ICE raids and attacks on immigrant workers have sent reverberations through every single union in this country. Alot of these attacks have been here in our own Washington backyard. It's not just the raids and kidnappings, detentions and deportations of union members. It's every active organizing campaign, every non-union worksite where unions have been meeting with workers, building organizing committees or getting campaigns off the ground, grinding to a sudden halt. Workers are terrified, they aren't going to take a risk or be exposed with these state terror raids happening in their neighborhoods and work places. Workers have withdrawn from union activity which is already precarious enough during fairer labor conditions.

International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees (IATSE)

Sheet Metal Air Rail Transport (SMART)

Hotel Employees Restaurant Employees (UNITE-HERE)

Familias Unidas Por La Justicia

Service Employees International Union (SEIU)

United Farm Workers (UFW)

International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM)

I'm probably missing several. But all of these unions are currently fighting for justice for detained or deported union members since Trump's term began.

Speaking plainly here, xenophobia and nationalism have traditionally made these issues fringe in the broader labor movement. On one hand you have unions like SEIU & UNITE-HERE, UFCW, UFW, who've all been leading the labor fight for migrant justice for decades in core industries like janitorial, agricultural, food production, hospitality and service work. This isn't new territory or a new fight at all for them.

But it is new to SMART, IATSE and IAM, unions who suddenly find their members being kidnapped off the street and their locals drawn into the national spotlight. If I have any big take away from attending the Washington State Labor Convention this week in Vancouver, WA, it's the following...

All of our unions need each other more than ever right now. In particular we need to lean on the expertise and follow the lead of workers with decades of struggle and experience in the many different ways we're having to fight right now.

Unions are also under attack with Billions of dollars in Federal funding being weaponized and withdrawn from the States. Every building trades union is stunned right now. All of the solar farms, infrastructure projects and maintenance funding just got ripped out from under them. Every roadway, railway, building, electrical, pipe fitting, maintenance project... Union locals that exploded in growth with large investments in solar, wind, green energy by the last administration are seeing layoffs in droves. Members with less seniority having to take other work while these big union projects sit idle.

State Budgets were already nearly impossible to balance and they were made knowing they'd be supplemented with approved federal funds in mind. States are now in a crisis. Workers are in a crisis. These budget cuts made an already dire situation impossible.

For Federal union workers, whole departments are being obliterated. Hundreds of thousands fired arbitrarily. Those who still have jobs threatened with furloughs or being told their union contract is void.

The threat of unregulated AI and Data collection is being felt across every industry and every corner of the labor movement. With virtually no regulations or legal definitions or precedent available to defend workers or the people, this challenge is in front of every working person right now. So long as the bosses are in control of AI systems, algorithms, data, surveillance, automation it will never work in the interests of working people. The unions that are negotiating, arbitrating and fighting on these issues have to work together across industries to come up with a united game plan.

The attacks on protestors and activists. Targeting people for their thoughts, their speech. If labor can't picket, can't disrupt, can't criticize the government? We're fucked. Every libertarian independent small government person in this country should be enraged at what is happening. The U.S. military cracking down on U.S. citizens? People don't know how close to a full on authoritarian dictatorship we've come.

For all of the shortcomings of the AFL-CIO, their National and State and Local CLC's, for all of the unions just coasting along being unremarkable right now, burying their head in the sand hoping they'll emerge unscathed on the other side of Trump, there are some unions and some Labor Councils out there who are stepping into the crisis and fighting. We all need to step up and follow their lead.

As sister Stacey Davis Gates from the Chicago Teachers Union said on Wednesday, "I don't want to encourage you, I don't even want to make you feel good. I want to make you feel accountable for this moment. Workers, in all of our racial diversity and gender diversity and all of the places that we live in this United States of America, we have a responsibility to show solidarity and teach people how to fight for their rights."

Here's where reality sets in. Most of our union locals were already sitting idle before this moment. There are some dynamic locals out there in the country and some large regional and national contracts that get a large base of the rank and file moving from time to time. But most of our unions barely have any juice. Just maintaining old legacy contracts waiting for an older generation to retire and fade away. Sorry, but that's the truth.

National unions keep consolidating locals into massive statewide structures with service staff who come out to visit workers. There's no power on the shop floor. There aren't robust stewards programs. Disputes aren't settled by the workers themselves. The union pays to have someone come and do that. It's a joke.

If we wanted actual shop floor power and rank and file participation we'd have to be agitating internally and stirring shit up. Deliberately moving the ranks from frozen stiff to active. So it's really easy to say what we could and should do but the top brass of a union can't command an army that's sound asleep. That right there should at least make sense to union leadership at a Labor Council level.

Which gets me to an elephant in the room that for me is nothing short of disgrace. It's so offensive to me and unionism that I don't know how to speak sensitively or diplomatically about this.

The amount of unions at a State Labor Convention who's seated credentialed delegates aren't even members of the union, but are hired staff. Hired staff that are represented and dues paying member of a different union. Take a bite of that and savor the flavor for a moment.

Someone that doesnt even work on the shop floor under a contract of your union, is supposed to represent you and your coworkers at your unions highest governing body? Someone who is employed by your union and therefore works at the direction of your unions officers? Help me out here...

This entire time I was thinking labor had just been beaten down so bad by the government and bosses that we're just here trying to hold on a bit longer. Come to find out virtually none of our unions are bottom up, or member led. How many unions out there have executive board members and other positions filled by hired staff, organizers etc.? For better or worse, it's gross and wrong. I don't know how to reconcile it.

No disrespect to well intentioned union staff and organizers but how fucking disrespectful to the rank and file is that shit? If we can't fix this, then damn us all to hell. I really don't know how to account for the last 150 years if this is what's been going on.

Workers are the union. Workers lead the union. It's literally our fucking union?

1. If the membership doesn't care and nobody wants to participate... that's not a valid excuse. That's an education, organization problem. Someone has to be accountable for that.

2. If the contracts don't allow for members to run for office, take time off for union business etc. Then y'all are bargaining your contracts wrong.

There is no legitimate excuse in the world for a non-member to be sitting in a leadership position or a representative position in any union for any reason. Shame on you all and all of your ancestors who let this non-union bullshit creep in and become the norm. No wonder your members dont care. They don't even own their own union.

And don't think I'm letting the rank and file off the hook. Shame on any union local that let's hired staff carry their water for them.

My brain is fucking discombobulated. I don't know what the hell I just watched.

So here we are.

All that’s in play is what’s on the table. Take a look around. This is the labor movement that exists. These are the communities, the activists, the organizers, the resources, the odds the staff in leadership positions. These are the conditions on the ground. These are the issues. This is who has power and who doesn’t. These are the risks.

We need a strategy, a campaign. We need to agitate and organize the rank and file at the local level up into the national union structures. We need to agitate and organize the affiliates of every CLC, State Council all the way to the National and International structures of the AFL-CIO.

Organizing is the only answer to "where do we go from here?"

It's one foot in front of the other. It's an unsexy uphill slog in the rain. You're going to get shit on and be called a class collaborationist, a sell out, a fake, a centrist, a counter-revolutionist, an obstructionist, a liberal, a reformist. If we don't fucking organize then who cares who is fucking right, wrong, perfect or pure.

I'm not a political theorist. I've spent alot of energy adopting and absorbing decades old critiques of the AFL-CIO, I've read the pantheon of left crit on the labor movement. I get it all, I've read most of it. I pre-downloaded other people's positions and yeah it's helped me frame a worldview and an understanding of the shortcomings of quite a few moments I've lived through.

I don't know that any of it has utility though. Yes it keeps my critique sharp, yes it teaches me about pitfalls, yes I spend alot of time being frustrated and hating on political parties, union structures, performative bullshit and resolutionary flowery language without meaningful action, accountability or follow through. But here I am and we're still not organizing? Or are we?

I'm not going to make some bold declaration that I'm prepared to step into the moment. But I'll say this. You're never going to get everything you ask for. You're never going to get anything period if all you do is throw a tantrum. A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link. A union is only as strong as it's most disinterested or under-represented member. We gotta go way way back to the fucking basics. No utopias. No revolutions. Slings and arrows every step of the way. We have to move our pieces across the board that actually exist. That's the fucking game.

Discipline, adaptive learning. Clearly defined goals and direction. We might have to do it in the streets, on the shop floor, in the courts. We might have to organize to vote in elections. We might have to break the law, disrupt norms or commerce. I don't know, that's all determined by the people doing the organizing.

The point is we have to be bigger, better, smarter, more disciplined, more strategic, more forward thinking then THEM. We need everybody. We need the radicals, the revolutionaries, the first time protesters, the liberals, the activists, the shitty activists. We need the masses. Anything short of the masses will end in bloodshed and even then it could still end in bloodshed. You fuck with rich people's money and the guns start coming out, the violence gets deployed.

At this point i don't ever want to read a resolution or statement of policy again. If we aren't laying down structure... contracts, laws, taking power I don't want to hear about it...

Policy and resolutions are what we do, when we are the minority in our organizations and doing the only thing we can as a bookmark or placeholder to try and keep us rooted in values and traditions... but it doesn't change or do anything beyond inspiring a future generation with the knowledge that at one time people felt this way and they left us a road map....

If people who are serious about organizing aren't in power in our locals, in our CLC's, in our State Labor Councils, in our National union structures then how will we ever go where we have to go?

Last week was sobering for me. It was a good place to be with the state leadership of all the unions in Washington doing work together. But I know my own union very well and know that we have work to do internally and in our national structures. I can logically conclude that all unions are in a similar state of disrepair and disconnection.

I understand it’s a quandary or a paradox to both be encouraging folks to follow the lead of staff driven unions while being deeply troubled by the lack of rank and file representation in those same unions. That’s the contradiction before us and we’ve already wasted to much time sitting on our hands. This is the labor movement we have and we have to move.

I wasn’t there to do anything other than represent the ILWU this week. It was pretty wild to be in the big house of labor. But it was also alot just taking it all in with historical perspective.

I intend to write more on this experience. Some topics I'd like to flesh out based on the events I experienced are as follows.

1. The history of the ILWU's involvement in the AFL, the CIO and the AFL-CIO.

2. The history of General Strikes in the United States. I'd like to write a bit about how and why they happened and what they looked like procedurally at the Local CLC level. It was clear that a "general strike" is taboo and radical and misunderstood by the leadership of the WSLC. It's important to "de-radicalize" the general strike weapon and reframe it as a strategic, democratic labor response to a crisis.

3. Alot of young activist first time delegates had their hearts ripped out by the unfortunate roadblocks of bureaucracy and process this week. Something I've experienced personally at every level of my union involvement. I guess I want to write a bit from a place of grace, understanding and encouragement in the hopes that young activists in the AFL-CIO debrief, change up and try again. (Please do!)

It was an honor to go as a representative of ILWU Local 23 to the Washington State Labor Convention. It was eye opening, alarming and hopeful at the same time.

All power to the workers!
All power to the people!
Organize and fight!

Cheers,

Skiff
61968
International Longshore & Warehouse Union Local 23

By Brian Skiffington

I started writing this the night of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. I don't usually weigh in on current events til the smoke has cleared a bit and I've been able to have some discussions and consider some viewpoints. I think I'll preface this writing as me working through my thoughts, toward finding the floor so I know how to analyze the headlines and talking points these next couple weeks. I'm not trying to sound smart, I'm trying to weigh my feelings against my values and ideas.

Joe Biden announced a couple weeks ago that he is not going to run for a second term and Kamala Harris is the presumptive Democratic candidate for U.S. president, so some of this writing may seem redundant. My first few attempts at writing this were full of excoriating criticism of the current president but it didn’t feel helpful to include, given where we are at now. Again, I’m attempting to analyze the ground I’m actually standing on and the terrain has shifted in the last couple weeks. So here we go…

The united forces of the right wing have a plan. They aren't dumb, they aren't playing nice or by the rules and they don't give a shit about being civil. That's their program with or without Donald Trump at the helm, but needless to say, Donald Trump has given them wings. He's inflammatory, he's unashamed of his bigotry, stokes up the fire and gets everyone feeling all the feels with his rhetoric and arrogance like a good populist should, but he's still just a tool for the radical white Christian Nationalist sect who've taken control of the Republican Party. Trump isn't shit to the GOP but a vehicle to take them where they want to go in record time. He's like a magic wand that radicalizes and enrages working people who've been left behind and made to feel stupid for being there. Instead of offering any hope or vision or way forward he just points and says blame them, hate them!

The old guard Right and their donor base have been playing the decades-long game to beat back the human, civil and labor rights gains of the 50’s and 60’s. The think tanks have been moving the pieces slowly across the board.

That reactionary "let’s go backwards" bullshit is the philosophical bedrock of conservatism. But those old guard Republicans are not who are in charge. We are facing a very different Republican Party.

I have never seen a timeline of all the insurgencies inside of the GOP that laid the groundwork for this moment, where actual certified freaks have commandeered the Republican Party and are running the show. The Tea Party? The racists that came out to oppose Obama, It might be worth going back and laying out the maneuverings of the GOP as well as the various radical Right Wing political formations over the last 20 years. Lay them side by side to see it from a bird’s eye, because it didn’t just start with Trump calling for a birth certificate. Charlottesville, the racist that stabbed and killed people on the train in Portland, the neo-nazi paramilitary groups like Vanguard America, Patriot Front, Identity Europa, Atomwaffen Division who are organizing, recruiting and marching out in the open. The Proud Boys and the so-called Alt-Right. The January 6th insurrection. We get so caught up in the Trump cult of personality that we lose analysis of the political conditions on the ground and all of the movements organizing in the shadows and out in the open. We don’t have clear analysis of where and when this current moment actually began. It would be childlike to just say "that’s America from its inception," or to give Trump all the credit.

The insane shit everyone is panicking about in the Project 25 document, would have been unachievable just a few years ago but it was all there being plotted and planned by radical white Christian Nationalists. Now, because they’ve methodically stacked the deck and smashed through road blocks previously preventing them from doing so, the real agenda of the radical Right Wing is on the table for all to see. The radical Right is above ground and on parade, unabashed in their vision to drag this country back to pre-civil war power dynamics and social relations.

I don’t want to discount the Right for their cunning and organizing. But I’d be missing an opportunity to point out that the Dinosaurs running the Democratic party have sabotaged every effort made by young people to course-correct that party to represent the people who will be inheriting the future. The Democrats don’t get to act like they didn’t also create this moment by pandering to their conservative base.

It's ironic that the Democrats and Republicans seem to have opposite problems inside their parties. The Democrats are trying to maintain the center at all costs to appease the comfort of their donors, and to do this, they must prevent their left wing from having any power. This means they've had to acquiesce and move to the right with the GOP so their more conservative center and donors won't cross the line and join the other team.

The Republican Party on the contrary has been completely taken over by radicals, and their center isn’t putting up a fight or trying to hold the line. This is because the radicals are actually winning. Trump’s imperious bombast and brazen disregard for law or decorum has given them rocket boosters to lay down decades of extreme conservative structure. For “classic" Republicans, it feels good to be on the winning team after being losers for so long. To walk around with the sun on their faces even if officially they’re supposed to pretend like they’re moderate and holding down the traditional parties values. Look how many vocal Trump critics just kissed the fucking ring and took a knee at the RNC? Paper thin fake-ass boot lickers.

The biggest roadblock to the Democratic party having power, is their own handcuffing of the more radical edges of the party. If the Dems would get out of their own way, the organizers, the activists, the community coalitions and labor movement could get some real work done. There’s still millions of independent people out here on the left, many who were radicalized by the Dems near-Herculean efforts to sabotage being an actual progressive party. Independents are over here by the millions waiting for that party to climb back up out of the sewer they lowered themselves into. We’re sure as shit not following them down there into the abyss, not after they’ve sabotaged all of our efforts to get that party moving and energized and WINNING again. I say all this knowing that everyone I just described, all the disaffected Berniecrats, are going to have to get over it, regroup and return to the organizing work. My advice is take your frustration, scream as loud as you can, punch a hole through the wall then cover the hole with a Live Laugh Love print from Big Lots.

It is not lost on me one bit that the old guard leaders of the Democratic Party were all young "radicals" or "liberals" during the civil rights and anti-war struggles of the late 60s and 70s and are now trying to silence the contemporary young people screaming for healthcare, civil rights and ceasefires. My guys? Sit thy fucking geriatric asses down. Wisdom? Sure, thanks… but leading? Vision? The people running the Democratic Party aren’t even organizing for this Century. They give lip service to the issues but miraculously the profit keeps flowing, the donations keep racking up and the change never comes.

I know what's at stake. I know the departments, committees and board appointments that a presidential cabinet would secure. All of it matters. But it would be nice if the "incumbency" wasn't the only thing going for the Dems keeping power in the White House. Some leadership might be nice for a change and at the bare minimum, that starts with a capable and viable candidate that doesn't include guilt-tripping or gaslighting the electorate.

Anyone that knows me, knows I'm not a cheerleader for the Dems. I'm a cheerleader for workers, class-struggle, militant direct-action and community power. More specifically, it's because those things bring people together around common issues and put the people themselves at the forefront of their own struggle. Now, it just so happens that 75% of the time The Democratic Party aligns with my position on issues, and maybe like 0.55% of the time a position taken by the GOP makes a little bit of sense to me. There's probably smaller independent parties that speak much closer to my issues and the world I'd like to live in, but I don't believe power comes from above and am not going to spend much time there hoping it does. We do need a legislative, political strategy on every issue we take on, but that can not be the extent of our political action as working class people. It should be the bare minimum. In a vacuum, with the absence of working class-power structures to keep politicians in check we start to see top down, dictatorial power establish itself.

Working Class power is built from below, brick by brick. As I see it, we all have to be organizing everyone, everywhere, all the time, period. Bringing people together and getting us marching in a direction, against a boss, against a landlord or a landlord lobby, to get resources for our communities, whatever the cause may be, that’s how we build power - we fuse people together around common interests and issues. And we do this because it is the only way to take away the seemingly arbitrary power of bosses, CEOs, Elected officials, Police forces, or whoever we’re pushing against. "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." Conversely, this is also how we add power behind a politician or leader when they’re championing our issues. We have to always be striving toward critical mass; building overwhelming majority support.

The kind of power we have to build as normal everyday folks is the power that can and will shut down commerce, shut down the streets, shut down the college campuses, shut down the banks, the courts, the prisons, the airports. Until we have that power, I'm leery of putting too much stock in our "electeds" abilities to do much of anything. I mean, we do want to send people into government to represent us and fight for our interests, but if we can't back them up with actual organized working class power what are they going to accomplish? And how durable are the bills, laws, ordinances they successfully get passed if we as a working class can't mobilize in real time to defend them or enforce them?

The maneuverings of politicians up above us at the local, state and federal level, to most of us working people are not very interesting, not very sexy, really boring actually… but all kinds of demonic shit happens there, and for many of us, our lives, healthcare and freedom depend on it.

For anyone doing any kind of organizing work, any kind of community building... the people representing us in government matter, because they determine what the floor you're standing on will look like, and how windy it's going to be and which direction the wind is blowing from. Not only do they build protections into the law, but they install the people who will be interpreting those laws.

No matter who occupies the White House, the Supreme Court or Congress, we can never stop organizing or expressing ourselves through militant action. We can not cede ground or sit still. We have to organize for our mutual protection, our communities and the resources we need and not wait on or rely on the Government to do it. That's on a good day, not like this moment we're in now where the right wing has indicated their intent to dismantle the entire social safety net.

We may have to organize to mitigate incoming damage like the GOP taking away rights and freedoms, slashing funding to critical programs etc. Shit, we might have to organize against armed fascists roaming the streets if we can't put the lid back on the radical right. Unions weather storms, strong communities weather storms, democratic institutions weather storms. As I see it, that is our actual political task as working class people. It's to build community, build democracy and build power with our neighbors and coworkers.

The entire scope of the Right Wing's politics is rooted in appealing to the individual. It's about me, myself and I. It's about you, your personal autonomy, your right to accumulate wealth, and own property. It opposes taxes because fuck everyone else. It's all about the individual.

Conversely, the different configurations of the left are about meeting common needs. Socialism pre-supposes an obligation of all of us to look out for one another. You are your brother's keeper, or as my union likes to say "an injury to one is an injury to all." With all this bounty and abundance and human ingenuity, we can't find a way to organize our society in such a way to share and meet the basic needs of every human on this planet? Food shelter water healthcare?

The schism between competing philosophies of "Me vs. We" is the foundation of all modern politics and should hopefully help folks understand the coalitions of interests that make up the 2 major parties in the United States representing the so-called left and right wings of U.S. politics.

Unions are institutions of class power, churches, community groups, students etc. There are many more examples but the point I want to make is that these groups have organized and unified around common interests. Since they are organized, whether formally (a union or church) or informally (students on the same campus) they have gravity that can push and pull, move and manipulate the institutions of Government or move their community around them. Maybe it's a church congregation voting as a bloc, or mobilizing their congregations to speak up for affordable housing or resources for the homeless or maybe its students organizing boycotts, occupying a University building or organizing mass demonstrations of nonviolent civil disobedience on their campus. Even when the law declares something illegal, mass movements of people, built through giant coalitions of class power can put a boot up Congresses ass to overturn an unjust law or a city Government or University compelling them to bargain with workers in good faith or divest from sweatshop labor etc. I'd like to think we could stop the world from turning if we actually got organized worker to worker. Couldn't we shut it all down any time anyone needs solidarity and justice anywhere? What a world that would be?

Anyone read along this far? Onward!

All the people gleeful a couple weeks ago, making jokes about how the shooter missed Trump, are so caught up in their hatred or disdain for Trump (well deserved) that they've lost analysis of the very serious political moment we're in. This country is a powder keg and everything is at stake. The simmering eruption I'm alluding to is not the shooting at the Trump rally. I want to talk about Trump's first term and the Covid 19 Pandemic.

How this country is still here is a testament to our strong communities and strong institutions. The nefarious maneuverings of the Right are trying to unravel every bit of working class power that's been stitched together for a century.

First, Trump woke up a thing in this country. Like irresponsible populists before him, he just opens his mouth and talks shit in a way that only someone who's never been punched in the face can do. He debased civility, debased process, debased respect. Now to be fair it's a very thin veil between order and chaos and he ripped that shit down and said being decent has no value, discard it. The law has no value, discard it. He says "go that way" and people go that way, whether it's appropriate, irresponsible, it doesn't matter. He'll deny he ever said "go that way".

Masses of people were in their "critical thinking / political infancy" during Trump's first term and he was just stoking the fire, agitating a base who he moved into action purely on anger and emotion. Think about growing up and maturing as an adult human. How we learn to contain our outbursts, learn methods for interpreting and reacting to things. If you become radicalized (moved to aggressive action) when you were in your toddler years of politics, you don't have the methods and the skills to work through political problems, and if a populist comes along and says these are the people who wronged you, you light up a torch and follow the angry mob.

I really am not trying to say these things to offend anyone. Think about your coworkers or your neighbors… It's really only a small fringe of people we know who tend to be out, loud and proud about their political beliefs and affiliations. Most people are just trying to raise families and be left alone. Politics happens all around us, and we all are political actors, but most of us are atomized, unconscious and not particularly interested in the talking heads on TV or the loud ass political guy espousing YouTube opinions in the break room. That is, until a populist comes along and gives voice to our feelings. Feelings are cheap and misleading and are not a substitute for principles and values.

Second, we lived through Covid 19. Every single person was affected by Covid 19. We are social beings. We live in community together and our lives are given meaning and defined by the relationships and the communities that we participate in.

The isolation, the lock down, the anxiety, the actual disease killing people we know, the precariousness of surviving, eating, paying rent or utilities, the strain on our Healthcare systems, the strain on workers and businesses.

Let's say you were stable, healthy, had your shit together going into covid 19 - you likely drew inwards a bit when it all started going down. You may have chosen self-preservation and selfishness for the first time in your adult life; shut the gate on your neighbors or family members and stopped putting yourself out there for others. You went into isolation and came out of the lock downs with a bit of reservation and skepticism.

Or let's say you were a community organizer or a Healthcare worker and you stepped into the crisis to take care of people and organize for people's safety and then you had to confront the junk science and psychobabble of people vehemently against vaccines and masks while people you know and love started dying around you - the mental, physical stress on your psyche had to have been unbearable and depleted you.

Now if you went into the Pandemic with any sort of instability and precarity... if you were dealing with anxiety or mental health, if you were one paycheck away from financial collapse, if you were unemployed at the time or any variety of situations, what did it do to you? What did it do to an entire generation of students who were robbed of being kids, being social, learning, playing sports, getting their driver's license, being teenagers. The point is, it did something to all of us. It almost split my union in half over the idea of vaccine mandates coming to our industry. It split friends and families against each other. It socially split us from each other in a way that will be obvious to future generations looking back at our collective history. Like finding evidence of forest fires in the rings of an old tree.

This country over the last 10 years reminds me of my garden when it's experiencing pure stress from days on end of extreme weather. For the gardener, it's morning, day and night trying to water, prune, provide shade, amend the soil, solve problems and inevitably some of these plants die or don't bear fruit. Whole parts of a garden get baked, drowned or wiped out with pests and it just saps your energy and will to carry on.

Before the kid in Pennsylvania ever fired a shot at Donald Trump, this country and its institutions were starting to unravel from wave after wave of stress, strain and crisis and wave after wave of right wing attacks - stacking the Supreme Court with partisan ghouls, the assault on our educators and the media, peer reviewed journals, academia, voting rights, labor rights, the attempts to erase Black History, ban books, gut environmental regulations, persecute migrants, gutting protections and resources for our Trans, Queer and non-binary friends while simultaneously agitating for violence and the demonization of marginalized communities.

We're living in this moment where leadership is needed more than ever - people that can articulate a vision for an unselfish, shared humanity that works for all of us - and we're not getting it from anywhere.

I know the very real threat of Trump and the radical right needs to be contained but the biggest issue in front of us as I see it, is pessimism.

Look how fucking toxic and demoralizing this moment is? The entire government is being drug far to the right. While fucking little MAGA freaks point at moderate Democrats from a bully pulpit and say "these communists want to destroy the country." What the fuck are you talking about? A real communist would blow your hedgehog haircut off your head.

The way forward for everyone, is the way it’s always been. Organizing 101. We gotta get people together on widely felt issues and we gotta get them moving in unison. Biden is gone. Let’s stop trying to frame these next months in the same context of whether the next Dem candidate can debate Trump. Fuck a debate with that loser, how about a vision for a future that speaks to everyone?

We need to be thinking about these moments like a union or community organizer.

If we’re going to be strategic, we have to take all of these people in this country and move them toward the issues. That means talking to people like they are a human, finding out what matters to them and what makes them tick. Some people are going to be freaks, it doesn’t mean we’re leaving them out to dry, but someone that is openly hostile and bitter might not be the top priority in the beginning. We have to fuse together millions of people from diverse backgrounds and viewpoints, get them talking, building, being neighbors again. Here’s the wild newsflash… most people living in this country are ALREADY DOING THIS because the basic aspirations of folks are the same! It just doesn’t make the news when neighbors or coworkers with differing viewpoints get along. So I circle back to pessimism.

Fascism and the radical right-wing freak show are marching down main street in the United States. We (all of us) have got to put them back in the box. The conditions that led to this moment are neither here nor there but they are rooted in most of our own disinterest and despondence based on the elitism of the Democratic Party. FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK… the failure of the Democratic Party to live up to it’s basic charge of being progressive, liberal, New Deal etc. Is really how we got here. It’s not the popularity of the White Christian patriarchy trying to drag us backwards. It’s the so-called progressive party sabotaging its own purpose and values to appease it’s donors.

I don’t want to dismiss our passion and critique because the analysis is correct, but to organize, we have to take our own frown, plugged nose, disdain and we have to set it aside. The long term project is to win. We gotta bring the masses to the work. It’s a higher calling to organize. It’s a suppression of the urgency and feelings of the ego.

There is no substitute for on the ground organizing. There is no substitute for issue based campaigns. Voting for politicians to represent us is the BARE MINIMUM threshold for political action. That can’t be the norm going forward. Unfortunately, the Democratic party needs a reorientation. Yes we tried with Bernie, yes his analysis was basically correct, but the power of wealthy elites and entrenched bureaucrats was too much for us to win in round one. We’re not there any more. The terrain has shifted. Also, what fucking organizer loses and then just throws in the towel? I’m actually challenging myself here to move beyond my contempt for the Democratic Party… we built all that momentum into the Bernie campaign and then just let it die? Bernie would have been cool as hell. But we just left it there and have thrown a collective tantrum disguised as “disinterest" ever since. I think we need to regroup and reconsider entering and changing that party.

I’m not here trying to reform a 2 party system, but until we have critical mass, how are we going to seriously talk about leveraging Kamala Harris and the Dems? Are we going to derail this political moment instead of putting a lid on the extremist radical right? Fuck Harris and the Dems. If history has taught us anything, it’s not going to be a president that ends a genocide. It’s going to be sit-ins on the tarmac, on the railroads, on the university lawns, in the factories. It’s going to be a mass exodus from corporate banks, divestments from stocks. It’s going to be taking arrests, getting maced in the face. We have to follow the money and ruin their profit. That’s how we’ll stop the genocide of the Palestinians, by finding out who is profiting and disrupting it.

Harris to me is no savior, she is at least competent and going to do exactly what we expect Dems to do. More than we can say for Biden in his worn out state. She can help us put a lid on the fascist jack in the box that's burst into 2024. Unfortunately, we're not going to be able to rely on the dems to stop the mass killings in Palestine. We're going to have to organize and assume risk for that. (That's what class struggle politics actually looks like). We have to make the Dems do it. We just haven't struck the right nerve yet.

I guess I don’t see this as some grand opening for a break with a two party capitalist hell world. We gotta put the fascists in the box. And I’m not saying we gotta try to reform the Democratic Party first, but I assure you, a strong, organized left would most definitely be doing that as a basic strategy. In truth though, I don’t expect the radical left to do anything other than produce a radical left flank. Those movements produce gravity, they move people into action, we need them. We need them moving ordinary people toward the work. What I don’t want to see is pessimism being the motivator. “Oh that party is useless so lets operate like it doesn’t exist.” I’m not saying you have to vote in the election for a Democrat. I’m saying, if you’re not going to vote you better have a reason and it shouldn’t be dumb. This moment calls for leadership and strategy. If you’re going to act politically, be strategic. Let’s establish the political terrain we’re going to struggle on because frankly we don’t have the collective power to offer an alternative when MAGA is wreaking havoc.

It took decades of struggle for the CIO to emerge from the Great Depression as a challenge to the derelict, "white’s-only" AFL. It was built on the shoulders of the CPUSA popular front, before that the Red International of Labor Unions, before that the I.W.W. & The W.F.M. and before that the Haymarket Martyrs, the Knights of Labor and a myriad of other socialist left groups. If we’re serious about a future beyond just a ceasefire in Palestine, we gotta do some long, lengthy work and it doesn’t start or end with who is President of the USA for 4 years. The leaders of the labor struggles in the 40s and 50s, the civil rights struggles of the 50s and 60s, the struggles for Indigenous and queer folks and all the other people’s movements. Those took generations, standing on each other’s shoulders to inspire, show the way and move to action. If we aren’t thinking of politics as a 50 year plan we aren’t prepared for this work.

Power of the magnitude we desire to achieve is a long term project. The left wing has got to get back to grass roots bread and butter. If we don't, we're just nerds talking shit from the cheap seats.

We're in a moment where basic community organizing skills are needed more than ever and where the fuck are we? Fight for Palestine, shut it all down, but please for the love of Alanis Morrisette, put out clear and concise information and center the people doing the work. Build them up, put them in the front of their own struggle, help to draw out their voice and their power.

Final thought? Send the GOP back into the abyss. You can vote for Kamala Harris and the very next day you can lead a sit in for Palestine in her front lawn.

I'm done looking at this shit. I don't even know what to call this? I'm pretty sure it's a screed!

K. Bye.

The 39th Convention of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union: State of the Rank and File Address

It took a couple days to synthesize my thoughts on this past week at the 39th Convention of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union. I’m reminded this week, that there’s no substitute for on the ground organizing.

For decades, generations of my union have been riding the coat tails of those who came before. All those great and historical causes, all the progressive stances and protests. My union is currently experiencing a moment of broad transition. It's not good or bad, but it is where we are.

A mentor of mine, once told me "you can't get ahead of the Rank and File." He went on to say that Harry Bridges and his fellow officers would have to "coast" for a bit, til the ranks could catch up with the union's leadership.

In the late 60s and 70's the union had radicals, activists and left wing organizers of all stripes embedded in locals up and down the coast and across the many different divisions. They involved themselves in hundreds of rank and file initiatives and set to work building and agitating the union. They organized, formed committees, printed leaflets and brought struggles into the union and brought the union into struggles. They were the children, grand children and great grand children of wobblies, communists, freedom fighters, suffragists and suffragettes, anarchists, share croppers, immigrants and more. They knew the '34 men and grew up with stories of the strikes in the 30's & 40's. For all intents and purposes those 70s radicals knew and learned from working class legends.

For several decades, the dynamism and culture built by those generations has helped the ILWU maintain it's left wing, militant, social justice character but the ripples get a little further and further from each other as they slowly dissipate year after year.

As those workers from the 60s and 70s have retired or passed away, a vacuum has formed. The culture is still there, in some places more than others, but it's thin and waning with each passing year. There's a gap generation in the late 80s to the early 2000's that didn't train it's replacements, didn't open the doors and bring young people in and here we are in 2024 dealing with the political and philosophical realities of it.

Here, at the Convention this past week, it felt like that last bit of juice that the progressive forces of the union have been riding on has finally started to sputter out. In my analysis, what many of us want to see in this union will no longer be given freely and should not be expected, but must be deliberately built from the ground up, the long and hard way.

This is not to say that we don't have strong, thriving, disciplined locals and divisions in the union that are currently experiencing growth and vitality. It's not to say that we don't still have progressive and principled stands, that give hope to workers around the world. It's certainly not an indictment of the National or International leadership - but it is to say, that the real, progressive left-wing politics that we celebrate in the ILWU's history, can not be easily achieved in this moment.

Without deliberately recruiting or opening the doors and being a safe haven for activists and radicals to join the union, we will keep sliding backwards. Without developing the rank and file's consciousness around international solidarity; developing peoples critiques of capitalism, imperialism, police, incarceration and war, we will keep sliding backwards. We need to be building the layers of rank and file leadership into the union that can stir shit up a bit and get us agitated. And it needs to be done in succession so there is constant renewal and rebirth from below.

Why am I writing all of this?

A series of progressive resolutions were squashed this week at the ILWU Convention. And I'm honestly not bent out of shape, because you can't get ahead of the rank and file. If we're not going to educate, agitate and build consciousness around issues at the Local level... there's no way to expect progressive leaders to be able to make this giant organization move on any issue that doesn't have broad support. We're not a top down union plain and simple.

It breaks my heart seeing a small group of workers in our union get shot down when they’re asking for support or resources. It’s apparent to me, that we need to be going into conventions having already shared and educated other memberships and divisions about our ideas and our needs in advance of debate on the convention floor. There’s many other lessons to draw. I guess my thinking is we can be bummed or we can take a couple days and then get to work. I’m going to choose getting back to work, and I think most in the union feel the same way.

One of the most important and durable institutions of the ILWU is our strict adherence to bottom up, rank and file-led unionism. If anyone is miffed about their ideas being shut down at convention (myself included), let’s regroup and get to work building it from below. I certainly learned alot. In several resolutions that failed this week, they weren’t shut down over their ideas, but the process and rules of the convention were used to dismiss them. There’s a massive generation gap and lack of institutional knowledge on process and prcedure. There’s a learning curve for a whole generation of younger leadership.

What I saw last week doesn't discourage me. It gives me hope, albeit a sober hope. Everywhere I look, I see young leaders starting to get involved, moving up in their locals, getting sent to things like conventions and caucuses, serving on boards and committees, leading trainings and starting to break off pieces of the union's work. That part gives me hope. Seeing young workers who are on their negotiating committees or labor relations committees, that gives me hope.

The part that gives me a sober assessment of where we are though, is these young leaders are being met with a moment that is divorced from that 60s and 70s radicalism. Alot of our elders and mentors who had living memory of those people and those times, have passed away, retired and so on. That makes me sad and also grateful for the people I've gotten to meet in my short time on the waterfront and in the Labor movement.

In conclusion:

There is no shortcut to organizing. There is no shortcut to education. It's slow, it's careful, it's patient work, and if the leaders and rank and file want this union to maintain its heart and soul, it's commitment to the Black freedom struggle, to the struggle for the marginalized and the oppressed, against war, against dictators, against fucked up U.S. foreign policy then we better be organizing.

We better look in the mirror and ask for help if we need it too. It's in all of our interests, to get our locals moving, participating, active and engaged. At a bare minimum, until we can do that, it's going to be difficult to bring bigger social vision to the union.

Please, keep blessing the union with your passion, your politics, your big ideas... but we all have to get serious about member to member, worker to worker conversations before we can get this International union moving as a big cohesive fighting machine the way our ancestors did.

My biggest take away from this convention, is that our organizing department has been completely rebuilt, it’s been supported with serious resources, given marching orders and is firing on all cylinders. I don’t remember the last time I’ve seen the union moving like this in terms of new worker organizing. I think the cure to what ails us is contained within.

For anyone in the ILWU that wants to talk strategy and ideas to change the culture inside of their local, region or division from one that's asleep and standing still to one that's starting to move, starting to organize, starting to build. Let's chit chat. I only want the best for our Organization and I'll talk with anyone anywhere, rank and file or elected about what's worked in my local, and what I've seen working in other areas and other unions.

Thank you very much to the members of Local 23 who sent me to Canada this week. This is a big union with a lot of moving parts. There's much to share and much to do. Let's chit chat.

A few more days of Caucus and then I'm looking forward to returning to my garden and going to work.

Cheers,

Skiff
61968

There was a twitter thread today from Boots Riley making the rounds about it being curious that a movie like the Irishman focusing on organized labor and mob corruption would rear its head at a time when unions, strike waves and socialist organizing have been on the rise. Insinuating that this big budget movie is being used to discredit the left and feed the myth of the “corrupt union” when intense political forces are sparring openly in U.S. politics.

I will probably not see that movie. I can get just as much drama watching the current chaos unfolding in the leadership of the United Autoworkers.

When unions are “top down”, when decisions are made behind closed doors, when financial records aren’t made readily available to the members, when union elections are made by a small group of regional war chiefs, when there aren’t term limits, when leaders take on an elite, separate prestige in the union and start showing up in suits to work, when they view themselves as administrators, or something other than workers, when they give paid staff appointments to their family and friends or their political allies, when they are in cozy with the employers and scratch each others backs, when they create buffers of bureaucracy and red tape to hide behind through hired staff instead of workers handling the business of the union, or a series of convoluted processes that at best get you a one on one sit down behind closed doors away from the ear of the membership, when they shut down debate or don’t allow it at all, when they punish or intimidate members who speak up, leaflet or bring any measure of criticism or activity outside of their authority, when they appoint committees instead of opening them up to the members, when they determine when its time to strike or not instead of a vote of the members, when they come to you at meetings and report to you what they have done instead of asking for permission, then yeah, you probably have the fertile soil for mobbed up corruption in your union.

The way to prohibit this is to have “bottom up” unionism. Where every decision the union leadership makes is at the direction of the members or at least under threat of recall of their office if they step out of bounds, where open and regularly scheduled meetings are available to the rank and file, where debate and participation is encouraged, where elections are open and appointments are abolished except under specific circumstances (temporarily filling a vacancy), where all spending is subject to scrutiny and approval by the members, where the leadership is essentially the point of an upside-down pyramid and the workers, the rank and file members have complete democratic authority over the direction of the union, where strikes are called by votes of the membership, where contracts are negotiated by and ratified by the members, where the administration of the union is performed by rank and file workers elected to serve in office, where the business agents and stewards who enforce the contract and handle grievances are democratically elected by their peers, where every executive board, board of trustees and other committees or governing bodies of the union are not only open to the members to observe but the composition of such bodies are always weighted in favor of the rank and file, not exclusively filled with high ranking officers. The rank and file should always be the tie breaker.

It is the absence of the rank and file members participation, scrutiny and observance that allows for corruption, shady dealings and other impropriety that jeopardizes the vitality and strength of the union. If this doesn’t make the case for attending your union meetings, then I do not know what to say. Please look into the corruption investigation in the UAW right now for some imperative to participate in your union.

There is no such thing as a perfect union. There are shortcomings in all unions, and at the end of the day shortcomings in people with different egos, ambitions and integrity who are elected to union office. But the unions that do it right don’t take long to sniff out the bullshit and take action.

It has fascinated me since I started attending my unions meetings what a gift our founding generation left to us. From a structural and procedural standpoint, I am part of the most democratic, transparent, intentionally rank and file union I have ever encountered. I am always analyzing my coworkers politics and ideas and feeling-out where people are coming from. While workers don’t often speak explicitly in terms like I do of democratic, “horizontalism,” autonomy, “rank and filism” or more in depth comparisons of the roots back to Syndicalism, the Wobblies, the Communist Party and other political tendencies on the waterfront leading up to our founding, I have been really impressed and blown away by the durability of my union and the way it’s program continues to replicate itself more than 80 years later. Generation after generation there is an unacknowledged commitment to transparency and democracy that I see from the members of my union. Maybe not all, but certainly the rank and file majority.

“Rank and filism” is built so tightly into the fabric, process and culture of the union that it has shaped every single person that participates in it in some way. Coworkers that for all intents and purposes are deeply conservative or openly right wing, still have this rank and file commitment.. I love union meetings where you hear an audible rumble or jeers from the audience and somebody who you least expect stands up and says “this isn’t right”, “this is not how we do things around here” or “this isn’t fair!” Democracy is fucking ugly. But I get to watch it happen in all of it’s “Lord of the Flies” glory every month at the union meeting. It fascinates me and while there is no shortage of terrible or stupid things to disagree with, I more often leave feeling inspired, like I get to be a part of a really cool and special thing with some amazing people.

It’s funny how you can spend the first ten years of your career respecting someone at work til you hear them speak at a union meeting and it’s like WTF did they just say? And someone else you thought was the biggest asshole on the waterfront turns out to care more for the well being of the members and the union and you realize you had them pegged all wrong.

Getting to observe my union’s last convention and sit in on the regional caucus really showed me the bigger picture of the union. My first time attending anything like this was the ILWU Canada convention 4 or 5 years ago and they actually encouraged me and other young workers to sit in and observe the committees deliberate in break out sessions. I wonder if other unions out there encourage young people, without delegate credentials or full union membership to sit in on committees?

This is sort of just a brain dump and really wasn’t meant to trail so far into the ILWU. But since we went there, I hope all my sisters and brothers will consider attending the meetings once a month. It’s where the real power and magic of the union take place. Rumors travel far and wide on the “front,” but the monthly meeting is where you get the truth and where you can make up your own mind about what’s going on and who is who. The convention is this awesome space where you hear the voices and see the faces of the entire union doing business as this giant multi-cultural, International cohesive movement.

At the end of the day, a union is just a voluntary organization of workers. Workers made the union and only workers can “unmake” the union. In every other facet of our lives: church, school, work… there is always a pastor, a teacher, a boss… someone to run the show. As bottom up trade unionists, it’s just us. Nobody to hold our hand. We have to run our own meetings, do our own business, negotiate our own contracts, politically, economically, socially, legally fight to defend and perpetuate our organization. That is a radical concept in American society — normal-ass every day workers can come together and change their own destiny and unite together into a powerful organization completely administered by and for the workers and take on some of the biggest employers and governments in the world.

Sadly, many stalwart unions have roots in the conservative wing of the labor movement. They may have evolved into the present and softened culturally but their structures, process and governing documents are still stuck in the 1880’s. As fellow workers, we have to get together across trades and jurisdictional lines and help each other analyze the shortcomings of these union structures, help each other develop the skills we might need to bring change or pressure to bare upon those structures. Entrenched leadership who’ve buttressed their power behind closed doors don’t just leave because you ask them to. Workers might have to revolt. We have to develop the skills to recognize when we are being played or manipulated by leadership. We have to help each other learn to speak publicly, how to write, how to phone bank and leaflet, how to recognize and develop worker leaders around us who can reach groups of workers on the job. It’s the same kinds of skills that built our unions in the first place. We have to help each other build confidence.

Samuel Gompers ghost still haunts the corridors of the AFL-CIO. The entire Building Trades Council is a freaky, right wing, reactionary elephant turd. It is definitely the elephant in the room. A political juggernaut that actively works against it’s workers class interests and most often stands in opposition to the affiliates and member unions of the state and local labor councils. And they are not the only ones. Any AFL-CIO affiliate with origins before 1948 is directly responsible for severing the “organizing wing” of the labor movement. It would take a lot to impress me these days, there are a few that pass the test. And even in my own union, like any union there are political fights and efforts to suppress speech. At the end of the day it comes down to workers watching over their own unions, speaking truth to power and making sure the union is accessible and open for all workers to participate. That’s our duty as union members. So if your union is shitty, maybe… I’ll just let you fill in the blank.

Groups like Labor Notes, Jobs With Justice and Democratic Socialists of America are three that come to mind that have delibrately focused on the skill building and education of union activist organizers. The left may have been formally expelled from the labor federations but it is alive and well as it has been in various forms for decades. Sometimes the left has to go underground, and sometimes it gets to live loudly out in the open. These are three organizations I would encourage union members to go to develop your union consciousness and to learn skills to start a rank and file spark in your union and to help support other workers in their organizing.

As activist organizers we might help a sister union build enough momentum locally that they agree to change their structure or process to allow for more transparency, participation and democracy but inevitably the regional or national organization might step in to squash it. So you draw it out to its natural conclusions, the task is then to organize a grass roots movement to get buy-in from other locals and hopefully petition the national or run a campaign and capture enough delegate seats at the national executive board or convention to amend the national constitution or bylaws. This story has been playing out for over 150 years in the U.S. labor movement by the way.

The ILWU feels like an exceptional union in 2019. And it is. But there used to be dozens of unions like us. It is my belief that the ILWU members have to be out there building relationships with other workers and talking to them about democratic unionism and how to “fight to make your union fight.” There are 40,000 of us in Washington, Oregon, California, Hawaii, Alaska, Canada and Panama. We might be small but we have geographic reach, local and regional relationships, closed shop jurisdiction over a vital pinch point in the global supply chain and we punch way above our weight class. What if the union developed a boot camp and there were hundreds of organizers connected through a network? I mean… some well meaning rank and filers could do the same thing with or without permission.

There are too few progressive and militant unions left. Sometimes it feels like there are too few progressive and militant unionists left. We can not go it alone and we need to help build other unions that organize and fight like us. To do that we have to develop fighting, conscious rank and file members in our unions and the unions around us. I think we need to be training up a generation of organizer activists who can build the ILWU program in hundreds of creative ways. It doesn’t make sense to have this gift from our ancestors and not try and replicate it for other workers.

This is a frustrating time to be in the labor movement with the current political landscape, the Democratic Party power structure, the Republican and neoliberal attacks on labor, the entrenched Trumpka machine in the AFL-CIO, the unorganized supply chain growing rapidly without any unity or coherent organizing strategy from labor, right to work legislation and so on. It feels so slow and demoralizing sometimes. Like you want to slap an older generation around and say what the fuck did you do on your watch? But all of that is irrelevant and self-defeating. We will not find movement or freedom there.

As union members, we have to learn how to organize in our unions. If your union has regular open meetings, crash that shit and find out what is going on. I saw a post this week in a labor forum from a rank and file union member in Illinois saying it’s been 293 days since his union held a membership meeting. Yikes.

I’ve been meeting with workers from a local union for a year or two now that has 7,000 members and per their constitution, 7 members…. SEVEN… constitutes a quorum that can do business on behalf of their union. All it takes is 7 hired staff, who by virtue of this unions bylaws can pay dues to the union and vote. Who hires and fires the staff? You guessed it, the union president. You see how power can instantly be exploited by very few at the top. That kind of crap is happening in unions all over this country. Workers need to break the door down and take the reins back. I literally mean break the door down and throw these motherfuckers in the streets. Just kidding. I mean turn members out to union meetings, vote bad leaders out, develop a slate or a program and run candidates for elections, take shit over so it gives voice and access to the workers. And yeah, if you have to occupy your union offices, boycott the headquarters, shut shit down publicly and demand justice for the workers then do what you need to do.

Amend your constitutions and bylaws. Change the way your union holds elections or approves business. Restructure committees and union meetings so they are meaningful and include the participation of members. Don’t waste people’s time. Keep things moving and come up with creative ways to get members to turn out. Free childcare, pizza, actually taking a 10 minute break if it’s going to be a long meeting, parking or transportation, moving meetings closer to where workers live. And by all means, the expenses and business of the union have got to be done out in the open with debate and transparency. Why go to a meeting to not have a voice?

The union movement can do anything we put our minds to. We can shut the whole country down. We can stop the world if we want. Union militancy and left politics are starting to emerge in the labor movement again. So as frustrating as it is, as demoralizing as it is, with all the Gary Jones’ and James Hoffa’s out there, the mechanical engines of our unions are just sitting there idling waiting for workers to turn the gears and get them moving again.

From the bottom up,

❤ Skiff

There’s been a tremendous amount of chatter about a general strike the last week as a response to the Federal Workers going unpaid for over 4 weeks now.

What is a general strike? A general strike is when a substantial amount of industries are brought to a halt effectively shutting a city or region down due to workers withholding their labor en masse .

Within the structure of organized labor, almost all trade unions are connected regionally, state wide and nationally through labor councils and federations. So there are clear channels and mechanisms in place for rapid coordination and mass action.

A general strike is possible and we know this because it has happened many times before.

There are factors that are missing in 2019 though that need to be considered. Without an understanding of history, appeals for a general strike are not rooted in reality and show a lack of understanding of structural capacity. It’s also frustrating having pseudo-theorists with no lived experience inside trade unions bandying about some cool shit from a history book without any real commitment to studying that history, analyzing how we arrived at this moment and knowing what labor is or isn’t capable of.

For example, in the 1919 Seattle General Strike, there was a region wide shipyard workers strike.

A. The general strike that followed was a mass solidarity response to an existing strike.

B. The shipyard workers asked the labor council to call for a general strike.

C. The Industrial Workers of the World had built deep militant cadre inside many of the existing unions. Revolutionary syndicalism, socialism and many other left wing currents were found throughout labor’s ranks, even in conservative unions.

These ideas like the mass strike resonated with workers even if radicalism did not. 110 unions went out on strike for 5 days.

In Minneapolis in 1934, a city-wide truck drivers strike led by the Teamsters Union, who had a large faction of Trotskyist/Socialists successfully shut the city down in a mass strike following violent repression by the cops.

Once again, embedded radical organizers + an existing strike. This time with an added factor of cops killing and wounding strikers.

In San Francisco, the 1934 general strike. After months of striking by maritime unions up and down the West Coast, brutal skirmishes and workers being killed coast wide, things came to a head. 2 workers were killed in SF and days later the entire city shut down in a general strike.

In SF and on the West Coast there was years of cadre building by the Communist Party, the I.W.W. and many more radical currents and philosophies. Also the daily lived experience of workers who struggled through decades of failed strikes and repression.

Cadre as I use it, meaning there was a collective memory of class struggle and militant trade unionism, older generations who may have been installed there intentionally by a revolutionary organization, but at the bare minimum, there were respected, trained militants that could teach and organize new workers inside these unions.

There have been other general strikes but these are the few I feel most comfortable discussing.

In 1933 the will to organize was revitalized all over the country due to the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act Section 7A granting workers the right to organize and bargain collectively. This is why the mid 1930s saw an explosion of strike activity. For the last 40 years rather than an explosion of activity we have seen the slow chipping away of labor unions. But it does feels like we are living through the beginning of a historic moment again. Socialist organizing is at a record high in the U.S., workers, particularly young workers are joining unions and the political tension in this country feels like it could burst. But I digress…

My point is to say that... in all of these instances, a general strike was called in solidarity with an existing strike. There was also deep struggle based militant currents embedded in the trade unions at the time of these strikes. I don’t know that we can just will a general strike into existence without the Federal Workers who are unpaid shutting jobs down and calling for labor to join them.

Another critical thing to understand before you wantonly dismiss trade unions as being weak, reactionary or incapable of action...

In 1947 Taft Hartley became law, making sympathy strikes and secondary boycotts illegal. General Strike action is effectively a sympathy strike.

Workers do not wield the strike weapon lightly. It is revered, as the primary weapon of the working class. It is hard enough for workers to assess the risk, consider their home lives and families and agree to take collective strike action on behalf of their own job. But in a general strike you are asking them to assume all that risk on behalf of other workers. And it is not just personal risk, but contractual risk to the union for an illegal work-stoppage under the collective barganing agreement. For some industries there is the very real threat of the federal government declaring Taft Hartley provisions or the Railway Labor Act and using the U.S. military to commandeer your industry and employ soldiers as strike breakers. A general strike is asking every union to weigh those risks. And in the post-1947 era, you have to understand that some kinds of trade union action are illegal and have different sets of consequences.

So hell yeah. Let’s build militant left wing cadre in unions. Hell yeah, let’s go out on strike in solidarity with other workers even if it means risk to ourselves.

Let’s shut the whole place down. If conservative union leaders aren’t buying it then we can wild cat and sick out.

The point of me writing this is that we absolutely need to know what we are talking about and not toss the phrase General Strike around because it sounds cool. It’s heavy and it deserves respect. In my opinion, it also requires serious internal organizing and capacity building that is all but invisible in U.S. trade unions.

Do we have the capacity for a general strike? If so where? Are we laying the ground work? Are we getting unions and labor councils talking about coordinated job action? Are we moving workers to participate in their own unions? Are we moving our unions to hit the bricks and get in the streets and take on progressive fights?

At the end of the day it comes down to capacity.

Capacity is not about what could or should or would happen. It’s not about the hypothetical “what if” fantasy realm. Capacity is what we can summon right now in this moment. Capacity has to be built. Cadre has to be built and if you know your history, the ground work for the general strikes in 1934, were preceded by 20 years of organizing and capacity building waiting for the right confluence of events and then BAM! Massive strikes that shook the nation.

For those calling for a general strike, get your shoes on. We got work to do.

I have some scattered thoughts about white nationalist recruiting and reactionary politcs as they intersect my life and I suppose I intend to work my ideas out here.

I have straddled the underground punk scene and the trade union movement directly parallel to one another for many years and often times I’ve found myself comprehending one of those world’s because of my participation in the other.

The Charleston is an all ages punk venue in Bremerton, WA. I've booked and played many shows there over the years.

They were recently targeted by Patriot Front, a white nationalist cell that’s actively recruiting in Western, WA. They were formerly known as Vanguard America and changed their name and image to distance themselves from fellow white nationalist James Fields who drove his car into a crowd and murdered Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, VA. Most of their activity in Western Washington has been limited to banner drops that say "blood and soil" and stickers and wheat pasting that have really savvy and appealing graphic design with rhetoric against immigrants, and pro-patriot, pro-white, pro-ICE (immigration customs enforcement) messaging. Even though the language is abhorrent on their flyers, they are choosing somewhat innocuous ways to say what they’re saying. They are couching it into the rhetoric that contemporary right libertarians and Alt-right mouthpieces are saying or parroting Donald Trumps words. In other words, they are recruiting people, using surface level palatable ideas as an entry point to move them deeper into white supremacist organizing.

I’ve seen several people posting about the Patriot Front stickers at the Charleston and in general around the Gig Harbor, Bremerton, Port Orchard area.

We should not simplify this as an attack on the Charleston. It should not be interpreted solely as a threat because the Charleston is a stronghold of Anti-fascist punk. It’s also a stronghold of young, pissed off, predominantly white youth and that to me is why the Charleston (+ white suburbs and college campuses) are being targeted by Patriot Front.

If you look at the members of Atomwaffen Division, a white nationalist terrorist cell that is here in Washington, it’s comprised of underground punks, former metalcore, skinheads, metalheads. They are recruiting underground youth from the music scene.

The union movement has taught me a few things that I think apply here. We can not assume that we know someone’s politics or where they are at. All we know about punk is that we congregate in a venue on the weekends, and then people head back out into the world. People’s political development is nurtured by punk, but you can’t just assume that someone’s participation in a show or a scene can be counted on. Factor in that most punks are social weirdos and outcasts and in the internet era, form alot of their identity and social networks on the internet.

There are deeply reactionary forces at work in punk. Right-libertarianism seems to be a common place for 80s and 90s punks to end up. I say this because punk music as it currently exists does a piss poor job of keeping older punks engaged. (Or maybe punk just sucks to begin with)

"All lives matter", men’s rights & anti-feminist or anti-trans tropes are rampant in punk circles. Usually a small minority at shows and they don’t speak openly about this shit when femmes and queers are around, but thats what you’ll likely hear at a party or on a car ride to a show.

That shit right there, is how would-be “apolitical” punks get sucked into reactionary politics.

Hey kid... why is it a crime to be white? Your life matters.

Hey kid, why is it a crime to be a man? Why should you have to walk on egg shells around these feminists?

Hey kid, why is it a crime to be cis or straight?

Hey kid, when is someone going to take care of you instead of all these immigrants? You work hard don’t you?

Hey kid, why should you have to yield space for QTPOC at shows? Those people are fascist dictators.

Then factor in the typical lyrical content and sloganeering in hardcore and punk. Self reliance, self empowerment, self identity, strength, determination, do it yourself, blah blah blah. These themes can go several different directions. They can be liberating or they can be reactionary. There are entry points from extreme music to the national socialist black metal scene, misanthropic experimental noise, neofolk, RAC oi bands. A lot of national identity, racewar, fascist nonsense, but extreme underground music is a gateway.

Are we sure we want to take for granted where people in the punk scene are at? I’m just saying, we should be pumping zines out, putting our own anti-racist messaging, stickers and flyers out, holding discussions in the community about this kind of thing, not just so we are always prepared to deal with the real and violent threat of Nazis attacking our shows, but also to confront the reality that young punk kids are being recruited from our communities into actual paramilitary white nationalist cells.

We have to OUT-ORGANIZE reactionary forces. That requires strategy, discipline and doing the work.

I suppose I'm thinking like a union organizer here, where recently when confronted with national right to work legislation, my union went out to every job, every tugboat, ferry, dock and talked to members about the issues and the importance of the union and had members re-pledge to the union in anticipation of right wing anti-worker laws.

A Koch brothers front group called the Freedom Foundation has been trying to organize members away from their unions, So we had to develop and implement a strategy and because we did the work we out-organized them and retained our members.

Our unions are VOLUNTARY organizations of workers. We can never take that for granted and at all times must be revitalizing our movement through education, organizing and creating new ways for our fellow workers to participate meaningfully in the daily life of our union.

In the same way, our underground music scenes are held together by a sort of loose provisional code of respect. Some places like the Charleston have gone out of the way to enforce policies against rapists, racists, bigots etc etc. And that is sadly in most show spaces an exception and not the norm. So don’t take for granted that people in the music scene are on the level. I’m not saying there is a grand conspiracy. I’m saying actively reinforce the shared values of punk and always be engaging people and challenging them to think critically about the world around them.

Rhetoric about fighting nazis has limits. Get some actual punk education going about the issues. Get some punk action going against white nationalist organizing. Always be building community and bringing people in.

In unity and struggle,

Skiff

There is a humanitarian crisis in Tacoma, WA.

On April 4th, 2018, the tenants at Tacoma’s Tiki Apartments located at 1111 S. Highland received 2 different notices taped to their doors. The first notified them that the apartments were now being managed by a new owner group Allied Residential. The next informed them that the apartments were to be remodeled extensively and everyone would have to move. They split the apartments into 2 groups. Half the tenants were given 57 days to move and a $600 assistance fee if they surrendered their keys. The other half received a 26 day notice with a $900 assistance fee if they surrendered their keys.

I caught wind that the Tenants Union of Washington would be visiting the apartments and holding a meeting, so I grabbed some coffee and headed over.

A quick personal note. I have never been involved in tenant advocacy before so if I sound awkward, it is my first rodeo. I also don’t claim to be the worlds greatest at traversing language in a way that is not harmful to people with disabilities, so feel free to reach out and let me know how I could word something better. I would appreciate it.

I come out of the union movement and most of my organizing and participation is usually around union and worker specific issues. I understand housing and rent, landlords and capitalists, incarceration and bad credit and I easily connect the dots that this mass displacement of Tacoma community members and the larger housing crisis are bound to one another. They are workers issues and an attack on working class people. BUT, my initial thought was devoid of any broader analysis and was quite simply… I’m a longshoreman, I have a van, my coworkers and I move and stow cargo for a living. Maybe my union can go out and help people move who are experiencing crisis right now. What transpired was one of the most raw, human, community meetings I have ever attended.

Amy Tower from the Tenants Union was doing her best to facilitate. This was the first organizing meeting like this so navigating a process for communication was a challenge, especially with frustration and emotion boiling over, not to mention we were right next to Highway 16 so hearing was difficult. People were scared, angry, exhausted and wanted to be heard.

Probably 40 people participated. Mostly tenants, home care workers and some community members, groups and city agencies. Here are the external community folks that I noted as being present, may have missed a few…

- Associated Ministries

- United Way — South Sound 211

- Tenants Union of Washington State

- Veterans Housing Services?

- Community Healthcare

- International Longshore & Warehouse Union

- Democratic Socialists of America

- Pastor Eric Jackson — Bethlehem Baptist Church

- 3 University of Puget Sound students

- Komo News 4

- A staff aide for City Councilman Keith Blocker

- Tacoma Housing Authority

The meeting started with introductions. “Hi, I’m so and so from unit 106…” and so on. As new people came to the meeting things often got passionate and sidetracked and it was difficult to reign things back in or move the discussion in any liner direction but this really was a space to vent, to cry, to be heard and tell your story. That in itself may have been the most important thing that happened today as a whole community. We sat in a circle outside on various chairs that had been supplied from kitchens and living rooms.

I jotted down a lot of notes and a lot of quotes. I didn’t ask permission to share anyones names so I don’t intend to do so here. But I do want to sift through my chicken scratch and use bits and pieces to help paint a picture of the community that’s under attack.

- “…full time student with chronic back problems.” Also a social worker.

- Went to trade school and joined the union. Needs stability to overcome past debts and rebuild credit from past eviction.

- Recovering from a stroke. Movement in hands difficult. not able or prepared to move out.

- Elderly man with back problems. Lived there 15 years. Unsure how he will be able to pack his things.

- “…I’m exhausted and scared and I’m not afraid to cry about it.” Currently on a 3 year wait list with housing authority. Panic attacks and anxiety.

- “moved down from Seatac to get on my feet and had really hoped to stay here for awhile longer.”

- “I was living in a car 6 months ago but I got help and was able to get this apartment.”

- “was thinking about suicide last week.”

- “they waited till I paid my rent, then put this notice on my door.”

- “We’re Tiki Refugees!”

- “I just want people to know there is still sunshine in the sky.”

I was struck by this cross section of working class voices. Union members. Dollar store workers. Women of color. Students. Formerly incarcerated. Single moms. Single dads. Formerly homeless. Recovering drug addicts. Retirees. People with disabilities. People moving away from domestic violence situations. Some people expressed that this was going to be hard because everyone is experiencing this notice to vacate in different ways. While this is certainly true, it struck me that this also connects a lot of different communities and groups to this struggle. A possibility for a broad coalition that could come together to support these tenants and maybe launch a bigger conversation about housing, slumlords and development in Tacoma.

One thing that makes me sick, is one of the tenants told us Allied is offering new leases again to everyone after the remodel but with no guarantee of a timeline and at $500 more per month. The units are being “upgraded” to bring them up to rent levels in the booming Tacoma market.

The Tacoma Housing Authority, who does good work really put things in perspective. Their list for new applicants is CLOSED. Only 3 of the Tiki Tenants were already on the list and were on a 2–3 year wait for placement.

Community Healthcare had several patients at the Tiki Apartments and wanted to let people know they were monitoring the situation and would assist anyway they could. Veterans Housing and the Associated Ministries let people know that nobody needed to worry about purchasing packing materials and that boxes and other supplies were readily available. The tenants were informed that a gofundme had been set up already to help people with the transition. UPS students met with tenants and offered to help them move.

We all waited for the city council to arrive at 4:30 and they never showed up. An aide for Keith Blocker did attend and interviewed the Tenants Union and spoke with tenants. This prompted a conversation that if the city wasn’t going to come to the Tiki’s, then the Tiki’s were going to go to the city.

So what do we do? Here is all the concrete information I have at this time.

On Saturday, a group of tenants and community folks are going to doorbell and talk one on one with Tiki tenants and distribute flyers. We are going to make a note of accessibility needs and get a rough headcount for the council meeting on Tuesday.

Tuesday, April 24th @ 3:00pm There will be another community meeting at the Tiki Apartments.

We are organizing a caravan to get everyone down to the city council meeting. Sign in for speakers is at 5:00 PM. Meeting is at 5:30.

There was consensus on asking the council to pass an emergency ordinance blocking this notice to vacate. Essentially buying time to sort through this housing emergency. More discussion at 3:00 pm on Tuesday.

WANT TO HELP?

Join us on Tuesday. Listen to speakers. Hit the mic. Stand with the Tiki’s.

We are looking for a place to warehouse peoples personal things during this transition. Just the knowledge that there is an available place, would ease a lot of anxiety. Know someone in Tacoma that owns secure storage units and likes helping people?

Every dollar counts. We are looking for people, possibly from the building trades unions that could help touch up paint, fix doors and help get much needed deposits back for 59 apartment units. We anticipate Allied Rentals “nickle and diming” everyone, even though they are supposedly tearing everything out for a remodel.

You may also donate here to help with the transition for 100 displaced people:

https://www.gofundme.com/tiki-tenant-relief-fund

Thank you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Brian Skiffington is a rank and file member of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union.