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Are you a Liberal? Do you think you’re “middle class”? Do you swear by individualism? Are you black or gay? Then this article is for you.

INTRODUCTION: With this document we inaugurate our series designed to serve as a “Virtual University”—an online curriculum—on social, economic, historical, and political affairs rarely touched by the establishment educational system, media, and other instruments that form and manipulate personal opinions. We have carefully picked these documents for their power to do more than just instruct and inform; they are also empowering, and, in more ways than you expect, transformative. And we harbor another simple ambition: to give the “students” of this online political curriculum an understanding of society and the world like they could have never acquired even after many long years of college and graduate studies. Continue Reading »

Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

Michigan National Guard confronting union supporters outside GM plants in Flint, 1937

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SPECIAL FOR OUR READERS–A FULL MEMOIR BY UNION ACTIVIST GENORA DOLLINGER OF A TURNING POINT IN THE CONFLICT BETWEEN LABOR AND CAPITAL IN AMERICA.: THE GENERAL MOTORS SIT-DOWN STRIKE OF 1937.

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Genora (Johnson) Dollinger Remembers the 1936-37 General Motors Sit-Down Strike … as told to Susan Rosenthal*

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* Duplication of this interview by any party, in any form, in part or in total, is expressly forbidden without the author’s permission. Thomas Paine’s Corner has Susan Rosenthal’s authorization to republish this piece.

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Preface

There are times in history when the forces of capital and labor are so evenly matched in combat that the actions of a few brave individuals can tip the balance in favor of their class. Genora (Johnson) Dollinger was one of those courageous and clear-sighted people. Her greatness lay in her determination to press forward to win a decisive victory for labor and her deep conviction that such a victory could only be won by the workers themselves.

The struggle to organize the growing American automobile industry began with a strike at a Studebaker plant in 1913. In 1930, workers at Fisher Body in Flint struck and closed their plant for a week. Early in 1933, auto workers struck Briggs Manufacturing Co., the Hudson Motor Car Co. and the Motor Products Co. In 1934 auto workers won a bloody strike at Toledo’s Auto-Lite plant and signed up thousands of new members. But there was still no national union of auto workers, only individual, federally-chartered locals affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Growing impatience with the craft-dominated AFL spurred the formation of the national, industry-based United Automobile Workers of America (UAW) in 1936.

On November 17, 1936, the first auto industry sit-down in U.S. history began at Bendix products in South Bend, Indiana. Workers occupied their plant for a week to win recognition of the UAW. But the spark that led to the unionization of the giant General Motors Corporation, and eventually of the entire auto industry, was ignited on December 30, 1936, when auto workers in Flint Michigan sat down and occupied their plants.

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Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

Few contemporary American politicians incarnate the false promise of liberalism as well as Democrat Hillary Clinton (along with husband Bill, the master opportunist “triangulator.”) If Hillary were to gain the White House, the Clintons would constitute another dynasty in presidential politics, and although rabidly denounced by the insane and hypocritical US rightwing punditocracy as wild leftists, in international terms they barely merit the label of mild “centrists.”

“The Roosevelt reforms…had to meet two pressing needs: to reorganize capitalism in such a way as to overcome the crisis and stabilize the system; also to head off the alarming growth of spontaneous rebellion…— organization of tenants and the unemployed, movements of self-help and general strikes in several cities.”

Part I: Class Conflict

BY SUSAN ROSENTHAL

Dateline: September 17, 2007 CROSSPOSTED AT AUTHOR’S BLOGSITE: SUSAN’S BLOG

AMERICA IS DEEPLY DIVIDED. For one thing, most Americans want an end to the war against Iraq and some form of universal health care, while the ruling class is committed to the war and to sacrificing social services to pay for it.

This conflict between the rulers and the ruled reflects a deeper, structural rift. In a series of three articles (Z Magazine, February, April, May, 2007), Jack Rasmus documents how,

“From the early 1980s on, income inequality widened, deepened, and accelerated until today well over $1 trillion in income is being transferred every year from the roughly 90 million working class families in the U.S. to corporations and the wealthiest non-working class households.”

Thirty-five years of pro-business social policies have hurtled class inequality back to the level of the 1920s. One percent of Americans now owns half the nation’s wealth. In 2005, the total wealth of all U.S. millionaires was $30 trillion, more than the annual wealth produced in China, Japan, Brazil, Russia and the European Union combined!

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