CineMontage

Q4 2020

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controversial action, and quickly drew the ire of labor's enemies. "The firing of Peter Robb belies all the [President's] happy talk about unifying the country." Indeed, Biden's appetite for conflict is a significant unknown for which we must solve. There has, in fact, been plenty of "happy talk," as the WSJ opinion-writers would have it. In November, in virtually the same breath in which he promised "unions are going to have increased power," Biden reassured his audience, "It's not anti-business." His was a can- didacy defined by appeals to comity and civility, and a famous 2019 assurance to well-heeled donors that "nothing would fundamentally change" under his watch. After the Electoral College affirmed his victory, he reiterated an interest in tran- scending partisanship: "I will work just as hard for those of you who didn't vote for me as I will for those who did." And in his inaugural address, he earnestly de- clared, "my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together. Uniting our people. And uniting our nation." Those aren't f ighting words, and B i d e n's c o m m i t m e n t s t o t h e u n i o n members who helped elect him can't be honored without a fight. Which president will we get? The self-professed "union guy" who knows which side he's on and is gunning for organized labor's enemies from day one? Or one who retreats back to his hole upon seeing his shadow? Biden's early days offer hope that he may prove a more reliable ally to labor than his old boss, President Obama. As a candidate in 2007, Obama had famously pledged that, if workers' rights came under attack, "I'll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself. I'll walk on that picket line with you, as president of the United States of America." But Obama didn't, in fact, make an appearance on any picket lines in Wisconsin when Governor Walker rolled back collective bargaining rights. Nor did he expend political capital attempting to reform labor law. Perhaps the "comfortable shoes" reference ought to have been a tell, because — although appropriate footwear is indeed important on the picket line — standing up to fight for what's right is never comfortable. We'll need to watch how Biden acts in these early days of his presidency to gauge his commitment to the union val- ues which he's professed. But unlike the groundhog, our role is not simply to look for signs and to make predictions about weather we cannot control. To borrow a metaphor from King, labor's role is to be not thermometer, but thermostat. If Biden shows himself to be too cool to the confrontation requisite to follow through on his commitment, it's on us to turn up the heat. To the degree to which a politician who had long fashioned himself as a moderate — who ran as a palatable and even milquetoast alternative to a con- tinued reign of chaos — might govern as a bold reformer, credit is due perhaps not so much to the man as to the mass movements that impel him to action. Ultimately, that's the logic that informs any grassroots, democratic struggle for justice: power isn't so much about who you have in office; it's about who you have in the streets. I was in the streets last November, on the Saturday that Pennsylvania finally counted enough Philadelphian ballots for the race to be called for Biden. Trump and his toadies were already spreading slander to discredit the popular verdict against his presidency, already testing improbable and outrageous schemes to cling to power in the face of defeat. In response to these clumsy machinations, a handful of labor and community groups around L.A. called for an emergency rally downtown. The teachers' union printed placards that exhorted, "Defend Each Other, Demand Democracy," and thou- sands of us poured into the streets for a peaceful demonstration to insist that we would not be disenfranchised by this coup that couldn't shoot straight. I personally have been pretty scru- pulous throughout the pandemic about maintaining appropriate distancing, so November's mass action was the first time since the enormous Black Lives Matter protests last summer that I had found myself in a crowd of that size. It was exhilarating and a little uneasy, at first, being immersed in such a mass of bodies, the proximity of so many strangers after so many months of virtual hermitage. As we marched and chanted — "¡El pueblo unido, jamás será vencido!" and "Whose streets? Our streets!" — waves of emotion washed over the throng — outrage, relief, hope, and triumph. We were grieving the bodies ravaged by a v i r u s a n d g r i ev i n g t h e d a m a ge done by a would-be strongman and his enablers to our body politic. We were celebrating the hard-won prospect of recovery. And we were defying an array of clowns and bullies who believed Amer- ica was greater when people like us — a motley multitude of working folks of all races, ethnicities, and genders — knew our proper place. With masked mouths and swelling hearts, we chanted and marched through the streets of Los Angeles. Someone in the crowd produced a trumpet and began to blow, a drummer materialized, and suddenly, exuberantly, our marching morphed into ecstatic dancing. In that brief and delirious spell of public jubilation, our revelry certainly wasn't about Biden. It wasn't even really about Trump. It was about us, about our claiming these streets, our comman- deering them for a dance floor. We'd been waiting years for this party. We collectively decided we would let the sun shine on us and cast our shadows where it might, and we'd let nobody tell us to get back. At a time when our leaders and our institutions had shown themselves to be all too fallible, we were out there to appropriate space for our shared joy and to demonstrate to one another that we had each other's backs. Maybe that could be enough. ■ 12 C I N E M O N T A G E G E T T I N G O R G A N I Z E D

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