- Location
- New York
[X] Federalize the Michigan National Guard and order them to stop the Minutemen and scab workers and have the FBI arrest Ford
The Second Reconstruction-A Post-Civil War Kaiserreich USA Quest
- Thread starter Jeeshadow
- Start date
Ghostdevil
The Devil of Ghosts
- Location
- United States
[X] Federalize the Michigan National Guard and order them to crush the Minutemen and Red Guards and have the FBI arrest Ford
Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the Constitution is the Commerce clause which gives Congress the power "To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;"
The Commerce Clause refers to the movement of commerce which has always meant goods and services and the Plessy vs Ferguson case fell under could fall under that clause because it was about a service that was crossing state lines. The Clause has nothing to do with one person or a group of people traveling from one state to another for the purpose of getting a new job or changing their jobs. I could accept a job offer in Colorado and move their from Virginia and the Federal would have no Constitutional grounds on which to stop me. This is not the same as for example a large group of Mexican citizens getting temporary Green cards to work in the US these are American citizens exercising their right to freely move across the country to start a new job.
The NLRA is so new that I can't see how a case could have even gotten to the court yet which would cause them to rule one way or the other on any part of the new law. This case would be one of the first to go before the Court if we are going to use the NLRA as the grounds for the arrest.
We don't know the numbers of people involved but I doubt we are dealing with multiple 10,000's of thousands and even if we are the update was clear that General McArthur and the Joint Chiefs of Staff have plans that we can implement to bring the army in if they are needed. McArthur is not a fool nor are the rest of the Chiefs so if they have plans ready to be implemented then I trust them to have sufficient numbers ready. We have known things could blow up for awhile now so the Army having plans ready to be implemented tells they have the regulars on high alert.
The Red Guards are not a bunch of Innocents they decided to act like a bunch of armed thugs who think they can dictate things at the barrel of a gun and we really should not emboldened them. Reed will take everything he can from it and we will lose support if we only focus on one group when things are coming to a head and we need the strongest coalition we can get.
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- Location
- Somewhere
[X] Federalize the Michigan National Guard and order them to prevent further violence between the Minutemen and Red Guards
- Location
- USA
Freedom of movement in the United States applies to individuals. This is not concerning individuals, it concerns the efforts of Long and multiple Southern Governors to hawk their unemployed citizens to the north. We, as hypothetical citizens, have the right to go to whatever state or territory in the United States as we please, but in this case there is an inextricable governmental influence in the form of Long and his fellows facilitating this movement. This is clear as day because while individuals from the South probably were flowing north in the 4 month interlude, it is only in the aftermath of Long approaching Ford on behalf of the AFP that this current crisis has come to pass.
These are actions of state governments on interstate commerce.
In regards to soldiery, also keep in mind that the general strike has almost certainly rendered railroad service intermittent and that the Army would probably have to take over its functions to begin getting soldiers into Detroit in a consistent and timely fashion. In this case though it's probably best to ask OP for MacArthur's in universe opinion.
@Jeeshadow How many Regular troops does MacArthur think the Army can have in Detroit by tomorrow morning when another clash occurs in addition to the National Guard?
I am not pretending that the Red Guards are squeaky clean goody two shoes, I am recognizing that in the same way, it is going to be practically impossible to separate the Minutemen from the scabs, it is going to be practically impossible to separate the Red Guards from the strikers when the shooting, in some shape or another, inevitably starts regardless of who fired the first shot. I am also pointing out that the semi-professional National Guard probably is going to be compromised somewhat and that trying to just fight it out against Red Guards and by extension the strikers in a city that is around 300 miles from the nearest state that didn't vote for Reed is probably not a good idea.
As for making the strongest possible coalition, what's the point in firing on the Red Guard and by extension the strikers, when we're already going to arrest Ford regardless anyways? I don't think many businessmen are going to be swayed by us firing on the strikers when we're already going for one of the most prominent businessmen in America, whereas we still have a meaningful amount of sympathy and respect from the unions that would be lost in just a general crackdown. We have stood by labor these 4 months, and I stand by my view that they were not the escalators in this situation. Their strike was going on, we passed the NLRA, and before any peaceful negotiation could go on that way, Long and Ford threw a grenade into the room. The first day the scabs were turned back by the Red Guard with no deaths. The second day, the Minutemen led the scabs and there was bloodshed.
The Red Guard are not innocent babes swaddled in cloth, but they are joined by the hip to the strikers that we have tried so hard to curry favor with and the reality is that to attack the Red Guard at this juncture is also to attack the strikers. The consensus is already that Ford ought to be arrested, let us not throw away labor as well when it is scarcely needed.
For the record, under no circumstances would I support a vote towards supporting Ford and the scabs straight up, sure we might shore up support amongst the parts of the business community that aren't aligned with Ford and Long, but the only winner in that would be Long, going beyond rendering the entire short term political goals of the NLRA pointless as attempting radical centrism would do, but probably straight up collapsing the coalition as the neuroticism of pulling out all the stops to pass a progressive platform only to then do a 180 would destroy the ideological standing of the Federal government and leave its remaining supporters with naught but rage and confusion.
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- Location
- US
- Pronouns
- He/They
Not a lot. The US Army is still on a full peacetime footing. While the plans would start the mobalization it would take time and it wouldn't be feasible to deploy a sizable amount of combat ready troops to Detroit within 24 hours. All you have is really the Michigan National Guard which is at most 10,000 men although even that might not be fully mobilized yet.
I think coming out and taking over parts of the city with armed groups is very much a escalation. The NLRA has been passed and yet Reed and his allies have kept the strikes going and are willing to threaten people with death to get what they want. We have been clear about supporting the right to Union and collective bargaining and I don't think we will lose what we have of Labor over this. On the other hand since we have passed a law that is favoring the low level worker over management I really do think we need to show that the Red Guards can't get what they want at the barrel of a gun if we don't want to lose even more business support. Reed is keeping the strike going for politics and not because of economic issues and we really should not give him this.
I also don't think the people who are still tied to Reed are people we can get.
We can have the Guard hold things down for a day and a bit until the regulars can arrive to support them. About 10,000 guys is a lot of fire power and we would have the initiative which is a big advantage.
Boss do we have any idea on the number of Red Guards and Minuteman who are on the streets and armed because that would be useful information to have if we have around 10,000 National Guard to work with at the start of this incident.
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- Location
- US
- Pronouns
- He/They
Its unclear the exact numbers. The pre conflict estimates by the FBI had the Minutemen having low numbers but its clear those FBI numbers are very, very wrong. Its also unclear how well the scabs and strikers will take it if the National Guard starts shooting militiamen. Ford also has corporate security and the Detroit PD are a bit of a wildcard if this gets truly violent.
- Location
- USA
Much of the Midwest being like that has been the status quo for 4 months when the strike began. Red Guard moving to block scabs is hardly a step up from that.
This entire strike has been political from start to finish, the fact is that we just have to deal with that. We already know that a significant portion of the SPA Senate caucus must have voted for cloture on the NLRA, we have real evidence that Reed's presentation of united opposition amongst the SPA is beginning to dissolve. All of that would be for naught if we attack the Red Guard because whatever the National Guard does, it will be in the context of a crap ton of Minutemen trying to bring scabs across strike lines backed by Red Guard. When the shooting starts, if the Guard is directed to crush the Red Guard, strikers are going to die and when that happens the SPA resolidifies because all that effort spent on the NLRA will mean nothing when a bloody New York Election Day repeats itself 10-fold by the direct order of the Federal Government.
There hasn't even been enough time for the NLRB to be appointed yet, let alone for substantive negotiation to have begun, its unreasonable to expect workers who are striking for their livelihoods to immediately put down the picket signs and return to work immediately after the passage of legislation when the single most significant aspect of that legislation was to legalize unions and establish rules for strikes.
I ask again. We are already arresting Henry Ford, the man who brought the assembly line to America on an industrial scale, the man who created the first practical mass-produced automobile. How many businessmen are going to be swayed by the fact that we shot at the Red Guard too when we are arresting Henry Ford?
You are also being extremely optimistic in terms of how much 10,000 soldiers can accomplish. Detroit is a city of over 1.5 million people. Scenes like this will be repeating all over the city. Mobilization is also the sort of task that takes weeks, not another 24 hours. The US has never performed a peacetime draft up to this point and has no experience whatsoever with the type of rail coordination that is necessary to expedite the process. Even the smoothest and most well prepared mobilizations in WW1 required at least a few weeks to be completed, all of which is discounting the fact that most of the rails in and out of Detroit probably have striking workers.
I think trying to attack the Red Guard in the heart of syndicalist power as well the constituents of the senators who voted to destroyed the current version of the filibuster is an unwise political move in the Olson Whitehouse and while it would be a feelgood thing to crush both of them it is practically politically untenable in the Midwest looking at our electoral map and our political promises for the Fair Deal. Both Wagner Acts took a lot of Olson and the establishment's political capital for years and while a civil war is brewing to boot. We have bribed and cajoled our way for the workers without working with the radicals in Washington but Michigan is different because we can't exactly ensure the loyalty of the National Guard of Michigan in attacking the Red Guard without knowing their loyalties especially when the governor himself is much more sympathetic to the unions and he was the one who recruits those in active service.
Vote closed
How much support do you think we will lose if we shoot at the Minuteman and also hit guys who have come North just cause they need a job. If we give the impression that we are okay with the Red Guards fluting the law and walking the streets with guns like they own the place I guarantee you we will lose current support and push more people to the AFP. You are worried about losing the labour people that we have been working to sway away from Reed to our coalition when we have been favoring them while I am worrying that supporting one paramilitary group over the other instead of getting both of the streets will lose us members of our current coalition. Doing this would convince even more people that Olsen's flag really is Red.
Blood is going to be spilled one way or the other and we are past the point we could have gotten Reed or Long to roll over so I would prefer to move while we have initiative. I also don't like the idea of just giving up a city as important as Detroit to the Red Guard.
P.S votes decide let's see what we get.
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Detroit is basically the most red of cities in the Union, a city where they gave their votes for the Reed presidency. New York City pales in comparison to the amount of influence the SPA has in this city alone because they don't have Tammamy Hall to blunt syndicalist advances. Besides America First is a dangerous enemy on its own and we have been creating an inciting incident to destroy them utterly over after using the Fair Deal to destroy the filibuster. Destroying the filibuster means we are eyeing the South and fears of how thorough we neuter the South's political influence is real since after the Second Civil War they would wish for the Resconstruction Era to come back.
Ghostdevil
The Devil of Ghosts
- Location
- United States
You forget that this is Kaiserreich lore, Reed has immense support in these states and cities (even if much of it would be way to conservative for a socialist guy otl)
- Location
- USA
I suspect we will lose quite a bit of support! But I do not believe the National Guard has the discipline to simply separate the Red Guard and the Minutemen, so I see a violent outcome as inevitable for all of the actions that involve the National Guard. Shooting the Minutemen means the flat loss of support for massacring people, and the South. We never had the South anyways. Shooting the Red Guard means the flat loss of support for massacring people, but also the Midwest. We have come so far for labor for the purposes of preventing the Midwest from exploding. As it stands, we can conceivably split the SPA and I think it is still possible to prevent the CSA from existing as a mass rising.
I reiterate that since there was consensus on arresting Ford, that the difference of whether or not we fired on the Red Guard was basically meaningless to members of our own coalition proper in comparison to the arrest of Henry Ford.
If you believe that we were already past the point of preventing the CSA from existing, then why would we throw away troops in the deepest part of SPA territory possible? Those troops would be completely fucked. Again, Detroit is over 300 miles from the closest state that voted for Olson. Even if we somehow secured the whole city of 1.5 million plus people with just 10k National Guardsmen, it would be surrounded on all sides by the CSA and all the Federals in the city would have no choice but to surrender.
I have never done much with the Kaiserreich Mod so maybe I am under estimating how much support Reed would have outside of the city itself. I really don't think we would have to secure the city with just the 10,000 Guard as the Police are a bit of a Wild Card as Jeeshadow said and we don't know yet the numbers the Paramilitaries actually have in the city. The entire city also is not behind the Red Guards so their is that as well. I don't like it but the argument that we should pick our battles and let Reed and his bunch have this one for now is one I can stomach.
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Well atleast Reed respects us more because we showed those southerners that we are doing the law NOW
The Die is Cast, Part 2
- Location
- US
- Pronouns
- He/They
"You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to 'preserve, protect, and defend it.'"
John L. Lewis, the closest thing Olson had to an ally in the CSA
While technically members of the CSA, the Ford employees that were striking were not radical firebrands many in the CSA were. Instead they were members of the two year old United Auto Workers union, which had been organized by the AFL. The leadership of the UAW in fact most aligned with the President of the United Mine Workers, John L. Lewis. Lewis was in no way a revolutionary like Reed or even Thomas. He, and the AFL in general, had felt forced by circumstances to ally with the IWW in the CSA to have any hope of achieving labor reform. He was more than willing to seek a legal and political solution within the American system if it proved possible and had been cautiously supportive of the NLRA. In short, Lewis and the UAW were the exact types of CSA members Olson and his allies hoped that they could steal away from Reed.
Perhaps that is one of the reasons helping Ford break the strike wasn't even seriously considered by the Cabinet on that crucial day. Aiding Ford, and as documents declassified decades later would show, potential assassinations by the FBI of Reed and Long were rejected out of hand. Olson had been an acquaintance of Long and almost certainly didn't want to see him dead and assassinating Reed would open up a massive can of worms. Instead the debate would circle around if both the Minutemen and Red Guards would be targeted by the National Guard or just the Minutemen. The Hoover Administration had attempted to oppose both militias equally and publicly the Olson Administration continued that line, even if recent tensions had rendered the capacity of the FBI in the South to almost nothing. Yet with the Army unable to send serious aid for weeks and the Michigan National Guard being of dubious quality and loyalty, ultimately it was decided that in this case they would have to focus on what they truly saw as the greater evil, Ford and the Minutemen.
Eisenhower as a young officer, long before he had any idea about the crucial role he was to play in his nation's fate
There was certainly something to this decision by the Cabinet, the UAW was far from the most militant of the CSA unions and were considered potential allies by Olson. It was also Ford who had escalated things, ruining the carefully prepared plans of Olson and the proposed NLRB. The man had colluded with an illegal and armed militia, helped them cross state lines, and almost started a war in the streets of Detroit. A clear message had to be sent that no one was above the law and sedition against the United States would not be tolerated. With the decision made after hours of tense deliberation, Dickinson returned to the DOJ to speak to Director Hoover, while Stimson hurried across the street to inform General MacArthur of his orders.
MacArthur was no friend of the Syndicalists nor American First, in fact he loathed them both. Given his way he likely would have sought to see both sides crushed under the boot of the Army but he as well was able to see the impracticalities of that in the current moment as well as the fact the Ford shouldered the bulk of the blame. He grudgingly accepted the plan of the White House and sent the orders to the Michigan National Guard. To oversee the situation he sent one of his senior officers, Lieutenant Colonel Dwight D. Eisenhower, to take an Army Air Corps flight to Michigan. Meanwhile the War Department also sent out orders calling reservists across the country to active service, recalled most of the Pacific Fleet from Pearl Harbor to San Diego, and sent orders to the Philippines to start a drawdown of the sizable US force there. All evidence points to General MacArthur following the plans of the War Department, so blame can hardly be placed on his shoulders when the leadership of the Michigan National Guard decided to ignore those same orders.
The commanding officers of the Michigan National Guard had long been ready to break the strike and when the Legislature had given it orders to do so, despite them not being signed by a Governor who was determined to wait for guidance from Washington, they had begun preparations to do just that. By the time new orders arrived from Washington, they had already deployed substantial forces into the city and were about to give orders to the Red Guards to disperse. Perhaps due to an actual ideological opposition to Syndicalism, or maybe it was hubris, they decided to press forward with it. Naturally the Red Guards didn't take kindly and fought back, although not yet with firearms. Months of tension finally came to a head when several National Guard officers ordered their troops to open fire on the Red Guards. While some units did so, most of the rank and file of the National Guard were not about to kill friends, neighbors, fellow Michiganders, in the name of a bunch of Southerners and refused to follow orders to open fire.
The City Hall of Detroit and the place the first commune in America would be declared
Thinking the defeat of Syndicalism was at hand, the Minutemen had arrived to back up the National Guard and ended up in a firefight with them as well as the Red Guards. Soon the entire industrial area of Detroit was turning into a battle between the Red Guards, Minutemen, and the National Guard units who backed either side. Outraged by some of the National Guard attacking the men who were trying to protect them, the strikers joined into the escalating fight. While the National Guard had reserves to deploy, word soon reached them that an angry mob was descending on City Hall. The remnants of the National Guard that were still following the orders of their leadership withdrew to protect City Hall while the Minutemen, and the workers that they had brought with them, scrambled to flee the city.
The FBI's attempt to arrest Henry Ford went little better. Ford had long been paranoid, probably with good reason, that the Syndicalists might try to kill him and so had surrounded himself with bodyguards, including Minutemen. When the FBI arrived, those same bodyguards attacked them and outnumbered and outgunned the FBI Agents and US Marshals fell back. They were able to secure the headquarters of Ford Motor Company once backup from the Detroit Police arrived and several Ford Executives, leaders of the southern workers, and Minutemen officers, were arrested but Ford himself had fled the city. Despite having evidence of Ford being behind the Minutemen's actions, it was a hollow victory.
When Eisenhower arrived the next day, the situation was only getting worse. The National Guard was preparing to completely abandon Detroit while in Lansing massive protests were starting to gather outside the State Capitol. By the end of the day, with near total control of the city of Detroit, leading CSA and IWW members stood on the steps of its City Hall and declared the Commune of Detroit.
Outrage from all corners followed what was being called the 'Battle of Detroit'. While Reed and the CSA couldn't pin the violence on Olson's Admin, it was a blow to the credibility of the Federal Government to claims it could protect strikers. In general, it looked as though the Federal Government was losing control of the country and all semblance of authority. Yet it was the reaction of the South that truly tipped the scales. While the National Guard had not followed Washington's orders, it had publicly backed the Syndicalists, proving Olson to be a closet Red after all in the eyes of Southerners. Even the more moderate voices had concluded his Administration was completely incapable of stopping a potential Syndicalist Revolution. Long, the Governors of the Deep South, and all the AFP members of Congress, signed a document demanding Olson's immediate resignation and stated if he didn't do so, they would stop the Syndicalists themselves. When Olson refused, Southern National Guard units stormed Federal properties across the South, arresting Federal officials, seizing poorly defended Federal armories, and surrounding military bases. It was clear a decisive response was required by the Federal Government. Olson ordered the immediate demobilization of all Southern National Guards and agreed to MacArthur's plan to
[ ] Order the Mobilization and Federalize of all non-Southern National Guard units
[ ] Have the Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana National Guards intercept and arrest the Minutemen and scabs fleeing south from Detroit
[ ] Deploy FBI Agents backed up by Marines to New Orleans to arrest Long for sedition against the United States of America
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DivineGa'riofMan
DreamWalker may understanding guide you
- Location
- AMERICA
[X] Order the Mobilization and Federalize of all non-Southern National Guard units