Solidarity IS the strategy.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) September 28, 2023
As we overcome division and bigotry, we will win economic dignity for all.
The people stand with @UAW 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/tc6mSa77Ht
Transcript:
….Thank you so much. Let’s do it again because it’s just so fun. Two-Two, Five-Oh. Two-Two, Five-Oh. Two-Two, Five-Oh. Thank you all so, so much. My name is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez….Thank you all so, so much for welcoming me. Are you all fired up?….Are you ready to go?….Thank you again for having me. I’d like to give a special thanks to your Local 2250 President Katie Deathridge…the first woman president here in forty years….And your UAW Region 4 Director Brandon Cambell….Thank you so, so much. And your congresswoman Cori Bush….Thank you so, so much for the invitation here. It is an honor to be here. It is a true, true honor to be here. And I want to say that personally and also as an elected official. Because being invited to a picket line is not an honor to be taken lightly. It is, that extended hand comes from a sense of mutual relationship, and trust, and most importantly, of action….Action…and, and for all of those reasons I just want you to know how deeply and personally I, I take this honor. So, thank you.
We’re all here today because our economy is in a special kind of crisis. Our whole economy is in a special kind of crisis. Now, if you ask a Washington insider or a Wall Street analyst they will tell you, I don’t know what you’re talking about. They’ll say, look at GDP, look at the growth rate. They’ll say, look at job numbers. How are we in a crisis? And that’s an easy thing to say for someone who primarily experiences this economy on paper. [“yeah.”] Who aren’t choosing between child care and work, or medicine and rent. It’s easy to say that when you’re not making those decisions….Because those of us who do have to make those decisions feel the economy in the calluses of our hands and the aches in our joints at the end of a long day….When we don’t have any time left, proper time to spend with our children or loved ones. That’s where we feel the economy. And that is where this crisis is going on today. What the figures in Washington and Wall Street don’t reflect that in a time of record profit CEOs of the big three are giving themselves forty percent raises [“Boo!”]…and [inaudible] billions of dollars to manipulate stock, stock prices of off your back breaking labor [Yeah.”].
The reality is we are living in an absolute economic crisis of inequality [“That’s right.”]. One, where prices are skyrocketing, not because workers are making an insane amount more, but because, but because CEO excess is at insane levels that we’ve never seen before. [“Right.”] And they are squeezing the working class of this country to the brink to pay for it. Their yachts are paved with our low wages and our cut benefits. And we have to say, no more…. We need to say, enough is enough. UAW, you are all showing all the working people of this nation that the only way to change the tie is an economy that is built for the one percent is only if working people of all backgrounds and differences come together and act. And act. And that is what the stand up strike is all about…The way we win this is that is to know that solidarity is the strategy. Solidarity is the strategy. And I wanted to reflect on that. Because the one percent in this country does everything within an inch of their life to break the grip and make us turn on each other. [“Right.”] That is what they do. The finance a media to divide us by race and geography and class and culture. They make us argue over whether people of different identities deserve rights. We need to unite and stand up for our values….and stop this nonsense and demand the economic dignity that we all deserve. Solidarity is the strategy. Us sticking together breaks up their approach. They don’t know what to do when people are unified.
So, when they say that prices have to go up to accommodate treating workers right, we say that it’s their greed and excess that have to end [Yeah.”]….When they claim that they have to lay people off we need to remind people that the average worker in this country has to work for four hundred years to make what these folks pay themselves in one. And when the big three don’t want to take the value of their workers seriously then they have given, then they have given workers no other option but to force them to them, to value their labor with a stand up strike [“Right.”]. Management leaves no other choice.
We have seen what happens when people don’t stand up for themselves. When we don’t get the solidarity and support in Washington and among media and from coast to coast. We’ve seen what happens. In 2008 after these same executives gambled people’s homes and millions of Americans went into foreclosure, they had the audacity to turn around and blame the same workers getting kicked out of their homes. That is an outrage. And we have to say, the math ain’t mathing there. It doesn’t make any sense….[inaudible]….And in 2008 these members saw their pay and their benefits cut, all for a myth. A myth and an IOU, for them to say, one day, when we are better, we’ll make it right. Well [knock, knock], time to cash the check…..Two-Two, Five-Oh. Two-Two, Five-Oh.
And I’ll end with this, we started this, this whole gathering today by pledging allegiance to that flag right there. By pledging allegiance to that flag right there. And that flag means something. It means something. This is the flag of the United States of America, who’s red stands for valor. Valor of the Americans, all the Americans, including the labor activists who died and spilled blood so that we could have a weekend and health care….The white, the white stands for purity. Of our intent and commitment to one another as Americans. The purity of our unity. The purity of love for our fellow man. That blue stands for justice….it stands for dedication and justice. But this flag doesn’t mean those things just because someone said that. This flag means those things because we dedicate and live up to it with our actions. That’s what makes that flag mean something. We do not pledge allegiance to greed. We do not pledge allegiance to Wall Street. We do not pledge allegiance to corporate profits. We pledge allegiance to the United States of America, to our fellow man, to the betterment of all people. and that’s why we are here today.
[….]
Transcript via Show Me Progress
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2 Comments
AOC has forfeited her role as progressive voice by her more or less total sell-out to the neoliberal, neo-cons of the Democratic party leadership. How can anyone believe a word she says — or even listen to her speak without nausea rising in one’s throat. She is indeed the perfect example of why no one should trust the Democrats. Worse, she’s more of a warmonger than Marjorie Taylor Greene…. Imagine, being allied with Lindsey Graham on supporting the US proxy war in Ukraine! Pig.
Well, how about that I can not only watch this video without getting ill, but I also believe that what AOC says in it is very very likely what she thinks, and is, in any case, as good and or better than much of what the left is saying, or not saying, about the strike. I am only guessing, but perhaps than yourself as well. So, tell me, do you think I like her talk and believe her words here is because I am a warmonger, or a closet right winger, or a sell out, or what? And would you be so sure about that deduction that you would trumpet it, as you do your reaction to AOC? If not, which I admit I hope is the case, why not?
For that matter, can you entertain the possibility that other people might have a different reaction than you with reasons that are not viles, for example because they actually want the strike to succeed? I do not know you at all, just like neither of us knows AOC. But whatever your views may be, or whatever your purpose may be, can you conceive that this comment of yours might diverge from wisdom enough in many people’s eyes – not just AOC’s, or mine, but, say virtually everyone on strike – so that asserting it so unequivocally comes across as incredibly arrogant and indeed sectarian to many others, sort of like your reaction to AOC though, dare I suggest it, with considerably more reason for their reaction to you, than you have for your reaction to her? Is that your intended effect? If not, perhaps reconsider the approach which appears to be (I can’t know what it actually is based on so little) to label anyone who dosen’t see things as you do as, what, pigs??
P.S. To return to matters of reason, can you recognize that to take a similar position with someone on the right, even with a fascist, about some particular policy or issue, does not imply being in alliance, being on the right, being a fascist, not least because your reasons may be completely different? Were you alive, you might have found yourself agreeing with right wing critics of Stalin, say…that he was a horrible dictator or for that matter agreed with right wing opponents of, say, the war in Vietnam, or of rape, or of terrorism, and so on, where their reasons and your reasons greatly differed.
P.S.S. A related point. When one extrapolates from a worthy and even correct but very general observation – for example, we have a one party society, the democrats and republicans are just different factions of the corporate party – to a particular policy stance, never vote for anyone, one can, if not careful, leave reason behind, so considerable care is in order. I happen to think, as but one example of many of my own views that markets are an abomination that need to be totally transcended but given that they are a context that exists and that isn’t going to disappear soon, I am not only being foolish but also harmful if I dismiss every activisst project that assumes markets as context. Or, say, I think people should receive income for duration, intensity, and onerousness of socially valued labor and not have bosses at all, so I might say about the strike, what the hell, they accept that they earn wages, they accept that there is an owner, and so on….so they are all sell out fools. I might go on to say, to back a union and its strike is to prove the vacuity of trusting labor – it isn’t going to get rid of capitalism, and so on. It would be not just idiotic for me to take such a leap, but contrary to seeking real change, not to mention callous. On the other hand, it might appeal to some people…
I am sorry to be a bit harsh but, honestly, that you know there are those who are far from ignorant or right wing, or even liberal, who may even know what you know and more, but who read a post like yours and, as you say, feel ill but in this case ill that people perceived to be on the left generate such content…may, I hope, cause you some second thoughts…if not about your assessment than at least about how to suefully communicate…
P.S.S.S. Even calling cops pigs is a strategically counter productive as well as not particularly insightful albeit easy to enunciate practice. IT is easier than organizing. But it is less productive than doing nothing.
Again, my apologies if I have in any way myself misread your words.