Technical Difficulties

Unfortunately, the grand goal of a blog updated daily from China has met with the reality of technological limitations on the ground. To be more specific, the email system is not working correctly and nothing is coming through. 

Look for a full recap some time later this week, as Ken returns tomorrow full of stories with a camera full of compelling photos.

Prologue

"What syllable are we seeking,

Vocalissimus,

In the distance of sleep?

Speak it."

– Wallace Stevens (To the Roaring Wind)

Today Tim Paulson, Director of the San Francisco Labor Council and I will catch a cab for SFO and a plane for Shanghai. Our China travel companions include UC Labor Studies Chairs Ken Jacobs (UC Berkeley) and Kent Wong (UCLA) and at some point Josie Mooney, from SEIU and also the Labor Council.

I remain a humble classroom teacher in the midst of labor giants...We are on a mission. Not to save souls, like in the imperial days of the infamous western concessions, but to meet with the labor leaders in Shanghai and then to forge formal relations with the Guangzhou Labor Federation. To see working conditions in China...Banquets, meetings, more meetings and visits to schools, universities and a rumored pit-stop to the Pearl River Beer Brewery before we head home (Tim writes, 'yikes')...And I get to tell you about it...

China is on the cusp. Working class discontent ferments in the subterranean depths of the booming market economy of theirs. The Party priesthood must be spending long nights dissecting Das Kapital and Quotations of Mao or rather Deng Xiao Ping (or old Confucious) Communists building a capitalist system. My dear old anarchist Grandpa Abe, the tailor, must be laughing in his grave...

I get to take a look at all this. It may not be the Gettysburg Address, but this sure as hell is history in the making...Will the workers' party allow for worker advocacy or will the iron heel of red fascism prevail...And I get to sip Jasmine tea on the shores of the spectacle...