Book
avaliacións
Movement, Movements, and Contemporary Radical Currents in the United State By Craig Hughes, Steve Peace, and Kevin Van Meter for the Team Colors Collective (ed.)
AK Press: Oakland, 2010, 400 pp.
Winds from Below: Radical Community Organizing to Make a Revolution Possible by Team Color Collective (ed.)
Microcosm Publishing:
Reviews by Robert Ovetz
Where are the pitchforks and torches? That’s the number one question following the meager response to the meltdown of the
Contributer George Caffentzis lays out the mission of Usos dun remuíño in his piece “Notes on the financial crisis”: “If class struggles had the power to create the crisis, then understanding them might guide us to the path that would lead out of the crisis with more class power.” Caffentzis has continued his project begun with Zerowork and Midnight Notes in the 1970s to illuminate new forms of working class struggle that lay just beyond our perception. At first glance, long stagnant median wages, vastly increased work, castrated labor unions, eroded social programs, exploding personal debt, and the evaporation of trillions of dollars of household wealth would seem to point to absolute and utter decomposition of the U.S. and global working class. After 30-plus years of defeat after bloody defeat, it now appears that business and the neoliberal state are going in for the kill. Not so, suggests Brian Marks in “Living in a whirlwind.” Marks’s analysis sweeps the reader across the landscape of pitched battles over wages, rural enclosures, and debt financed growth in
Comprender a causa da crise é máis que simplemente documentar como a "financiación" do capital é unha fuxida do investimento "produtivo". Precísase unha análise coidadosa e exhaustiva para comprender por que o voo se fixo máis frenético desde os anos 1990. Isto é especialmente necesario dado que a reestruturación neoliberal parece ter continuado na recomposición do poder do capital desde as históricas derrotas dos anos 1930 ata principios dos 1970.
The missing pieces make the puzzle, Marks seems to be saying. Yet, as far as class analysis goes, the dynamic process of conflict means both that the pieces have yet to be cut and we still lack a complete picture of the spaces in which they fit. This is what he suggests when he concludes that “the tools of class composition analysis and militant research…are a good place to begin mapping class composition and plotting a course towards recompo- sition.”
Aínda que o Colectivo Team Colors coincide na misión de Marks e Caffentzis de documentar e articular unha recomposición global de poder da clase traballadora emerxente, algúns dos restos do volume fallan. Moitos dos colaboradores engaden pouco ou nada ao proxecto de Team Colors. Ademais das observacións dos participantes moi perspicaces sobre como organizar os traballadores de servizos precarios por parte do Sindicato de Traballadores de Starbucks e revitalizar os movementos okupas liderados por Take Back the Land and City Life/Vida Urbana, Usos dun remuíño precisaba ser máis selectivo para garantir que os colaboradores sexan capaces de engadir ao proxecto. Non está claro se os colaboradores restantes comparten a misión ou posúen o marco analítico ou as ferramentas para facer o traballo analítico necesario. Como resultado, algúns dos colaboradores retíranse con demasiada facilidade nunha esaxeración desgastada e sen sentido do proxecto activista ao que pertencen. Pero como testemuñan os propios Team Colors, os movementos activistas e as organizacións non gobernamentais financiadas por fundacións corporativas non fan ningún movemento ou clase traballadora recomposta.
While Team Colors’ intent was to give voice to those in the midst of battle, this invaluable project would have been much better served if they had done the analyses themselves—as they manage to do in their compact companion Ventos de abaixo. This essential volume, which was intended to be their theoretical contribution to Usos dun remuíño, lays out their analysis of working class recomposition in the
A idea máis convincente de Team Colors é que para reproducirse, os movementos da clase traballadora deben organizarse para reproducir os seus membros como persoas con necesidades reais para o que eles chaman "coidados". Tomando prestado da contribución de Sylvia Federici en Usos dun remuíño, "O feminismo e a política do común nunha era de acumulación primitiva", Team Colors conclúe que "o potencial dos movementos de autorreprodución... é que busca volver centrar esta reprodución como principio e práctica organizativa". Team Colors parece lembrarnos que o camiño cara ao éxito de moitos movementos militantes ao longo da historia pasada dos EE. as crecentes necesidades insatisfeitas de coidados infantís, educación, alimentación, vivenda, saúde, compañía e mesmo música. Realizar e facer circular estes pequenos “futuros no presente”, como os chamou CLR James, son esenciais para seguir recompoñendo o noso poder de clase ante o implacable asalto neoliberal.
Para Team Colors, a escuridade que nos enfronta está causada tanto pola ausencia dos fachos como polas tenues luces das nosas ferramentas analíticas. O camiño, afirman, é aproveitar a nosa propia capacidade autónoma para construír os tipos de sociedade que queremos agora.
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Robert Ovetz is a precarious mindworker of academia at several
How Working People Can Regain Power And Transform
Reseña de Carl Finamore
Un novo libro do avogado laboralista e veterano negociador sindical Joe Burns, Reactivando a Folga, is a valuable contribution to resurrecting fundamental lessons from the neglected history of American labor. As the title suggests and as he emphasized to me, “The only way we can revive the labor movement is to revive a strike based on the traditional tactics of the labor movement.” But he doesn’t stop there. The author reviews for the reader the full range of tactics and strategy during the exciting, turbulent, and often violent history of American labor.
Refreshingly, he also provides critical assessments normally avoided by labor analysts of a whole series of union tactics that have grown enormously popular over the last several decades. For example, he examines and reviews the mixed results of boycotts, temporary strikes of very short duration, and corporate campaigns. Even organizing the unorganized membership drives come under his scrutiny for a bit of criticism, especially when they are mistakenly cast as the main formula for reversing labor’s rapid descent. Membership will only increase, Burns believes, once labor adopts a more militant strategy, outlined in the book, which successfully leads to substantial economic gains for workers. Here, the author refers to the experience of the 1930s when millions flocked to fledgling unions only because they were seen as immediately capable of improving the everyday lives of working people.
It will be similar victories, Burns strongly emphasizes, and not any secret- weapon ingenious organizing techniques that will boost union membership. But Burns reserves most of the blame for labor’s alarming decline on the last several generations of union leaders who have largely abandoned labor’s most powerful weapons of striking, of establishing national industry contract standards and of standing for solidarity with others under attack from capital. And, of course, the author particularly deplores the virtual disappearance from today’s labor scene of classical strikes that totally shut down production.
Cita estatísticas de que “en 1952 houbo 470 grandes folgas (as de máis de 1,000 traballadores) que implicaron a 2,746,000 traballadores. Pola contra, hoxe, no ano 2008, só houbo 15 paros laborais importantes, que implicaron a 72,000 traballadores”.
Recuperando a nosa Historia
Of course, workers engage in strikes only as a last resort, when all other forms of negotiations have broken down, because it is well understood the conflicts involved such big personal commitments. Harry Bridges, International Longshore & Warehouse union (ILWU) founder and leader of the 1934 San Francisco General Strike, compared a strike to a small revolution in his oral history, “Centennial Retrospective”: “You see, in a small way, temporarily, a strike is a small revolution. It simply means a form of revolution because you take over an industry or a plant owned by the capitalists and temporarily you seize it. Temporarily you take it away.”
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As restricións á movilización do poder dos membros como árbitro final dos conflitos laborais intensificáronse coa onerosa Lei Taft-Hartley "Traballo escravo" de 1947 e a lexislación Landrum-Griffin de 1959. O lector debería resultar bastante interesante coñecer os detalles de como a militancia obreira e a capacidade de mobilización dos afiliados foi cada vez máis recortada por estas normativas gobernamentais.
As novas estratexias substitúen a folga
To traditional trade unionists, the point of a strike was to stop production or otherwise inflict sufficient economic harm to force an employer to agree to union demands. That simple, commonsense notion formed the basis of labor economics for the first 150-odd years of American trade unionism. “By the 1980s, however, conventional wisdom had reversed, and stopping production had become a fringe idea. That, more than anything else,” the author concludes, “explains the weakness of the modern union movement.”
Como resultado, argumenta Burns, a maioría dos sindicatos abandonaron en gran medida pechar por completo un empresario como parte da súa estratexia. Como se mencionou anteriormente, algúns adoptan como alternativa as folgas de curto prazo dun, dous ou tres días; outros adoptan campañas corporativas que afastan aínda máis o foco dos piquetes masivos no lugar de traballo.
Aínda que algunhas vitorias parciais conseguíronse con estas tácticas, sobre todo a campaña corporativa de JP Stevens a finais da década de 1970, e as recentes vitorias dos sindicatos hoteleiros empregando tanto boicots como folgas a curto prazo, ningún destes enfoques, afirma o autor, pode revertir a tendencia laboral. mergullo no esquecemento. Burns non desconta completamente estes enfoques como parte dun programa global, simplemente rexeitaos como un substituto dunha estratexia máis militante que comeza co peche da produción. Escribe, por exemplo, "aínda que a campaña corporativa pode, en ocasións, traballar en conxunto cunha estratexia de folga, nunca substituirá unha folga que para a produción".
Ten un punto.
Recent public employee battles in
The dilemma of our times is that unions react defensively rather than offensively to the numerous and myriad undemocratic restrictions on our freedom of mass assembly, of free speech, and of our rights to express solidarity through secondary boycotts and sympathy strikes. Unjust laws must be aggressively challenged that prevent people from organizing massive picket lines capable of shutting down production and stopping scabs from taking their jobs. This is the history of labor and it is well documented by Burns. In fact, it is the history of the
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Carl Finamore é o delegado de Machinist Local 1781 no San Francisco Labor Council, AFL-CIO.
Unha historia queer do
Reseña de Michael McGehee
Michael Bronski’s new book Unha historia queer dos Estados Unidos is to the history of sexuality in this country as Howard Zinn’s classic Unha historia popular dos Estados Unidos is to the history of class struggle. And while Bronski’s book is not officially a part of the Unha Historia Popular series, it really should be. Like Zinn’s work and those who have followed in his footsteps, Bronski’s new book is about providing a more complete account of our history.
American history, as taught in our public education system, is often presented in a very narrow fashion that tells the stories of presidents, members of Congress, military leaders, and leaders from the business community (with a sprinkle of everyday people who made a big impact). History is often left to the study of political events and students are simply taught to learn names, dates, and places. Then they take a test and that is all. To make matters worse, history is often sanitized so that students only learn what is “proper,” or as it is for my state of
“Throughout social studies in Kindergarten-Grade 12, students build a foundation in history [that] enables students to understand the importance of patriotism, function in a free enterprise society, and appreciate the basic democratic values of our state and nation,” as referenced in the Texas Education Code (TEC). Students learn that Martin Luther King Jr had a “dream” but they do not learn that he was growing more radical against war, militarism, and capitalism. And students learn that Helen Keller overcame the adversities of being blind, deaf, and mute and learned to communicate, but learn nothing of her socialist and feminist views. And what of the sexuality of Walt Whitman or Eleanor Roosevelt? There is a wide gap in what students learn for it is these ignored social elements that were a big part in defining who these people were. This gap, at least in regards to sexuality (though he does touch on race, gender, culture, class and politics), is what Bronski goes a long way to fill in with his book.
Bronski is quick to point out that history is more than politics or economics. It’s not always sanitary (it can be very messy and outrageous to prevailing senses of normalcy) and it’s not about just knowing general information of particular events. It’s about knowing who we are, even those considered to be on the fringe, and how who we have been and where we have gone has brought us to where we are today. Do we want right-wing Christians using mob rule to limit the constitutional rights of other citizens, or for the government to use epidemics to police the sexuality of those deemed deviant simply because they do not reflect the lifestyles of the “general community”?
And as far as our collective sense of sexuality is concerned Bronski does just that—he richly explores our history from the earliest days of when Europeans stepped foot on the continents of the Western Hemisphere to 1990, at which point he says we are leaving history and entering the realm of “news.” In this reviewer’s opinion the book is a valuable contribution to American history. In fact, when I finished reading the book I thought to myself, “I may not be queer—outside of my absence of bigotry I am a pretty ‘normal’ heterosexual male—but if I were I would be loud and proud about it.” Because what Bronski shows is that a liberated sexuality—the advancement in personal freedom to explore and discover one’s self is always a good thing—has come a long way from colonists dismembering indigenous people to feed to dogs because those Europeans were disturbed by the natives different culture of sexuality.
The social purity movements, the wars, the urbanization, the move from biological families to social communities, the emergence of a consumer market for LGBT people, and the social achievements in labor and race and gender have all impacted the queer community—because they too were workers or of a certain skin pigmentation or were women or were natives or immigrants—and helped give them a sense of identity and community. These social achievements of the oppressed, the persecuted and disenfranchised have a rich history in civil disobedience, agitation, and direct action. Bronski touches on these actions and I bring this up because it is something students are too often robbed of understanding. The progress we have made in this country has not been by voting or leaving our struggles to political leaders to decide the outcomes. Just as slaves did not vote for abolition so too did women not vote for suffrage or workers for labor rights or African Americans to end Jim Crow laws or LGBT people for broader tolerance, acceptance, and equal protection under the law. The ongoing issue of getting protection from the law while also getting government out of our personal lives is likely to come from a variety of tactics to aid our struggles, and though voting may in some settings be a useful tool, community organizing, civil disobedience, direct action and other activities outside of lobbying politicians or voting will undoubtedly be necessary, as history ought to show us.
I would like to imagine that one day our government, under pressure of successful social movements, will establish a Queer History Month so that students can learn about the history of sexuality and Bronski’s A Queer History will be an important reference. That would be the first step and who knows? Maybe from there it—as well as Black History Month or maybe even Class History Month—will be incorporated into classes as a complementary view of history. Because as Bronski concluded in his epilogue: "All of which goes to prove that LGBT people are simply Americans—no less and no more. The idea of
Their history is our history and should be recorded and taught as such.
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Michael McGehee is an independent writer and working class family man from Kennedale, Texas.