What Obama should do for Wisconsin

I’ve seen the video clip several times, in which President Obama speaks before the election to a large labor audience, promising people he would find “a comfortable pair of shoes and walk with them” if necessary to protect labor’s rights to collective bargaining. I’ve also seen the rape of those rights on a dark night in history by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and his cronies. And I’ve seen the president stand by and do nothing but mutter soft words on a Milwaukee radio station.

MSNBC’s Ed Schultz on the Ed Show, suggested that Obama put those shoes on now. If he didn’t have a pair, Ed would give him his. This was in answer to a wire headline that “Obama’s team seeks new ways to fire up his base.” As Schultz said, if ever there was a way to do it, showing his face in Wisconsin and supporting those protestors would be it. It’d be a lightening rod to generate new power.

Nevertheless, adding insult to injury, Obama’s advisors have issued words to the effect that is is proper for the president not to take sides with labor or the state’s corrupt governor and the Republican legislature. Better walk a line through the middle of this conflict. But since when in the history of politics, has a leader gained the confidence of his base by flip-flopping through the middle of a crucial issue and letting the likes of the billionaire Koch brothers keep overfunding Governor Walker and the Republican Party to further enrich the rich and impoverish labor?

One relevant name comes to mind here to challenge Obama’s ambivalence, another president in fact, Republican Dwight Eisenhower. The Little Rock Seven, as Wiki tells us, “were a group of African-American students who were enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The ensuing Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, and then attended after the intervention of President Eisenhower, is considered to be one of the most important events in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. On their first day of school, troops from the Arkansas National Guard would not let them enter the school and they were followed by mobs making threats to lynch.”

Mind that notion of this being “one of the most important events in the African-American Civil Rights movement.” It was. And thanks to it, helped to have a black president sitting in the White House today, Barack Hussein Obama.

Furthermore, in response to the Arkansas National Guard, Eisenhower’s commitment to those children prompted “The U.S. Supreme Court [to issue] its historic Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 347 U.S. 483, on May 17, 1954. The decision declared all laws establishing segregated schools to be unconstitutional, and it called for the desegregation of all schools throughout the nation. After the decision the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) attempted to register black students in previously all-white schools in cities throughout the South.” That was also when we did not have a bought and paid for Supreme Court, but one truly interested in justice.

Thus, “in Little Rock, the capital city of Arkansas, the Little Rock School Board agreed to comply with the high court’s ruling. Virgil Blossom, the Superintendent of Schools, submitted a plan of gradual integration to the school board on May 24, 1955, which the board unanimously approved. The plan would be implemented during the fall of the 1957 school year, which would begin in September 1957. By 1957, the NAACP had registered nine black students to attend the previously all-white Little Rock Central High, selected on the criteria of excellent grades and attendance . . . ^[3] ”

Eisenhower’s decisions had the effect of bringing out the best decisions in the highest court in the land as well as with the everyday citizens trapped in a racist system without the legal clout to do the right thing.

In fact, “Several segregationist councils threatened to hold protests at Central High and physically block the black students from entering the school. Governor Orval Faubus deployed the Arkansas National Guard to support the segregationists on September 4, 1957. The sight of a line of soldiers blocking nine black students from attending high school made national headlines and polarized the city . . .”

It was a sight I will never forget, seeing it as a 17-year old, looking at our still black and white TV in Brooklyn, watching with my Republican father, who had voted for Eisenhower and believed the president had done something extraordinary. And today, as a progressive liberal Democrat who voted for Obama, I keep waiting for the extraordinary to happen again. It’s been a long wait so far.

But back then, “On September 9, “The Council of Church Women” issued a statement condemning the governor’s deployment of soldiers to the high school and called for a citywide prayer service on September 12. Even President Dwight Eisenhower attempted to de-escalate the situation and summoned Governor Faubus to meet him. The president warned the governor not to interfere with the Supreme Court’s ruling.”

That warning was refuted by the racist Governor Faubus. And what followed from Eisenhower was a firmer answer and action . . .

“Armed Escort

“Woodrow Mann, the Mayor of Little Rock, asked President Eisenhower to send federal troops to enforce integration and protect the nine students. On September 24, the president ordered the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army to Little Rock and federalized the entire 10,000 member Arkansas National Guard, taking it out of the hands of Governor Faubus. The 101st took positions immediately, and the nine students successfully entered the school on the next day, Wednesday, September 25, 1957.”

You see, it was and is possible for a president to use the power of his office to buck the powers of blind and hateful people, to move the cause of democracy forward. It had its effects, both positive and negative. But Eisenhower persevered to amplify the power of the best people and diminish the power of the worst people. As the president, he acted as the arbiter of last resort.

“A tense year

“By the end of September 1957, the nine were admitted to Little Rock Central High under the protection of the U.S. Army (and later the Arkansas National Guard), but they were still subjected to a year of physical and verbal abuse (being spat on and called names) by many of the white students. Melba Pattillo had acid thrown into her eyes.^[6] Another one of the students, Minnijean Brown, was verbally confronted and abused. She said “’I was one of the kids ‘approved’ by the school officials. We were told we would have to take a lot and were warned not to fight back if anything happened. One girl ran up to me and said, ‘I’m so glad you’re here. Won’t you go to lunch with me today?’ I never saw her again.^’”

But President Eisenhower did not shy away from confronting the issue head on. He may have lost as many of his Republican base as he gained from the Democratic base, but he did what he had to and could do. This was the same president who warned Americans in his parting address of the potential power and danger of “The Military-Industrial Complex”. I urge each and every one of you to read this prophetic one-page document. Had we heeded its warnings, we wouldn’t be involved in three wars today and wasted so much of our national treasure’s blood and taxpayers’ money. We’d have our priorities straight.

But then Eisenhower, this soft-spoken Kansan, West Point graduate, who worked his way up to Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in WW II, was no neophyte. He had seen combat, taken on the responsibility of leading armies, and had a depth about him that ran quiet and deep. Perhaps Obama could reflect it if he wished to rise in the eyes of his base and in the memory of history. It isn’t easy to buck the system. And it wasn’t easy for Eisenhower to buck the institutionalized racism of the South and help create the Civil Rights movement. But he did it, without great flourish, without excessive speechifying, but with swift decisive actions and words that underlined his commitment to right against wrong, to good against bad.

I would encourage most of all President Obama to regard these two pieces of history. And then get those walking shoes on, whether real or metaphorical, and join in backing the people of Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, and other states where the labor movement and the cause of justice in America is seriously threatened. Watching polls does not make a great president. Looking into his soul for the right way to go and then doing it does. Keeping his promises is the supreme command.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer, life-long resident of New York City. An EBook version of his book of poems “State Of Shock,” on 9/11 and its after effects is now available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. He has also written hundreds of articles on politics and government as Associate Editor of Intrepid Report (formerly Online Journal). Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.