrew Jackson in 1834, Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877, Grover Cleveland in 1894, Theodore Roosevelt in 1903 and 1907, and Warren G. Harding in 1921.
Calvin Coolidge’s ascent to the White House was set in motion in 1919 when, as Massachusetts governor, he defeated the unpopular Boston police strike and declared, “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime.”
During wars, Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman seized control of certain enterprises or entire industries a total of 71 times to prevent or end strikes — sometimes on the side of unions, sometimes on the side of management.
Since Congress passed the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 over President Truman’s veto, the law’s emergency injunction provision — allowing the federal government to shut down strikes in the private sector — has been invoked by presidents 35 times.
Ronald Reagan — the only White House occupant to have previously been a union president and strike leader—infamously fired over 11,000 striking air traffic controllers in 1981 rather than negotiate a new contract with them, setting off the modern era of union busting.
Still, some presidents have also occasionally provided organized labor with moral and tangible support.
In March 1860, as the New England Shoemakers Strike was underway, candidate Abraham Lincoln addressed the situation while campaigning in Hartford, Connecticut. “I know one thing — there is a strike! And I am glad to know that there is a system of labor where the laborer can strike if he wants to,” he said.
Four years later, as the Civil War raged, a printers’ strike in St. Louis was in danger of being broken by U.S. Army troops commanded by General William Rosecrans, who saw labor disputes as impediments to the war effort. The printers appealed to President Lincoln by reminding him of his campaign remarks about the right to strike. Lincoln is said to have ordered Rosecrans to stand down.
President Teddy Roosevelt made history during the anthracite coal strike of 1902 when, instead of simply having the military stamp out the strike, he attempted to mediate a fair resolution by bringing union and management representatives to Washington to negotiate as equals.
During World War I, Woodrow Wilson rewarded union workers with shorter hours, higher wages and better conditions to avoid strikes. But Wilson was also merciless toward anti-war labor radicals, imprisoning many organizers with the Industrial Workers of the World for “obstructing” the war.
Franklin D. Roosevelt is often considered the most pro-labor U.S. president because he oversaw the New Deal — a slew of reforms in the 1930s that uplifted much of the industrial working class, including the pro-union National Labor Relations Act. A famous 1940 union poster quotes FDR as saying, “If I went to work in a factory, the first thing I’d do would be TO JOIN A UNION” — but it’s unclear if he ever actually said this.
“Earned, not freely given”
FDR’s New Deal wouldn’t have been possible without overwhelming Democratic majorities in Congress, a critical advantage not enjoyed by Joe Biden and his stalled Build Back Better agenda.
Nevertheless, Biden has made a decent effort. Under his administration, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has been more unabashedly pro-worker than likely any time since the 1930s. Biden has also followed union leaders’ wishes on who to elevate into key positions such as Secretary of Labor and NLRB general counsel, and has used his bully pulpit to make some of the most pro-union public statements we’ve ever heard from a president (again, it’s a low bar.)
At the same time, Biden has so far failed to get Congress to pass the union-friendly PRO Act, though he was all too successful in getting Congress to preempt last year’s potential railroad strike and impose an unpopular contract on rail workers despite a majority of them voting to reject it. Anti-union actions like overriding rank-and-file democracy and denying workers’ their fundamental right to strike are unfortunately par for the course for U.S. presidents.
This seems to be something UAW President Shawn Fain understands. Just as Fain refused to engage in the traditional, ceremonial handshake with the Big Three CEOs at the start of contract bargaining, he and his union have so far refrained from endorsing Biden’s reelection (while 17 other unions and the AFL-CIO quickly endorsed him back in June).
“Our endorsements are going to be earned, not freely given,” Fain has said. This example of labor proudly standing up for itself and demanding respect, instead of reflexively bowing to those in power, likely encouraged Biden to make history by joining the picket line today. It may also be what ultimately forces the Big Three to make historic concessions to striking autoworkers.Keep ReadingShow Less
Report Details How Community Utilities Can Usher In Green Energy Transition
"We have a powerful tool to accelerate the energy transition in a way that builds community wealth and energy justice in our communities: publicly and cooperatively owned utilities."
Apr 18, 2022
Publicly and cooperatively owned utilities offer a better transition path to a fossil-free power grid than their corporate-owned counterparts--as long as they are properly reformed and regulated--the authors of a report published Monday argue.
"It is time to reignite the radical history of community utilities to herald the transition to a genuinely democratic, equitable, and clean energy system."
The report--by Thomas Hanna, Johanna Bozuwa, and Raj Rao of the Democracy Collaborative and Climate and Community Project--found that community utilities "are better suited for a 'Green New Deal'-style transition than for-profit corporate utilities."
However, the authors also contend that "many community utilities as they currently exist must be significantly reformed to fulfill their full potential."
"The United States urgently needs to transition off of fossil fuels and onto clean sources of energy (especially renewable energy) to maintain a livable climate," they assert, noting that "as of 2020, only around 20% of U.S. electricity generation is from renewable energy sources."
"Energy utilities--the companies that run our power systems--have enormous control over the scope and scale of the transition, but have often dragged their feet or even fought against clean energy," the report continues. "Not only does their inaction imperil the very future of humanity, but it directly harms families--often Black, Indigenous, low-income, or otherwise marginalized--who live in the shadow of toxic power plants."
\u201cOur latest report w @ThomasMHanna @johannabozuwa + Raj Rao takes a deep dive on our existing public + coop utilities. \n\nWe already own 30% of the energy utilities in the US. Time to start acting like it. Check out recommendations below \ud83d\udc47\ud83d\udc47\n\nhttps://t.co/SEO6jb4YwZ\u201d— Climate and Community Project (@Climate and Community Project) 1650297634
"The current U.S. energy system is dirty and expensive," the publication states. "Thirty-one percent of households in the country have to make the choice between buying groceries or paying their energy bills. In response, communities across the country are beginning to mobilize to demand an energy transition."
The authors stress that "we have a powerful tool to accelerate the energy transition in a way that builds community wealth and energy justice in our communities: publicly and cooperatively owned utilities."
According to the report, around 30% of U.S. households are currently powered by community utilities, whose historical roots the authors call "radical."
"In the early days of electrification 100 years ago, residents across the country rose up against profiteering private utilities who provided poor (or nonexistent) service at high prices by creating their own publicly and cooperatively owned utilities," they note. "In the state of Nebraska, for instance, they kicked all private utilities out of the state for good. To this day, there are no private utilities providing electricity to Nebraskans' homes."
\u201c\ud83e\udd70 this image that shows what we can be building toward. This doesn't come without hard-won fights and intransigence. But it is worth it for a new conception of our energy system, owned for the people, by the people.\u201d— Johanna Bozuwa (@Johanna Bozuwa) 1650295362
The report also cites the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration's Rural Electrification Administration, a New Deal program that boosted the electrification rate from 10% to 90% in a decade as farmers united to start their own electric cooperatives.
"It is time to reignite the radical history of community utilities to herald the transition to a genuinely democratic, equitable, and clean energy system," the report's authors assert.
The report lays out a nine-point plan for community utilities to realize their full potential. Blocking privatization, setting incentives and mandates for renewable energy, establishing public banks and financing, and boosting democratic governance are some of the steps the authors say are crucial for success.
\u201cAnd send the bill to the billionaires, banks, & plastic-churning mega corporations who have us locked into this system with their investments!\u201d— Jackie Fielder (@Jackie Fielder) 1649808500
"Community utilities are much better suited to support a just and equitable clean energy transition than for-profit corporate utilities," said Hanna.
"However, many must be reformed and democratized to fulfill their potential," he added. "Alongside (and integrated with) larger public interventions and institutions in the energy system (such as regional public power producers), community utilities can play a prominent role in the clean energy future we desperately need."
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