Big Eyes: A woman artist trapped in cruel deception

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4 SOCIALIST ACTION JANUARY 2015 Tim Burton’s new film, based on a true story, is often highly comical although its overall theme is tragic. “Big Eyes” tells the familiar story of a woman who submits to a flamboyant and domineering husband. In this case, however, the husband even usurps the woman’s identity as an artist. The film opens in 1958; the perfectly cast Amy Adams as Margaret Ulbrich, tired of life as a suburban housewife, leaves her husband to pursue her career as a portrait artist in beat-era San Francisco. At a jazz club one night, she meets Walter Keane. Christoph Waltz (“Django Unchained”) does not miss a note as Walter, an animated, charming bon vivant, to whom he bears a close resemblance. His pick-up line, “Does your husband approve of your working?” defines this as the era when women were subservient to their husbands.

Walter boasts that he studied art in Paris. He belittles her work. He asks why she paints eyes somewhat larger than in real life, calls them “jelly bean” eyes; she ex­ plains that one can see the person through the eyes. Still, she is blinded by love to not see the real Walter.

Once they are married, Walter sells Mar­ garet’s “big-eyed” paintings as his own work—at first behind her back and later with her grudging consent. An example of oppressive patrimony occurs when the non-religious Margaret visits a Catholic church to confess that she is lying about her and Walter’s deception. The priest tells her to obey her husband as the Bible instructs. She sheepishly accepts.

The couple achieves fame through the me­ dia. Their paintings are reproduced as cal­

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Labor activists, including Fight for $15 and the Service Employees International Union, have been staging demonstrations and employee walkouts at McDonald’s and other fast-food chains for the past two years, demanding a $15 minimum wage and the right to a union. Along the way, the movement has scored a couple of legal victories against McDonald’s that should help open the door for union-organizing drives in the entire fast-food franchise sector.

When Seattle approved a $15 minimum wage law last year, the legislation contained a long implementa­ tion schedule (five to seven years) for small business­ es. However, many fast-food workers were shocked to hear McDonald’s Corporation claim that their outlets should qualify as “small businesses” because they are franchised to individual owners.

In the end, the Seattle law included language that prevents a major corporation from claiming its fran­ chises were exempt from the law’s requirements: “Large employers (businesses with 500 or more em­ ployees, either in Seattle or nationally) will reach $15 per hour in three years.”

McDonald’s not only lost in Seattle last year, but on the national level, it recently suffered a setback in re­ gard to the second demand of fast-food strikers: “The right to a union.” The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled last month that McDonalds is a “joint employer” with its franchisees. The ruling overturns McDonald’s claims that it is not the actual employer at its restaurants and that the franchisees are entirely responsible for setting wages and working conditions.

Last month, the NLRB issued 13 complaints that in­ volved 78 charges by workers that McDonald’s USA, LLC and many of their franchisees broke the law by interfering with collective efforts to organize and improve working conditions. The complaints came from regions that include: Manhattan, Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, New Orleans, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Indianapolis, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. The complaints will now go to a trial before an administrative law judge.

The allegations include “discriminatory discipline, reductions in hours, discharges, and other coercive conduct directed at employees in response to union and protected concerted activity, including threats, surveillance, interrogations, promises of benefit, and over broad restrictions on communicating with union representatives or with other employees about unions and the employees’ terms and conditions of employment.” The NLRB is scheduling region­ al hearings to address these complaints.

There are plans for global demonstrations against McDonalds in 2015. McDonald’s is the largest fast-food employer, with 440,000 fulltime and part-time workers in the U.S. Accord­ ing to Business Insider, in April 2012 there were 761,000 McDonald’s workers worldwide. $15 Now in Philadelphia and Portland A broad coalition in Philadelphia is building a march and rally on Martin Luther King Day, Jan. 19. One of the main demands of the march is “$15 minimum wage and a union.” The march will wind through the central city and end at a rally near Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell (see the coalition’s Statement of Principles on page 3.)

In another significant development, the Phila­ delphia city council plans to hold a public hear­ ing on raising the minimum wage. The council’s decision was taken after strong action by the Philadelphia $15 Now coalition, which included bringing low-wage workers to meet city officials in order to give testimony about the hardships of trying to live on poverty wages. During the past year, $15 Now has canvassed neighborhoods around the city and built several neighborhood support groups.

In Portland, Ore., “Don’t Shoot Portland” has en­ dorsed 15 Now, and a series of joint marches have taken place combining the issues of poverty, rac­ ism, and police brutality. On Jan. 3, there will be a joint rally starting at a McDonald’s to demand $15, and then a march to spread the “Hands Up, Don’t Spend” message to end corporate domina­ tion and income inequality.

Minneapolis airport workers Last month Kip Hedges, a Delta Airlines bag­ gage handler who was fired for speaking out about the low wages at Minneapolis-St. Paul In­ ternational Airport, took his case to the Metro­ politan Airports Commission (MAC).

Hedges, a known union activist, was fired on Dec. 2 for comments he made on a “Workday Minnesota” video, in which he said that one-half of all Delta workers make less than $15 an hour. At the Airports Commission meeting, Hedges repeated the words that got him fired and challenged the commis­ sioners to take a stand in support of workers. “I want you to make it clear to Delta that they stand alone on this.”

Many airport workers are participating in $15 Now Minnesota’s campaign for a $15 minimum wage at the airport. Some airport subcontract workers have been engaged in an organizing drive of SEIU Local 26, and flight attendants and ground workers at Delta are seeking union representation with International As­ sociation of Machinists (IAM). Along with $15 Now members, they packed the commission meeting and spoke of intimidation and harassment of their respec­ tive union organizing drives.

Some commissioners spoke in favor of a “Labor Peace Ordinance” to counteract employer intimida­ tion at the airport. One commissioner said, “They [la­ bor peace ordinances] make for a great workplace, a fair workplace.” Commission Chair Dan Boivin said he agreed and that he would put the issue on the agenda in the first quarter of 2015.

In the meantime, Hedges is pursuing the issue of his firing through Delta’s internal appeal process. If the decision is not overturned, he says he will sue the air­ line in court for wrongful termination. n ... M.L. King Day (continued from page 3: “Call to conscience, commitment, and action in the celebration of Martin Luther King Jr”) cies that usher Blacks and Browns into prisons at un­ heard of rates for ever-increasing profits. Economic policies that enrich private corporations at the ex­ pense of poor neighborhoods, schools, and families to create a Black and Brown permanent under-caste must stop!

We are committed to the complete elimination of poverty, the restructuring the economy, and bridging the gulf between the haves and the havenots. We must challenge our governments to deploy the technology and resources needed to eliminate the structures of poverty. We call for restructuring the systems and policies that destabilize Black and poor communities, producing unemployment, home­ lessness, hunger, malnutrition, illiteracy, infant mor­ tality, and slums.

We seek economic power for the poor, enabling individuals to make decisions concerning their own lives. We seek fair working conditions for labor­ ers, ensuring the right to organize and just represen­ tation. And we seek stability for families and com­ munities, assuring access to training, small-business financing, and other means of self-improvement. Communities of Peace I citizens of Ferguson, Missouri, as they democrati­ mages of tanks and high-tech weapons trained on cally challenged injustice, are forever burned into our collective consciousness and hearts. There is no more vivid reminder today of the culture of violence that now dominates the world, our nation, cities, communities, and homes.

Unending wars for resources, fighting terror with terror using drones and torture, the spread of ever more deadly weaponry, and establishment of policies that put the government at war with its citizens and condemn them to the violence of poverty permeate Celebrations for the Cuban Five Socialist Action was proud to be among the sponsors of two events that celebrated the free­ dom of the Cuban Five (see article on page 6). Hundreds of activists jammed into the headquar­ ters of Local 1100 in New York on Jan. 3 and at Berkeley’s La Peña Cultural Center on Jan. 4. The diverse range of organizations that had contribut­ ed to projects to bring the Five Heroes home dis­ played a spirit of solidarity that was exhilarating. The La Peña event included speakers from the National and International Committees to Free the Cuban Five; the mayors of Berkeley and Richmond, Calif.; Valerie Landau, daughter of filmmaker and Cuba solidarity activist, Saul Lan­ dau; Socialist Action’s Jeff Mackler; and film clips with Danny Glover and Alice Walker. Karen Wald announced that a film of the rally would be brought to Cuba the following week.

In New York, the major speaker was Cuba’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Rodolfo Reyes. Freed political prisoner Lynne Stewart, framed up on charges of conspiracy to commit terrorism, was greeted at the event with a thunderous standing ovation. n every fiber of our existence.

In Philadelphia, where more than 80% of homicides have been committed with guns and 242 homicides were committed in 2014 (a 2% increase over 2013), and where Black males are 90% of murder victims and offenders, our youth come to believe that Black lives don’t matter and only intimidation and domina­ tion win the day. As a result, they suffer abuse too often, fight on the streets and in the military beyond their numbers, and die too young.

This glorification of war and weapons—which is creating unending war zones, where militaries and police target, entangle, and execute whole communi­ ties at will—must stop! “We are committed to ending the culture of milita­ rism and violence that pervade our lives in the forms of war, imperialism, domestic violence, rape, terror­ ism, human trafficking, media violence, drugs, child abuse, violent crime and mass incarceration. We op­ pose rapid increase of military spending, the prolif­ eration of high-powered weapons to be used in and against our communities and the continued pursuit of war. We seek to build these communities of peace through tireless efforts, creative work and seizing the time to do right, rather than resorting to intimidation and fear”(Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., “Nonviolence and Racial Justice,” Feb. 6, 1957).

We will challenge all policies that embroil Black communities in crime and trap Black youth in lives of criminality. We must end the policies and culture of mass incarceration, stop the proliferation of guns in our communities, oppose wars here and abroad and transform our values.Our goal is to es­ tablish a fuller sense of community, rooted in our collective political and economic control and new strategies to connect, collaborate and create holistic relationships.

We are building the beloved community upon new relationships, understandings, and redeeming good­ will. n SOCIALIST ACTION JANUARY 2015 5