대한 팀 쇼록 자신의 입장을 담은 이메일입니다. 킴의 글에 대한 약간의
정정과 콤멘트입니다. 참조하시길.
A response from Tim Shorrock on Kim Scipes’ distribution of his
Nation article, “Labor’s Cold War”
I would like to make a public statement disassociating myself from
comments made by Kim Scipes in an e-mail sent out on May 1
introducing my newly published article in The Nation, “Labor’s
Cold War: Freshly unearthed documents may force the AFL-CIO to face
up to past betrayals.” My article is running in the May 19, 2003,
print edition of the The Nation and will soon be available on
www.thenation.com.
Kim Scipes has made important contributions to our understanding of
the AFL-CIO’s operations during the Cold War, and I appreciate his
desire to send my article out widely to his friends and colleagues
in the labor movement. He has played a valuable role in spurring
discussions on labor’s foreign policy, and his work led in part to
the “clear the air” resolutions passed by West Coast federations
discussed in my article. I regard him as a colleague and respect his
views.
However, I take strong exceptions to two sections of his cover
letter, which I believe require a personal response.
1) Scipes’ comments on Tim Beaty, the AFL-CIO’s deputy director
for international affairs, were unfair. I think its inappropriate to
take a personal comment from someone and send it out over the
internet where it will be read by thousands of people without
permission from that person or asking him to respond. Scipes follows
his description of Beaty’s quotes with the statement that “the AFL-
CIO has still yet to ‘come clean’ on its foreign operations,
either in the past or today, and this has never been democratically
discussed, much less ratified by union members.” True or not, that
statement leaves the impression that Beaty and other AFL-CIO
officials are not forthright about their current programs. I agree
with Scipes that the AFL-CIO should be far more open about their
programs and funding sources. And as I wrote in The Nation, their
policy now is not to comment or investigate past abuses - something
I believe should change. In Beaty’s defense, however, he and I have
had many discussions on labor policy in recent years, and sometimes
we agree and sometimes we don’t. But when I’ve asked him as a
journalist about current AFL-CIO programs, he has always provided me
with accurate information and helped steer me to the right people.
Its important to remember that, unlike the Meany and Kirkland eras,
when the senior staff of the AFL-CIO international affairs
department were recruited from outside of labor, Beaty and most of
his colleagues in the international affairs department are trade
unionists and have long histories of solid and principled work on
behalf of the labor movement. They are people of integrity. I hope
Scipes did not intend to imply otherwise, and I say this not at any
prompting from Beaty, but because I think the discussions that ensue
from my publication of “Labor’s Cold War” should be as principled
as possible.
2) Scipes insists that “One point that has NOT been sufficiently
emphasized is the role of the AFL-CIO in the development of the
National Endowment for Democracy (sic).” He adds, in bold emphasis:
“How can the AFL-CIO take money from the Bush Administration for
work overseas, when the same Bush Administration is doing everything
it can to disembowel the union movement here in the US??? Hello!
And does anybody over the age of, say ten, believe that this money
does not come with a quid pro quo?” Here, Scipes raises legitimate
issues, but I disagree with his tone and his argument that NED is
the key issue in this debate - nor do I think its been under-
emphasized. In my article, and in a previous piece for New Labor
Forum (http://www.qc.edu/newlaborforum/html/11_article9.html) I
discussed this issue in detail. Here’s what I wrote: “When asked
about the wisdom of using money from NED—which was created to
funnel money to groups that oppose governments at odds with the
United States—(AFL-CIO officials) say it comes with no strings
attached and is used to build support for unions and freedom of
association around the world. AFL-CIO members, however, would be
better served with more transparency from the Solidarity Center and
the International Affairs Department about its programs and their
relationship to the priorities set in their funding by the U.S.
government and the NED.” Stan Gacek, who runs the AFL-CIO’s Latin
America programs, went much further in the interviews we did for The
Nation. But I believe Scipes does a disservice by stating that even
a ten-year old should know that NED’s money comes with a quid pro
quo. In some cases, as Beaty and Gacek have argued, it may not; but
to make a case that there is a quid pro quo in a country like
Indonesia, one needs solid evidence, and that takes solid
reporting – something I now intend to do in the second phase of
this project.
To conclude, I see NED is a congressionally-funded program designed
with a specific political agenda (as baldly stated in my Nation
article by the neo-conservative Joshua Muravchik). That agenda, in
my opinion, clearly runs counter to any progressive or labor
program. I agree with Scipes that that the AFL-CIO should cut its
ties with NED specifically because of that agenda and its role in US
foreign policy. I also think it should evaluate, particularly in
light of recent events, how its international programs mesh with
AID’s - and thus the State Department’s - overall mission. The
real question for the labor movement, which I lay out in the Nation
article, is whether a solidarity-based foreign policy can be built
with government funds designed for a particular agenda, particularly
with an administration like George W. Bush's in Washington (there’s
another, practical issue as well: government money can’t be used
for cross-border solidarity campaigns targeting a certain
corporation). I wrote my article in hopes of opening some debate
about these issues. Maybe what’s needed is a new start, with an
international labor solidarity fund raised by trade unions and
designed by and for trade unionists and workers. But first we need
to discuss these issues openly and with patience and tolerance for
other views and perspectives.
Tim Shorrock tshorrock51@hotmail.com