I'm gratified to be called a utopian. A few months ago it was parliamentary cretin. To every thing, turn, turn, etc.
Guards were raised in the context of KP's litany against organized labor, so my "and" was not a lie. It was the damn truth.
Far as I'm concerned, prison guards are in the working class. The guys who dragged a black man to death in Texas were too. W.C.-status doesn't imply virtue. In revolutionary periods, it is true that prison guards' role makes them different than their social peers. So when the next revolutionary period rolls around, I advise everyone here to try and stay out of jail. Meantime, such distinctions are not very important. Guards' behavior is important, of course. I remember seeing a very interesting piece by a prisoner about the difference between unionized and non-unionized guards. He much preferred the former. Wish I had saved it.
As for this . . .
mbs: > And somehow blacks and women are exempted from all said
> rottenness, as if they would construct fundamentally different
> trade unions.
CC: Some day when you are rubbing elbows with AFL-CIO bureaucrats, ask Bill Fletcher about union organizing in Memphis in the '30s. . . .
mbs: The Memphis story is indeed inspiring. But the case was one of imagining the difference between mature trade union organizations controlled by whites on the one hand, or blacks and women on the other. Re: the latter, ask the NYC folks about Dennis Rivera and 1199.
mbs