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The Weimar Solution
By David Glenn Cox
We talk and talk and discuss the pros and cons and the rights and wrongs until our tongues grow weary and our heads begin to ache. That is fine, that is how it’s supposed to be. Or is it?
I was taught as a child to never start fights and never get involved in a fight that didn’t involve me, but to never, ever back down from a bully. Backing down from a bully will only bring you more fights in the long run, not fewer of them. A bully who sees a soft mark will always push for more and more. A bully confronted will either back down or fight, but in most cases will move on looking for another easy pushover.
In March of 1932, the hungry and the unemployed in the Detroit area organized a march to draw attention to their plight. Since 1929 the monthly caseload for the city's welfare department had swelled from 5,000 a month to 50,000 a month. The plan was to march to the gates of Henry Ford’s River Rouge auto plant. Henry Ford at the time was the richest man in America and the Rouge plant was the largest manufacturing complex in the world.
The marchers made their way to Detroit’s City Hall where the mayor, Frank Murphy, came outside on the steps and waved to the marchers and said in solidarity, “I’m with you all the way.” Murphy ordered a police escort to the city limits. When the marchers reached the Dearborn city limits the story and tone changed. The road had been blocked with police cars and motorcycles, and officers on horseback pushed the crowd into a wedge. The police ordered the marchers to disperse and then fired tear gas into the crowd.
The marchers responded by throwing frozen mud and stones back at the police. The Dearborn fire department then turned high-pressure fire hoses on the crowds in sub-freezing temperatures. When that failed the police and Ford’s private security thugs opened fire on the crowd with live ammunition killing four and wounding several dozen. Calls for food and work had been answered with ice water, tear gas and bullets.
There has never been a question as to who were the aggressors in the Dearborn massacre. Henry Ford was the richest man in America so when Ford tells the Dearborn police to stop them, the police stop them. We all answer to power on some level and power never backs up. Power only moves forward. Power services its own needs; it doesn’t make moral concessions nor does it admire sincerity. The only thing that it admires is more power.
My grandfather was a union organizer in Ohio and while walking his turn on the picket line was confronted by a bullyboy. A bullyboy was a street tough, a thug type who was hired by the company to cross the picket line. The men on the picket line always knew when the bullyboys were coming because they showed up shortly after the police had arrived. This fellow tried to push his way past my grandfather and my grandfather pushed him back and was arrested for disorderly conduct. The bullyboy was put into another car but never made it to the police station to be charged.
In a fair system the bullyboy should have been charged with assault; instead my grandfather was charged with a crime. The power was behind the company. The union paid my grandfather’s bail and he was back on the line the next day. Again the bullyboys came and again my grandfather was arrested and hauled before the same judge. The judge asked, “If I release you on bail will you promise no more trouble today?"
He answered, “Today? Sure!"
As he was released he turned to the judge and said, “See you tomorrow.”
My grandfather was a large man at six foot four and stocky and easy to identify, so when the bullyboys came the third time they focused on him specifically. As he resisted their assault a policeman’s billy club came down across his forehead opening a three-inch gash. In the melee some of the men on the line put him in a car fearing what might happen if he was arrested again. They took him home, bleeding and unconscious, and a neighbor lady sewed up his forehead with a needle and thread.
Towards evening as he lay on the couch my father called out from the porch, “Some cops are coming.”
My grandfather met them at the door with a baseball bat in his hand.
The officers explained, “The plant owner wants to talk with you but was afraid that you would kill him if he came by himself.”
My grandfather answered only, “He’s a smart man.”
The next day the plant owner arrived and my own father said it was the first new car he had ever seen up close. The deal was simple, if my grandfather would get the men to call off the strike the boss would make him the plant foreman with a large raise and answering only to him.
My grandfather told him, “Get the hell off the porch.”
Within another week the bosses gave in and the strike was over and was settled in favor of the workers. At no time did the bosses bargain in good faith. They tried intimidation and then force and then coercion, and only when all of those tactics had failed were they willing to bargain fairly. It is a sad commentary on our society but it was force and not negotiation that ended the strike. Power only backs up when forced to back up; they don’t admire courage, and they don’t care about the environment or saving the whales.
Don’t get mad at me. I didn’t invent the system, I’m just calling it out. I’ve often wondered what did more to bring about civil rights for African Americans. Martin Luther King’s marches or the riots in the inner cities that caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damages? During the peaceful marches the marchers were stoned and tear-gassed and had police dogs and fire hoses turned on them. During the riots insurance companies run by rich white folks got creamed. I think that the change was brought about by both. The moral force of the marchers and the economic force of potential riots.
Where would the gay rights movement be without the Stonewall riots? Do you think that waving rainbow flags and wearing funny clothes will get you anywhere?
On March 12, 1932 thousands marched to a public funeral for the slain auto workers. More than 70,000 Americans listened and removed their hats as a band played “The Star Spangled Banner” and then the Communist anthem “The International.” Riots and food riots were becoming the norm across Herbert Hoover’s America. His administration had spent two years fighting the depression with loans and tax breaks for big business.
The Red Cross sent vegetable seeds to hungry farmers in the Dust Bowl, oblivious as to why they called it the Dust Bowl and why the farmers were hungry in the first place. Soldiers with bayonets and not negotiations had run the Bonus Marchers out of the capital and army tanks stood guard at the gates of the White House.
This is the America that Franklin Roosevelt assumed the Presidency of in 1933. The Communist party was the fastest growing political party in America and some feared that there was a real threat of revolution. Where Hoover had lived in denial on Pennsylvania Ave., Roosevelt offered accommodation. This wasn’t because Roosevelt was just a great guy but out of a genuine concern that they could lose the whole capitalist shooting match if they didn’t make accommodations. So successful were his reforms that millions of Americans today can’t imagine taking to the streets to defend their rights.
It was force and fear that the status quo would be smashed that brought about change. At the same time across the ocean in Germany the Fascist party developed a reputation for being street brawlers. They took joy in breaking up opposition party rallies until people feared showing up for the rallies of centrist parties.
The Social Democrats and the Catholic party made complaints to the police but the police could only offer a few men to defend their rallies. The Nazis came to power because the power to oppose them was weak and disunited. Once in power they began to make territorial demands and because the powers in Europe were weak and disunited they decided, “Let’s just give them what they want to keep the peace.”
So, let’s not fight with them; let’s let them keep the media spotlight and tell their side but not yours.
“You do not become a 'dissident' just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society.” Vaclav Havel
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