UAW and Nissan at Canton, Mississippi

Yes, it is too damn bad that UAW lost the vote at Chattanooga,  I gather that the union is attempting to get a re-vote.  (I am an always paid-up member of UAW and get most of its stuff, such as Solidarity magazine.  No, I am not and never have been an auto worker, but the National Writers Union, to which I've belonged for many years, is a formal component of UAW.)

While wishing  the auto workers in western Tennessee all the best, let's also keep an eye on the intensive UAW campaign, targeting Nissan at Canton, Mississippi.  About 3500 workers are involved and a big majority of them are African American.

Mississippi's ethos is anti-union.  Nissan has been a ferocious foe of unionism. In the old civil rights days, Canton, just north of Jackson and then a larger small town, was one of the most hostile and dangerous places in the state.  I (and sometimes Eldri and Maria) had our share of Canton experiences -- as did lots of other civil rights activists.  The town is bigger now, a small city if you stretch things a bit,  The impact of Black political strength is obvious almost everywhere.  But  much poverty exists all over Mississippi -- and, of course, elsewhere.

One of Nissan's anti-union approaches is to make selective and large financial donations in an obvious effort to split Black workers and to split the Black/Non-Black combo.  It's contributed large amounts of dinero to Canton's physical improvement.  It also, less than a year ago, contributed $100,000 to the Evers Foundation in Jackson.  The Foundation eagerly grabbed the money and the Clarion-Ledger, largest newspaper in the state gave this donation wide and very favorable publicity for Nissan.  No surprises in either of those.  Myrlie Evers, who with some other family members, heads the service-oriented foundation, had no direct activist experience in the Movement that I ever saw, aside from being Medgar's good wife and an occasional visitor to mass meetings -- almost all of those featuring well known personages from the North.  The Foundation has never been in step with Medgar's social justice vision.  The Clarion Ledger is the primary mouthpiece for, as I've often put it, the "new moderate orthodoxy."  Its basic constituency has almost always been the business community, especially its wealthier dimensions.

But most Canton/Nissan workers, Black and white and other, do seem to be standing firm.  It's a cardinal rule in social justice organizing of any kind that the broader community become as supportive as possible. In the civil rights days, of course, this meant bringing much of the community right into the Movement itself.  In Labor campaigns, it means educating the public as widely as possible.  The pro-union Nissan workers and UAW have been doing an extremely intensive job of this -- in Canton, across Mississippi, in various parts of the U.S. -- and even globally.

So, keep an eye on this very significant justice campaign.  There is some info on the Net and via UAW.

John Grisham's book, A Time to Kill, is based in Canton.  If you see the fine flick of the same name, you will see a lot of the town -- including the Madison County courthouse.  Here's one of our Old Days experiences in case you missed it at earlier points.   http://hunterbear.org/big_distress_challenges_in_the_e.htm

In Solidarity,

Hunter Bear


HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq / 
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO

Check out our massive social justice website
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The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
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