Most of us are aware of the benefits of practicing gratitude, but did you know that science recently has helped prove that age-old adage that a grateful heart is indeed a healthier heart? For this co-creative time together, hours and hours, we're going to be sharing information about the science and spirituality aspects of gratitude. Hi, I'm Tiffany Barsotti, and I operate in the world as a spiritual counselor and a medical intuitive, helping practitioners and laypersons move forward using conscious technology and integrative skills. My name is Paul Mills. I'm a professor of public health and behavioral medicine at the University of California at San Diego and also a director of research for the Deepak Chopra Foundation. As a couple, we cross over in the fields of science and spirituality. Paul is a trained scientist. I am a theologian that has no dogma. And together, we seek to add value to your life, not just more content. So welcome to the Heal and Thrive podcast or video cast. We're in the final month of the year and typically it's a time where we review. We review what the year has brought, what has happened, and it's our desire to share some of the, once again, the science and the spiritual aspects of gratitude as well as to offer a practice with how it is that we can utilize this virtue, the building of the virtue of gratitude. The year can, when we do this year review, oftentimes, because it just happens sort of by default, it can look at all of the different stressors. We might be going through some stress right now. We might be dealing with financial conditions or family conditions or other challenges. And this conversation is meant to facilitate a beautiful discussion about what gratitude, the practice of gratitude can do for you and as a way of shifting our inner chemistry as well as the whole field around us, which makes it a little easier to be with family. Well, you mentioned a moment ago, Tiff, about stressors and that reminded me, some years ago, I was given a presentation on gratitude at the Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego, California. And this was in a broader conference on bringing the fields of integrated medicine into the active military hospitals as well as the VA system. When I finished my presentation on gratitude, a few people lined up to the microphone to ask questions. And one of them actually wasn't a question. It was a comment. And this was one of the healthcare providers there. And she told me that just some weeks earlier, she had instituted for some of her patients for them to begin to keep a gratitude journal. And what that meant is she told them that most days of the week, right down in the journal, a few things that you feel grateful for. And even though it had only been a few weeks so far, the patients were reporting back to her that it had really helped them deal with the stress. The stress broadly of their lives, yes, but more specifically, just the stress of the medical condition that they've been carrying for many, many years. So doing the gratitude practice began to help them in their mind and perhaps in their spiritual level too to begin to cope better with the stressors of daily living. And I remember when you were featured on NPR for this, National Public Radio and Time Magazine covered it. There was a lot of coverage on this breakthrough science. And what was so astounding to me is that it makes sense from a mindset and emotional point of view. But when I was hearing the results, and obviously you and I spoke about this, but your presentation on the actual physiological measures, that's a bit mind-blowing. Can you explain that a little bit more, please? Sure. I was just mentioning some of the findings regarding stress even for this healthcare provider. So stress is something more subjective. I think that's what you're getting at. But are there any findings related to biology? And indeed, there are. And we've conducted quite a few studies in that area. So let's see which ones to share initially. We did research on cardiac patients at the University of California, San Diego. And some of our research was in collaboration with scientists and clinicians in Scotland and Tehran and also in Spain. So it's been very interdisciplinary and interinstitutional research. But the cardiac patients, you might remember, in addition to evaluating when they practiced gratitude, how they were doing in terms of stress, how they were doing in terms of sleep, anxiety, we also did measure cardiac physiology, and we also drew blood. And essentially after two months of practicing gratitude, keeping that journal, these patients had about a 22% reduction in inflammatory biomarkers in their peripheral bloodstream, which was really quite remarkable. And also the heart rate variability and measure of just the, say, autonomic nervous system drive to the heart was improved. So there's some physiology for you. That is indeed some physiology. It's quite astounding to think about that. And I know you also did some work also with the soldiers, but there's something I want to bring up before you speak about that. And that is that we have a default mode network in our brain. It's actually several systems that are connected in the brain. And they can hijack our behavior to be in rumination and sort of like a hamster on a wheel of just feeling this sense of stress and overwhelm and worry. And the thing that's really interesting is that if our default program is only set to that, will it tend to get more of the same thing? Different situation, different people, but a lot of it has to do with our internal wiring. So the good news is, is that it's totally programmable. And I think that's also some of what is so magical about when we introduce an actual new habit or behavior or a technique or process that we begin to employ, we can see the neuroplasticity be able to be our friend in this case. Because neuroplasticity can also not be your friend in the same way that the default mode network just sort of does what it does. But it's up to us to be the chooser of our reality as far as that's concerned. So can you say, because the soldiers are also an amazing set of findings. Yeah, but I want to add to what you're just saying about the default mode network. Reminds me, there was a study or two published a couple of years ago where they had people practicing gratitude and then they put them in the FMRI scanner, also did some EG work. And essentially they were able to find that the practice of gratitude helped reduce the noise of the default mode network. And as you're speaking, it reminded me that that made sense to me. Because the default mode network, I think in part is related to just the sense of egotism and how strong that inner dialogue with oneself is going. And I appreciated Deepak Chopra once said that it's impossible to have egotism and gratitude at the same time. And what's beautiful about that insight is that it does give us insight that gratitude is a way to reduce our inner chatter and also just that overburden of egotism. Not that we're eliminating the ego, that's not possible and it's not wanted. But egotism is desirable to lesson and gratitude by expanding our heart and minds to things beyond ourselves than lessons that sense of egotism. So about the soldiers. Yeah, we did study soldiers in a gratitude study. This was several hundred and this was at a university in Tehran. And essentially what we're able to show is that another way that gratitude supports mental health and this is back to the stressor idea, it changes our perception of stress. It changes what might have been a stressor for us once upon a time with the practice of gratitude is no longer seen as a stressor or it's seen as less of a stressor. And when we have less stress in our psyche, of course that does improve mental health. So this was something that was quite striking and I think a beautiful insight with these soldiers is that those who had more of a trait, gratitude also perceived less stress in their lives even though they were experiencing the same things that all soldiers typically experience which obviously in combat is stressful but even just often in training and so forth is very stressful. This is so beautiful. So it brings us right into the tool and the practice and some of this of what we're going to share with you right now was inspired by Roger Hamilton and I enjoy his work and you can look him up. The point is that given what you just said about mindset and being choosers about what it is that we feel about something, we're essentially the choice maker. We're the ones driving our own life experiences. We're driving our own bus so to speak. So as we embark on this kind of automatic review that happens, let's use our 2020 hindsight vision to bring gratitude to no matter what memory may be coming up, no matter what stressor could be in that review process. When we think about what didn't work, if you have the mindset of immediately saying thank you, even though we might still be in sort of an agitation of something that went on, there's the act of even saying thank you sometimes when you don't even know why you're saying it, that it starts to move us in a healthier direction. And so I invite you to do this. I do it all the time for myself. I catch myself in like getting into a little bit of complaining pants and then I will go Tiffany say thank you. And it's like it brings almost this state of neutrality. That's actually what happens. There's an equanimity that happens and I'll stop judging. So I invite us to share in this practice because imagine if we were all doing this and how much more peaceful and less complaining even in our heads, even if it's not to the outside world. So our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to get out of this so-called sort of negative programming of how it is that we've been seeing something and just say thank you while in that little time, while we're still unpacking what the benefit of that situation was. Because I don't know about you but I tend to believe and I believe you do too that everything that happens in our life is happening for our benefit. It just may take a little time to figure out what the heck was the benefit to ex-situation, right? So finding that blessing that's in the so-called curse. So the mission, should you choose to accept it, when you're doing that natural review and you trip onto something that may be bringing a stressor, say thank you and then sit with the discomfort for a moment of what was it that I was intending to teach myself? What was it that that whole situation was about so that you can get to where the gratitude actually is? And that's really a mindset shift and it's super powerful. Once you get it employed and get it more built into a habit within the default mode network. It's not going to happen overnight but it does happen in time and it happens quicker than you think. Time has sped up, astrophysics has proved it. So we've got that on our side. Anything that you'd like to add? Well, when you were speaking about judgment, my thought went to, judgment is one of those, we could call it one of those mind killers, meaning judgment is what? What is it? Well, a dear friend said once that judgment is observation without love. So essentially any time we're judging anything about ourselves, our lives, things we've done for others or others have done to us, etc., etc., with judgment, we're looking at the situation without love. I think back to gratitude. Gratitude, since it helps us step out of our little mind somewhat, then it helps us move away from judgment. And once you're out of judgment, then we're naturally moving back into the space of love, which is our natural inheritance. Yes, beautiful. I love that. Thank you. All right. So let's employ this. Let's put it to work and give us your comments. How has it worked out for you? What has shifted? What did you notice in your body? What did you notice change in your relationship? We'd love to engage with you. Relationships. All right. So many blessings in this holiday time. Let's stay positive and... Grateful. Grateful. Have a wonderful, enjoyable time. Thank you. All right. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.


Today we proclaim that America will never be a socialist or communist country. Now that was declared by President Donald Trump just two years ago, and I didn't do the accent for obvious reasons. But we would disagree, and that may seem very absurd to some. After all, we are saying here that the most powerful country on Earth could see a socialist revolution. With the power of Wall Street overthrown and the United Socialist States of America established. And it may seem ludicrous to those who perhaps still see the United States as a land saturated in anti-communism and reaction, the land of Joseph McCarthy and the Red Scare, of Ronald Reagan and the evangelical right, the land of Donald Trump and the KKK.  Surely there can't be a revolution in the belly of the beast. Some would even suggest that the American working class is too chauvinistic, too patriotic, and too invested in the domination of the world to overthrow their rulers. In actuality, the United States of America has very revolutionary traditions. After all, its foundation was through a revolutionary struggle against British imperialism. And there is a rich history of radicalism within its labor movement, which is deliberately hidden and falsified by the American ruling class. And I'll be covering some episodes of this tradition in this talk. Indeed, particularly in the wake of the Great Depression in the 1930s, there was a growing anti-capitalist mood in the United States. Many were becoming open to the ideas of communism. And in response to that growing interest, Trotsky wrote a short article titled Should America Go Communist in 1934 for Liberty, which was like a popular mainstream magazine at the time. And in this, he outlines the impact a socialist revolution in America would have on culture, on technology, on the economy, and on a world scale. Such was the mood at the time. It was featured in a mainstream magazine that had a circulation of millions. It would be like having an article on communism in Hello or something. I don't know if that still has a circulation of millions, but anyway. But in this talk, we'll be asking, could America go communist? Well, the IMT would answer in the affirmative. And hopefully by the end of this talk, you'll be able to see why this perspective is more realistic than you think. For one, we need only look at polls to reflect the growing rejection of capitalism and the embracing of not only socialism, but even the idea of communism amongst the American population. A poll conducted by the University of Chicago recently revealed that 54% of respondents strongly agreed with the following statement. A few wealthy people are able to achieve greater and greater wealth while ordinary Americans seem to struggle more with each passing year. Just 12% disagreed with that statement. Well, another poll by YouGov in 2018 found 42% of Americans had a positive opinion of the term socialism and a poll taken the following year found the term communism was viewed favorably by 28% of Generation Z and 36% of Millennials. And of course, polls do have their limitations, but these clearly indicate there's at least a growth of a mood of rejecting capitalism and even support for a communist alternative. And is it any wonder? Despite being the richest country enough, the vast majority of Americans possess none of this wealth. While the top 1% of Americans have a combined net worth of $34.2 trillion, the bottom 50% of the population holds just $2.1 trillion combined, which is 1.9% of all wealth. These are obscene levels of inequality, similar to those that preceded the Russian Revolution and even the French Revolution. And that fact actually was recently recognized by Harlan Orman, who's a senior advisor to the Atlantic Council, who asked in an article, are we headed for a Bastille-like assault on the government? But it's not just inequality that is provoking a questioning of the system. It's the American society itself feels like it's going backwards. An MIT economist recently warned in a report that America is regressing to have the economic and political structure of a developing nation with the world's largest economy having roads and bridges that look more like those in Thailand and Venezuela. The water system also recently failed in Jackson, Mississippi, leaving millions without clean water. Well, last year and again this summer, there were energy outages all across Texas, leaving millions without power. So this country that beats its chest on the world stage is at home in a state of complete decay. America's infrastructure is collapsing all around it. And while America is still the foremost imperialist power, it is not immune from the long-term decline of capitalism. Even the mightiest oak can succumb to internal rot. Recent years have seen the so-called world's policemen forced to withdraw, for instance, with its tail between its legs from Iraq and Afghanistan. And we even see a growing recognition of this relative decline in US imperialism reflected amongst the upper circles of the ruling class. There is a panic among sections of them that the age of the American empire is coming to an end and that the masses of the world and at home will soon turn on them. And from what heights American capitalism has fallen? It, above all others, benefited greatly from the boom after the Second World War. Its old rival, Britain, had become a second-rate power and the US had emerged unscathed from the war with a hugely expanded industrial base. And as a result, it was able to dominate half the globe, sharing it with the Soviet Union. And it could provide a fairly decent standard of living for their working class as a result. And you saw an unprecedented boom in capitalism lasting almost 30 years. But all good things must come to an end. The post-war boom finished with the world slump of 1973-74. And soon after attacks on the working class began, as capitalism sought to stabilise itself. From the 1980s, this also went hand in hand with the offshoring of jobs as American capital sought cheaper labour. And as a result, since 1979, the US has lost nearly 7 million manufacturing jobs, which has decimated whole towns and cities. And that's a trend that's continued into this century. The American dream has become an American nightmare. But this was only a nightmare for American workers. The American ruling class was having a party. They've been raking it in. And especially following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, the opening up of China to the world market, both of which were huge victories for capitalism, the possibilities of this system being overthrown seemed next to zero to many. And for two decades, really, the working class, not just in the US, but really internationally, was on the back foot. It was the end of history, the triumph of liberal capitalism, as Francis Fukuyama declared. And for a whole period, the class struggle appeared to many to be outdated, demoralising a whole generation of activists and labour militants. But inevitably, this idea of the end of history and the American triumphalism that dominated in the 90s was to be revealed as hubris. The 2008 capitalist crisis showed that the boom bus cycle of capitalism had not gone away. And it came like a bolt out of the blue, a deep crisis that rocked American society and had lasting damage. Thousands of jobs were lost, 3.7 million workers lost their homes. However, despite the huge impact of that immediately on the lives of ordinary American workers, there was not this sudden immediate turn towards class struggle. And many opponents of Marxism at the time pointed to this and smugly asked, where's the revolution then? Well, that's a straw man really. It's a caricature of Marxism that we think as soon as a crisis hits, that the working class immediately go on strike and head to the barricades. Often the immediate response to the working class is to try and survive. It can take a while for consciousness to catch up with material conditions. And you saw this also in the wake of the 1929 crash, which I'll get on to you later. But when consciousness does catch up, it does so with a bang. And that bang really started to begin in 2011. There was a huge movement in the state of Wisconsin against the Union Busting Austerity Bill, which even saw workers occupying the state capital in defiance. And later that year, you also saw the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York. An anti-capitalist movement really of young workers and students occupying Zagotti Park and Wall Street. And that movement soon spread across the entire world, including to London. And despite the stereotype of Americans being very ignorant and, you know, of worldly affairs, very inward looking, Occupy was very much actually inspired by the events of the Arab Spring. It awakened a whole new layer of workers, many of whom were suffering from unemployment and high student debts to political life. And these millennials, who had been screwed by 2008, and who despite the promises of President Obama of change and hope, saw that really nothing was appearing to be changing and there seemed to be no hope. And that growing discontent that was bubbling up was also to be later expressed in 2014 and again in 2020 around the enormous Black Lives Matter movement. Sparks initially around the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, who was an unarmed black teenager murdered by a police officer. That saw uprisings really in countless states. And the movement surged again in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd and it spread across the entire globe. Now, that movement included all layers of the working class. It was initiated really by black Americans, yes, but workers of all colors and backgrounds came out in solidarity against racism and against police brutality. At one point, 10% of all Americans participated in those protests. We're talking about millions of people here. And it's reflective of the pent-up fury that exists against racism, which is an integral feature of the capitalist system, one that's baked into its very foundations. Eventually, this ever-growing sentiment in American society, this anti-establishment, anti-state status quo feeling that was growing after the 2008 crisis, was also to find its expression on the political plane. And you saw that in the movement behind Bernie Sanders and his run for Democratic presidential nominee in 2016. This campaign and the support it drew in shook the whole establishment from top to bottom. His call for a political revolution against the billionaire class gained a huge echo, but he was crushed by the Democrat establishment. And unfortunately, rather than use the momentum behind him to break with the Democrats and run as an independent, he instead chose to endorse Hillary and it repeated the same mistake in 2020. Even when, in 2020, his supporters put forward the slogan, Bernie or bust, saying that only for him and him alone, he still refused to make an independent run or at least try and use this momentum to launch a new party. And the first time you can very much say was tragic, but to make the same mistake twice is certainly farcical. Now, after all, it is obvious that the Democratic Party is really a misnomer. It's neither Democratic nor a party. It's essentially an electoral machine for one section of the U.S. capitalist class. And by tying his fate to that machine, he has tied his fate to an entity that is viewed with hatred and disgust by millions of American workers and rightly so. It cannot be pushed to the left. It is a bourgeois party through and through. Gore Vidal actually aptly summarized American politics when he said the following, America has one party, the property party, with two right wings. Now, some believe voting for and supporting the Democrats is simply supporting the lesser of two evils. But this lesser evilism only plays into the hands of the bourgeois and only leads to the far right filling the vacuum. In fact, Trump won, you could argue, as a result of Bernie's capitulation. And he really welcomed Bernie throwing his towel in. He actually said, Clinton is so corrupt, there's nobody I'd rather run for president against. I'd rather face her than Bernie. And he could then pose as this outsider candidate, promising to drain the swamp and make America great again. And of course, he played on these racist, sexist, and other reactionary ideas, which appealed to a certain backwards base of the Republicans, mainly middle class and so on. But particularly in Rust Belt states, places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, working class areas that had long suffered, he promised to bring jobs back to America and promised to revitalize their communities. And in the absence of a genuine workers alternative, they looked to this right-wing demagogue and got behind in millions of them. Now, some might simply dismiss these workers as racist and think they could never be one round to socialism. But as Martin Wolf wrote in the Financial Times in 2020, in a rather fearful tone, right-wing populism may thrive on anti-establishment backlash while leaving capitalist markets in place. But as it cannot deliver on its promises to the economically frustrated, it is just a matter of time before the pitchforks come out for capitalism itself and for the wealth of those who benefit from it. Now those pitchforks are really beginning to come out. That's not just reflected in the polls I mentioned earlier, but also in the resurgence of the American labor movement. Workers who are deemed as unorganizable in occupations thought of as impenetrable to unions are instinctively organizing and taking action en masse. And that's not a new phenomena in the history of the American labor movement. And as Marxists, we should look back at the history and the traditions of a country's labor movement, how it developed, its victories and its defeats. We should look back to periods of a similar nature to the ones we are passing through to draw lessons for the class struggle today. And with this in mind, I think the most relevant period to look back to currently is that of the 1930s, a time when mass unemployment and plummeting real wages led to militant class struggle by new layers of workers. You saw factory sittings. You even saw armed clashes with the National Guard. Now, following the initial shock of the 1929 capitalist crash and a huge unemployment it saw, the working class was initially on the back foot. But once Democrat President Roosevelt got in in 1933, he was under great pressure to alleviate the deep crisis while avoiding social unrest. And so one of his first measures to revitalize capitalism was to free corporations from antitrust laws through the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933. However, companies would only be exempted from these laws if they followed set wages and conditions for their workforces. He was really trying to walk a tightrope here between not inciting class struggle on one side and still trying to solve capitalist chaos on the other. This act also included a clause that allowed workers the right to unionize. Roosevelt perhaps thought that this mood could be safely channeled into the tamed American Federation of Labour, which is the collective body of America's unions. And they had backed his presidential campaign and really grown to become a safe pair of hands with a nice cosy, comfortable bureaucracy at their home.  Many workers did indeed start to join the AFL. But with a slight beginning of a recovery workers started to feel confident in their power and began to strike. There was a wave of these swept across the United States with 1,700 strikes in 1933 and 1,856 strikes in 1934. And this was the real beginning of a birth of class struggle unionism. Now, in particular, there were three significant strikes that rocked the USA in 1934. These were the Autolite Strike in Toledo, Ohio, the West Coast Longshoremen Strike and the Minneapolis Teamster Strike. And all of these contained vital lessons for workers looking to fight back today. Now, the first of these that year was in the city of Toledo, a city that was blighted by unemployment which had really hit the city hard. 70% of workers were unemployed and many of the city's car factories had closed. And so the bosses in the city used that as an opportunity to depress wages. And so following a strike in February which resulted in the bosses reneging their negotiated contract, the workers for car park manufacturer Autolite, half of whom were women, struck en masse in April demanding higher wages and union recognition. But the bosses tried to break the strike with these unemployed workers. However, that move was to seriously backfire. Because around that time and aided by socialists in the American Workers Party, jobless workers had gotten organized into the Lucas County Unemployed League. These unemployed men and women began to organize solidarity with the strikers and stood on their picket lines to bolster their forces in defiance of a court injunction that had been taken out by the bosses to stop that very act. Even when they were arrested for doing so, once released they would simply march back from the courts to the picket lines and do the same. And soon this really started to snowball as a movement to include all layers of the working class and eventually saw thousands on these picket lines. And there were even violent clashes with the police and the National Guard and strike breakers. And in what became known as the Battle of Toledo, at one point two workers were shot dead in a confrontation between the guards and the pickets. But feeling their growing strength and such repression did not deter the strikers who instead upped the ante. At one point some of the women pickets stripped a scab of his clothes and paraded him through the streets which made the front page of the local papers and I imagine put off other scabs. As well as through physical resistance the strikers also tried to break the guardsmen politically. Socialist historian Art Pry noted this saying the following The strikers and their thousands of sympathizers did more than just shame the young National Guardsmen. They educated them and tried to win them over. Speakers stood on boxes in front of the troops and explained what the strike was about and the role the troops were playing as strike breakers. Women explained what the strike meant for them and their families. And the repress reported that as a result of this some of these guardsmen just quit that very day and went home. And so by June the strike could have ballooned into a general strike. As following a rally of thousands of workers and trade unionists from across the city the majority of local unions voted for such a course of action. And seeing this just days after the bosses capitulated and agreed to wage rises of 5%. And the militancy of this strike really cannot be underestimated. These brave workers defied strike-busting legislation not in words but in deeds and as a result of their defiance of anti-worker laws they won around wider sections of the city's working class and broaden the strike's power. And ultimately the capitalist state can only back up the law with physical force but the working class can counter this with organisation, determination and a willingness to fight. And it was on the basis of seeing that defiance that inspired wider layers of the working class to join them in solidarity which really shows how rapidly consciousness can transform in the course of a struggle. This is why the picket line swelled and why the workers were prepared to strike together and ultimately what led to the strike's victory. Now another strike that year was of the Longshoremen on the west coast which resulted in a general strike rocking the city of San Francisco. In the years prior to 1934 however across the west coast the Stalinist Communist Party had been trying and failing to organise dock workers into a revolutionary red union the Marine Workers Industrial Union and this campaign was a result of the Communist International's frankly insane policy of the third period in which the Stalinist bureaucracy had declared the established Social Democratic Parties of Europe and trade unions in America as fascists. That ultra-left perspective then informed these wild tactics of trying to form small revolutionary unions isolated from the wider labour movement and unsurprisingly this tactic was met with little success. As Lenin explained in Left Wing Communism the Communist Party should instead have worked within existing trade union structures and aimed to win the rank and file to their banner via fighting shoulder to shoulder with them while putting forward a revolutionary perspective and arguing for revolutionary strategy and tactics. In fact, the incorrectness of the Stalinist tactic was proven during the lead up to the strike. As by 1933 the Longshoremen were signing up to the larger established AFL Associated International Longshoremen's Association and the International Siemens Union they did not look to this small sectarian union on the outskirts and soon enough those workers were starting to demand the minimum wage of a dollar an hour and the six hour day. Importantly, they also wanted a closed shop and the end of the shape-up and its replacement by union hiring hall. Now the shape-up was the means by which the bosses would hire these dot workers for the day. They would gather in the early hours at the shore where they would then get hand-picked. The situation to be in, not unlike delivery workers and so on to this day and the workers themselves actually referred to it as being like a slave market and the demand to abolish the shape-up was pushed in particular by a radical faction of workers known as the Albion Hall Group led by the Communist Party member Harry Bridges and some other communists and that group had for a while also been publishing a paper, the Waterfront Worker which had grown in influence along the ports and was trying to build support for the strike. But crucially although that paper criticised the established unions, it did not call for joining the Marine Workers Industrial Union the Communist Revolutionary Red Union which put those communists in this Albion Hall Group in divergence with the Communist Party's line at the time. Now following some negotiations, some demands around wages were won but not recognition not a closed shop and not the demand for a union hiring hall. The Albion Hall Group however in the process of these negotiations had come to become elected to the strike committee and with support built up through a long patient explanation and through publishing this paper amongst the rank and file they were able to defy the union leader's call to leave at that agreement and instead mobilise the workers to continue fighting. And as a result and due to all this influence that had been built up in the previous period, you saw a strike begin across the entire Pacific Coast region closing down all West Coast ports which held firm for 83 days and that was even against the wishes of the official union leadership and following the killing of two pickets in a violent clash outside the union's canteen known as Bloody Thursday the strike swelled to thousands culminating in a general strike in San Francisco that saw 150,000 workers out and shortly after that the workers won arbitration with the bosses and the longshoremen voted to end that strike. But if bridges have pursued the original tactics of the communist party to build this small marine workers industrial union then the strike would have been completely to fall under the sway of these union leaders and been sold out. Now another important aspect to their success that I want to touch on was that the Albion Hall groups attempts to cut across the racist tactics of the bosses with class solidarity. Black workers at the time were barred from working on a dock and so a common tactic of the bosses was to use these workers as scabs to break strikes and then once the strike was over they would simply fire them. And so anticipating this, bridges had gone around the black community of the city speaking at churches and community centers and he promised that if black workers supported the longshoremen strike came to their pickets and didn't work as scabs he guaranteed that should the union control hiring then ensure equal opportunity for black workers. As he put it if there were only two longshoremen left working on the docks one would be black and one would be white and that successfully won round the black community and sure enough when the strike was won black workers were welcomed into the union and were working on the ports. Is this appeal to class solidarity that ultimately strengthened the position of all workers black and white and forged lasting unity by appealing to common interests. Unity which lasts to this day with unionized longshoremen shutting down west coast ports in 2020 on Juneteenth in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Now perhaps the most significant strike of 1934 and one from which we can learn the most lessons for today I believe is that of the Minneapolis Teamsters strike. Now this strike was led by the Chotskiest Communist League of America specifically members such as Farrell Dobbs, Ray Miles and Grant Dunn who are all brothers and Carl Skoglund and their forces were relatively small but because they based themselves on genuine Marxist theory as opposed to the empirical approach of the Stalinist Communist Party these small number of Chotskiest were able to orientate correctly with the necessary ideas tactics and methods. In fact the Minneapolis branch of the League in particular was qualitatively strong because of their attention to Marxist theory. Farrell Dobbs spoke of how they spent a good deal of time studying the Marxist classics and discussing how to shape their revolutionary course. James Cannon who played a good role during the early years of American Chotskiism although it was later to make some serious political errors explained the decision to focus their forces in Minneapolis despite the city being infamously anti-union was precisely the presence of these experienced theory-hardened Kader. They were not just good trade unionists they were revolutionary class fighters and so they chose to organize workers in the coal yards into Teamsters Local 574 they brought all workers into the union including laborers as well as coal truck drivers and others into the union and soon they were to go on strike first for recognition which was really the first hurdle in a city known as Scabs Paradise due to low union density but because the strike was organized by Marxists from the get-go they knew they had to be organized on a military-like basis they were essentially prepared for battle they established a headquarters for the strike which included a makeshift hospital and also served as a base to send out flying pickets from which were groups of strikers who'd go out in vans and force Scabs to dump coal they'd try and politically convince them first and if they disagreed then other methods would be taken and being revolutionaries with a Marxist understanding of both the bourgeois press and the bourgeois state they prepared proletarian responses to lies and repression of both they launched a paper called The Organizer that was produced to cut through the local press' lies and explain the reasons behind the strike and report on its progress this reached a circulation of 10,000 to the city's residents and was vital to broadening support for their actions the league also prepared for the violence that would inevitably come down on them from the armed bodies of men following a brutal attack by the police the league armed the pickets with clubs hose pipes and bats donned helmets and prepared for a showdown with hundreds of them ready and so as a result, on the following Monday when the pickets were attacked they responded in kind and it became known as the battle of deputies run as the police deputies had to run away in fear the police then retaliated however and orders from above used their shotguns and dozens of pickets were shot, injured and several killed and as is often the case however this whip of the counter-revolution drove the movement forward outraged by the killings the whole city mobilized behind local 574 offering money and picket line support and workers from other industries in the city stepping in and following a meeting of 15,000 workers a call for a transportation strike was made and with this situation intensifying the governor, Olson declared martial law mobilizing additional 4,000 guardsmen to try and take over the strike as HQ and in response to this the call for a city-wide general strike then went up and the local 574 then placed demands on the local AFL leadership to coordinate this general strike as Trotsky asked how rotten those bureaucrats have become and sought to expose them in the eyes of the increasingly conscious working class of the city and sure enough the local AFL leaders did start to try and divide the teamsters, did sell out the workers and try and dampen things down and regain control of the situation which is the role of trade union bureaucracies Dobbs described these people as complacent bureaucrats enjoying high salaries and lavish expense accounts living in a lush world of their own they took a dispassionate view of the labour movement fearing the workers they sought to regiment the rank and file on a dictatorial basis and as a result of that betrayal the rank and file and the workers of Minneapolis then defied their official leaders and turned to the Trotskyists they got behind them if the Trotskyists hadn't been there in their absence these workers might have just got demoralised by that betrayal and the strike would have been defeated and so when the general strike cut came and it did come it was essentially now a situation of dual power the city's working class led by revolutionaries an effectively running society on one side and the city's bosses and the governor on the other and fearing the worst in this situation and seeing the strength of the workers the employers gave in they gave in to their demands they recognised the union allowed for negotiations and introduced minimum wage rates and this impact of this strike the impact of the victory of this strike was historic it became the first local union of industrial unionism which was soon to sweep across the states and it led to the development of the Congress of Industrial Organisations in 1935 which originally began as a committee within the old American Federation of Labour and these were organisers who had sinned the successes of this strike and under pressure from below were now set on unionising on an industrial basis which means unionising the whole of a particular industry like they had done in Minneapolis the AFL model of craft unionism which is where you organise a particular occupation or trade so all the electricians or all the train drivers but a leading role of the Trotskists in this Minneapolis strike and in the birth of industrial unionism cannot be underestimated in fact when asked why they were successful Teamster and League member Harry de Burr simply said we couldn't have done it without a disciplined revolutionary party it was the crucial influence of the Marxist understanding of the state and the press a grasp of consciousness and how it develops on the basis of events an understanding of how the trade union bureaucracy would behave and how best to organise the workers that led to their success as a result they were able to use the correct methods, tactics and demands to meet the consciousness of the class connect with it and push it forward and given how the working class was beginning to move across the country in that time if they had had the same spread of cadres as they had in Minneapolis in all major cities it's not out of the question that they could have led a revolution and although their numbers grew in Minneapolis following their strike their forces were still too weak to replicate the same success of Minneapolis elsewhere which would have been entirely possible given the objective conditions now today conditions are once again ripening for an explosion in the class struggle we are seeing a resurgence in the US labour movement unlike anything for generations and sometimes you know, I see in the bourgeois press and things that it's just sort of put down solely to the pandemic but this was a process that was beginning before 2020 in 2018 you had 485,000 participate in large scale strikes which was the largest number since 1983 the pandemic merely served to kind of accelerate an already ongoing process and so as lockdown eased last autumn you had what was dubbed striketober with hundreds of thousands of workers and industries from McDonald's workers to farming machinery workers to professors in higher education to Kellogg's factory workers and you also started to see the transformation of older established unions a recent election in the Teamsters saw victory for the left while the rail unions under pressure from below almost struck over summer although they called it off at the last minute and over the last year we've seen incredible unionization drives that have really picked up pace and each breakthrough spurs the rest of the class forward most famously with the Amazon Labour Union these efforts aren't necessarily down to the initiative of communists or socialists or anything but simply material conditions forcing the working class into organizing collectively is an organic process starting from the bottom up and I think this is best expressed actually by Amazon Labour Union organizer Derek Palmer who said they were motivated not by any sense of optimism but by necessity indeed even those deemed unorganizable such as the service workers in coffee shops are coming together and getting organized we've seen the Starbucks workers united union which is organizing partners as the company calls its workers into a union as of August 209 Starbucks have now unionized but this time last year there was no unionized Starbucks stores in all of America all it took was one success in Buffalo, New York and in the space of one month 20 others had filed for union votes and this process is showing no signs of stopping in August a Chipotle restaurant became the first of that chain to ever unionize while last weekend an Apple store in Oklahoma became the second Apple store to unionize in the country and this has immense popular support for instance 75% of Americans believe Amazon needs a union and a recent poll actually found that 68% of Americans approve of unions in general which is the highest level sin since 1965 the US working class is beginning to recover its militant traditions and rediscover its power that when it organizes collectively and moves to take action it can shut things down and it will relearn important lessons in doing so and soon enough will come to the conclusion there needs to be a political solution to fight not just against one capitalist but against the whole capitalist system and as a result the question of a workers party is set to rear its head in the coming period in tandem with the revitalizing labour movement after all for the working class to achieve its aims it must first be organized into a party that can generalize the struggle beyond the industrial and has a political independence from the bourgeois parties so that they can advance their class interest and this is the conclusion drawn from the concentrated experience of 100 years of proletarian struggle and in these circumstances Chotsky's advice to a CIO official in the 1930s is incredibly pertinent in these times in an interview with this trade unionist he said for socialism to be established in the US the labour movement would have to break with their ordinary normal routine methods he said the following the first step is clear all the trade unions should unite and form their own labour party not a labour party in name only but a truly independent political organization of the working class this would then have to wage an uncompromising struggle against the banks the trusts the monopolies and their political agents the republican and democratic parties and the CIO official panicked at this at the time he said you know Roosevelt's still too popular and a labour party should be built in the future which is similar to the arguments of groups like democratic socialists of America today but Chotsky pushed back at that saying the union leaders incorrectly looked to above them instead of to those below and he said that the decay of American capitalism the growth of unemployment and poverty all these basic processes which directly determine the fate of millions of people do not depend on the candidacy or popularity of one president and that the idea of an independent militant labour party that aims to put to an end economic anarchy unemployment and misery to save the people and its culture is capable of inspiring tens of millions indeed Chotsky's advice remains good advice through to this day clearly the US working class is showing its daring and willingness to struggle once again but the conservatism of both the labour bureaucracy on one hand and the weak reformism put forward by groups like the DSA can act as fetters on this struggle these leaders of the trade union movement and the left hold back the working class and keep it in a state of political infancy by failing to build a class independent party which is why comrades of the international Marxist tendency in the USA raised the demand for a labour party a mass workers party as a necessary step for the American proletariat to advance the class struggle forward indeed the class struggle is only set to intensify in the coming period in the United States as all across the world but those lacking a Marxist perspective such as bourgeois academics or media pundits cannot really understand what is on the horizon they have even commented on the prospects of a new civil war in the states multiple books have actually been written on this in the past year seriously putting it forward as a perspective but what these bourgeois academics and commentators are either blind to or dare not to speak allowed is the fact it's not civil war between Trumpists and Democrats that is likely to break out but a class war indeed behind closed doors I think these people fear America could go communist but for America to go communist for the American proletariat to be successful in a class war then like an army it also requires generals and officers that is revolutionary Marxist cadres who studied the history of the class struggle who have a grasp of Marxist theory and can point the way forward the Minneapolis teams to the strike in 1934 offers a glimpse of what is possible when a militant working class is led by capable revolutionary Marxists but that was presupposed by a whole period of educating those revolutionary cadres and just as today the Marxists then came under pressure to abandon this doubling down on Marxist theory and essentially abandon the building of a revolutionary leadership in favor of mass work and simply throwing themselves into the movement James Cannon leader of the communist league even acknowledged the apparent absurdity of their study of theory while capitalism was going up the spout here were the Trotskyists with their documents under their arms demanding that you read books study and discuss and so on but he and we understand there is no substitute for this work of education and building no matter how determined the working class history has shown time and again the missing element is a revolutionary leadership which must be built in advance it cannot be thrown up in the heat of the moment and that's what the international Marxist tendency in the USA is doing today under the bold banner of socialist revolution our comrades do stand on the picket lines they are at the Amazon labor union rallies they are fighting shoulder to shoulder with the working class but at the same time they are not just activists acting blindly they are building an organization of trained Marxists to win the ever growing layer of class conscious workers in youth to a revolutionary organization that is fighting for a socialist program so the Marxist are once again swimming with the stream of history even in America and big class battles pretend but for America to go communist then the communists must grow sink roots into the working class and on the basis of events win their leadership and I'd like to finish actually on a pertinent quote from Eugene Debs who was a leader of the socialist party of America he was a revolutionary and an internationalist and a man who identified with the Bolsheviks from head to toe his vision of the future in 1919 is once again the vision of America's and indeed the whole world's future in 2022 he said the rise of the working class is the red specter in the bourgeois horizon the reign of capitalism and militarism has made of all peoples in flammable material they are ripe and ready for the change the great change which means the rise and triumph of the workers the end of exploitation of war and plunder and the emancipation of the race let it come, let us all help its coming and pave the way for it by organizing the workers industrially and politically to conquer capitalism and usher in the day of the people


And now tonight's presentation of radio's outstanding theater of thrills suspense Tonight the story of a handicapped man and the woman who holds the key to his freedom. We call it give me liberty So now starring mr. Tony Barrett. Here is tonight suspense play Give me liberty. I Embezzled a quarter of a million dollars. I Want you to know that needed brains? planning patience I devoted three years of my life to the trick and I got away with it $250,000 Of course, they caught me very easily, but they couldn't find the money. I wouldn't tell them where it was I Got seven years for it My right wrist was handcuffed to the left wrist of a detective and they put me aboard a train bound for the penitentiary I Could see that the detective had had instructions to soften me up He was much much too kind you're comfortable mr. French You want a magazine any anything? Like to be able to lift my hand without raising yours in a year Can't you got me without being quite so attached to my Sure, I guess we can work that out. Tell you what you sit next to the window I'll kind of boxy in and that way you can wear the cuffs all by yourself and nobody loses now. Thank you Let me get my keys There Funny thing Most guys say the biggest trouble is when you read a paper Five inches of chain don't give you much room to turn the page. I'm not worrying About seven years for reading seven years and a quarter of a minute Say how smart does a guy have to be to get his hooks on so much lettuce? Would you like some of it? Are you kidding? All right, let's make a deal You drop the key to these things on the floor and then you go have yourself a nice lunch Oh sure, and when do I see mr. French again what I made you to pay off Mm-hmm. I wouldn't be taking kind of a chance there would I? You know to tell the truth you wouldn't be taking a chance at all Why should I escape be on the run the rest of my life? No Now this has to go according to plan planning That's what gives a man his future, but you've got a long stretch ahead How do you know that whoever is holding this stuff?  No, I'd use my brains for myself this time some guys will do anything for dough not take you seven years Lay on its side and planes passengers who could move got through the broken windows French It was the detective his legs pinned by the wreckage What can I do with my hands like this? Where do you carry the key? Give it to me we'll both die here if I can't use my hands Where's that key? The only weapon was a suitcase I kicked him in the face. I smashed the suitcase down on his head And he didn't have the key I emptied his pockets down to the last crumb of tobacco while a fire crept closer He hadn't the key to the hand and I wanted Because this wouldn't be an escape. This would be a disappearance What a chance I would have my liberty and I'd have my money. I threw away as pistol I wouldn't need a gun. I used my head. I squeezed my college ring on his finger. I switched wallets There was a conductor out there a crowd of passengers. I got to the opposite side of the car No, not a soul and there wasn't a splinter of glass left in the window Slid down the side of the car. I cleared the wheels. I struck the ground running a few moments Few hundred steps and I was safe in the darkness. I was free They'd think I was dead and I had a quarter of a million dollars Listening to give me liberty tonight's presentation in radio's outstanding theater of thrills suspense Tomorrow night CBS radio's FBI in peace and war goes into a car ceiling racket that involves a youth from one of the community's most Respected families don't miss the facts about the neighborhood boy on the FBI in peace and war tomorrow night on most of these same stations And now we bring back to our Hollywood soundstage. Mr. Tony Barrett starring in tonight's production of Give me liberty a tale well-calculated to keep you in suspense My first job after escaping was to break out of those manacles I Sat in a wheat field holding my arms over heads Oh, the blood would run for my hands and wrists and leave them slim Then I try to pull them off Didn't work and I I couldn't snap the chain. I Twisted I pull at it. I try to fling my hands apart And it wouldn't break I Rubbed it against stones until my skin was torn bleeding and it wouldn't break By this time it was morning It wasn't until then that I Knew I had to have Push through the wheat and the corn beyond it. I stumbled on a slope The woman was standing near one of the hen houses a pan of chicken feed in her hand What do you want there's nothing I could say she has seen the handcuffs come on. What do you want um? I'm hungry. Why are you from? How'd you get away? Oh? We were going up to the prison. There was an accident. Well What do you want from me? Look you lend me a file and If you could spare some food, uh, I'll be glad to pay you don't have to pay me for anything Wait here Jack you watch him She went into the house And the dog got down on its belly and put its nose between its paws And its eyes never left my face for a minute Then through the stillness I heard the cranking of an old-fashioned wall telephone, and I knew what she was doing I couldn't get them off. I couldn't get the hair and cuffs off. I Couldn't get anything to eat. I couldn't show myself You know what it means to to see food all about you're not be able to buy it Don't tell me I could have eaten corn fruit and roots I can tell you the nature of every dog in that area the feel of every barbed wire fence and the sound of every rifle and shotgun I crept into a village one night I forced up the window of a hardware store I wanted a file just a file Do you know what they carry in hardware stores these days? Last where a kitchen gadgets garden tools seeds ovens rat boys and dresses Then I moved behind a counter A hardware store has to have a file somewhere My foot struck a wire stretched across the floor How tired have you been?  On the evening of the fourth day of my liberty I I crawled quietly to the garbage can back of a roadside dine. I began to pour about for something. I could ease it There was a step behind me. I turned it was a boy We looked at each other for a long moment. He was waiting for me to speak I said Hello, sonny You you're living this neighborhood. Yeah I I don't I'm I'm traveling with handcuffs on Oh Well friend put them on me for a joke say that gives me an idea sonny.   No, I'll let you keep them there. They're fun no Well, then would you do something else for me? depends Well, you know, I'm a little embarrassed about going in a lunch wagon like this Would you step in there and buy a few hamburgers for me? How much? Same ten dollars Let's see the money I got I got it right here in my pocket ready to jump into your hand A lot of things a boy can buy with ten dollars. Uh, here we are What do I know? It's good Don't don't you trust me drop it on the ground Drop it Why you drop it and back away then I'll pick it up Oh Say that's very smart All right, how's that? Far enough He picked it up began to walk around the diner When he was out of reach he started to run I got away and I couldn't tear them off. I couldn't I had two hundred and fifty thousand dollars buried away and it was worthless to me Do you know what can be bought with a quarter of a million? A man's soul can be bought for less, but I couldn't buy a ten cent fire I spent that night in a nest of cast-off railroad ties stacked at a siding When I opened my eyes in the morning, I had company A very tough looking hobo in blue jeans and a navy coat She was counting my money smoothing each bill with loving care She grinned when she saw that I was awake Good morning chum You sleep like an honest man It's mad at chum never speak till they bring your orange juice Look, I'm in trouble. I want you to help me here To get the bracelets off? Yes, yes That's chum wouldn't that be kind of silly? I might lose all this hard earned dough Look, there's more where that came from a lot more. I'll make it rich Yeah, yeah, I've heard that one before What's up on chum? Listen, listen, I've got a quarter of a million dollars Yeah, I know I get feelings like that Look, come back, will you? It's true that don't you read the papers? I'm Earl French I've never heard of you Look, just go into town and buy one of the newspapers. It's six days ago.  I died in the train wreck near Scottsville You, uh... You're sure about that, chum? You died only a few days ago No, no, they only think I did Look, get those newspapers and come back here with a file and some food Ah, chum, don't order me around Just take it easy, maybe I'll be back I waited for all through the long blistering day Crouching within the four walls of railroad ties I knew she'd be back She couldn't resist it. I knew she'd be back Chum, it seems you were a very important guy in your time You saw the papers Yeah, and I got news for you Mr. French, you are now burned to a crisp That's the way they found you in the train Recognized me by the ring on my finger Yeah Yeah, you're dead all right You and 250 grand All right, all right, we'll come to that later Look, get to work with a file Now, look, you're giving me orders again I told you, I don't like that Please, give me the file It's right here in my jeans That's where it's gonna stay until you lead me to my share of that dough You'll get it, you'll get it Chum, you listen, I can pick up 500 fish by turning in an escaped prisoner Or you can dig up that treasure chest and buy this file for half the dough It's over a hundred miles away I can't ride a train or a bus with these on my wrist It's okay, Chum We'll walk, I've done it before But we'll be seen Not at night How will I eat? Where will we sleep? You'll sleep in the woods and I'll bring your grub to you Me? I'll sleep in town where I'll be snug and safe You don't take this file from me, Chum Not till I see my half of the dough And that's how it was That same evening we started a walk At first it wasn't as bad as I made it sound It gave me time to think And I knew I'd think of something Don't start thinking I trust you, Chum, I don't A lot of things can happen before we get there No, I'll do what's fair, we'll split We don't all split your skull Don't kid yourself that I won't I've been waiting a long time for a break like this We walked Well, the handcuffs digging so deep into my flesh That I began to believe they were part of me Yeah, yeah, she brought me food But she wouldn't come close enough to hand it to me And every time I reached for anything it was torture My hands and wrists, they were a mass of misery As though I were a pet animal on a leash My friend always walked six paces behind me Oh, she was smart I realized I had to get away from her in soon The morning I decided to do it She found me a shack to hold up in I could hardly wait for her to leave, go into town This place looks good I'll meet you back here tonight All right, all right, see you tonight That's the way I like it, Chum Nice and agreeable Well, why not? Why shouldn't I be? I'll see you tonight as usual Sure Is anything special you'd like me to bring you to eat? No, nothing special Uh, Chum I think you better turn around Why? Because When I awoke with a dull ache filling my head I found myself neatly trust up I could move a little but not enough to get free They talk about female intuition She had guessed that I was gonna try to get away from her And she just beat me to it I didn't give up though She would have to make one mistake The next night we'd stop for a rest How can you be sure the stuff is still there? Look, it's safe How do you know? What kind of a place did you hide it in?  How long do you think...  Wake up the neighbors Now move No I said move No!  Now that's not a bad idea Is it? But it happens I'm not an animal And it all so hap- What's that for?   The money Where? We're standing over it You're trying to kid me We're standing in the middle of the highway You didn't do any digging here, Chum Looked as a culvert running under the road here A 24 inch pipe Come on in the ditch, I'll show you You didn't stick that dough in the pipe it had washed away It's not in the pipe It's in a deep crevice between a pipe and a concrete Pull out some of those stones You pull them out With these hands I can't touch anything Without screaming pull them out Prince, help me if this is a gag She believed me, she had to She saw the truth in my eyes The money was there in my quarter of a million She bent over to tug at the stones She turned her back to me for the first time That was it, that was a mistake I was waiting for her, I sprang forward And I killed her The hand comes down on her head Look back at her hand Her hand, her hand Her wrist, but I didn't care I didn't, I just didn't care She was dead I couldn't move My hands, my poor hands I had to wait till the shock drain all of them I reached into her pockets for the file It isn't there Must be in this one No No, no fire She hasn't got a fire She never had one Cheat Come on, little children Come on babies, 250,000 beautiful Come on I can't get a hold on it Need another few inches I can't, I can't with these handcuffs on I need one of them That's the way I found him, Chief Sitting in a ditch beside the dead girl He hasn't stopped babbling since All right, lock him up I'll notify the city authorities Tell him we got Earl French here Suspense In which Mr. Tony Barrett starred in tonight's presentation of Give Me Liberty Next week, suspense will bring you a repeat performance of one of the most controversial stories ever heard over your radio It's called Zero Hour Written by Mr. Ray Bradbury Be sure to listen to Zero Hour That's next week on Suspense Suspense is produced and directed by Anthony Ellis Tonight's script is written by Herb Meadows Music was composed by Lucian Morwick and conducted by Wilbur Hatch Featured in the cast were Michael Ann Barrett Lou Merrill, Helen Cleeb, Richard Beals and Jack Carroll Ride a real squad car with Night Watch Thursdays on the CBS Radio Network


chance to see those and that they might make their changes. That goes back and forth and it becomes even more of an administrative nightmare than we have already. Another option is to have the select board approve the minutes at the next select board meeting. The village charter is not as restrictive. So once the select board minutes are approved, we could bring that to the next joint meeting, let the trustees review the changes or review those minutes and offer any changes for both boards to hear at the same time and then the select board can reapprove. So we can break the charter and wait until the next meeting but then you're breaking the law, essentially. Or we can keep doing what we're doing. We can keep doing what you're doing. And the differences are some punctuation and spelling and a few words are added here and there are sometimes even a line but sometimes but sometimes it's a legitimate error that one board catches and the other one doesn't. So staff recommendation is that the select board approve the minutes at its next meeting and the trustees wait until the joint meeting. I'm gonna make a snarky comment, is that okay? All right. You know, the select board, you do such an awesome job with your minutes and you guys are really into minutes that I'm sure anything you do would be fine with us. But can I make a serious observation? The very first time that Dan was here, we over at Lincoln Hall, we asked him, Dan, do we have to keep meeting as separate boards or when we get together, does it constitute an individual board that can have its own sort of rules? And he, because we really are thinking of consolidating and doing a lot of stuff together. And Dan said, yes, you could do that. And then we said, great, we're gonna keep doing the way we've been doing it for the last couple of years. But it was an opportunity and I think it was an opportunity here for us to think outside the box. And maybe if we acted as a subcommittee, we could check with Dan and maybe if we declare ourselves and not a subcommittee, a joint meeting, maybe we could have our own minutes rules. I would look into that. I would like to throw that out there as an idea. It might help staff out in terms of minutes instead of saying when we meet jointly, we still have to maintain the same rules as the trustees and the select board and maintain for all their other meetings. We might be able to streamline things a bit if we just were willing to think outside the box. Just an idea. Elaine. I just have one possible refinement to one that might make it a little simpler. Number three, if the select board approves the joint minutes at their next meeting and then you bring the approved version to the next trustee meeting, not the next joint meeting, but the next trustee meeting. Yeah, that's fine. And then that's the end. Yeah, that would work too. So I mean, that's option two. The catch there is that if, or it's option one. But it's option, yeah, the catch with that is if the trustees make any corrections to the minutes for any reason, then you either have a different set of minutes or it's start, you have to bring it back to the select board. Yeah. Can I just ask, good. And therefore we can't post it. We shouldn't post it. Which is five business days. We need to post the draft, no matter what. We can post the draft, but we can't post any finale. Philosophical question, what happens if we break the charter? You're setting a bad example of breaking the law? But let me just, I think like the minutes, let me just ask. I mean, Lori as a representative of the entire legislature, what's the harm? We will be in Switzerland. But I'm just trying to get at, I'm asking, what's the harm? Is it that somebody from the public will say that you're not following the law? Yes. And someone will say that, I can guarantee you. You don't have to follow that law. We don't have to follow this one. That would be, yeah, it could be very, very precedent setting. I'm too tired to think outside the box tonight. All right. So I suggest the one where you all approve it at your next meeting, and it comes to the next joint meeting. It's easy. I think it's easy to say that. It's the easiest of a bunch of bad, not very easy options. Thank you though. Thank you for coming to a decision. But I would check the thing out with Dan and see if we can't get around a lot of this just by saying, yes, yes, we can meet as a separate entity. We don't have to follow the rules of separate boards. That's what he seemed to be saying to us. It's a possibility. Give me a formal motion as well. Do you want to check? I can eyes over that option because it raises the whole question of about Elaine having to vote twice. And we've told the public that we won't do that. That she can abstain from one of them. Let's go with the not outside the box tonight. Okay, let's stay in the box. So we should do a motion in the middle of the box. We're gonna take a motion. And the recommendation that was written is basically what he said, right? Okay. I would move number three for the select board. Second. Okay, do we, as written in this December 5th argument. Okay. Any further discussion about the approving option number three for how we handle joint minutes? You don't know those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. That's five zero. Okay, I think that we need to make a motion for the village. I'll make the same motion for the trustees. Okay. Second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Thank you. Sorry for butterling through that, but I appreciate it. No need for executive session, right? No. I would move we adjourned. Elaine. I hadn't brought that additional memo and I would just like to briefly request because I know it's late. The other thing I wanna emphasize is that that will work. And I took the liberty of drafting a press release about what the subcommittee has been doing coming from the two chairs of the two boards. And I would like at some point in the very near future, thank you, to have a communication of some kind from our boards go out to the public to share what we're doing. Doesn't have to be what I wrote, but I think we should be starting to share what we're doing, at least providing an update from these bodies, not necessarily waiting for others to cover it. That's all. You feel free to discuss what I wrote or not, or write something yourself. When you're saying it should be going out? Well, I mean, what I did write is very neutral and brief and vague, which is what most press releases are. And it talks about that we had a joint meeting on December 5th, so it could conceivably go in next week's paper if we wanted to do that. But I just, whether or not it comes, this press release is used or something else happens, I feel strongly that we need to start consistently and regularly communicating with the public what we're doing. Could I, I know it's late, I know it's tired, I know we want to stay in the box, but okay, but I, you know, Elaine, obviously you spent the time putting this together and I'm just asking, I'm wondering if we can't just all just take a minute and read this and give Elaine an answer yesterday. It looks to me like it's pretty neutral. I don't think it's walking any political lines. It's not an answer for me. It's like, if you're happy with this, then you and Max need to submit it. But I want to make sure everyone else is comfortable with it. Is that, could we do that? You're comfortable with it? Okay. And I agree we should. Okay, Andy? So sorry, maybe you need to clarify what the question is. The question is, Elaine wrote this as a press release for what the, about the governance, the thing, this governance stuff that we've been doing and she would like to actually release this to the local media as it's written. Do I have to allow it? You need to read it really fast. No, I've read it. Oh, is it okay? I'm going to have a sentence that I object to. Oh, okay, sure. Go ahead. You want me to say it? Yes, please. I was going to feed it to her quietly here. Uh-oh. Third from the last paragraph says the subcommittee did all the initial research. And I spent the whole weekend reading charters and provided that information to the subcommittee and as far as I know it's never been used, but the sentence. The other thing is. So before we get off that, we can strike that, right? Yeah, we can strike the whole paragraph out. You can strike it if you want. Absolutely. Just take the whole paragraph out. I'm going to rewrite it. I'm going to have to take a few days to do that, because I'm not going to do it. I would just take the paragraph out. The other, yeah, I guess for you. The other. I can revise this quickly. The other concern I have is that we don't come across saying that we're doing this. Oh, sorry. Yeah, the microphone got away from me. I don't want us to come across as saying that we've already decided we are consolidating. I mean, this is a discussion. This is a, we're exploring possibilities and we're certainly, I think, somewhere in there needs to say that we're very interested in getting additional feedback from the public. That's what it says. I don't, I'm sorry, I didn't read it, but I just want to make sure that it's, although it may be balanced, it also needs to not be a sales job. It needs to be an informational thing. And I'm sorry, I don't have recommendation for how to change it to make it that way, if it is or isn't. But. The next to the last paragraph says brings, addresses everything you just said, I think. Then it should be at the front instead of at the back of the press release. I think it should be earlier. I mean, I think we should very early, quickly say that this needs to be a public process and we need to make all efforts to not have it be a sales job, to have it make sure it's an informational. I mean, we had, I mean, we've been through this in other scenarios where we put out things to the public and then there are all kinds of concerns about, well, this word is biased or this one is in or maybe I'm being too picky here, but I think we need to have some more eyes on this than those of us, than the ones, I read it quickly this afternoon, objected to that one sentence and I don't, maybe I'm going on too long. I'm not ready to say, so I'm okay with publishing it immediately. I respectfully disagree. To put this in the middle, first of all, this is the first one. If this was the second or third, then I would say, fine, let's go to that next step. But I think this lays out the history of what we've been doing for the last five months and at the end, I wouldn't change a thing. We're excited to move on to the next stage of this process and begin to engage the public. Quote, once the boards jointly decide on which scenarios are the most promising, it will be time for the public to consider them. I don't know how you say it any better than that. Again. Given what we talked about tonight, I think this is a little premature. It talks about both boards discuss the committee's findings and next steps. Well, yeah, but the subcommittee's going to meet one more time, so I'd really like to hold off until we meet one more time and then have a more updated communication to the public. And I also feel like the month of December is not the time to be engaging the public with something like this. In the dull terms of January, they might pick up the Essex reporter. It's a lot harder for people to find time to really read something substantive and I want people to really focus on getting this. I disagree. Sorry, I disagree. What I think I'd like to do is I'd be happy to update this a little bit to say that, to adjust what Andy suggested, but when the subcommittee meets again, that's an opportunity for another article to update them on the next things we did. We need to constantly communicate what we are doing to the community because they're not going to know otherwise. Yes. And so the second from the last paragraph says, we are excited to move to the next stage of the process and to begin to exchange and begin to engage the public. Tyler said that will be a true statement in a month. We're not moving to a next stage because the subcommittee is still working. We are not ready to begin to engage the public because we have not whittled those down and presented them to the joint board. So I do feel this is a little bit of a change. That I can definitely edit, that that would be accurate and I'm happy to make that change. You, do you, does the select board meet next Monday? When are you meeting? No. We meet on Tuesday. We meet on Tuesday. The select board's the 17th. So what would be your plan for editing in this and getting Andy and Irene on board? Well, I mean, I could turn this around tomorrow, but I don't know if either of them would want to look at it before it was part of a packet. But if I could send it to you guys after I've edited it, as long as you replied individually to me, that would be fine. Everyone else good with that? Yes. Yeah. Were you going to send it to everybody and not just... I can definitely do that and then folks can respond individually so that we're not engaging in group think. And not everyone will be engaged to read it in December, but I'm sure a lot of people will. I think we just need to make the point of actually communicating. That's a start. I think what would be really helpful is after each joint meeting, we make a point of communicating something. Okay, so we're done with that one? Yes. Okay, thank you, Elaine. Yep. Thank you. All right. So no executive session required, right? So we can entertain a motion to adjourn? I'll move to adjourn. All right, you don't have a second? Second. Okay, I'll make a motion for the trustees to adjourn. Second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Okay. Hey. That was a... Quite a meeting. That was a meeting. That was a meeting. That was a meeting. That was a meeting. That was a meeting. That was a meeting. That was a meeting. That was a meeting.