This article by Kelly comes much closer than the regular press coverage in describing the unique character of Miguel and explaining why he was so successful at energizing so many of us to work with him to implement his vision for working people in Los Angeles. Carolyn Widener
The Legacy of Miguel Contreras By Kelly Candaele In the early 1990's, I worked at the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, the umbrella organization for unions in Los Angeles. I was a labor movement utility infielder: working on local and statewide political campaigns, testifying at hearings on public policy and teaching labor history classes. It was a time of transition in a number of ways. Bill Robertson, the long time leader of the federation retired in 1994, handing the reigns to Jim Wood who was the federation's political director and chairman of the powerful Community Redevelopment Agency. Robertson was a power broker during the years when Tom Bradley was Mayor. If union leaders wanted to reach MCA Chairman Lew Wasserman, Dodgers owner Peter O'Malley, then LA Raiders owner Al Davis or Mayor Bradley, Robertson opened the door. He may have hob-knobbed with the rich and powerful, but knew who he represented - the working people of Los Angeles. Robertson was old school - a boxer, baseball player and bartender from Minnesota where the Farmer-Labor Party tradition had been strong. Wood was a different breed. He was college educated, had flirted with democratic socialism in his youth and had fought the internecine political battles of the 1960s New Left. There was also a tinge of the "new age" in Wood. He was a rigorous practitioner of Yoga and had a fascination with the "warrior" culture of ancient Japan with its traditions of honor and loyalty, qualities he believed were central to the labor movement. Wood was a man of strategic alignments and political maneuvers with a consummate knowledge of how to wield power to build union strength. When Wood brought Miguel Contreras into the Federation as political director in 1994, America was going through a technological transformation and Los Angeles was in the midst of a demographic one. Wood saw the potential for using computers in the political arena. We began a tortuous and at times comical attempt to use computers and electronic voter data to connect union members with one another who lived in the same Los Angeles voting precinct. It was our small attempt to overcome the breakdown of the "organic links" that had once tied working-class people together in their union halls, bowling leagues, bars and churches. Wood also knew that by bringing Contreras on board he was signifying to the broader labor movement that the growth in the Latino population in Los Angeles had to be addressed politically, socially and economically. Wood died of cancer in 1996 and Contreras was elected to lead the Federation later that year. When Wood was dying he told me that Contreras would be a good leader because he "came out of the fields and was not afraid of anyone." When Contreras died last Friday, activists and labor leaders immediately asked each other whether anyone could "fill Miguel's shoes." It should be remembered that many people who led and worked for unions when Miguel became head of the federation, had doubts about his ability to unite and galvanize the diverse interests of LA's labor movement. One of Contreras' great strengths was that he was not a sore winner. During his campaign for Secretary-Treasurer of the federation, the divisive issue of ethnicity was not far from the surface. Despite the personal slights he received, his first act after he won was to visit every major union leader in Los Angeles in a quest for unity. Contreras had what theologian Reinhold Niebuhr called a "spiritual resistance against resentment," the psychological strength to look beyond the personal attacks by focusing on the end goal. Contreras' other crucial insight was realizing that while previous labor leaders had mastered the "inside game" of politics, the future of the labor movement in Los Angeles would depend upon rebuilding local unions from the ground up. That meant he had to lead a declining labor movement "backwards," towards an organizing culture that had been all but lost or forgotten. It entailed reaching out to the new immigrant labor force and sending the message loud and clear that they were welcome in LA's unions. It also meant that the windows of democracy had to rattled a bit; that in order for working people to regain the ground they had lost they had to be in the streets, on voter's doorsteps and inside churches and synagogues. Like Martin Luther King Jr. and his mentor Cesar Chavez, Contreras' knew that the church was a place where labor's message of an earthly redemption might resonate. In that sense, his political and spiritual centers were in the same place. All of the articles about his life written during the past week have emphasized his keen understanding of political power. But I got the sense that despite his skills there, Contreras distrusted the cozy cloying dynamics of the inside political game - the deals struck over lunch and the nod and wink of the pay to play political culture. He understood that the inside game was relatively easy but that rebuilding strong unions was the real historical challenge. Under Contreras' leadership the labor movement went from courting political candidates to picking them. Mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa, State Senator Gil Cedillo, Speaker Fabian Nunez and Los Angeles City Council member Martin Ludlow were all labor officials before building political careers with Contreras' backing. Leaders who can see the future and act to create it are rare, particularly in the labor movement. The ongoing debates that threaten to split the AFL-CIO are taking place because unions in the rest of the country have so far failed to duplicate what Contreras helped accomplished in Los Angeles. History offers no guarantees, only opportunities. And there is no guarantee that the labor movement will survive. If it doesn't, it won't be because Contreras didn't warn the country's labor leaders - and more importantly, went about doing something to change the situation. Kelly Candaele worked for the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor from 1990 to 1996. He is currently President of the Board of the Los Angeles Community College District. *** The Young and the Jobless By BOB HERBERT May 12, 2005, NY Times There were high fives at the White House last week when the latest monthly employment report showed that 274,000 jobs had been created in April, substantially more than experts had predicted. The employment bar has been set so low for the Bush administration that even a modest gain is cause for celebration. But we shouldn't be blinded by the flash of last Saturday's headlines. American workers, especially younger workers, remain stuck in a gloomy employment landscape. For example, a recent report from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston tells us that the employment rate for the nation's teenagers in the first 11 months of 2004 - just 36.3 percent - was the lowest it has ever been since the federal government began tracking teenage employment in 1948. Those 20 to 24 years old are also faring poorly. In 2000, 72.2 percent were employed during a typical month. By last year that percentage had dropped to 67.9 percent. Even the recent modest surge in jobs has essentially bypassed young American workers. Gains among recently arrived immigrants seem to have accounted for the entire net increase in jobs from 2000 through 2004. Over all, only workers 55 and up have done reasonably well over the past few years. "Younger workers," said Andrew Sum, the center's director, "have just been crushed." Whatever the politicians and the business-booster types may be saying, the simple truth is that there are not nearly enough jobs available for the many millions of out-of-work or underworked men and women who need them. The wages of those who are employed are not even keeping up with inflation. Workers have been so cowed by an environment in which they are so obviously dispensable that they have been afraid to ask for the raises they deserve, or for their share of the money derived from the remarkable increases in worker productivity over the past few years. And from one coast to the other, workers have swallowed draconian cuts in benefits with scarcely a whimper. Some segments of the population have been all but completely frozen out. In Chicago, only one of every 10 black teenagers found employment in 2004. In Illinois, fewer than one in every three teenage high school dropouts are working. Last month's increase of 274,000 jobs was barely enough to keep up with the increase in the nation's working-age population. "The economy is growing and real output is up," said Mr. Sum, who is also a professor at Northeastern. "But the distribution of income, in terms of how much is going to workers - well, the answer is very little has gone to the typical worker." The squeeze on the younger generation of workers is so tight that in many cases the young men and women of today are faring less well than their parents' generation did at a similar age. Professor Sum has been comparing the standard of living of contemporary families with that of comparable families three decades ago. "Two-thirds of this generation are not living up to their parents' standard of living," he said. College graduates today are doing better in real economic terms than college graduates in the 1970's. But everyone else is doing less well. "If you look at families headed by someone without a college degree," said Professor Sum, "their income last year in real terms was below that of a comparable family in 1973. For dropouts it's like 25 percent below where it was. And for high school grads, about 15 to 20 percent below." It shouldn't be surprising that the standard of living of large segments of the population is sinking when employers have all the clout, including the powerful and unwavering support of the federal government. Workers can't even get a modest increase in the national minimum wage. Globalization was supposed to be great for everyone. Nafta was supposed to be a boon. Increased productivity was supposed to be the ultimate tool - the sine qua non - for raising the standard of living for all. Instead, wealth and power in the United States has become ever more dangerously concentrated, leaving an entire generation of essentially powerless workers largely at the mercy of employers. A remark by Louis Brandeis comes to mind: "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few. But we can't have both." E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** The feature on the State of the Housing Market scheduled to air on the News Hour With Jim Lehrer on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) has been RESCHEDULED FOR THIS THURSDAY, MAY 12. It airs at 7 p.m. in most time zones. The program will include a segment on attempts to preserve a threatened HUD housing project in Los Angeles. CES, together with the Los Angeles Housing Department (LAHD), Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) and Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles have been working to thwart an attempt by a landlord who is opting out of a Section 8 contract in a way to avoid accepting Enhanced Section 8 vouchers which would enable the low income tenants living in the 48-units Rolland Curtis Gardens Apartments in South L.A. to remain in their homes. The complex is adjacent to the University of Southern California (USC) and it appears the landlord is attempting to displace the existing HUD subsidized tenants in order to rent to USC students at extremely high rents. The owner's request for exorbitant rents from the Housing Authority cannot be justified by rent comparability studies required for the issuance of Enhanced Vouchers. In addition, in order for HACLA to provide Enhanced Vouchers to tenants, they must inspect the units to ensure that they meet HUD's 'housing quality standards' (HQS). HACLA conducted an inspection that resulted in units failing the inspections with major deficiencies. HACLA has no authority to make the owner comply and may have to ask the tenants to move out if the all the units do not pass inspection, regardless of a compromise on the rent levels. Recently, the owner served tenants with rent increase notices, effective May 1, raising rents to $1575 for 2 bedrooms and $1875 for 3 bedrooms, clearly far beyond what tenants who paid 30% of their income to rent could afford. Legal Aid notified the owner that state law requires a 60-day notice when rent increases are more than 10%. At the last minute the owner decided to rescind the increase notice and filed new 60-day rent increase notices. Attempts continue to convince the owner to make the needed repairs and accept the Enhanced Vouchers. What makes this situation even more outrageous is that the complex was recently sold to this owner by the Union Rescue Mission, a nonprofit homelessness agency. The Union Rescue Mission had only owned Rolland Curtis Gardens for six months. When Union Rescue Mission made it know it was planning to sell the complex, purchase offers were presented by the Esperanza Community Housing Corporation, a community-based nonprofit committed to preserving and building affordable housing in the USC area. Union Rescue refused, selling it the current owner (Jeffrey M. Greene and 1031 S. Wooster, Ltd.) of whom little is known about and who apparently has no track record on HUD housing. Acting as it was a big real estate speculator, Union Rescue Mission ended up making around half a million dollars on the sale. For its money making deal, this nonprofit action's could result in the loss of affordable housing and the displacement of low income tenants. Larry Gross Executive Director Coalition for Economic Survival (CES) 1296 N. Fairfax Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90046 Tel: 323-656-4410 Fax: 323-656-4416 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web site: www.CESinAction.org ------------------------ Yahoo! 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