On 2010-07-28, at 5:05 PM, c b wrote:
> UNEMPLOYED COUNCILS
>
> http://www.novelguide.com/a/discover/egd_02/egd_02_00522.html
>
> Unemployed Councils were grassroots organizations of unemployed
> workers created in the early 1930s to protest mass unemployment and
> inadequate relief. The first councils were established by the American
> Communist Party's Trade Union Unity League, an organization created in
> the 1920s to promote radical unionism. In March 1930 the Trade Union
> Unity League organized highly successful mass demonstrations to
> protest unemployment and demand government relief. In July of that
> year a national conference sponsored by the Trade Union Unity League
> declared the formation of the "unemployed councils of the USA."
>
>> From 1930 to 1935 the councils organized numerous conferences,
> demonstrations, and national "hunger marches." These actions often
> combined demands for aid ("work for wages") with calls for an end to
> the capitalist system. In late 1931 the councils were separated from
> the Trade Union Unity League and placed under the direction of Herbert
> Benjamin, a veteran Communist Party functionary.
>
> The frequent national protests and conventions sponsored by the
> councils during these years were small, but they spawned local
> organizations that had an important impact on relief policy. By mid
> 1931 thousands of Americans were receiving aid from large relief
> organizations with local offices in urban neighborhoods. Relief aid
> was inadequate, and workers were often subjected to degrading
> investigations by social workers. Taking advantage of these
> conditions, local unemployed councils helped clients apply for aid,
> demonstrated at relief offices, and sent delegations to demand more
> adequate relief from local officials.
>
> The unemployed councils' most successful tactics were eviction
> protests. These were a response to the fact that local relief agencies
> were too financially strapped to provide rent until a recipient was
> faced with eviction. Relief recipients were often awakened by
> landlords, accompanied by police, moving their furniture out of
> apartments when the rent had not been paid. Local councils of the
> unemployed would mobilize neighbors to forcibly stop the evictions and
> even move furniture back into the apartments when the police had left
> the scene. Violent rent protests generated a good deal of publicity
> (and support) for the councils.
>
> The success of the councils in 1931 attracted more moderate socialists
> less inclined to demand that recruits follow the "party line." A
> Chicagobased Workers Committee on Unemployment, led by the socialist
> Karl Borders, recruited twice as many local workers as the Communist
> leagues by the end of 1932. In Seattle, the Unemployed Citizens League
> played an important role in local relief administration. Radicals led
> by the independent socialist A. J. Muste organized Leagues of the
> Unemployed in the cities and small towns of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and
> West Virginia.
>
> The advent of the New Deal in 1933 transformed the grassroots movement
> of the unemployed. Local relief agencies were more willing to
> negotiate with organizations of the unemployed, and Socialist and
> Communist organizations focused more of their attention on national
> campaigns for unemployment insurance. The work relief programs of the
> New Deal stimulated new protests and organization efforts that
> resembled the growing union movement.
>
> In early 1935 the various Socialist organizations and the
> Communist-dominated councils united to create the Workers Alliance of
> America. Most councils of the unemployed were disbanded and absorbed
> by the alliance. This development was, in part, consistent with the
> new Communist Party line, which stressed a "united front" (or Popular
> Front) of all leftists against the "fascist threat." This development
> also reflected the fact that the organized unemployed, now focusing on
> Works Progress Administration projects, had become an influential
> interest group in the New Deal "broker state."
>
> See Also: COMMUNIST PARTY; HUNGER MARCHES.
>
> BIBLIOGRAPHY
> Klehr, Harvey. The Heyday of American Communism: The Depression Decade. 1984.
>
> Leab, Daniel. "United We Eat: The Creation and Organization of the
> Unemployed Councils in 1930." Labor History 8 (1967): 300–315.
>
> Nelson, Steve; James Burrett; and Rob Ruck. Steve Nelson: American
> Radical. 1981.
>
> Piven, Frances Fox, and Richard A. Cloward. Poor People's Movements:
> Why The Succeed and How they Fail. 1977.
>
> Rosenzweig, Roy. "Radicals and the Jobless: The Musteites and the
> Unemployed Leagues, 1932–1936." Labor History 16 (1975): 52–77.
>
> Seymour, Helen. "The Organized Unemployed." Ph.D. diss., University of
> Chicago, 1937.
>
> JEFF SINGLETON
>
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>
> Unemployed Councils
>
>
> ©2004 by Macmillan Reference USA. Macmillan Reference USA is an
> imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc.
>
>
>
>
> Chapter 3
> Organizing the Unemployed: The Early 1930s
> by Gordon Black
>
> Communist-led Unemployed Council demonstration at Tacoma City Hall,
> 1931 (courtesy of Tacoma Public Library). If ever a political credo
> was vindicated by wider events, the stock market crash of October 1929
> reinforced the CP USA’s goal to overturn the capitalist system. The
> Crash personified capitalism at its most obvious failing, and was, as
> well, Communism’s greatest chance to establish the case for a Marxist,
> worker-based economy and political system. By raising the political
> consciousness of the disaffected and poverty-stricken unemployed, the
> Communists could foment the revolutionary overthrow of the
> capitalistic system. Or could they? Could Washington State, which had
> a relatively small population with a high degree of industrialization,
> be the place to instigate change?
>
>
>
> http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/cpproject/black.shtml
>
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