Politics Is Union Work

August 1, 2025

Ken Shirk  -  AFM International Secretary-Treasurer

To Canadian members: I try to avoid US-centric writing in the International Musician, but sometimes events demand it, the presentation of which I hope might be useful perspective for any musician on this continent.

A smart person recently observed that a union’s main job is to build sufficient power to enable members to attain fairness in the labor market and justice in the political realm. These two imperatives have always been challenging, no matter the political party in power.

We get letters from member readers from time to time. They’re not always letters for inclusion in Feedback—some are just expressions of agreement or disagreement about the perceived political or social bent of the union.

The most recent letter fell into the latter category, in which the writer stated that he had “grown continually angry at the far left lean of everything coming out of my union.” He further inquired if we knew “what percentage of the membership leans so far left as to agree with the abolish ICE, No Kings Day, or the newly disclosed corruption about the FBI’s efforts to frame Trump.” His concluding remonstrations urged that the union stay out of politics and abandon the left-leaning propaganda, and concentrate on union business.

Parenthetically, his perception of what constitutes “left-leaning” was instructive for me, as I was unaware that the worries about the ramping up of race-baiting language in political discourse, the intimidation of the Fourth Estate, the blackmail of the legal profession, the corrupting of institutions of higher learning, and the dumbing-down of scientific inquiry were solely the province of left-leaning thinkers.

Growing up in a conservative family, I was taught that our leaders should set the standard and be the example of the best to which America aspires, that science was the pathway to better understanding, that fairness obliged journalists to report both sides of a story, and that we should treat others the way we wish to be treated. It never occurred to me that my conservative family was espousing left-leaning values. My bad.

I was also unaware that one had to be left-leaning in order to harbor concerns about the dismantling of government bureaucracy, the government’s use of private contractors to carry out quota-driven detainment of US citizens, the manifestation of an imperial presidency, or the transformation of three co-equal branches of government into two co-opted branches of government. Whether right, center, or left leaning, all thinking US citizens should share a concern when the long-standing checks and balances of the US government, which have sustained the country for more than 200 years, are upended in favor of a Unitary Executive on steroids.

Center- and left-leaning citizens may be howling with dismay now, but right-leaning citizens will be similarly howling when the next left-leaning president is elected and takes full advantage of all these new-found powers and immunities that the Congress and Supreme Court have so recently vested in the executive branch. The US Constitution is nothing more than a blueprint for a political balancing act designed to keep the peace between the citizenry and the government it elects. Citizens of any political persuasion who have the capacity to think across the arc of history should be alarmed when that balance is cast to the winds.

Beyond the parenthetical, however, is the reality. The reality is that the arts are under attack in ways never before experienced. Government agencies and private nonprofits that support the arts are similarly under attack. None of this is a surprise—it was well-published in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the blueprint for a second Trump administration. And that is union business, because the implementation of Project 2025 is economically impacting our active working members’ employment and the security of our retired members.

The National Endowment for the Arts—the agency upon which so many of our American members’ employers depend for growth—has been reduced to a moribund blob. The National Labor Relations Board—the only agency charged with maintaining a legal balance of power between musicians and their employers—has been converted into a corporate waterboy. The US Congress just recently tried to give carte blanche authority to big tech to use artificial intelligence technology without any intellectual property guardrails.

Each one of these moves by the government reaches directly into musicians’ pockets. Government must be a friend to musicians and the arts. If it isn’t, we take action. That’s not left-leaning; that’s the gig.

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