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UPPNET News



Fall 1997

Editorial on Labor Media
Let\'s Discuss This for Crying Out Loud

Book Review
WCFL: Chicago\'s Voice of Labor, 1926-78
by Nathan Godfried, University of Illinois Press, 1997

Interview: Mike Konapacki Talks About His Labor Cartoon Animations

Interview with South Korean Labor Media Activist

\'97 LaborTECH Points To Use of Technology

Labor Media Resolutions for AFL-CIO Convention
Resolution On National Labor Cable Channel & Radio Channel

Resolution on Detroit Radio Stations

Resolution on PBS



Editorial on Labor Media

Let\'s Discuss This for Crying Out Loud

by Howard Kling, Pres. UPPNET

Raise your hands if you think public relations and commercial spot buys should be the only media strategy of organized labor. Thank you. OK. Now raise
your hands if you think building more independent labor media and communications capabilities is the way to go. OK. Raise your hands if you think labor
should find ways to challenge capital\'s nearly total domination of mass information and communications. OK. Thanks. I think there\'s room for discussion.

I\'ve got a confession to make. I created a bunch of commercials for a few unions earlier in my media career. The locals involved paid a gazillion dollars to get
them on TV a few special times a year. I don\'t know anybody that ever saw the things at 6 and 11, though plenty of people must have. They were pretty good,
really. I know there are lots of union commercials out there. I guess they kinda work, after all politicians use the technique. They certainly seem harmless
enough. And they\'re fun to do. Expensive though. See, I\'m easy.

On the other hand, we do a rather inexpensive weekly labor cable show that gets all around the state of Minnesota. And we create videos for other venues as
well; and web pages. We\'re members of IATSE. I have no idea how many workers watch our program on Channel 6; or how many anybodies watch it for
that matter. But, I do know that we get phone calls from state officials, and legislators and the governor\'s office and business leaders and tycoons all wanting a
certain program or complaining about a certain program or wanting us fired or whatever. And union folks I run into mention a show every now and then. And
a neighbor I don\'t know very well thought a program we did about a transit strike was the best coverage he\'d seen.

I also know that we use other union producer\'s stuff, like Labor Beat in Chicago. That\'s some of what UPPNET is all about. I\'d say the labor movement is
pretty lucky to have independent labor video and radio programs and production units dotted around the U.S. There are all kinds of advantages. And
possibilities. But back to reality. The Broadcast folks at the AFL-CIO told me that they received lots and lots of valuable 1-800 calls as a result of the
commercial spots they ran during the elections.

So they work. And their public relations with the mass media has worked pretty well so far as well; look at all the coverage. And if organizers do their job
well and PR is handled right, the mainstream media will cover the story and workers and unions won\'t have to figure out how to get the message out
themselves (sort of like Field of Dreams, or was it Wayne\'s World?) And it is important that the union message be tightly controlled from the top so that it is
coherent and consistent. Quality control is important as well. Beautiful images and perfect video are preferred to the ragged stuff found on union public
access shows. Not the right image for labor. Like Mr. Jefferson\'s Report says, \"image\" is the key if you want your message to fly. And image is our
business, said the PR spider.

You know, I get excited about beautiful lighting and a great interview and the perfect shot and terrific editing too. I\'ve produced and edited feature films that
were purchased by big bad Disney Corporation. I know about this stuff. A lot of it is about money. But you only have to tune into some of the popular
network shows like Cops to realize that this discussion is a minefield of contradictions. For the AFL to embrace the beautyboys imagespeak and use it
against their own out in the field is really sad.

The pattern developing in AFL-CIO media policy relies heavily if not exclusively on embracing the world of corporate media. There doesn\'t seem to be much
room for being critical of the conglomerates any more, either in style or substance. Not even PBS. There also doesn\'t seem to be much room for being
involved with grass roots labor media, either. For Pete\'s sake, you can\'t even get a media list from them anymore. D.C.\'s reasoning starts with the observation
that all the money that was spent on labor television during the reign of LIPA did little to help the labor movement. Media fiddled while labor burned out and
lost millions of members. Who can argue with that. Public Affairs feels it needs to go in a different direction. OK, but, didn\'t LIPA back off from grass roots
media all by itself? Didn\'t they instead do all those expensive commercials not so back when that didn\'t really work? If so, then how is this new direction a
different dir. . . but . . .

But I guess I\'m still easy. There are some positive changes like coordinating commercial buys with organizing activities and so on, and I can see value in a
variety of approaches. Spots and public relations handling of leaders are useful tactics, no doubt about it. But shouldn\'t there be some perspective, some
caution, some recognition of the big picture tagging along with this activity? Shouldn\'t we worry about the fact that the corporate media can shut us out any
time they like? As in: did the Detroit solidarity rally really happen in medialand? There\'s a PR success. As in: could the striking union members in Detroit
buy spot time and ad space to run their own local announcements? As in: will Out At Work by Tami Gold appear on PBS? No. Whoops.

How do we confront this unless we develop our own independent media further and get in the face of those who silence the stories of working people and
labor instead of giving in to their gameplan. What\'s the long view? Problems in paradise.

Then there is the point of view that the very existence of the TV box creates alienated and isolated individuals, destroys community, and substitutes a
powerful, fictitious, ideologically motivated image of ourselves and our neighborhood that keeps people from acting in their own better interests. I agree with
the notion of challenging our passive, isolating culture and think we should be cautious about the physical and structural realities of mass media as we create
our own vollies in the media war.

The danger is that the very rules of engagement constrain the cultural and ideological expression of one side in the confrontation - our side? TV is alienating.
We need community. Now what? If that\'s too extreme, it\'s certainly not so extreme to wonder whether the exclusive way to go is a total capitulation to the
most superficial, the most alienating, the most symbolically greedy form of capitalist media, the commercial spot and its comrade, PR. Are unions just one
more commodity straight from the electronic bazaar to be consumed by the public: take Rogaine for thinning hair and Union for thinning wallets? Or are
unions part of a movement that thrives at its heart from a value system that resists the commodification of everything that moves and doesn\'t move. Our
humanness is insulted by crass commodification. Do we want public relations? Or do we want information, interaction, transformation, and solidarity? Do we
want to be handled, or should we just handle it ourselves?

Of course this is not a new debate, just a missing one. Somewhere in there is the stuff of a great renewed discussion that is just not happening, a discussion
we in the labor movement ought to be having while we are in the process of reinventing and reinvigorating organizing and union building. It is almost as
important as the debate over organizing styles, and business unionism vs. organizing unionism itself, and should similarly be taken seriously. The cultural
and media context within which organizing takes place is crucial.

Clearly I\'m for the debate because I think the current national priorities could use a little adjustment. The end product I\'d hope for would be a better
thought-out media and cultural strategy that is informed by an understanding of how both content and form influence people\'s way of seeing and thinking, a
plan that recognizes the special nature and advantages of this huge collection of workers voices we call organized labor. It doesn\'t have to come down to
whether we should ever do commercials, or whether we should never gain PR advise when entering the minefield of the commercial media. Such absolutes are
not very practical and give up a lot for some fairly academic principles. The media debate ought to be about how we understand such behaviors, about
priorities and context and a vision that goes well beyond expediencies. Let\'s reexamine the nature of the labor movement itself and the character of labor
media in all its facets? Is there anything unique, even precious, about it?

The resulting strategy I\'d like to see would include more, not less, support for independent labor media. I don\'t think it would be at all crazy if the AFL sought
to reinvent the project of developing localized labor media throughout its domain. Every state or region or area should have what Minnesota has, at the very
least. Or what Missouri has. It\'s practical. It works. A larger network of producers and production facilities with slots on the dial in more communities would
be very cool. How could state feds and central bodies be the vehicles, or, like ours, how could university labor centers be utilized? How could Public Affairs
help with networking and sharing footage and radio segments and the like? There could be a plan. In the longer run, how could this kind of multiplied activity
result in enough programming to warrant a national labor cable channel to compete with all those right wing stations?

One more point. I would hope that we haven\'t made such a pact with the PR devil that our responsibility to challenge the undemocratic nature of the whole
shebang has been silenced. Shouldn\'t labor be at the forefront of pointing out the biases of the networks, the dangers in the concentration of media ownership,
the corporatization of PBS, the continual erosion of alternate voices in the phony pundit battles, the actual censorship of working people\'s voices?

I\'m just gearing up for the debate. It\'ll happen, won\'t it? Let\'s discuss this for crying out loud!


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Book Review

WCFL: Chicago\'s Voice of Labor, 1926-78

by Nathan Godfried, University of Illinois Press, 1997

At midnight on March 21st, 1976 WCFL, one of Chicago\'s big time rock-and-roll radio stations, played an hour of the sounds of soothing ocean waves as a
transition from the station\'s rock-and-roll era to beautiful music. Within two years the station was sold by the Chicago Federation of Labor to Amway
Corporation, thus ending labor\'s premier experiment in owning and operating a mass media outlet whose goals varied from establishing a national network of
progressive labor radio stations to using the station as a cash cow.

The history of WCFL, as told in Nathan Godfried\'s well researched and well presented book, gives us a sense of the hopes and aspirations not only of the
station but of the Chicago Fed as well. We also see the business aspects of unionism specifically with the Chicago Fed, but more generally in the union
movement as a whole.

The story of WCFL begins with the Chicago Federation of Labor\'s interest in progressive political activity after World War I. CFL President John
Fitzpatrick\'s advocacy of independent political activity and a Cook County Labor Party gave him the incentive to develop an interest in mass media and in
radio. This concern with politics and media was shared by CFL Secretary Ed Nockels who became the main advocate and organizer within the Chicago Fed
and Chicago\'s labor community until his death in 1937.

By the founding of WCFL in 1926 much of the politics of Chicago\'s labor movement had changed and, while Fitzpatrick and Nockels might have continued
to be seen as independent and therefore loose cannons on some issues by elements of the Chicago and national labor movement, their outlook and perspective
became closer to mainstream labor with the passage of time. For the radio station this meant inspiration from the more radical post-World War I days came
to fruition at a more conservative time. Notwithstanding the very real difficulties of finance and organization faced by WCFL as described by Godfried, this
conflict in orientation made the station a difficult project for the Chicago Fed.

Fitzpatrick and Nockels\' original hope of making the station Chicago\'s \"Voice of Labor\", the station\'s identifying tag, ran into the reality of developing
programming that would appeal to a mass audience. Much of the \"sound\" of the station was similar to Chicago\'s other superstations of the time with music,
sports and humor being the staple of WCFL. Specific labor oriented programs were always broadcast, especially in the 1920s and early 1930s and many of
the more popular shows were given a labor twist, such as the children\'s daily variety program, the Junior Federation Club, which was co-sponsored by the
Chicago Teachers Union and the Chicago Board of Education. These labor programs were often successful (the Junior Federation Club received 40,000
letters from Chicago children in the fall of 1930) but they were the exception on the station.

This need to develop a mass audience came not only from the politics of the CFL\'s desire to reach a large number of workers but also from the imperative of
being able to sell the station to advertisers and justify the station to the government regulatory agencies which were often not pleased to give valuable air space
to the labor movement.

Originally conceived as a listener-sponsored station with a small dues tax on the Fed\'s union members, it soon became clear that the unions were not
interested in continuing to pay for the upkeep of WCFL. Much of Nockels work as soul and spirit of WCFL was in keeping the station financially solvent,
sometimes by getting union sponsorship for specific programs, more and more often by getting sponsors who were looking for an audience.

Protecting the station from the government wolf at the door was no less of a task than developing funding for the station. Continually challenged by the
corporate networks, WCFL had to prove its right to the airwaves. It had to prove it could deliver programming to a mass audience - just as the corporate
networks did. One aspect of the increasingly obvious contradiction between the hope of the CFL to build a grassroots radio station and the economic
imperative for audience was the discussion the CFL entered into with archenemy NBC in the late-1930s. With NBC, the CFL could find a distribution
network for WCFL; with an increasingly conservative Chicago Federation of Labor, NBC hoped to find a strong station for its own programming.

Although this relationship did not move beyond the discussion stage, it did show the distance the CFL had traveled from its original intention of being a
progressive media voice for labor. This point can be emphasized if we know that at the same time the CFL was talking with NBC, it was also refusing air time
to the newly organized CIO which was forced to buy time on a spot basis on other stations for its own shows. As the Chicago Fed became more closely
linked with the national American Federation of Labor, it paralleled the AF of L\'s hostility to the challenge the new industrial organizing was presenting to
established labor.

WCFL had a long ride as an important attempt of labor to have its own voice on the airwaves. Fighting the political and economic realities of its time, the
station, as well as the CFL itself, lost its way as a vehicle for a progressive labor movement. Nathan Godfried has given us a good story and he ends his book
with a challenge to those of us trying to use our own media as a voice of labor: our efforts must be dependent on the varied cultures of our working class
communities. When our efforts cease responding to the movements of working people and their needs, we will more easily succumb to the obstacles placed
in our way by corporate society and its media.

- Wayne Heimbach


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Interview



Mike Konapacki Talks About His Labor Cartoon Animations

Mike Konapacki, of the labor cartoon team of Huck and Konapacki, has been cartooning for about 20 years. H&K are probably the best-known labor
cartoonists in the U.S. Recently, Mike Konapacki has produced labor cartoon animation.

UPPNET Newsletter\'s Larry Duncan conducts this interview.

L.D.: You\'ve been successful as a labor cartoonist for some twenty years.

Konapacki: I started drawing cartoons for a strike newspaper in Madison in 1978, and Gary Huck was working for the Racine labor paper, so we started
Huck-Konapacki Cartoons in 1983.

L.D.: You\'ve been using a traditional technology which is, I guess, about 30,000 years old if we start from cave drawings.

Konapacki: Yea, except drawing with crayon on paper, that was at the turn of the century with photo engraving. You didn\'t have to have a block of stone and a
big company to print cartoons. You could take a black crayon and draw on a piece of newsprint and you could have a political cartoon printed. That\'s how the
Wobbly cartoons became so prolific because before that Thomas Nast had to engrave everything on a stone, drawn backwards.

L.D.: What set of circumstances led you to getting into cartoon animation?

Konapacki: Computers. A friend of mine and I once tried to do some film animation. You had to send the film away someplace to have it developed. But if
you wanted to do a pencil test you had to wait a month before you got the film back to see where you made all your mistakes. So computers changed all that.
You don\'t need film anymore. You could do it all on a desktop. And with all this animation software and with paint programs like Photoshop and with
scanners you can do all this digitally.

L.D.: Can you tell us about your new demo tape with cartoon animation?

Konapacki: Well, a couple of years ago I was working for a labor lawyer, a guy named Ed Garvey. And he was adept in computer and video equipment. So
he started a video studio. Right now his studio does political commercials for candidates, and industrials, and videotapes for labor unions and so on. So I
started experimenting with just using some drawings in a video format. The tape that I sent out was really very early stuff. Mouseconsin was done in 1993 or
\'92 I think. And all that was a slide show. We were trying to see if we could put digital drawings into videotape and would it work. In the meantime, I took a
couple of classes at the local tech school on a program called MacroMedia Director, which is an animation program. Then I stated thinking \'Why not animate
my labor cartoons?\' and \'Why couldn\'t they be animated in full color?\' Then the Web came along, and I found that I could animate a couple of cartoons and
put them on a website, so that way I could experiment and teach myself how to do this animation, and have a place to show it. But there are a lot of labor video
producers, and I thought, well nobody is using animated political cartoons in their videos. Now that this technology exists, that\'s what I want to try. I want to
see if I can provide something like that. As the labor press gradually shrinks, more and more communicators are using video, and so for a cartoonist it just
seems logical that we evolve. It used to be the International Labor Press Association, and now, because there\'s video and audio and radio, it\'s the International
Labor Communications Association. So as a labor cartoonist, I felt that it only makes sense to keep the art of labor cartooning current, and try to adapt it to
the new technologies that people are using to communicate. We want to be able provide labor cartoons for the world wide web and we also want to be able to
provide them for video.

L.D.: In the demo tape you have two samples of 30 second spots dealing with a political campaign. Then you have Mouseconsin, which is about 5 minutes.
In Mouseconsin how much time, how many scenes were done, what kind of a project was that for you?

Konapacki: Well, again, Mouseconsin really wasn\'t an animated cartoon, it\'s really more of a slide show. The characters don\'t move, it\'s really a series of
different pictures. We were commissioned by some political activists, and they had some money, and I did it in about a week. Unfortunately, I think in some
ways it looks like that. But what the demo

tape does is show an evolution of the kinds of things I\'ve been teaching myself. So I first started out doing the slide show, and then the other stuff are really
considered web animation.

L.D.: It\'s like animation on Saturday morning cartoons. It\'s not a full-blown frame-by-frame animation like Disney, with 3,000 underpaid animators in
Taiwan working on it.

Konapacki: Just one underpaid animator in Madison. But the reason I did that tape is not to provide anything on the tape for use, it was just to get people
thinking: \'Hey, maybe we could put some animated cartoons on our videos\'. And so I wanted the tape to show it\'s possible.

L.D.: When I do cinema verit