[Dialogue] Niemoller quote

[frank bremner]

One of my favourite quotes, Marshall.  Which beckons some story-telling.
 
In the late 1980s I was the union branch secretary at the high school where I was teaching - in South Australia each school was a branch - smaller schools could get together with neighbouring small schools to form a branch.  We were dealing with the double-speak of the employing authority about some of the "cost-cutting" measures that would have a music advisory service located in our school, with some disrpution to some of our classes, and also (as we suspected) as a step towards eliminating such support for musc teachers.
 
It was a challenging time, as I had in my mind all those short courses about "the union movement is over", and so on; yet we watched the movie Norma Rae, and in New Testament studies I cast St Paul as an early union organiser.  (In time I learned how much USA industrial history influenced such short courses which were being spread across the world as universal truths.  Australia had one of the first Labor Party governments in the world, has one now at the national level and in most of the states, and a similar and different industrial relations history.) In my experience, such short courses left more and more ordinary workers without any industrial power.  
 
Reading Barbara Kingsolver's book on the women's role in the Arizona mining strike of 1983, Holding the Line, reinforced my view.  In 1983 in-coming Labor PM Bob Hawke held an Accord meeting in Parliament House between government, labor and business representatives. Bob knew many of the employer representatives, as he had been a union leader.  The so-called "level playing field" of globalisation, economic rationalism (from another "Chicago school"), and managerialist rhetoric destroyed most of the positives of the Accord of 1983.  Ten years of the Liberal (for non-Australian audiences read: liberal and conservative in an uneasy alliance, with "conservative" in the ascendant, but definitely non-labor) government of John Howard accentuated that destruction.  But the wheel turns eventually, and has.
 
But I had yet to see "the rise of local man" (sic) in any way that dealt with these day-to-day industrial issues in Australia.  Where were "our people" introducing "our methods" into industial negotiations?  Maybe there's an unfulfilled agenda there.
 
But quietly the influence of the Australia 2020 Summit (of 1000 people) early last year set a tone.  There is now a poorly advertised "summit" movement of local gatherings.
 
I read a book about Martin Niemoller at that time.  A quote attributed to Martin's father stuck in my mind, as we reflected upon how in schools we were continually being mucked around by people "in the system" who were changing policies every now and then, with "flavour of the month" ideas, or ideas which were old ones re-jargoned.  Governments were trying to win votes by "teacher-bashing" and "cost-cutting".
 
   The quote was something like : You clean a house from the top (imagine cleaning a 
   staircase).  You build a house from the bottom.
 
   I think it's very heartening to have a community organiser in The White House.
 
Best wishes
 
Frank Bremner



Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2009 00:50:08 -0800From: synergi at yahoo.comTo: dialogue at wedgeblade.netSubject: Re: [Dialogue] help with 2 memory questions




First they came for the communists,
   but I was not a communist--
   so I said nothing.
Then they came for the social
      democrats,
   but I was not a social democrat--
   so I did nothing.
Then came the trade unionists,
   but I was not a trade unionist.
And then they came for the Jews,
   but I was not a Jew--
   so I did little.
Then when they came for me,
   there was no one left who could
      stand up for me.
 
According to Martin Marty, this is the received version based on oral comments by Martin Niemoller.
 
Other texts to check out: Sartre's Philosophy of Revolution and Friere's Pedagogy of the Oppressed...if you want to do more homework.
 
Marshall
 






 
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