One of the sad things about our American public education system is the way in which we learn our own history. What we are taught is mostly focused on Pilgrims, the Founding Fathers and our Constitution and then a list of dates pertaining to a series Presidents and wars, often times avoiding any in depth discussion of the Vietnam War–the one we lost. Unless you are fortunate enough to have a teacher or professor who assigns you Howard Zinn’s book, A People’s History of the Untied States:1492- Present, you are never really educated on the social movements, the rebellions and important political struggles that have changed this nation over the course of the last two and a half centuries. Who was it that said those who are ignorant of their own history are bound to repeat it?

This vast ignorance of the social history of America dooms even those new hires on the waterfront to a limited understanding of even their own unions’ place in the collective history of the people of this nation. The name Harry Bridges might be recognized as a street name in Wilmington, but so many of the young ILWUers and other locals might not even recognize his historic role in founding this union – the 1934 strike and the killing of strikers, his fight against deportation on charges of being "an alien" or a "communist" or the thousands that came before them who worked for a fraction of what a longshoreman is paid today.

Even though it’s the high pay that gets most people’s attention today, the issues of the eight hour day, workers disability insurance, child labor laws, social security and job safety are amongst the accomplishments that the labor movement have won for the benefit of all workers– union or not. If we look back just one hundred years ago, workers in this nation had none of the protections listed above nor were consumers protected from unscrupulous manufacturing practices like we are now seeing coming from China where food and drugs are not protected, inspected or regulated. Back then, the free market reigned supreme, and up until the Great Depression, the idealism that free trade was a fundamental ingredient of American democracy was a faith revered by Wall Street and the great industrialists.

President Calvin Coolidge and then his Republican successor President Herbert Hoover (after whom the Stanford Hoover Institute is named) both defended the resiliency of the free market, even after the stock market crash of 1929. Unto his last days in office, he was criticized by liberals for his, "Prosperity is just around the corner" remark. Not unlike our current president’s statement of, "Stay the course." George Bush (#2) is also a fundamentalist Free Marketeer.

The popular uprisings that have occurred over the last 150 years either by Midwest farmers or by industrial workers and social activists were often in direct rebellion to these free market precepts, that since the time of President Reagan have been so widely espoused by conservatives (under the misnomer of Neoliberalism) as the future of our democracy, if not the new world order of the American century! Part of this is the topic of our front-page story in this issue where David Bacon connects the dots between free trade and the immigration issue. Populism, the popular uprising against the status quo, has often in a time of catharsis turned against the least among us—the foreigner. Blaming the immigrants for the shortage of jobs for domestic workers, or the problems of crimes in our crowded cities is an American pastime. Go back in history and see what they were saying about your ancestors! Here in the ever-so-enlightened Golden State under the populist leadership of Governor Hiram Johnson, who signed into law the initiative, referendum, and recall statutes, immigrants of Asian origin were prohibited from owning land. And even though the Industrial Workers of the World commonly known as Wobblies, were the first union to accept all races into their ranks, it would be decades before the rest of the labor movement accepted blacks and Mexicans as members. The Civil Rights movement was an afterthought to our national creed, "that all men were created equal."

Does this same creed apply today to the 12 million foreign workers who now inhabit our shores or do the same legal protections that once governed US citizens protect native-born persons accused of terrorism? Political catharsis and social upheaval are the main avenues by which this country has ever changed and they often come during or as a result of our country going to war. The door of history revolves, showing us once again that populism does not always equal social progress or even justice. We can ignore it, but only at the expense of being sentenced to repeat it.