Because the wars are endless,
we are having a party.

This strange sentence came to me as I stood rinsing and cutting up endless bunches of COSTCO grapes in the very well-appointed catering kitchen of the SEIU-1199 “penthouse,” organized labor’s most impressive Manhattan event space, perched above 33 floors of offices on the far west side of 42nd Street. The occasion was a fundraiser for the New York City chapter of U.S. Labor Against the War, an organization of activists from many different unions who come together to raise labor’s voice publicly against the war(s) while working inside their locals to promote activism on the issue. I was looking down at the impressively twinkling lights of the cars gridlocked along the river (and a long blue-green swimming pool on a lower floor of a neighboring luxury building that one of the 1199 staff had pointed out to me, telling me about the sights he saw from his job, like a glimpse of the plane that ditched in the Hudson a couple years back–“I saw the tail, they were chasing it down the river!”) because I had taken on major responsibility for organizing the food. For want of a nail, the shoe was lost, and for want of the shoe, the horse was lost, and somehow all of that ended up in the loss of the kingdom, and in my case, the proposition could be worked backwards, something like this: for need of affirming the proposition that U.S. militarism has got to go, an organization was founded; and for need of a way to start focusing again on global issues and not so exclusively on the local ones that I’ve been paying attention to in recent years (which I’d turned to in part because of contradictions that arose while trying to bring global issues to the local level in a neighborhood peace group), I joined that organization; and for need of a way to raise awareness about our work and the issue in general, as well as to have operating funds, we planned a fundraiser; and for need of a cost-effective way to feed the people who came to the fundraiser (tickets for which were $20 a head, as compared to the $20 per person that a recommended caterer planned to charge for catering the event), several of us said that the food should be purchased directly from retail outlets; and for need of workers to supply the obvious labor needs that such a plan would require–securing food that would be worthy of the elegant space that the renowned healthcare workers’ union SEIU-1199 had so generously donated for the occasion–I volunteered; and thus it happened that I spent much of the day running around with my comrade Tom Gogan in his little car, pumping carbon into the atmosphere while loading up on food and drink protected by environmentally dubious packaging of plastic and glass, as well as frightening quantities of disposable serving items (ironic, given that shopping is my least favorite activity), and getting to see what a Brooklyn COSTCO looks like (they have escalators for the shopping carts!) (but no Trader Joe’s, please–they’re a no-no because of the tomato workers’ boycott–and surely everyone knows by now, no, I mean no Coke products, including Dasani water!!). And it all ended up with my session with the grapes, which seemed unnaturally huge as they came out of their enormous plastic tubs, tubs that bore the ominous legend PLEASE RINSE WELL, and I tried to rinse as well as I could, wondering with vague sadness about the laboring conditions of the workers who had picked the grapes, and the workers who had helped us out at COSTCO (which is at least supposed to be a little more labor-friendly than WalMart), and wondering what they put on the grapes to make them grow the size of apricots, and what it would happen to anyone who ate them if they weren’t well-rinsed, and how well-rinsed is well?

The event was a big success, with excellent attendance, the usual greetings from union leadership, an exuberant performance by the NYC Labor Chorus (“Banks are Made of Marble,” “Down by the Riverside,” and “Solidarity Forever”), and a talk by Wisconsin teacher’s union (AFT) President Bryan Kennedy about labor’s struggle in Wisconsin and how it connects to the need to end the wars and devote our tax dollars to constructive ends at home. I did come away, however, with one fervent wish: would one of these union speakers, just one time, please, talk about why we as working people need to stop paying our money and looking the other way as our government continues to invent ingenious new means (political and technological) of visiting unimaginable suffering on (mostly dark-skinned) working people in other parts of the world? Could we dispense with the notion that “workers” are only self-interested and U.S.-centric? Could we, in short, practice acting as though a truly internationalist and anti-racist solidarity were not only possible, but necessary?

Although a day devoted to shopping for an anti-war party prevented my going to Zuccotti Park on Thursday, Occupy Wall Street came to USLAW in the form of a delegation of half a dozen OWS members who showed up and made a solidarity statement. They invited us to come down to Foley Square on Friday, between 1 and 5 p.m. for an event with veterans. (Hey, it’s Veterans’ Day.) “We know you’re working people, but it’s Friday afternoon! The week is kind of winding down and what better time to show that your job isn’t as important as the job of saving your country!” Feel free to join them. I’ll be in Vermont, from whence I’m planning to post some reflections on my two neighborhoods.