By Cindy Sheehan
08/20/05 "ICH" -- -- The media are wrong. The people who have come out to Camp Casey to help coordinate the press and events with me are not putting words in my mouth, they are taking words out of my mouth. I have been known for sometime as a person who speaks the truth and speaks it strongly. I have always called a liar a liar and a hypocrite a hypocrite. Now I am urged to use softer language to appeal to a wider audience. Why do my friends at Camp Casey think they are there? Why did such a big movement occur from such a small action on August 6, 2005?
I haven't had much time to analyze the Camp Casey phenomena. I just read that I gave 250 interviews in less than a week's time. I believe it. I would go to bed with a raw throat every night. I got pretty tired of answering some questions, like: "What do you want to say to the President?" and "Do you really think he will meet with you?" However, since my mom has been sick I have had a chance to step back and ponder the flood gates that I opened in Crawford, Tx.
I just read an article posted today on LewRockwell.com by artist Robert Shetterly who painted my portrait. The article reminded me of something I said at the Veteran's for Peace Convention the night before I set out to Bush's ranch in my probable futile quest for the truth. This is what I said:
I got an email the other day and it said, "Cindy if you didn't use so much profanity ... there's people on the fence that get offended. And you know what I said? "You know what? You know what, god damn it? How in the world is anybody still sitting on that fence?
If you fall on the side that is pro-George and pro-war, you get your ass over to Iraq, and take the place of somebody who wants to come home. And if you fall on the side that is against this war and against George Bush, stand up and speak out.
This is what the Camp Casey miracle is all about. American citizens who oppose the war but never had a conduit for their disgust and dismay are dropping everything and traveling to Crawford to stand in solidarity with us who have made a commitment to sit outside of George's ranch for the duration of the miserable Texan August. If they can't come to Texas, they are attending vigils, writing letters to their elected officials and to their local newspapers; they are setting up Camp Casey branches in their hometowns; they are sending flowers, cards, letters, gifts, and donations here to us at Camp Casey. We are so grateful for all of the support, but I think pro-peace Americans are grateful for something to do, finally.
One thing I haven't noticed or become aware of though is an increased number of pro-war, pro-Bush people on the other side of the fence enlisting to go and fight George Bush's war for imperialism and insatiable greed. The pro-peace side has gotten off their apathetic butts to be warriors for peace and justice. Where are the pro-war people? Everyday at Camp Casey we have a couple of anti-peace people on the other side of the road holding up signs that remind me that "Freedom isn't Free" but I don't see them putting their money where their mouths are. I don't think they are willing to pay even a small down payment for freedom by sacrificing their own blood or the flesh of their children. I still challenge them to go to Iraq and let another soldier come home. Perhaps a soldier that is on his/her third tour of duty, or one that has been stop-lossed after serving his/her country nobly and selflessly, only to be held hostage in Iraq by power mad hypocrites who have a long history of avoiding putting their own skin in the game.
Contrary to what the main stream media thinks, I did not just fall off a pumpkin truck in Crawford, Tx. on that scorchingly hot day two weeks ago. I have been writing, speaking, testifying in front of Congressional committees, lobbying Congress, and doing interviews for over a year now. I have been pretty well known in the progressive, peace community and I had many, many supporters before I even left California. The people who supported me did so because they know that I uncompromisingly tell the truth about this war. I have stood up and said: "My son died for NOTHING, and George Bush and his evil cabal and their reckless policies killed him. My son was sent to fight in a war that had no basis in reality and was killed for it." I have never said "pretty please" or "thank you." I have never said anything wishy-washy like he uses "Patriotic Rhetoric." I say my son died for LIES. George Bush LIED to us and he knew he was LYING. The Downing Street Memos dated 23 July, 2002 prove that he knew that Saddam didn't have WMD's or any ties to Al Qaeda. I believe that George lied and he knew he was lying. He didn't use patriotic rhetoric. He lied and made us afraid of ghosts that weren't there. Now he is using patriotic rhetoric to keep the US military presence in Iraq: Patriotic rhetoric that is based on greed and nothing else.
Now I am being vilified and dragged through the mud by the righties and so-called "fair and balanced" main stream media who are afraid of the truth and can't face someone who tells it by telling any truth of their own. Now they have to twist, distort, lie, and scrutinize anything I have ever said when they never scrutinize anything that George Bush said or is saying. Instead of asking George or Scotty McClellan if he will meet with me, why aren't they asking the questions they should have been asking all along: "Why are our young people fighting, dying, and killing in Iraq? What is this noble cause you are sending our young people to Iraq for? What do you hope to accomplish there? Why did you tell us there were WMD's and ties to Al Qaeda when you knew there weren't? Why did you lie to us? Why did you lie to the American people? Why did you lie to the world? Why are our nation's children still in harm's way and dying everyday when we all know you lied? Why do you continually say we have to "complete the mission" when you know damn well you have no idea what that mission is and you can change it at will like you change your cowboy shirts?"
Camp Casey has grown and prospered and survived all attacks and challenges because America is sick and tired of liars and hypocrites and we want the answers to the tough questions that I was the first to dare ask. THIS is George Bush's accountability moment and he is failing ... miserably. George Bush and his advisers seriously "misunderestimated" me when they thought they could intimidate me into leaving before I had the answers, or before the end of August. I can take anything they throw at me, or Camp Casey. If it shortens the war by a minute or saves one life, it is worth it. I think they seriously "misunderestimated" all mothers. I wonder if any of them had authentic mother-child relationships and if they are surprised that there are so many mothers in this country who are bear-like when it comes to wanting the truth and who want to make meaning of their child's needless and seemingly meaningless deaths?
The Camp Casey movement will not die until we have a genuine accounting of the truth and until our troops are brought home. Get used to it George, we are not going away.
The Sandwichman was out of town when comment spam convinced him to shut off the comments on all previous posts. Unfortunately, that will be the routine for now. Meanwhile, I've contributed guest posts to MaxSpeak, You Listen! and to MRzine. Next week, I'll be contributing to the Wall Street Journal Online's Econoblog.
Now Supported by Organized Labor and Numerous Employers, It Will Depend for Its Continuance Upon Many Factors
By R.L. Duffus
The adoption of the five-day week and six-hour day as an immediate objective by the American Federation of Labor, in convention at Cincinnati, puts a fighting edge on a movement which has been gathering strength for some time and which has gained some support among industrial executives, as well as among labor leaders.
The controversial element in the proposals represented in the Cincinnati declaration concerns wages, rather than hours. The federation is committed to the stand “that such reduction in labor hours should carry with it no reduction in pay, but on the contrary wages should be maintained and steadily increased, in keeping with the expansion of productive efficiency” Though a number of employers have accepted the shorter working week, in practice or principle, few, if any, have expressed themselves as willing to pay as large a weekly wage for thirty hours of work as they have been willing to pay for from forty to forty-eight hours,
The Trend to Shorter Hours
Historically, the present movement may be regarded as a further step in an evolutionary process which has been going on ever since the application of the steam engine to industry. Hours of labor have been steadily pushed down from fourteen or even more to twelve, ten, nine, eight and less a day. Real wages have advanced, though not quite so steadily. Can this evolution be carried far enough to give labor the thirty-hour week without impairing its standard of living? That it can, if the growing productivity of labor is reflected in wages, no economist doubts. The answer is rendered harder to guess, however, by the fact that other elements than labor’s productivity enter into the willingness of employers to raise the hourly rate of wages.
If America’s past experience is a guide, the degree of success of the labor forces in their effort to obtain a reduction in hours, with no reduction in pay for government employee will have a bearing on the success of the larger campaign. Since such a move would increase governmental expenditures it is certain, as Washington dispatches have already indicated, to be strongly opposed — al least for the present. It is just as certain, nevertheless, to be strongly pushed as an emergency measure to relieve unemployment.
The final outcome will probably depend upon whether the measures adopted to “spread employment” during the present depression are continued after prosperity returns. The short work week of 1932 is an adaptation to existing circumstances and it falls short of the federation’s Cincinnati plank by being accompanied by sweeping reductions in weekly pay. Its continuance, with increased pay, must depend upon whether labor and capital can agree upon a redistribution of the benefits arising from labor-saving improvements.
Mr. Green’s Estimates
Some shops and factories have recently been working more than thirty hours a week, many others much less than that amount. The adoption of this schedule as a basis for discussion seems to have resulted from calculations such as that made by President William Green of the A. F. of L., who has estimated that if the hours actually being worked at the present time were distributed on the basis of thirty hours a week among the working population the 12,000,000 now unemployed could be put to work.
Actual practice is not quite so exact. One difficulty has been that if hours were drastically reduced without an increase in the hourly rate of pay the workers would receive less than a subsistence wage, so that dependence on. charity could not be avoided. ‘Spreading work” as far as possible, however, has apparently been the policy of an overwhelming majority of manufacturing establishments. A recent survey of 1,305 concerns, employing in 1929 nearly 2,000,000, made by the National Industrial Conference Board, showed that 85.5 per cent of them were following this policy, 11.9 per cent were not following it, and 2.6 per cent were working with neither their forces nor their hours curtailed. The board also found that 936 out of 1,269 business executives who were questioned believed in the soundness of spreading work during business depressions. A study of 928 diversified manufacturing establishments showed that the average number of hours worked each week had actually declined from 49.6 in 1929 to 37 in 1932.
Three Governing Factors
The future of the shorter working day or week depends, manifestly, upon three factors: (1) technological efficiency, measured by the output pet worker; (2) the attitude of capital; (3) the attitude of labor.
Between 1914 and 1925, according to estimates of the National Industrial Conference Board, volume of output per worker increased so much that seventy-one wage earners in 1925 could turn out as much as 100 wage earners in 1914.
There is every reason to believe that labor-saving machinery introduced since 1925 has continued the increase in output per worker. The movement for the thirty-hour week rests on the assumption that there, will not again be enough work to go round on the old basis. if this assumption is correct the principal problem to be solved is that of the rate at which labor will be paid under the new arrangement.
Francis H. Brownell, chairman of the board of directors of the American Smelting and Refining Company. perhaps expresses the point of view of many another employer when he says, in a. statement to THE TIMES “If the plan for a five-day week means the payment to each laborer of the same number of dollars for five days that he now receives for six days it would increase the general wage cost of commodities approximately one-sixth, or 16 2/3 per cent. If, on the other hand, the plan means the same wage scale as is now paid, but limits each laborer to five days, instead of six days’ pay, the effect would be substantially a cut, in money received, of 16 2/3 per cent; but. more men would be employed and the wage cost of commodities would not be affected.
“Generally, ‘when the plan is discussed it is on the assumption that the first alternative is meant, and that an increase in labor cost will occur, and I assume that is meant in this case. Supporters of the plan argue that improvement in machines and method is constantly reducing costs sufficiently to offset such in-crease in labor cost. But if the saying made by installing improvements and adopting new labor-saving machinery is to be largely or entirely offset by an increase of labor cost, there would be no incentive for the expenditure for research and plant improvement, and industry would gradually become static.”
Another Opinion
A more favorable opinion is expressed by Lamont du Pont, president of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. Mr. du Pont points out that during the past few decades working hours have been greatly shortened and goes on to say: “The continual tendency toward shorter hours is certainly connected with the modern development of industry, for with the use of power, mechanical devices and quicker methods the amount of effort to do the world’s ‘work is constantly being reduced. This is a tendency which must be beneficial to the human race, for it gives more leisure time and contributes to the joy of life.
“Many industries and offices fear the results of closing Saturday. They fear they will lose customers or business, or will reduce the productivity of their plants without reducing the carrying charges. The current five-day week movement is. to some extent aimed at an effort to get everyone to go on a five-day Week, and thus avoid any disadvantage in competitive fields.
“The movement appears to be constructive and likely to produce good results, provided we do not fall into the error of trying to accomplish it by law. There are, no doubt, some activities which cannot be conducted on the five-day week principle, even though it is admitted, generally speaking, that by so-called ‘staggering’ of the work any continuous operation can be conducted without interruption and without any employee working more than five days per week. If the practice of working five days per week can be brought about by persuasion or by force of public sentiment, then the results cannot help but be beneficial. -This is the way in which reduction of hours of labor has been brought about in the past.”
Labor’s position, as expressed on various occasions, is that the weekly wage in normal times for the thirty-. hour week should be at least no less than the prevailing wage in normal times for the longer working week. Otherwise labor would obtain its increased leisure at the expense of a drastic reduction in its living standards.
Labor’s Point of View
The point of view of organized labor, reaffirmed recently at the Cincinnati convention, was defined as early as last July in resolutions adopted at the Atlantic City convention of the A. F. of L. “The nation must either give up machinery,” said these resolutions, “or give up the long work-week and the long work-day. * * The American Federation of Labor solemnly declares its purpose to exert every effort at its command to bring about the establishment of the shorter work-day and shorter work-week basis at the earliest possible moment. At the same time the federation’s executive council called upon President Hoover to summon a conference “to assist labor and industry in the inauguration of the shorter work- week and the shorter work-day upon a national basis so that local inequalities which might follow the adjustment of working time in this way may be avoided and the full economic benefits of this policy may be brought to the nation and to all branches of industry, and to those connected with them.”
President Green has proposed “a Federal agency accumulating information on man-hours of work by industries, workers available and potential, and the facts that determine productivity and output,” which “would perform for wage earners and managements a service in some respects similar to that which the weather bureau performs for ships.”
The Six-Hour Day
A six—hour day for railroads has been proposed by the railroad brotherhoods. The brotherhood point of view was that if the shorter day were paid for at the same daily rate as the longer day- the increase in operating cost would be not more than 13 per cent. A railroad estimate, introduced at a hearing before the Interstate Commerce Commission, was that the increase would be 25 per cent, or nearly $670,00O,000 annually—enough, it was asserted, to produce a net annual deficit for all railroads, after fixed charges were paid, of about $360,000,000 annually. The issue here raised is undoubtedly the central one in any discussion of the shorter working day and week.
It is manifest that current discussions of the whole problem have been rendered confusing by the difficulty of distinguishing between “spreading work” as an emergency measure, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, using the increased productivity of industry to give leisure to the workers. But if the experience of the past means any-thing, the hours of labor are bound to be reduced as labor-saving devices are introduced. It is also inconceivable that the living standards of employed workers will be permanently lowered.
This article appeared in the New York Times on December 11, 1932.