The Streets Were Paved with Gold - Ken Auletta [162]
Despite the evidence to the contrary, the left continues to treat most labor unions as if they remained the cutting edge of reform, a beleaguered rather than sometimes privileged class. It was easy to attack George Meany’s blatherings about communism or the war in Vietnam, but when it comes to many local issues people genuinely committed to reform adopt a conservative pose. When mayoral candidate Bella Abzug strayed and tentatively questioned generous municipal pension benefits, Geoffrey Stokes wrote in the Village Voice that she was “union-baiting.” Ellen Willis, in Rolling Stone magazine, described the municipal unions—who are now the city’s primary bankers—as “powerless.” Before union leaders consented to withdraw a few of their fringe benefits in 1975, writer Nat Hentoff condemned Shalala and Councilman Robert F. Wagner, Jr., as “anti-labor” for suggesting such blasphemy. The same people who favor strengthened consumer protection and oppose monopolies, blindly support municipal labor monopolies against growing consumer demands to get what they pay for.
All of this has an Alice in Wonderland quality to it. By opposing more local “sacrifices,” the chances of bankruptcy grow, as do the odds that the real Huns will step in and demand the wrong kind of cuts or much deeper slashes in worker pay and benefits. If that happens, the nation’s foremost liberal city will flash to the rest of the country a message liberals want to avoid: liberalism doesn’t work. Some conservative colonialists will be granted license to speak of New York the way they do of “primitive” Africa. The liberal compact would break down as growing numbers of New Yorkers join other Americans in viewing not just liberalism, but government, as the enemy.
This may be the real danger—not that liberalism will be discredited but that government will be. Here, labels do matter. For while the old liberal or left litmus test issues—Vietnam, McCarthyism, domestic spying, unionism, dump LBJ, McGovern vs. Nixon—have receded, what tends to separate those on the left (loosely defined) from those on the right (also loosely defined) is a commitment to use government as an effective tool to help people. While many from my post–New Deal generation may reject the liberal label—preferring “progressive”—they would plead guilty to a bias in favor of the less fortunate, an emphasis on what remains to be done, a commitment to seek change; in a word, hope. Obviously, many who are called “conservatives” possess some or all of these qualities. And there are honest differences over the means to achieve these ends; people can be “left” on some issues and “right” on others.
But as the child of a working-class home, I know that while liberals may be bleeding hearts, at least they bleed. If you’ve ever covered or attended a national Republican convention, perhaps you know what I’m trying to say. These are the people who tend to agree with neo-conservative cynics like Irving Kristol, who urges what he calls “benign neglect” for cities: “The cities are bottoming out. Leave them alone and they’ll recover.” That is the voice of a comfortable man. Similar voices opposed advances in civil rights and women’s rights, the antiwar struggle, tax reform, antitrust, consumerism. The status quo. “All great discoveries,” C. H. Parkhurst once said, “are made by men whose feelings ran ahead of their thinking.”
The challenge to progressives—both nationally and locally—is to think a little more clearly; to learn from, rather than embrace, past mistakes;