AFL-CIO leaders, sparked by the strength of pro-labor protests in Wisconsin, are deciding how they can help keep the crowds large and the pressure high as demonstrations enter a third week. Officials at the nation's largest labor federation said Monday they are looking for a more strategic approach to keep the protests going strong. …

… AFL-CIO officials were in the nation's capital for the federation's annual winter meeting, where strategy sessions on the three-day agenda include "The Battle of Wisconsin: Lessons and Opportunities." AFL-CIO officials have been helping organize protests in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and other states where GOP officials seek to curb union rights. …

The issue has helped galvanize union members nationwide, as labor leaders argue the proposal is a political maneuver meant to undermine unions and weaken a core Democratic voter base. …

On Tuesday, the labor federation will hear from David Plouffe, senior adviser to President Barack Obama. That meeting, like most others over the three-day session, is closed to reporters. …

… AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has said he's satisfied with Obama's response. "I think he's doing it the right way," Trumka said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Richard Louis Trumka served as the AFL-CIO's Secretary-Treasurer from 1995 to September 2009, second in command to its President, John Sweeney. On September 16, 2009, Trumka was elected President of the union.

Trumka was born in 1949 in Nemacolin, Pennsylvania, the son and grandson of coal miners. He too began working in the mines at age 19, joined the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), served as head of Local 6290's safety committee, and became an activist in the Miners for Democracy reform movement.

Trumka graduated from Pennsylvania State University, earned a degree from Villanova University Law School, and was admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar. He served from 1974 until 1978 on the legal staff of UMWA, then returned to the mines. He was elected to UMWA's Executive Board in 1981 and as the union's international President in 1982. He became a member of the AFL-CIO's Executive Council in 1989. …

In 1995 Trumka was one-third of a troika elected to head the AFL-CIO. His running mates for election were Sweeney, head of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and Linda Chavez-Thompson, who had been Executive Vice President of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). This threesome called itself the "New Voice," and pledged to replace the policies of moderate AFL-CIO leaders. …

The new unionism of Trumka et al, by contrast, focuses on government workers who benefit from higher taxes and bigger government, and who therefore implicitly support socialism and America's pro-big government Democratic Party. …

As an AFL-CIO leader, Trumka has developed and promoted radical strategies and tactics like those of the 1960s New Left for signing up workers. These tactics include labor alliances with media, government, and radical activists to intimidate companies by threatening a "death of a thousand cuts" that targets a company's investors, public image, relations with government regulators, and more.

Like his fellow triumvirs, Trumka favors radical approaches to resuscitate a dying labor movement. One of their first projects after winning election was "Union Summer," an effort "to recruit and train hundreds of young people as organizers and political activists." …

The "Union Summer" indoctrination materials endorsed by Trumka use explicit class warfare rhetoric. Young participants are told to recite a pledge called "Working Class Commitment" that includes the Marxist dogma "that we produce the world's wealth, that we belong to the only class with a future, that our class will end all oppression."

Unlike their more moderate predecessors, Trumka and his fellow AFL-CIO bosses see free market capitalism not as essential to worker prosperity but as something to be despised and destroyed. "Union Summer" seeks to spread ideological hatred of capitalism, as well as love for "progressive" government, throughout the union movement. The ultimate aim is not to boost members' wages, but to radically transform society.

Shortly after coming to power, Trumka, Sweeney and Chavez-Thompson rescinded a founding AFL-CIO rule that banned Communist Party members and loyalists from leadership positions within the Federation and its unions. The "New Voice" triumvirate welcomed Communist Party delegates to positions of power in the Federation. And the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) declared itself "in complete accord" with the troika's new AFL-CIO program. "The radical shift in both leadership and policy is a very positive, even historic change," wrote CPUSA National Chairman Gus Hall in 1996 about the Trumka/Sweeney/Chavez-Thompson takeover.

One condition of the AFL-CIO merger of 1955 was that outright Communists be purged from CIO unions. The AFL-CIO in 1957 instituted a rule that required any union official invoking his Fifth Amendment right (to avoid incriminating himself before a congressional committee) to be removed from his position. But when Richard Trumka twice invoked his Fifth Amendment right in a case involving a corruption and money-laundering scandal during the late 1990s, the response by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney was to purge the rule instead of the rule-breaker Trumka. …

Remember: "You cannot possibly understand NEA without understanding Saul Alinsky." It’s at the heart of their forced dues racket and it’s at the heart of their battle in Wisconsin and Washington.

It’s not about children. It’s not about fairness. It’s about Alinsky’s angels organizing for political power.

Can’t repeat enough: Remember the words of former NEA top lawyer Bob Chanin, which I posted here in 2009…

He wanted a radical change of America’s social and economic structure, and he planned to achieve that through creating public discontent and moral confusion. Alinsky developed strategies to achieve power through mass organization, and organizing was his word for revolution.

He wanted to move the U.S. from capitalism to socialism, where the means of production would be owned by all the people (i.e., the government). A believer in economic determinism, he viewed unemployment, disease, crime and bigotry as byproducts of capitalism. "Change" was Alinsky’s favorite word, used on page after page. "I will argue," he wrote, "that man’s hopes lie in the acceptance of the great law of change."

Alinsky used what he called "general concepts of change" to move us toward "a science of revolution."

What he called change meant an alteration of our socioeconomic structure; what he called organizing meant pursuing confrontational political tactics.

Holmes was here referring to the song, penned by Samuel Smith, which has survived the ages as "My Country, ‘Tis of Thee."

Known in its entirety nowadays by perhaps only a handful, and only by its first stanza for a somewhat larger group (many being upwards in age), most of the younger generations have only a vague notion of the melody, unaware of the parallel with Britain's national anthem. Indeed, Smith himself had no inkling of the similitude of musical elements with "God Save the Queen." He simply wrote a new hymn set to a traditional Germanic melody.

I recently took the occasion to read through the lyrics, and was once again amazed by the depth of meaning carried within these words. However, I was most particularly struck by the notions of education as a safeguard of Truth and Righteousness, which are essential elements in sustaining us as a Nation, pure and triumphant! [emphasis -pwc]

Here are the full lyrics: [Author's note: there exist a number of versions, and it is difficult to know with certainty which stanzas were later culled from the original, and which were added. This should not diminish from the premise of this article.]

There are, of course, the glorious expressions of thanks to the Almighty for a rich and abundant land, and the opportunity to shine forth the spirit of liberty "with God's holy light." But notice the progression, from the fantastic discovery in the first two stanzas, to the sort of evangelical zeal bursting forth until midway through the song.

Now, an unexpected shift: the verse progresses onward to the concluding two stanzas, where the timeless quality of the effort is fully revealed. From the free-spirited exuberance of a youthful zeal, one is suddenly made to face, albeit with joy and longing, the enormity of the responsibility to teach these truths to posterity. One can, from the within the lyrics themselves, discern three imperatives with regard to such a burden to educate the following generations:

* 1. To more fully appreciate the bounties shared at great cost to our collective posterity.

* 2. To safeguard our liberty from the encroachment of tyrants.

* 3. To know and do what is Right and True, and hence ensure our standing throughout the ages.

This brings to mind how Harvard was established in 1636 by the Puritans as a means of providing affordable education to the vast majority of the people -- in direct defiance of the British Crown. This was in keeping with Puritan traditions of great tolerance and belief that only a population broadly schooled in logic, religion, and the liberal arts could remain free.

New England's reputation as a center of American learning is a legacy of the Puritan stress on diffusing knowledge as broadly as possible.

Sadly, this is no longer true of any but a handful of higher learning institutions. Indeed, the spirit of these words is best carried out within parochial education and the home-schooling "movement." In a way, it is also taking place through a kind of American "Awakening" best exhibited by the "Tea Party" movement. [emphasis - pwc] Time will tell, but perhaps we are in the midst of an American Restoration, wherein the People are returning to the sources of our true Liberty! If we are zealous and committed, perhaps we can even begin to influence our public schools toward this end!

On Samuel F. Smith's 80th birthday, Oliver Wendell Holmes sent him the following note:

I remember singing this hymn of praise and patriotic thanksgiving many dozens of times; yet I have not the slightest recollection of some of the truly weighty portions. What a tragedy!

What a greater tragedy still that words such as these no longer echo from the rafters of the very institutions that brought about their very existence.