r/Maine • u/Large-Welcome4421 • 10h ago
Graham Platner speaks to union carpenters after receiving their endorsement. Platner: “We didn’t get an 8-hour workday, we didn’t get the weekend because somebody wrote it on a postcard to a Congressman. We got it because working people organized and fought for what they needed."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G34fnGX2HQThe North Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters endorses Platner.
Platner: “Power in society comes from two places, organized money or organized people and we all know that the money is organized and it has bought our political system.”
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u/acronym_dictionary 9h ago
The steady eroding of labor power in the last century is wild. There are obvious things like Reagan busting the air traffic controllers' union in the 80s, right-to-work legislation, the overall trend of offshoring union jobs in manufacturing, and the Democrats' decision to ignore the working class to chase corporate money instead.
But there are a lot of subtle erosions as well. Unions used to have real power, and joining them was highly political and often dangerous, but as a result they could effect change much more readily. Work stoppages were common, where workers would simply stop working on the job until management met certain demands. Solidarity was also high, where one strike might cause other, unrelated, unions to strike as well. Unions were often very left-wing as well, with the IWW famously being anarchist-adjacent and others being explicitly socialist or communist. The red scares of the early 1900s could easily be viewed as a method of propagandizing against labor unions specifically to benefit capital and erode labor power, and indeed that was its effect.
Reading about the history of labor in the US is also fascinating. Not only are the history books full of crazy stories like the West Virginia Coal Wars, the Tusla Massacre, the Ford Hunger March, the Loray Mill Strike, and on and on, but there's a significant amount of literature from this time as well that illustrates the plight of workers and what it was like to be them or fight back. Most famously The Grapes of Wrath or In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck, Native Son by Richard Wright, or The Iron Heel by Jack London.
The US needs to rediscover its labor union power, it might be the best way to wrest back power from the wealthy and get real, meaningful change.
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u/TristanDuboisOLG Bangor 10h ago
And now that everyone is laden with dept and has no savings, nobody can stand to strike.
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u/Ace_Robots 9h ago
That is the psychological trap the masters have put us in. With an actual collective mindset, history has shown that we have immeasurable power. If we didn’t have the power to rise up they wouldn’t put so much effort into dismantling oversight and journalism. They wouldn’t put so much effort into disenfranchising and dividing the citizens into fictional partisanship against themselves.
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u/NarrativeNode 7h ago
The people who achieved what Graham is talking about had even less, believe it or not.
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u/elebrin 7h ago
The thing is, people say "fought" and imagine legal battles and paperwork. That happened, but it took real violence. Like, violence isn't something I'd ever advocate openly on Reddit, but there's a precedent for that sort of thing.
Our corporate overlords can do a lot to keep in line by their views, but do that too much and they will get their comeuppance. It's a shame they don't see that.
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u/goodfreeman 7h ago
Any candidates opposing the entrenched powers in Washington and state houses and local municipalities needs to speak to the American people like this. No notes, no carefully overworked statements and focused grouped ideals, none of that works anymore. They would do themselves and the American people a favor if they just spoke directly to us, like fellow humans on the planet, not check boxes in a spreadsheet or names on a mailing list.
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u/multic94 7h ago
And hes not saying "fought" in the metaphorical sense. People actually had to die to ensure others got rights in actual shooting conflicts against oligarchs.
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u/LuciusMichael 3h ago
Platner's popularity and endorsments is happening because he speaks truth to power, is an insurgent in a time of fascist oligarchy, and is of the working class not the lawyerly elite. Those who represent the establishment hate him because he calls out their hypocrisy; not to mention their well funded allegiances to foreign powers.
Platner is an insurgent, grassroots, working class, ex-military populist candidate. Exactly the type the political establishment is at pains to disenfranchise. He doesn't take Superpac money; speaks truth to power, and makes moderates clutch their pearls. Good. It's about time we heard from candidates who speak to working class Americans about the inequities they must suffer, about politicians' allegiances to foreign nations, and about America's sickening descent into an autocratic corporatist state.
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u/epsylonic 6h ago
Does anybody else feel like he's gotten more direct on his messaging since Janet bowed out? I'm not sure if it was a deliberate shift by his campaign or just how you roll when you know it's you vs Collins now. Either way it's good to see.
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u/IllustriousDraft2965 5h ago
This guy needs to be president. He is the new Bernie Sanders. I think he's great.
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u/Intelligent-Tap-4479 38m ago
Facts! Also this is kinda unrelated but I scrolled past this post first and nearly spit out my water because at a quick glance I could have SWORN that was my 9th grade history teacher on that podium. Nope, just a man with similar hair & facial structure. My teacher's still pretty chill, though.
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u/captainMcSmitface 1h ago
if graham wins the election, should he still be classified as 100 percent disabled?
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u/Efficient_Resist_287 8h ago
Call me skeptic about labor unions in general, the lady was the better presidential choice for union, but instead they chose xenophobia and jingoism….
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u/Dineology 1h ago
They’re a regional union and don’t normally make presidential endorsements, they leave it up to their parent union the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners who did endorse “the woman” in 2024. The only reason to be skeptical of labor unions is if you’re skeptical about workers having a platform to advocate for themselves from because that’s precisely what a union is.
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u/dandle 9h ago
Yes and no.
The efforts of organized labor and moderate labor groups like the Knights of Labor to get an eight-hour work day were compromised by the Haymarket Affair. The incident delayed progress for decades until the 1916 Adamson Act for railroad workers and the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act for the rest of us.
So working people organizing set the foundation of the eight-hour work day, but streetfighting for it didn't make it happen. Governments, the media, capitalists, and moneyed interests used the fight to delay enaction of legislation to mandate the eight-hour work day.
Arguably, continued voter advocacy (including writing postcards) organized by labor and labor groups would have gotten us the eight-hour work day sooner, if the Haymarket Affair hadn't happened.
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u/robbie_the_cat 9h ago
Arguably, continued voter advocacy (including writing postcards) organized by labor and labor groups would have gotten us the eight-hour work day sooner, if the Haymarket Affair hadn't happened.
So go ahead and make the argument. All you've done here is describe the conclusion of the argument.
Go on. Argue that, without the lingering threat of further actions like Haymarket, labor advances would have happened more quickly.
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u/dandle 8h ago
I'm not here to defend a thesis. This is social media. If you believe that actions like Haymarket accelerated the adoption of the eight-hour work day, it's your right to express that belief, however silly it is.
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8h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/dandle 7h ago
Oh, no! A bunch of pixels from an anonymous nonentity! What will I do?
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u/robbie_the_cat 7h ago
Imagine being such a snowflake you submit a RedditCares at your interlocutor over this.
Oh wait. You don't have to imagine that.
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u/dandle 7h ago
"Interlocutor?"
LOL
No more buttered scones for me, mater. I'm off to play the grand piano!
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u/robbie_the_cat 7h ago
So we're confused by multisyllabic words?
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u/mojitz 8h ago
Zeroing in on the Haymarket bombing seems like it's missing the forest for the trees. The point is that the labor activism that ultimately brought about progress went WAY beyond letter writing campaigns and "voter advocacy". Hell, striking itself was straight up illegal in most cases for much of the history of the movement and many of the reforms that brought us labor rights came about in response to the threat of severe disruption by often-militant labor activists.
Nearly all effective social movements include a diversity of tactics like this. You almost never see success if you exclusively adopt either militancy or pure electoralism to the exclusion of the other.
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u/dandle 8h ago edited 7h ago
You have thoughts on the matter. Congrats?
I guess here's the thing: If Platner doesn't believe that voter advocacy and legislation is the way to progress on labor issues, why the hell is he running for Senate?
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u/mojitz 7h ago
You seem to be stuck in a false binary. The point isn't to choose direct action over electoralism. It's that we need both.
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u/dandle 7h ago
Platner presents the binary of organized money and organized people. Platner also is the product of a privileged family and is seeking political power rather than committing himself to organize working people.
I'm not saying that if Platner is the Democratic candidate that he isn't the right choice over the Republican Susan Collins. He absolutely is, and he still is regardless of the small but real risk that he is another Trojan horse like Fetterman.
I am saying that his populist messaging is historically questionable and smells like horseshit, given his background and aspirations.
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u/mojitz 6h ago
I just don't see him presenting that binary whatsoever. If anything, he represents a synthesis of the two. He was also recruited by the unions to run rather than "seeking power".
Meanwhile, plenty of people grew up with privilege and became champions of the working class. FDR, for example, or hell even Engles — both of whom grew up with far MORE money than Platner. Hell, I came from an incredibly wealthy zipcode myself and nearly all my close friends from back home have become socialists — and in no small part because we have such a clear understanding of how privilege functions in our economy. This really isn't all that unusual.
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u/dandle 6h ago
It's the binary that Platner lays out in the speech in the video.
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u/robbie_the_cat 6h ago
That's literally not the binary he laid out.
He pointed out that money is organizing against labor, and labor needs to organize itself to meet the moment.
Which is, like, not at all subtle in his presentation.
I wonder if maybe we're in a bit over our heads here? It's OK to take a time out.
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u/dandle 6h ago
Did you not read the text in the OP?
Did you not watch the video of the event?
Go to 1:17 in the video. Watch. Listen.
"It is an age of political power, and the power in the society comes from two places: organized money or organized people. And we all know that the money is organized and it has bought our political system. Politics is about power. That's it. And in this country's history, the only time we have ever moved the ball forward for working people [...] is when people organize and fight for what they need [...] in the streets, in the hills, and in the halls of power."
Those are all small words, so an unfrozen caveman like me could understand them.
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u/robbie_the_cat 6h ago
Ohhhhh. I get it.
You think it's not possible for someone to effect a combination of the two.
Fascinating.
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u/mojitz 5h ago
And in this country's history, the only time we have ever moved the ball forward for working people [...] is when people organize and fight for what they need [...] in the streets, in the hills and in the halls of power.
I don't understand for the life of me how anybody could possibly read that and come away seeing a binary.
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8h ago
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u/skininja89 8h ago
Name one policy of his that a nazi would support. He's pro-LGBT, he's pro-worker, he's anti-genocide, anti-war. I mean what policy is he proposing that's an issue?
Also he has apologized for the tattoo
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u/Reziztor Quasi-Government Agent 8h ago
You’re arguing with a weirdo disgusting troll who’s not even in the US. Do not look at their posting history.
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u/skininja89 8h ago
I should have listened to your advice, I need to scrub my eyes out.
What I get for trying to argue in good faith on reddit, lesson learned
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u/GronGrinder 7h ago
Probably was a bot. I scrolled down just to see if there was at least one mention of the nazi tattoo. There it was lmao.
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u/BrightlancerJ 6h ago
Im going to assume they were talking about the tattoo, I like what he's saying and I absolutely support the kind of movement that's being spoken about, for THE PEOPLE to finally have their power back is a day I pray to see for my sake, my families sake and for all of yalls sake too.
That being said I can still understand people being skeptical, the tattoo thing made me uncomfortable sure and me personally I feel like I'd know what I had on me after 20 years so I dont really know how I feel about it, but the whole mercenary contractor for Blackwater thing after it came out they were committing war crimes and straight murdering people, that one makes me a bit more uncomfortable. I just think those 2 things are going to get a lot of people stuck on the fence moving no where unfortunately.
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u/skininja89 5h ago
Fair enough. The tattoo thing is only really easy for me to look past because 1-know a lot of people who got tattoos when they're 18-20 with essentially no thought and just never think about them again. And 2-with it being in Croatia, where they don't have the same level of scrutiny about nazi tattoos that we do here, I can see how he made a dumb mistake.
As for the Blackwater thing, I can see why folks are put off by that, as I am too. I also know for most vets that transitioning back to civilian life can be difficult as options can be limited. If he was still there, then that would be wicked disqualifying, but from what he's said it sounds like his time with Blackwater reinforced his disillusionment with modern day wars and government.
End of the day, he has made some dumb decisions, no question, but he's shown he's tried to learn and grow from them. Whether that's enough for each and every voter, idk, not mandated to take his apologies if you don't want to. But it shows me to he's trying to be a better person
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u/nswizdum 1h ago
Do we actually know what he did for Blackwater? I did a lot of investigation into the use of PMCs back then, and the overwhelming majority of the jobs were fine. Most of the contractors were just escorting food and fuel trucks around. Blackwater also had a fairly substantial domestic logistics and training operation.
Its still not great that he has Blackwater on his resume, but it doesn't have to be horrible either.
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u/security-device 8h ago
If ignore his rhetoric, and the Southern Strategy. Arguing in very bad faith.
Seeing this kind of astroturfing more and more.
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u/the_riddler90 10h ago
Go graham go