AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka rose to power in combination with President Obama. Trumka became president of the AFL-CIO at the same time President Obama took office in January 2009.
The Chicago machine organized a pact between the revolutionary communists (RevCom) and labor unions in 2007; specifically to assist the installation of Obama in the 2008 presidential election. The AFL-CIO (Nicholas), SEIU (Andy Stern), UFCW, UAW and AFSCME labor unions all agreed to assemble their foot-soldiers in common cause. That union army defeated Hillary Clinton in a brutal 2008 presidential primary. The communists won. The rest is history.
It was around the time of Richard Trumka’s 60th birthday celebration when the deal was signed. The Communists would get President Obama, in return the labor unions would get the massive pension liability of union member healthcare removed from their books. This is the origin of ObamaCare; by any means necessary.
Today, Richard Trumka died.
[Media] – Trumka, 72, has served as president of the massive 12.5 million-member labor union for more than a decade. Democratic politicians quickly memorialized him as a titan for worker rights.
“We are heartbroken to inform you that our brother and leader Rich Trumka passed away this morning at the age of 72,” said Liz Shuler, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer in a note to staff. President Joe Biden addressed Trumka’s death on Thursday, after apologizing for being late to a meeting with Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander civil rights leaders, he said to reporters, “I just learned a very close friend passed away.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., shared his condolences on the Senate floor. “It’s just horrible news,” he said. “We have just lost a giant. And we need him so. We will remember him forever. And his memory will, I know, importune us to do even more for working people.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Trumka an “unsurpassed titan of labor” who dedicated his life to the labor movement. His life “was a testament to the power of organizing and mobilizing for progress, and his leadership leaves a legacy of inspired advocacy for workers,” said Pelosi, in a statement. (read more)
For the first time in ages, the political right has had a massive boon dropped right into its lap. Democrats are shaking in their boots over the political implications of their institutional support for the state-sponsored racism known as critical race theory.
Their initial attempts to Jedi mind trick away people’s concern by insisting CRT isn’t real failed, and even Nancy Pelosi mouthpiece Politico is reporting how CRT in schools is deeply offending the independent and Democrat voters crucial to the Democrat Party’s competing grievance groups.
So what is the institutional right doing to capitalize on this amazing opportunity? A few states are banning it from classrooms — amid the usual friendly firebutt-coveringfor do-nothing Republican politicians — while Democrats prepare for total war to maintain their control of the national child-indoctrination apparatus known as public schooling.
If the conservative movement and Republican Party were serious like the left is serious, here’s what it would be doing to use the CRT uproar for tactical advantage instead of maxing out their energies on chest-thumping panel discussions and TV appearances while parents with kids and full-time jobs try to do all the groundwork without air cover.
1. Counter the Unions with a Litigation Army
The nation’s largest teachers union announced it’s filled a $5 million war chest to provide legal defenses for any teachers caught pushing CRT. The Biden administration has nominated to a key U.S. Department of Education legal post a leftist extremist who previously wielded federal power to institute racist policies that forced schools to discipline children according to their skin color instead of their actions: “Under her leadership, civil rights investigations became tools of harassment to coerce changes in school policies.”
These institutions are going to use the might of the federal government, an army of lawyers, and the nation’s largest teachers union to defend their territory. Who is helping parents go on the offensive against state-sponsored racism?
One-man journalist army Chris Rufo isrecruitinglawyer volunteersvia Twitter. That’s great, but he shouldn’t have to do this himself. The professional conservative movement should be moving massive amounts of money to support parents’ efforts and harden them as a target of this leftist legal onslaught. Stopplatforming leftist propaganda outletsand start hiringeffective marketing strategists, investigative journalists, and scads of lawyers.
2. Vote Against All Nominees Who Support Disparate Impact Racism
Max Eden points out in City Journal that when racial extremist Catherine Lhamon underwent confirmation hearings as Joe Biden’s nominee for assistant secretary of USDOE’s Office of Civil Rights: “Republican senators… did not challenge Lhamon on her record on school discipline. Nor did they ask any questions on the issue at the forefront of so many voters’ minds: critical race theory.”
Later, one senator, Ranking Member Richard Burr, sent Lhamon written questions about racial extremism and Llamon dodged, claiming she could not answer any “hypothetical” questions. Eden notes:
While Burr deserves credit for forcing Lhamon to make her ambivalence about racial discrimination a matter of public record, it is a shame that no Senator was willing to ask her any of these questions directly during her hearing. The American people deserved to witness her reluctance to condemn racial discrimination. The exchange could have made national news and framed Lhamon’s nomination as what it likely is: a referendum on whether or not the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights should permit anti-white racial discrimination.
Republican senators are not elected by the people of their states to rubberstamp racial extremism. The least we ought to be able to expect them to do is probe and bring out nominees’ unfitness for office, then vote against those nominees as a consequence. Explaining that vote to constituents should be a no-brainer. Get better, Republicans. Kids being recruited by racists are counting on you.
3. Make Effectively Opposing CRT a Litmus Test for Office
It should also be a complete no-brainer to make effective opposition to critical race theory a litmus test for public office, including appointments and judges. Not just saying “I oppose CRT,” but displaying an effective track record of opposing it or things like it, or presenting a specific plan about how the candidate proposes to combat it with the power he wants voters to grant him.
We’re talking about an ideology that pushes eight-year-olds to rank themselves and their classmates according to their racial and sexual (?!) “privilege,” demonizes people according to their skin color, says babies can be racists, and encourages leading children in chants to an Aztec god. Opposing CRT should be like taking candy from a baby. If a candidate can’t or won’t do it, he’s worthless and better disposed of.
4. Pressure Elected Officials with Ads and Primaries
How does one dispose of weak public officials who won’t stop taxpayer dollars from funding racists? Pressure. The Republican Party and all its various local branches should make CRT opposition a requirement for getting their campaign dollars and other assistance.
If primary season is coming up, primary them. If it’s not, run ads pressuring them. Send journalists to look into the public money and institutions politicians oversee and whether it’s funding CRT, and ask them to comment on why this is allowed. Get allies to go on TV and ask why Politician A who oversees the education committee wouldn’t comment about evidence of tax dollars funding racism. This is politics 101, people. Lefties do this in their sleep.
5. Map the CRT-Enabling Policies to Destroy
Richard Hanania pointed out earlier this year that, months into the CRT explosion, National Review editor Ramesh Ponnuru and Republican Sen. Tom Cotton publicly stated that neither had any policy ideas about how to fight cancel culture. Hanania responded by noting that the cancel culture use of “racism” to tar and feather perfectly normal and nonbigoted ideas is backed by an entire legal apparatus that has accreted over the years under the “disparate impact” doctrine, sprouted from race-conscious “diversity” laws and jurisprudence.
“Disparate impact” is, of course, what critical theorists use to absurdly accuse the United States, babies, and white males of inherent and systemic racism. It is very much linked to policies that can and should be reformed. Hanania gives these suggestions for such anti-CRT reforms:
1) Eliminating disparate impact, making the law require evidence of intentional discrimination.
2) Getting rid of the concept of hostile work environment, or defining it in extremely narrow and explicit terms, making sure that it does not restrict political or religious speech.
3) Repealing the executive orders that created and expanded affirmative action among government contractors and the federal workforce.
This is a starting point for think tanks to delve into various laws and regulations to put out actually useful whitepapers. Give politicians and bureaucrats a map of exactly what policies the real antiracists want them to search out and destroy. That way we can better hold them to it.
6. Fund CRT Escape Pods
Philanthropists should get together and stick a bunch of money into an endowment — or endowments! — that distributes “critical race theory escape scholarships” for families stuck in school systems that are trying to make their kids racists.
State lawmakers should sponsor bills to create “antiracism choice scholarships” that make state funds available to families in school districts that are found to be teaching racism. As Chris Bedford notes, this is the time to institute universal backpack funding so parents never have to negotiate with racial terrorists again. Churches should step up to their historic commitments to provide a Christian education to all Christian children, and to serve the poor, by starting schools or crowdfunding CRT escape scholarships.
State think tanks should help fundraise for any and all of these, or provide startup funding and assistance to groups of parents to start non-racist charter and private schools, education “pods,” and homeschool communities. The possibilities for direct action to give affected children immediate lifeboats out of desperate situations are myriad.
7. Give Chris Rufo a Journalism Army
Parents need help using research skills such as filing open records requests to find out what their school systems are doing with their kids and tax dollars. They may also need lawyers to send threatening letters and even file lawsuits if school districts refuse to disclose this public information. This kind of discovery, and amplifying it, would be largely the work of journalists if the profession weren’t such a mess.
Again, Rufo is amazing, but he should be duplicated as much as possible. Get the guy a research assistant, and journalists and lawyers to extend his work to as many school districts as possible. How many parents really know what their children are being told in school? Very few.
Scared parents in my local district in a red state recently sent around an “I do not consent” form letter to bring to school this fall stating that they don’t want their children taught critical race theory. How is that enforceable? How would they know if the school went ahead and ignored them? Why is it even a thing that parents should feel the need to send letters like this to an institution they are funding and sending their children to? Who is backing them up?
I know who it should be: Those with the resources to make their concerns heard and enforced, through as many avenues as possible. The time to press this advantage — one of the few people on the political right have right now — is immediately, and as hard as possible. Don’t squander this moment. Who knows if and when another one like it will arise.
During the question and answer session following his remarks yesterday, Joe Biden said something out loud the media are desperately trying to hide.
In this video segment listen carefully to what he says. As the Supreme Court and lower courts have determined, the CDC has no legal authority to block the rights of property owners from rental income from their tenants. This is a basic issue in the Constitution about private property rights and the limits of federal government to intervene.
However, think about Joe Biden taking an oath of office “to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” and contrast that oath against these public statements. In his remarks Biden readily admits that all constitutional scholars have advised the White House that a regulatory eviction moratorium will *NOT* pass constitutional scrutiny. He openly admits that….
….Then, in the very next sentence, after admitting any effort to initiate or extend a federal eviction moratorium violates the U.S. Constitution, he says he is intentionally directing federal agencies to trigger unconstitutional legal action in an effort to “buy time” and create a de-facto unlawful eviction moratorium.
In essence:… ‘I know this is unconstitutional; and I know we will lose the constitutional legal argument; but we will do this anyway, because ideology’. WATCH:
Put aside the sympathetic elements for a moment; and think BIG PICTURE. Think beyond the issue at hand with evictions. If the installed occupant of the White House can intentionally, and with willful and open intent, violate the United States Constitution; while admitting publicly he is violating the United States Constitution; then what makes you think they will stop at the issue of ‘evictions’.
Either we have a Constitution, or we do not.
Tell me how the willful violation of the Constitution -that is outlined in these public remarks- is not an impeachable offense?
With school boards and governors out there banning Critical Race Theory, defending its wholesome and totally not racist content can be a tough job! Luckily, we here at the Babylon Bee have made a handy how-to guide to help leftists stand up for their favorite theory.
Objection: CRT shouldn't be taught to young kids.
Answer: CRT is not being taught to young kids you racist!
Take a page out of Joy Reid's playbook and simply say that CRT is only being taught in law schools. Since the original founding texts of CRT from the 1970s aren't being assigned to 1st graders, you are totally correct.
Objection: If CRT is only taught in law schools, great! Then we can all agree to ban teaching it to eight-year-olds.
Answer: Are you saying you don't want kids to learn about slavery, you racist?!
CRT is simply telling the truth about American history. This is why adults today, having not had the blessing to learn CRT as kids, have never heard of slavery or Jim Crow.
Objection: Wait, I thought you said CRT was only for law school? But if it's just teaching about the history of racism and slavery - doesn't that mean it is currently being taught to kids?
Answer: Yes, but kids are being taught that slavery was a good thing, you racist fascist!
Kids are being taught outrageous lies about slavery. Kids are hearing falsehoods such as 'slavery was good, actually' and 'thousands of Americans died fighting to end slavery' and 'the Civil Rights Act was good and helped bring about the end of Jim Crow'. Nonsense!
Objection: But wait, those last two are facts! Shouldn't we be teaching children facts?
Answer: Facts are white supremacy, you racist, fascist, homophobe!
Remind this loon that facts and objectivity are simply constructs of whiteness. We teach whatever will help us reach the political goals we want; whether it's true or not is unimportant.
Objection: Your political goals seem to originate in neo-Marxism and aim to destroy the core elements of liberalism that are the foundation of our country.
Answer: Fall on the ground and play dead until they walk away.
Be sure to share this with every teacher they know, so they'll be prepared to combat anti-CRT rhetoric at school this fall. Unless we can get school canceled again. That would be great.
It was always going to be Herculean to inoculate, with an untried vaccine, a multi-ethnic nation of 330 million, across a vast continent—in an era when the media routinely warps the daily news.
Some minorities understandably harbored distrust of prior government vaccination programs.
Nearly 40 million foreign residents in America are from countries where corrupt governments had long ago lost the trust of the population.
The anti-vaccination movement was distrustful of what the government said was safe—given the rush to produce previously untried mRNA inoculation methodologies.
Rural and inner-city poor were sometimes not so easily reached, much less persuaded.
Yet politics played the most obstructive role early on. Candidate Joe Biden talked grandly of reviving the World War II war production board. He deliberately omitted that it was Donald Trump who emulated FDR’s mobilization of private enterprise under government auspices.
Trump offered legal protections for companies to accelerate their research and development—in hopes that competition, profits, and public oversight would result in COVID-19 vaccinations just 10 months after the pandemic hit.
And it worked. Mostly safe and effective vaccinations were rolled out shortly after the election. Some 17 million were inoculated by the time of Joe Biden’s January 20 inauguration.
Yet Dr. Anthony Fauci, in the days when he still posed as a bipartisan professional, had dismissed the idea of any viable vaccination in the election year 2020. Joe Biden publicly doubted that Trump’s vaccination efforts would either work or be safe.
In a nationally televised debate, vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris shamefully said she would never be vaxxed with any shot associated with President Trump. All that proved disastrous messaging for an already skeptical nation.
Pfizer had promised a breakthrough vaccination announcement in late October on the eve of the election. Then it mysteriously went silent—only to suddenly announce its successful vaccination, just a few days after the November 3 voting.
Joe Biden continued the politicization of the vaccination program by bizarrely and falsely declaring on CNN that there had been no vaccinations given until he entered office. Yet Biden himself was first vaccinated on December 21 on live television.
Soon Biden grandly promised that all those who were vaccinated would be safe from infection from the SARS‑CoV‑2virus. And thus they could resume normal lives without masks, quarantines, or social distancing.
Those who refused vaccinations were almost immediately equated in the media to Trump supporters, reviving the Left’s clingers/deplorables/irredeemables/dregs/chumps narrative of uneducated, white, and idiotic resistance to government.
The truth was that apart from Asian Americans, whites were percentage-wise the most vaccinated of the population. Elites charged that backward southern states like Alabama and Mississippi were not just lagging in their inoculation rates, but endangering vaccinated Americans by resuscitating a now constantly mutating virus.
Again, in truth, low vaccination rates among African-American populations in the South were a chief but unspoken reason why majorities there were not inoculated.
Once the so-called Delta variant arrived in force in early summer, the government’s earlier assurances that the vaccinated were now free to resume a normal life lost credibility. Weekly confused and mixed messages followed—simultaneously both downplaying and exaggerating the efficacy of the vaccinations.
In reality, most who were vaccinated were almost assured that they would not become seriously ill from COVID-19, would likely not need hospitalization, and almost certainly would not die from it.
No matter. The media-government fusion now blame-gamed unvaccinated “super-spreaders” for sometimes infecting those already vaccinated—as if the over 100 million adults still not fully vaccinated were red-state rubes who packed honky-tonk bars and motorcycle rallies.
Yet the reality was quite different.
Last summer over 1,000 medical providers had given blanket exemptions solely to BLM protestors, dangerously to mass in the streets for weeks on end to demonstrate.
Currently, two million illegal aliens are scheduled to cross the southern border in the next year—with legal impunity, but without vaccinations, or COVID-19 tests, or lectures from Washington.
A recent breakout of COVID-19, among even the vaccinated in Provincetown, Massachusetts, was not due to alt-right Neanderthals. It was attributable to the annual gay pride celebrations where some thousands of partiers swarmed bars, clubs, restaurants, and hotels.
Former President Barack Obama was scheduled to host 500 guests and 200 staffers at his Martha’s Vineyard estate—when the government was again insisting masks be worn almost everywhere.
Don’t look to COVID-19 czar Dr. Fauci to clear things up. He has already confessed he had lied about masks and herd immunity—allegedly for the people’s own good. Fauci still denies he helped fund dangerous gain-of-function viral research at the Wuhan virology lab—at ground zero of the later coronavirus pandemic.
If the Biden Administration cannot vaccinate half of America, or assure vaccinated Americans that COVID-19 mutants won’t seriously hurt them or rekindle the earlier pandemic, then it might first look in the mirror before casting stones at others.
The Department of Homeland Security was created in the wake of the
9/11 attacks for the purpose of protecting America against terrorist
groups such as al-Qaeda. It was not intended to spy on ordinary
Americans or track their political affiliations. But now DHS seems to
be spending as much time tracking and prosecuting "domestic terrorism" as it does foreign terrorists and actual criminals, including those gang members who are crossing our southern border every day. That's the same border that Kamala Harris is in charge of.
An official at DHS stated in May 2021
that "domestic violent extremism poses the most lethal, persistent
terrorism-related threat to our homeland today" — that in connection
with a new program of monitoring extremism on public social media. DHS
is going to be collecting and analyzing social media data in an effort
to identify possible threats. That seems straightforward enough, except
that one often discovers what one is looking for, and recent history
suggests that government is tracking conservatives more closely than
radical groups like Antifa.
On July 1, in one of many such
actions, DHS predicted "increased activity" by what it calls "rightwing
groups." It is mystifying how the department could make this
prediction, especially since no such highly public prediction was made
in regard to those terrorist groups that actually have stated
their intention to harm us. Those groups, like Iran's Revolutionary
Guards, seem to get a pass, but ordinary Americans become targets for
bureaucrats who believe that the "biggest terrorism threat" comes from "individuals and small groups in the U.S."
Contrary
to those, like the ACLU, who question the right of DHS to collect
information on American citizens, I believe that government agencies do
have the right to collect whatever information they need to avert
violence. But unlike many in these agencies, I also believe that these
efforts must be even-handed. Conservatives who are actually conspiring
to commit illegal actions should be prosecuted, but so should those on
the left who plot violence.
None of that seems to be happening. As Charles Marino writes,
during summer 2020, "protests by Black Lives Matter ... became
associated with the destruction of cities, attacks on law enforcement
and other forms of violence." Yet how many of those responsible for
this violence were ever prosecuted and jailed? One has to question
whether the same standards are applied to BLM, Antifa, and other groups
on the left. In my view, all who engage in violence or conspire to
commit it should be prosecuted equally.
Americans must never relinquish their rights to free speech, but there are limits
to expression. In our democracy, one has the right to speak freely, to
criticize the government and its leaders, and even to express radical
views so long as one does not advocate violence. Government does not
have the right to track speech that is legal and within bounds. The
danger is that government, with its power to judge what constitutes
"extreme" expression, may be monitoring the wrong groups.
DHS needs to be extremely careful to avoid gathering information on lawful citizens. There is not, as some at DHS believe,
a "close proximity between constitutionally protected speech ... and
the threat of violence." Constitutionally protected speech is entirely
different from speech that incites violence, and one would expect
high-level DHS officials to know this. DHS was created in order to
protect Americans from those who do not recognize this difference, but
now it appears that some of those may be working at DHS itself.
DHS may be confused as to what its
mission is. At the center of current DHS policy is Alejandro Mayorkas, a
person who has worked in government or government-related jobs, mostly
located in Washington, D.C., for his entire life. Are his ideas
concerning "rightwing groups" connected with the fact that he grew up in
Beverly Hills, attended Beverly Hills High School, and graduated from
U.C. Berkeley? True, one can hardly expect a person who has lived only
in Beverly Hills, Berkeley, and Washington to have a very sophisticated
understanding of heartland values. Perhaps that is why DHS is so quick
to accuse conservatives of extremism.
Part of this bias is the notion that left-wing violence is committed by "decentralized"
groups like Antifa, while right-wing actions like the Jan. 6 protests
were "coordinated" and "insurrectionary." In fact, thousands of
protesters do not show up without some sort of coordination: in the era
of social media, Antifa and the Proud Boys are equally
"coordinated." The idea that left-wing violence is decentralized and
thus less of a threat is extremely dubious.
Ironically, Mayorkas
was in charge of DHS's Citizenship and Immigration Services unit under
President Obama from 2009 to 2013, a period that saw a surge in illegal
immigration and in criminals such as MS-13 gang members crossing our
border. Unrestricted immigration always brings with it an increase in
violent crime, terrorism, and drug importation — just the sort of
activities that DHS ought to be investigating and blocking. Failure to
secure the border simply abets crime and terrorism.
Shouldn't DHS spend more time securing our
borders than tracking legal citizens who may entertain what it considers
extreme views? According to ICE, the total number of criminal illegal aliens stands at 1.9 million, about 16 percent of the officially recognized illegal alien population. (Of course, all illegal
aliens are criminals by virtue of their having crossed the border
illegally, but ICE tabulates those who have committed other
crimes.) Surely these criminal illegal aliens pose a greater
threat than the swaggering of native extremists, some of which may be
simply letting off steam. After all, one motto heard among MS-13
members is "kill, rape, control." Why isn't Homeland Security more
effective in protecting Americans against these and other gang members
instead of letting them in?
A percentage of the 30 million
illegals who may be here are members of criminal gangs, and the numbers
may be much larger than government wants us to believe. In many places,
Americans live every day in fear of these gangs, and for good
reason. In the midst of crime waves in many cities, senior citizens are
afraid to venture outside their homes, and even at home they do not
feel safe. Meanwhile, Biden minimizes the numbers and denies that a
"crime wave" exists — this despite a near doubling of violent crime in many large cities this year.
There
are an estimated 10,000 MS-13 gang members in the US, but this is only a
fraction of the number of illegal alien gang members in our
country. It is difficult to obtain accurate numbers because search
results are buried beneath articles claiming that "nondocumented"
criminal activity is less prevalent than "native" criminal
activity. (The same apparent manipulation of search results takes place
when one googles "crime wave.") Progressives are going to great
lengths to obscure the truth that illegals do commit violent crimes,
that the borders are in fact wide open, and that a crime wave is
sweeping across America.
Instead, progressives including Joe Biden
focus on "right-wing groups." DHS officials have stated that domestic
extremism is more of a threat than foreign terrorism or even than gangs
such as MS-13. DHS was created for the purpose of combatting foreign
terrorism, but somehow under Biden it is evolving into an agency that
tracks conservatives on social media and focuses on domestic
extremism. That mistake needs to be corrected while we still have the
freedom to do so.
Given Santayana's warning to those who forget the past, there yet
remains the problem of what to remember. Events during the summer of
1932 have frequently been remembered to promote some political
cause. What follows is an outline of the incontrovertible facts that
create their own perspective.
The context for these events begins with
the demobilization of the WWI veterans and the problems of their
re-integration into civilian society. In 1924, Congress overrode the
veto of President Coolidge to enact the World War Adjusted Compensation
Act, which included an insurance policy that could be redeemed for cash
in 1945. President Coolidge had argued
that existing programs were adequate to help the dependents of killed
or disabled veterans and that the act would inevitably lead to a balloon
payment in 1945, the effects of which could not be predicted in
1924. When the Depression hit, demands grew to pay the veterans
immediately.
In May of 1932, about 300 veterans, led by Walter W.
Waters, entered the yard of the Union Pacific Railroad in Portland,
Oregon; refused to leave until they were allowed to ride in empty
boxcars; and started on their way to Washington, D.C. to "lobby" for the
immediate payment of their "bonuses." The news media began to follow
their journey. This attention prompted local authorities and veterans'
groups to help with their transportation, and by the end of May, they
were on the outskirts of Washington. News coverage also inspired other
veterans to join their march. Waters estimated that over 20,000
veterans, some with their wives and children, appeared within the next
two weeks. Pelham Glassford, the district's chief of police, and
President Hoover co-operated in accommodating the veterans by raising
charitable contributions to set up their camps and kitchens. The
Veterans Administration, recently organized by President Hoover, set up a
field hospital for this "Bonus Army." Although some squatted in
unoccupied buildings, the largest group lived on the Anacostia Flats in
two camps. A large camp formed on wetlands reclaimed by the Army Corps
of Engineers as a public park and was called Camp Marks after the police
officer who patrolled it. A smaller one, Camp Bartlett, was on higher
ground and named after the owner of the land who allowed the veterans to
use it. Anacostia Park now includes both sites.
In
1932, Leon Trotsky still had eight years to live. The Workers'
Ex-Servicemen League, a communist front, infiltrated the protesters, and
the N.Y. Times (6/7/1932, p. 3) reported that the veterans purged those
communists they could identify. The communists set up a rival camp at 14th and D streets in southwest Washington.
Initially, fortune favored the
veterans. They organized a well received parade and successfully
lobbied the House to pass a bill for immediate payment of the bonus. On
June 17, 1932, about 8,000 members of the Bonus Army gathered outside the Capitol as the Senate debated. The Capitol Police came armed with rifles. When
Waters told the veterans that the Senate had rejected the bill, they
sang "America" and returned to their camps. There was no violence.
Congress authorized the V.A.
to pay travel expenses and a daily subsistence to veterans who chose to
go home, and thousands did. But thousands also remained in camps
scattered across Washington. Waters said he would stay until 1945 if
necessary. On the morning of July 28, 1932, the Capitol Police, six
days after giving notice, attempted to remove the veterans squatting in
condemned buildings on Pennsylvania Avenue. Some
left quietly, but others hurled bricks and rocks, hitting Glassford in
the chest. In the ensuing violence, two veterans were killed, and
several police officers were seriously injured. By late afternoon, the
Army, led by Gen. MacArthur and his aide Maj. Eisenhower, mobilized
infantry and cavalry on the Ellipse; the latter unit, commanded by Maj.
Patton, included five tanks. As the Army rolled through the camps, some
fleeing veterans set fires, and the troops completed the eradication as
they went. The Army crossed the Anacostia River around 9:00 P.M. to
disperse the veterans and their families from Camp Marks; Camp
Bartlett, on private property, was untouched. Many evacuees followed
the government's plan and trekked to the Maryland line, where National Guard trucks carried them into Pennsylvania.
There
were no serious injuries after the Army was called in. Immediately
after Camp Marks was cleared, MacArthur held a press conference. The
New York Times (7/29/1932, p.3) reported MacArthur's comments as
follows: "At the first point of attack, on Pennsylvania Avenue, not far
from the foot of the Capitol, the mob was a bad-looking one. It was one
marked by signs of revolution." Later in the article, the veterans are
referred to as "insurrectionists."
The aftermath generated many conflicting
versions of events. President Hoover said he had ordered MacArthur not
to cross the bridge to the Anacostia Flats. MacArthur denied receiving
any such order.
Maj. Eisenhower defended MacArthur, but President
Eisenhower repudiated him. After the violence, Waters dissociated
himself from any further protest and returned to Oregon.
Newsreels showed the military with tanks,
routing unarmed veterans. To many, the action confirmed a view of
Hoover as coldhearted and detached from reality. Reading a New York
Times account, Democratic presidential candidate Franklin Delano
Roosevelt told his aide, future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter,
"Well, Felix, this will elect me."
Together with the Great Depression, it did. The new
Congress eventually passed the bill to pay the veterans their bonuses
forthwith, and President Roosevelt vetoed it. He
reasoned that the bill was no longer needed because the recently
created Civilian Conservation Corps would give jobs to all these
veterans. Congress overrode Roosevelt's veto, and by June 30, 1937, the V.A. had certified 3.5 million WWI veterans as eligible.
The most bizarre contribution to this saga came from Hollywood. The genesis of Gabriel over the White House,
loosely based on the Bonus Army, is amazing. A novel by that name was
written during the summer of 1932 by T.F. Tweed, a close adviser of the
British politician David Lloyd George, prime minister during WWI. The
novel was published in February 1933 and immediately made into a movie
through a production company within MGM by Willam Randolph Hearst with
the intent of having its premiere coincide with Roosevelt's inauguration
in March 1933. Its message is simple: a president who loves the
American people should be given complete control of the United
States. Hearst and George were old friends, and it is difficult to
avoid the conclusion that they collaborated for a political end;
certainly, all Americans would feel that Roosevelt loved them, and the
rest follows by syllogism.
The media remember the Bonus Army when
they want Americans to associate a sitting president with President
Hoover, whom they have placed as only slightly less vilified than
Hitler. Thus, the Washington Post wrote an article in 2017 (republished
in 2020), and PBS released a documentary in August 2006 in time for the
midterm elections. But the facts suggest that the themes of Russian
interference and British meddling approach a tradition in American in
politics.
