A Lesson From Argentina’s Dirty War for Today
By Jay Schaffner
When my father immigrated to the United States when he was fourteen, his older sister was not allowed passage as part of the family visa, since in the year in that took to issue, she had gotten married. Anna and her husband Efraim were in a quandary. The year was 1921. The family were refugees from the Ukraine, which had been part of the old Russian empire. Efraim had been a conscript in the Czar’s army, from which he deserted, and now was wanted by the White Russians. He was then in the Red Army and in the Ukraine in 1921, he did not think there was any hope for the Red Army, so he also deserted.
Anna and Efraim boarded a ship in London for Buenos Aires, Argentina. My father would not see his sister for 54 years. During the period of Argentina’s Dirty War in the 1970s, when Argentina suffered under a murderous fascist dictatorship, my father and uncle convinced Anna to come to the United States. The first time they saw each other in 54 years. (Efraim had died a few years before.) They had written one another, about the weather, about their work, their families, nothing else, all in Yiddish. My father living under McCarthyism, fearing deportation because he was a naturalized citizen; Anna living under Peron and Peronism. They never expressed their views of the government.
Surprise, surprise, when they met after 54 years, they found that they were both members of the Communist Party in their respective countries. Anna was here two years, then she decided she was going back. She was confident that she would be OK. She lived another few years – the junta never came for her.
Years later Judith and I were in Buenos Aires. We went to Memorial Park, the monument dedicated to the 30,000 who were perished by the junta during the Dirty War. There were seven panels, for each of the seven years, organized alphabetically, with people’s ages. Nearly everyone was in their 20s, early 30s or a teenager. Anna was right, they left people her age alone.
My message – Those of us boomers – We have a vital role to play in organizing and fighting the MAGites march to fascism.
April 5, 2025 – Hands Off! – Remove, Reverse, Reclaim!
Remove Corrupt Politicians from Office
Reverse the Damage
Reclaim Our Democracy
One thousand local actions in every state, in every state capital, in large cities, in small cities and towns, organized by hundreds of local organizations and private citizens. Called to action by Indivisible, 50501 Movement and the Women’s March, and endorsed by more than 150 national and regional organizations.
Organizations as diverse as the AFT, NEA, PSC CUNY, SEIU, CWA, UAW, Greenpeace, Roots Action, Color of Change, Stand Up for Science, Consumer Federation of America, League of Women Voters answered the call; as did MoveOn, Working Families Party, Our Revolution, and Third Act.
For more information and to register for a local event, click here.
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How do we defeat the fascists? My Best Guess
By Fred Glass
I’m sure you’ve had the same conversation by now. A friend, family member or near-stranger calls and says, “Talk me down. I’m freaking out.”
I fielded two of these recently. The first caller, an old friend and comrade, is not a newbie. After a couple decades on the left, during which she was an activist in a teachers’ union and leader in various union campaigns, she upped her game, getting herself successively elected as a school board member, City Council member and finally County Superintendent of Public Instruction, overseeing seventeen school districts. She served two terms, staying faithful to the progressive ideals she started with.
After retiring she joined DSA and continued to stay active in electoral politics in a support role. In short, she is not naïve or easily rattled. But on this occasion, she was feeling completely unnerved and overwhelmed. Why? By paying too much attention to the news, chock full of horrifying stories about Trump, Musk, Vance, and the other elected and unelected fascists in their ugly campaign to destroy the helping powers of government and make life for the multiracial working class as miserable as possible.
She called because she was looking for human connection with a comrade whom she hoped could point to some rays of light amid the darkness. I told her that many people are resisting the fascist tide in many ways—in the courts, in all levels of government, and in the streets. New coalitions are being formed, and old ones resurrected. I mentioned the popup demonstration staged by FUN (the new federal workers network California Red reported on last issue) that I had attended.
I told her the mainstream media is certainly not helping here. Its underreporting of the resistance is spotty, often politically unsophisticated, and fearful of taking on Trump. If you pay too much attention to it, it will freak you out and/or wear you down quickly—part of the goal of a fascist regime. She got off the call telling me that she felt a bit better, and promised she would more carefully titrate her media consumption going forward.
In the middle of the call I saw my brother was trying to reach me, so I called him back—and found myself essentially returned to the same conversation, complicated by where he lives, a small conservative rural town. He said analogies with history (Germany 1933) were making him extremely nervous.
“… this part of the strategy requires state and local work around election protection, as well as a candidate selection process”
In both conversations (and others like them) I gave two pieces of advice: watch your political media intake carefully, and find a group of like-minded people with a common resistance perspective and shared activity to join with—being careful to take on only the amount of work that won’t burn you out over the long term. It also helps to have a best guess big picture to work with.
Best guess: Three lines of defense
I—and I’m not the only one—see three lines of defense and broad areas of activity between now and the 2026 elections (if we are still having them by then). The first, a focus on the courts, leaves out most of us for strategy discussion and direct participation, as legal action mostly requires being a lawyer. But we can certainly participate in support campaigns, including publicity, education and organizing. Since the highest court in the land is in the hands of Trump appointees, this first line of defense may only get us so far, with its main utility buying time. It may ultimately be more effective for education of the public than actual legal redress—especially if the fascists choose to ignore and sideline the courts. For what it’s worth we note that of the eighty suits filed against Trump he has won 12 and lost 22.
The second front is electoral—organize to overturn the thin majorities of Republicans (now a fully fascist party) in the House and Senate. It is critical that at least one house of Congress goes to the Democrats in order to block the worst actions of the trifecta held by Trump et. al. At this point there is no guarantee that there will be elections in 2026, or if there are, that they will be conducted fairly. So this part of the strategy requires state and local work around election protection, as well as a candidate selection process that makes certain no Trojan horses like Manchin or Sinema are among the Democrats running, and replacement of weak straws like Schumer among the current leadership. Then, of course, there’s actually electing candidates in 2026.
“… the final line of defense before full on dictatorship will be mass action. What might that look like?”
Alongside these two frontline areas it will be crucial to construct robust non-violent direct action (NVDA) wings of our movement. Sit-ins, marches, occupations, other forms of civil disobedience and face to face confrontations against the people moving the country to dictatorship will gain news coverage and, with successes, provide information and courage for the long term. Such activities will bring in new recruits. (They will also require savvy and well-prepared security. Depending on how things unfold the MAGA forces might well unleash their violent rabble on peaceful demonstrations.)
There is at best a two-year shelf life on these two lines of defense, which is why development of street support for them is so critical; the latter will likely become the key component of what follows. If lines one and two crumble the final line of defense before full on dictatorship will be mass action. What might that look like?
Here is where unions come into the center of the picture, and we must begin preparing now if there is to be any chance of success. Maximum impact on this far right government and oligarchy (which since January have become synonymous) will be earned when masses of workers refuse to work. The more that the consent of we the governed is withdrawn from the abuse we are suffering, the more leverage we will have.
Forward toward the…
I have never been one of those people who think it’s a good idea to call for a general strike to deal with a problem, even if the problem—say, the United States going to war under false pretenses—would deserve to be met with that solution. Why not? Because there are sound reasons why we’ve only seen around fifteen (depending on how you define them) citywide general strikes in nearly two hundred and fifty years of American history, and none since 1946. We’ve had exactly one national general strike, in 1886, which after achieving only limited success toward its goal of an eight-hour workday, brought on the first Red Scare.
Called by the young American Federation of Labor (AFL) and supported by large sections of the Knights of Labor on May 1, 1886, the strike was honored by some three hundred thousand workers (in a non-agricultural workforce of around twelve million). It eventuated over a period of years the establishment of International Workers Day on May 1 in nearly one hundred countries around the world, but not here, the country in which the events occurred that inspired the holiday. In the wake of that setback, the eight-hour day movement had to wait nearly half a century before it became the law of the land.
This historical record might not encourage hope for a general strike’s success today. Neither does the current state of organized labor, which is weaker in terms of workforce density than it has been in a century, and contrary to what is required for a general strike, fractured along several fault lines.
Don’t call: organize
But recent developments mean the political landscape is shifting. Many strikes erupted in 2022, the most important of which was the autoworkers’ victory over the Big 3. In its wake the UAW’s president Shawn Fain issued a challenge to the rest of the labor movement: line up your contract expiration dates for May 1, 2028 and prepare to act the way a united working class should act. No leader of a major national union has talked—concretely—like this for decades.
Although we have seen no citywide general strikes since 1946, in 2018 the “red state revolt” of education workers featured anti-austerity walkouts that in their scale were essentially general strikes of public education. Currently in California a number of major urban teacher unions have been meeting and planning to bring these ideas together: a common contract expiration date and united action when the contracts expire.
When Trump’s Department of Homeland Security announced earlier this month that it was cancelling TSA workers’ collective bargaining rights, Sara Nelson, head of the Association of Flight Attendants, responded that workers have “very few options but to join together to organize for a general strike”.
The wording is precise: not a call, abstractly, for a general strike, but to organize for one. This was the beauty of Fain’s call. Embedded in how he issued the call was how to make it happen. Even so, it will take a massive effort to pull it off. The plan was presented before Trump’s election with a three-and-a-half-year timeline—appropriate for scaling up this way. But given the speed at which the fascists are breaking government and completing their coup, we will probably need to move up the schedule. Is that possible?
“… unity of the forces of resistance to fascism and oligarchy is created by coalition building and …”
An extraordinary event, a general strike takes a rare combination of circumstances to bring it about, let alone win. Four preconditions are required: widespread anger among working people; a high degree of cooperation in a strong enough labor movement; union leaders confident enough in their level of organization that they are willing to stick their necks out and call for it to happen; and a spark or symbolic incident that crystallizes people’s willingness to act.
In light of the relatively small size of the labor movement today, coalition with other progressive organizations is crucial: finding common cause with community organizations representing working class, poor and otherwise marginalized constituencies, with international solidarity and anti-war movements, with NGOs of all types, will be important.
It is likely that building block actions will contribute along the way—sectoral strikes, demonstrations and occupations, with (best outcome) growing solidarity and tactical sophistication developing through successes and failures. Labor leaders will need to be convinced through this process that militancy is a practical matter. This will no doubt not be a linear process; more like a chaotic one, the lessons of which need to be considered on the fly, tested and retested. A general strike—the ultimate weapon of the working class—will result from intent, experience, reflection and a bit of luck.
Attitude counts
That’s as far as my best guess can take us. I’ll close by emphasizing that unity of the forces of resistance to fascism and oligarchy is created by coalition building and enabled by an attitude not always present in the culture of the left. We are far too prone to being alert to openings to argue, to disagree, split, stay in silos, and allow purity of principle to keep us divided. This is especially the case within organized labor. Seeking differences is relatively easy. We are less used to (and less good at) seeking openings to find our common interests and purpose and then acting together as one. But without that attitude of openness and unity-seeking, coalition building becomes far more difficult.
Fighting fascism is not a time and place for purity, single-issue politics or doing things the way we’ve always done them. It’s a time to set aside the narrow lens for a broad one. By all means continue to work on your social justice cause, the one that you have passionately cared about and pursued for years or decades, whatever that may be. But don’t let that divert you from the task of standing with others in the alliances that are now forming to build the strength necessary to defeat Trump, Musk and their fascist assault. We’re in this together or we’re not going to make it.
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These are not the polite petitions of victims pleading for a softer repression
By David Bacon
It’s been a few months since Donald Trump took power, after running a campaign soaked in anti-immigrant tirades and threats of mass deportation. The media have concentrated on these threats, but even progressive outlets paid little attention to the responses of the communities threatened. Yet marches and demonstrations have been widespread in Mexican communities.
These protests often take place not in urban centers, which typically receive more media attention, but in the Mexican barrios of the urban fringe. San Mateo is one – on the San Francisco Peninsula south of the city. Fort Bragg is another – a former mill and fishing town three hours north of San Francisco, where Mexican children are a majority in the small city’s schools.
” … demanding recognition as an essential people, belonging to this country’s fabric.
These are not the polite petitions of victims pleading for a softer repression. They are angry protests – people are out in the streets, not cowering behind closed doors. They carry signs with denunciations that declare “MAGA: Mexicans Ain’t Going Anywhere!” or “I drink my horchata warm because Fuck ICE!”
Young Mexican women – some born here, some who came as children, and others who just arrived – carry U.S. flags, not out of false patriotism, but demanding recognition as an essential people, belonging to this country’s fabric. The many, many Mexican flags have important meaning, and are no longer controversial as they were in the big marches of 2006. They speak of pride in Mexico as a country with a progressive government, in contrast to our reactionary one. They demand that the Mexican presence in this country be recognized as well, with rights and respect for Mexican people.
Not all the flags are Mexican or U.S., Hondurans carry their own, as do Salvadorans and Guatemalans. Some marchers wave the Philippines’ flag with a similar message – recognition for a community with a century’s history, starting with the imperial war that made their homeland a U.S. colony.
These marches with their flags and signs are harbingers of change. They’re not yet as large as the protests that took place in 2006, with its millions in the streets. But they are growing. They are overwhelmingly organized and led by young people and women, and they deserve recognition.
The benefit of organized resistance goes beyond fighting immigration raids. The movements of immigrant workers, their families and their communities have historically fought for deeper social change, beyond deportation defense. They’ve shown great persistence and strategic vision, as they fought threats of deportation while imagining a future of greater equality, working-class rights and social solidarity. That vision is as necessary to defeating repression as action in the streets.
In the flow of people crossing the border, “we see our families and coworkers, while this system only sees money,” says Rene Saucedo, an organizer for the Northern California Coalition for Just Immigration Reform, a grassroots immigrant rights organization that has organized marches and demonstrations supporting the Registry Bill. “So we have to fight for what we really need, and not just what we don’t want.”
Marchers carried signs promoting an alternative to deportation, the Registry Bill, HR 1511. This proposal would open legal status to an estimated 8 million people by allowing undocumented immigrants to apply for legal permanent residence. Some of the anti-deportation marchers were veterans of earlier marches last year and the year before, demanding the passage of this bill.
Stepping out is the precondition for mobilizing the support of a broader progressive community behind these protests. The photographs here can’t possibly encompass all the marches or show every aspect of them. Their purpose is to make visible the crucial role of the Mexican community in inspiring a fightback to Trump fascism across the board. They show who’s out there organizing and leading it. Their picket signs and flags graphically present their demands.
Because the new Trump regime is seizing the country’s databases, and has sophisticated tools to track those it targets, there are no individual captions for these photographs and no naming of the individuals in them. They were taken in San Mateo and Fort Bragg, California.
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Silicon Psychos and Pseudo-Proletarians
By Jeff Crosby
The battle brewing inside Trump’s fascist clown car
Trump’s for daylight savings. Trump’s against daylight savings. Trump’s against mail ballots. Trump’s for mail ballots. Trump’s against Electric Vehicles. Trump’s for Electric Vehicles. Trump’s for ending abortion. Trump’s for leaving it to the states. Trump created a beautiful vaccine. Trump’s against vaccines.
His Department of Government Efficiency (nicknamed by a clever wag Department of Oligarchs Getting Everything) will immediately trim 3 trillion dollars from the federal budget…or maybe 2 trillion, or maybe half a billion, which, by the way, would involve cutting student loans, Medicaid, food stamps, and federal workers’ pay. And oh yeah maybe some waste and fraud, too.
Some of this is just Trump’s endless whining. But it’s more than this, and it is important to understand how fascism ascends and maintains power: through spectacle, not policy. Nothing Trump commits to as a matter of policy means a damn thing, and never will—other than the goal of consolidation of capital and power in the search of profits.
Like totalitarians everywhere, Trump has systematically undermined the independence of the courts through intimidation and packing them with sycophants. Like all fascists, he bullies and humiliates the legislative branch of government, with the goal of making it irrelevant. He will threaten and even jail elements of the press who expose his and his cronies profiteering and personal degeneracy.
Bloodsuckers and Criminals
But layered over the consolidation of power and repression of popular movements is obfuscation, constant chaos, and a revolving clown show of bloodsuckers and criminals, clamoring for attention and favor.
Those of us who grew up watching war movies of goose-stepping Nazi soldiers and old newsreels of tens of thousands of Germans screaming for the blood of the Jews may still think of fascist movements as a unitary, disciplined social phenomena. Everyone is blond and square-jawed (at least the boys).
But fascist movements are not like that. David Broder in his book Mussolini’s Grandchildren delineates the conflicting trends in Italian Fascism, then and now: “eclectic ideological references, strategic outlooks and forms of activity, not to mention local particularities.” These include skinhead soccer thugs, anti-LBGTQ and anti-abortion fanatics, traditional anti-Semites, and even left fascists (or “roast-beef Nazis”) who wanted to socialize the means of production (lifted from Marx), and those who promoted an anti-neoliberal “communitarian” economic model.
Hitler’s murderous assault on his loyal SA stormtrooper brownshirts and other factions of the Nazi party in 1934 was another example: the Night of the Long Knives, which assassinated scores of Nazi leaders and arrested perhaps a thousand. The SA was useful to battle communists in the streets, but entertained notions of a redistribution of wealth, and had to be brought to heel so Hitler could consolidate the Prussian elites of the German military.
Musk and Bannon: Silicon Psychos and Pseudo-Proletarians
Some of the factional battles of the fascist swamp creatures do actually matter, not so much as policy disputes but as conflicts between elements of the fascist social base. At some point some choices may need to be made.
In the main ring, the bell sounds and the Silicon Psychos circle the Pseudo-Proletarians.
Musk and his crew are beyond what Minnesota Governor Walz called “weird”; they have moved on to bizarre. They truly believe they are an intellectual and even physical elite, a race above the rest of us, as coded in their DNA. Musk, with 11 or 12 or maybe 13 children by three wives and other blessed recipients of that DNA, uses them as props in the Oval Office, and has been described by a daughter as “cold,” “uncaring,” and “narcissistic.” He has been described by friends (and Bannon) as a sociopath, and as a “transhuman,” that is, someone who has the goal of “eternal life,”—in a physical, not spiritual sense. His co-parents have begged him to pay just a tiny bit of help and attention to his spawn.
Having survived as a failed businessman off of California state subsidies to rescue Tesla, he moved on to $38 billion dollars of government contracts. His DOGE crew dismantles anything that might regulate his brilliance. As someone who has run typical corporate dictatorships, he applies the same blunt force trauma to government, and his super-race self to governance, and revels in the glorious cruelty of it all.
One of my children lost employment this year due to a corporate buy-out and was given 36 hours to accept a new job with no idea of the responsibilities of benefits that came with that offer. Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric where I worked for decades, bragged about firing the “low performing” 10% of his employees every year. This is what it means to “run the government like a business,” with all its cruelty and yes, inefficiencies. Make the government a plaything of dictators, without regard to merit.
In the other corner are the Pseudo Proletarians led by Steve Bannon. Bannon is like the HR people who sit across from the union and tell you again and again about how they came from ten generations of coal miners. He neglects to mention his time at Goldman Sachs, and believes that you look a lot more working class if you haven’t showered in a month. He stole from a phony fund to which some willing fools donated their hard-earned dollars to build a border wall–which makes him a convicted criminal alongside Trump.
Musk bought his influence with $270 million of campaign lies about immigrants and trans folks, who have apparently moved a notch above gays and lesbians as a mortal threat to the workers. That’s the kind of moral exchange that Trump understands and is unlikely to want to jettison. Besides, Trump just gets off on power and money. In the short run, Musk will do untold damage. But Musk also has already become a lighting rod for resistance. People are actually more interested in counseling and health care for veterans and Medicaid, than in sending a billionaire on a tourist trip to Mars.
Bannon, on the other hand, represents an Ivy League cohort with an actual strategy to gain and maintain power and wealth. His blue-collar bullshit, along with that of his less clever co-thinkers like Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri and the clumsy Vice President Vance, will have more staying power. Hawley has even earned nervous criticism from the anti-union rat contractors Association of Building Contractors and the Right to Work Foundation for supporting things like mandatory contract arbitration. If you underestimate this, you have not listened to Bannon rant about “capitalists who always try to suppress wages.” He is harder on billionaires than most Democrats.
If, as I have argued before, the fight against fascism is essentially a fight for the working class, Bannon is the bigger problem.
Even for a sociopath like Musk, with zero capacity for self-reflection, attacking “capitalists” would be a bit of a stretch. If, as I have argued before, the fight against fascism is essentially a fight for the working class, Bannon is the bigger problem. Although Trump won the popular vote by 1.2% he acts as though he won with 90% of the vote. To consolidate sustainable control, he will need a strong social base in the working class majority. And resistance to Trump from more elite sections of society, from the other Tech Bros to the Washington Post to the ephemeral reasonable Republicans, has collapsed. Bannon offers a path to this working class base–Musk does not.
I am using here a broad and I think accurate definition of the working class as defined by “power–power at work and power in the larger society, rooted in our role in the production of goods and services, “in terms of relations to others.” Michael Zweig, in his definitive book The Working Class Majority: America’s Best Kept Secret, figures this comes to about 62% of us, despite all the changes in the types of work people do.
On Friday nights, if I am not busy with essential activities like going to a meeting or hanging out on the couch with my wife watching reruns of “Homicide” or “Call the Midwife,” I catch a beer with an old friend and fellow union guy named Fuzzy at a local bar, the Lido. We review the state of the world and get ready for the next round. “All Trump cares about is money,” says the Friday night Muse. “None of the rest of it means anything.”
Fuzzy is right, or maybe it’s money and the power that brings more money. The throughline beneath the Trump royal court conflicts, both serious and ridiculous, is power and money, and various strands of virulent white supremacy and patriarchy that will get them there. All the rest is fluff and distraction.
The good news is there is a united front building which can defeat the Silicon Psychos and the Pseudo Proletarians both. But that is for another column.
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Originally ran on Liberation Road Notes
Where’s The Heat, Where’s The Hammer
By Peter Olney
Worker-led and initiated organizing is certainly positive, but this emphasis is one piece of a much larger analytical framework for success in organizing.
A review of: We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big, by Eric Blanc (University of California Press, 2025)
We owe a debt of gratitude to Eric Blanc for his new book We Are the Union, and for his continuing outspoken activism in support of labor organizing. His earlier work, Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics (Verso Press, 2019) documented the 2018 upsurges in West Virginia, Arizona, and Oklahoma. Those battles, and the book itself, brought a breath of fresh air during the first Trump administration. Now Blanc joins a pantheon of other prognosticators who must grapple with what union revival looks like in the second and more ominous Trump administration.
In We Are the Union, Blanc draws on his 2018 experiences, as well as his observations of graduate student organizing, unionizing at Starbucks and other retail outlets, the organizing that revitalized The NewsGuild (CWA), and the 2022 surprise victory at the Staten Island Amazon Fulfillment Center. These led him to some broad conclusions for our movement:
“Let me be as clear as possible: this book’s argument is not that resources and staff are unimportant. It’s that they need to be deployed in a way that’s scalable. In other words, unionizing millions will require the absolute increase in staffing and financial support for organizing, but a relative decrease in the staffing density of most campaigns.” (p. 19)
In Chapter 3, Blanc presents some illustrative case studies of successful worker-led and -driven campaigns. The independent organizing drive at Burgerville brought five stores in the Pacific Northwest fast food chain into the Burgerville Workers Union, an affiliate of the Industrial Workers of the World. The Colectivo Collective organized coffee shops in the Wisconsin/Illinois area with help from the International Brotherhood of Electrical workers (IBEW), a traditional building trades craft union; they won their elections and joined IBEW locals.
The News Guild is a division of the Communications Workers of America. For many years the Guild has run an impressive Member Organizing Program that relies on the talent, outreach and passion of existing members to organize new members. All of these examples illustrate Blanc’s point that staffing ratios, while not unimportant, are not determinative. More staff does not guarantee victory: the involvement and initiative of workers themselves is key. And of course in the case of Colectivo and the Guild organizing, union leaders’ recognizing that fact and supporting worker-led organizing led to impressive victories.
To further bolster his argument for worker-to-worker or, in some cases, “do it yourself” unionism, Blanc describes changes in the terrain since the 1930s when labor experienced its modern upsurge in the US. Manufacturing is a smaller sector of working- class employment and logistics, while important, also does not occupy a huge percentage of the workforce. People don’t live near their workplaces, as they used to: there’s a lack of geographic concentrations in communities surrounding employment.
What gives workers power?
No sooner had I finished the last chapter in We Are the Union than I heard the results of the NLRB election at an Amazon fulfillment center in Garner, North Carolina. Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Employment (CAUSE), an independent community- based union, suffered a defeat: 829 workers voted for the union, 2447 against. This lopsided result was not unexpected and does not negate the excellent work done by CAUSE and the prospects for Amazon organizing, but it does shed some light on the limitation of the thesis that is the subtitle of the book, “How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big.”
Blanc correctly criticizes a formulaic and stilted staff drive approach to organizing, and proposes that “unlike the staff-heavy, 1 (staff) to 100 (worker) model defended above, only worker-to-worker unionism can leverage union resources in a way capable of scaling up working class power.” (page 63) But this observation is hardly revolutionary or at odds with most of the historic practice of organizing. My experience from over 50 years of organizing in venues from manufacturing and warehousing to janitorial confirms that a staff-intensive approach, while helpful, is not determinative.
But winning an organizing drive and getting to a contract does require “heat and hammer.” Workers must have a deep sense that something is wrong, and organizers—whether they be co-workers or union staff—need to be able to inspire and motivate workers to take action to address it. That’s the heat. The hammer is the source of power that will compel an employer to accede to worker demands; it can be the workers’ own collective actions, corporate leverage, labor and community solidarity, or some combination of these. With an understanding of “heat and hammer” in place, other considerations play an important role in successful organizing:
-Committee-building and staff expertise
An effective committee of workers takes leadership of the drive with skillful guidance from union staff. Such “skillful” guidance can often be deferring to the collective wisdom of workers—or being willing to challenge workers based on staff experience.
-Existing density or workplace power
A high percentage of the industry is unionized or the unionizing workers are linked to sectors and seams that are unionized.
-Community bases – subjective social dynamite
Workers are rooted in communities, often communities of color, with common histories and common language, and those communities have their backs.
While Blanc recognizes the power of a reformed United Auto Workers (UAW) and the dynamic “stand-up strike” conducted in fall 2023, he diminishes the importance of manufacturing and especially heavy manufacturing to building power for working people. The stand-up strike rocked the country precisely because it was in a key manufacturing sector in the second-largest manufacturing nation (after China) in the world. In 1955 there were half a million manufacturing jobs south of 57th Street in Manhattan, so radicals and intellectuals were much attuned to that sector. Now much of manufacturing has shifted out of the Midwest and Northeast and to the Southwest and Southeast. So social being determines social consciousness, and many on the Left do not see the continuing power and importance of manufacturing; it represents a smaller percentage of the workforce but is still key to power. When GM CEO Mary Barra cried to the media about the damage that the strike was doing and whined that her massive pay boosts are tied to performance, it was a clear sign the workers were rocking capitalism.
Logistics too remains key to working class power. Witness Donald Trump pandering to the International Longshoremen’s Association in their 2024 dispute with their largely foreign-based employers. Organized logistics workers have the power to choke off commerce and win significant concessions from capital. These sectors have far more impact on capital than workers organizing in most of the sectors that Blanc discusses. Certainly the organizing of grad students is impressive and important but these campaigns most often don’t confront the scorched-earth resistance of Amazon and its notorious union-busting law firm Littler Mendelsohn in Garner, North Carolina. “Amazon, implacably hostile to worker power, brought its full arsenal of union busting to RDU1,” veteran organizer and strategist Jonathan Rosenblum wrote in The Nation:
“After the union filed for an election last December, Amazon began staging around-the-clock anti-union meetings—brainwashing sessions, in which company lawyers and managers threatened workers with loss of their already-meager benefits, characterized bargaining as a futile process, and engaged in character assassination of CAUSE leaders. Amazon played the race and xenophobia cards to split the workforce: Managers told Latino workers that the union was just for Black workers, and they cynically highlighted the Trump deportation machine to further intimidate immigrant workers, who constitute a quarter or more of the RDU1 workforce.
“Managers roamed the warehouse floor and singled out union supporters for harassment. In break rooms, CAUSE organizers reported, the company played “Vote No” videos on a continuous loop. They posted huge “Vote No” banners throughout the workplace. Anti-union literature was plastered everywhere, even in the bathroom stalls, while pro-union literature was promptly taken down. In the week leading up to the vote, Amazon erected fencing around the warehouse, posted security guards, and even arrested an Amazon worker—a union leader from the JFK8 facility in Staten Island, New York, who had come down to North Carolina to campaign with CAUSE.”
Defeating this kind of anti-worker offensive from one of the largest companies in the history of capitalism will require the marshaling of multiple unions, community forces, friendly politicians, the power of solidarity links in the supply chain and of course the grit and imagination of the workers themselves.
Community is more than geography
Blanc’s equating geographic concentration with community misses the tremendous power of communities of color in organizing if they are properly tapped by culturally and linguistically competent organizers. The Justice for Janitors campaign in Los Angeles, which resulted in a gain of 6,000 new members for the Service Employees International Union, was fueled and powered by a largely Central American and Mexican workforce spread geographically throughout the LA basin. The 1992 drywall carpenters’ strike, which paralyzed the residential construction industry from Santa Barbara to San Diego, was led and organized by immigrants principally from one village in Guanajuato, Mexico. The epic battle resulted in 3,000 new workers joining the Carpenters Union. The concept of community needs to be imagined and therefore acted on far beyond the factory towns of the 1930s.
Find the hammer
The organizing at Starbucks and Amazon raises the question of what hammer will compel an employer to make real concessions. Indeed, the baristas have done some wonderful DIY organizing in spreading their movement through coordinated strikes and site-by-site National Labor Relations Board election victories at 500 out of Starbucks’ 9,000 outlets. But despite Starbucks’ willingness to sit down and negotiate, there is no deal in sight. What are the power points in the Starbucks operation that might help the workers get contracts? Perhaps the warehousing and storage facilities in key ports of entry for coffee beans in the US? Are there warehouses that house the trademark Starbucks merchandise? Where is the hammer and how can it be utilized?
Similarly, have Amazon’s choke points been identified and targeted? Could the inbound cross-docks that receive fully laden containers of imported Amazon merchandise be sensitive spots for labor action that might serve to leverage the whole production system? Again there are no easy answers, but union staff can complement and enhance workers’ organizing by doing the research necessary to identify these vulnerabilities and act on them.
Today only 6% of workers in the private sector in the US belong to unions. In 1955 this figure—the union density—was 35%. Yet and still there is power in certain sectors where union density is high, particularly in port, rail, air, and trucking. It takes money to make money: having density in certain sectors and having an organized and committed workforce can lead to victories in non-union sectors.
A forgotten variable in the dramatic Justice For Janitors victory in Los Angeles is the fact the union had control of the janitorial market in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, and had contracts with the same employers who were operating double-breasted non-union in Los Angeles. When the dramatic strike happened in June 1990 and the police brutally repressed a march in Century City, the carnage led SEIU leaders to threaten strikes in the major organized markets. So where we have power we need to organize and apply it to win in non-union sectors. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union represents all the major on-dock maritime logistics employers on the West Coast. But all of those employers have subsidiary inland warehousing, including facilities utilized by Amazon. Can we get organized to leverage that power and grow with thousands of new members?
Blanc’s emphasis on worker-led and initiated organizing is certainly positive, and as he points out, certain unions like the CWA have long employed this approach. But this emphasis is one piece of a much larger analytical framework for success in organizing. There are new conditions, but despite the reduction in the percent of workers in manufacturing and logistics, those remain power sectors of the economy. And organizing in those sectors will require the same community-, race- and culture-based approaches, enhanced by social media but not solely reliant on it.
We Are the Union gives us rich stories of worker-initiated organizing, in many cases leading to dramatic victories. But getting to scale power in sectors of the economy that, as in the past, can rock the foundations of capital, requires an analysis of “heat and hammer.”
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This piece first ran in Convergence – A Magazine of Radical Insights
Resisting the “Everything, Everywhere All at Once” Blitzkrieg
By Max Elbaum
MAGA’s fast-moving coup is upending the longstanding arrangements that have undergirded domestic politics and the US role in the world. What does this mean for the resistance, and how can the US Left maximize our impact?
No wonder all our heads are spinning. The foundations of the world and domestic order that everyone under 80 years old has grown up in have been under strain for two decades. Now they are being cracked wide open. A MAGA bloc that has meshed white Christian nationalists, right-wing populists, and a Musk-led “broligarchy” (now MAGA’s dominant faction) has captured the citadel of global power. And it is conducting a Constitution-scrapping coup to consolidate authoritarian rule and implement its take-over-everything-everywhere agenda.
It is urgent to get caught up with the breadth of the changes underway. Doing so requires the broad Left to sustain a difficult, deep-going analytic conversation even as we intensify our practical efforts to put roadblocks in MAGA’s path and build mass traction for a vision of a post-MAGA future that centers multiracial democracy.
In that spirit, I offer four initial theses as one potential entryway into the urgent political and strategic exploration this moment demands.
1. There is no going back.
The takeover of the US government that is currently underway aims to change the US political and economic system and shift the map of global politics in fundamental ways.
This moment of epochal change has not come out of the blue. The US-led neoliberal order with its forever wars, growing gap between the wealth of a few and the poverty of the many, and pathological inaction on climate change has lost its capacity to undergird social stability or political legitimacy. An exit from that order in one direction or another has been on the horizon since the 2008 financial crisis.
The acceleration of the system’s “polycrisis” intersects with a new phase of the 60-year backlash against the gains of the “long ‘60s” upsurge driven first and foremost by the Black-led Civil Rights Movement. The political bloc organized around this full-spectrum counter-offensive had gathered enough power by 2020 to prevent any accountability for its first attempt at a political coup. MAGA spent the years after January 6, 2021 building out their disinformation-demagogy infrastructure and making detailed plans for coup number two, which was to be activated whatever the vote count in the 2024 election and is now fully underway.
The system of “checks and balances” codified in the US Constitution is rapidly being replaced by the unchecked power of a “unitary executive,” sparking a Constitutional crisis. Every part of the Right’s “long march through the institutions” is now being taken to a new level. Under the banner of fighting DEI and an “immigrant invasion,” the post-Civil Rights Movement racial order is being replaced by a 21st-century version of Jim Crow. Women’s and LGBTQI+ rights are being curtailed and the very existence of trans people is being challenged via a theocracy-based gender-hierarchy regime. Government bodies and policies that put restrictions on capital, protect workers’ rights, or have a “safety net” component are being dispensed with, as are tens of thousands of federal workers.
Foreign policy is now officially based on the doctrine of might makes right. Multilateralism is out and the pretense of respecting international law (already shredded by Biden’s backing for genocide) is explicitly rejected. The groundwork is being laid for a global alliance of oligarchs, dictators, and fascists (Netanyahu, Putin, Orban, Modi, Trump et al). Using military threats, actual military force, and/or economic warfare (tariffs and sanctions), Washington will now take everything it can get from previous allies and targeted opponents alike.
Even if every administration move is stopped tomorrow there is no going back to the pre-MAGA world. The combination of continuing polycrisis and the damage Trump and Musk have already wrought means the only question is what comes next.
2. The range of possible near-term scenarios is very wide
A common view among militant anti-MAGA liberals is that over the course of Trump’s second term MAGA will transform the US government into something in between a liberal democracy and a dictatorship. Tweaking a term Victor Orban uses to describe his rule in Hungary—“illiberal democracy”—Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, writing in Foreign Affairs, describe the arrangement to come as “competitive authoritarianism.” Chris Cillizza summarizes their view this way:
“What lies ahead is not fascist or single-party dictatorship but competitive authoritarianism—a system in which parties compete in elections but the incumbent’s abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition… Opposition forces are legal and aboveground, and they contest seriously for power. Elections are often fiercely contested… And once in a while, incumbents lose.”
Something like that could certainly be in the cards. But other scenarios—most worse, but some better—are possible over the next two to four years as well.
Worse scenarios are possible because predictions about a shift to “competitive authoritarianism” assume this transition takes place without economic crises, major wars (tariff protectionism has often spurred both of those), large-scale popular upheavals, and/or a serious uptick in organized and semi-organized violence. There is no reason at all to adopt that assumption. On the contrary, the degree of shock (with or without awe) Trump and Musk are applying to a Constitutional system that has lasted more than 200 years and to a global economic and political order which has the US at its very center makes some kind of out-of-control catastrophe quite likely.
And in light of Trump’s “I am your retribution” pledge, his pardon of all January 6 defendants, and the cheers from the MAGA base for dehumanizing vitriol directed at immigrants, trans people, Palestinians, Marxists, and “libtards,” assuming that some kind of new state-sanctioned, lynch-mob enforced order “can’t happen here” is simply a manifestation of denial. Descent into a system closer to outright fascism (“techno” or otherwise), may not be the most likely outcome of Trump’s second term, but it cannot be ruled out.
On the other hand, with or without economic crisis or war, the MAGA project has vulnerabilities. It could stall and open the door for a project taking the country in a progressive direction.
The coalition that propelled the GOP to victory in 2024 has numerous parts and Trump’s governing program—as opposed to his campaign messaging—does not appeal to all of them. The biggest divide is between those people, largely working-class, who voted for Trump because they thought he would address their economic hardship, and the billionaires who want more wealth and profit for themselves. With Musk in the lead, Trump 2.0 has governed so far solely in the interests of the latter.
Add to that the fact that even if all components of the MAGA 2024 coalition stay on board, they do not constitute a majority of the US people. Trump won at the ballot box because a large section of the anti-MAGA majority was either uninspired by or downright alienated from the Democratic campaign and stayed home.
Also, it matters that for all his skills as a demagogue, Trump remains an unpredictable narcissist who surrounds himself with yes-men. The potential for over-reach and strategic stupidity are heightened in a movement with that kind of leader.
Can these factors be transformed from vulnerabilities into a political force that blocks MAGA’s agenda? That depends on the scope and depth of the anti-MAGA resistance.
3. In the resistance, spread courage, be flexible, look for fresh leadership
After a slow start compared to 2016, MAGA’s across-the-board assault has begun to spark an across-the-board resistance. Organizations and leaders that fought hard to stop MAGA before last November have pivoted and are throwing down. Bernie is on a nationwide “Fighting Oligarchy” tour targeting working-class districts and AOC is threatened with arrest by Trump’s “border czar” for providing “know your rights” information to immigrants. The Working Families Party and Justice Democrats are recruiting and training working-class people to run for office in 2026.
Grassroots groups in every targeted constituency (United We Dream, “Rise Up for Trans Youth,” and hundreds more) are organizing their bases and pressuring Democratic Party leaders and electeds to join the fight. Most recently, criticism of the Democratic spokesperson’s weak-tea response to Trump’s lie-and hate-filled State of My Kingdom address – and outrage at the ten Democrats who voted to censure Texas Rep. Al Green – bubbled up from the grassroots. And progressives offered alternatives: newly elected Rep. Latifah Simon gave a far different response to Trump on behalf of the Working Families Party, calling for Democrats to fight back with a progressive political agenda. And a broad spectrum of Black activists and leaders spoke in the State of the People 24-hour program under the banner of “We refuse to let the lies go unchecked.”
In the labor movement, resistance actions are coming from the AFL-CIO leadership (including the “The Department of People Who Work for a Living” initiative) and from rank-and-file initiative (the newly formed Federal Unionists Network (FUN)). Choose Democracy has published “What can I do to fight this coup?” a resource based on their study of anti-authoritarian organizing worldwide.
And it’s not only pre-existing organizations that are engaging in the fray. Like the FUN network above and #50501, new organizations are springing up. And like the 19,000 students in the Fresno and Madera Unified School Districts in California’s Central Valley who stayed out of school on the national “Day Without Immigrants” protests Feb. 3, new people are stepping into activist and leadership roles.
Practical priority number one for the Left is to bring everything we have to the battles underway: our energy and resources; our proposals for action; our willingness to take risks; our commitment to “an injury to one is an injury to all” as a guide to action. At the same time, to maximize our contribution we also need to understand our limitations. The political forces from Bernie leftward are not strong enough to halt the MAGA offensive on our own. A far broader anti-MAGA coalition is needed, as are new strategies and tactics for this new period.
Those new approaches will not all be generated within our current ranks. The resistance movement is already broad and diverse, it will (and must!) become even more so, which means no single strategy, however insightful, will guide all its parts. Polling shows majorities disapprove of Trump and Musk and oppose bedrock elements of their agenda, but it’s hard to predict what issue will turn public opinion into activity that imposes political consequences on MAGA.
Translating this combination of urgency and a sense of proportion into action can make us most effective at playing the roles we are best equipped to play.
We can bring a measure of leadership to each battlefront but should be alert to leadership potential in people first stepping forward from working-class and specially oppressed constituencies, and nurture that potential.
We can model courage, amplify it when it is displayed, and recognize that courage will also be demonstrated by some people that surprise us.
We need to build out the on-ramps into our organizations and networks and lean toward boldness in bringing people who get on those ramps into leadership positions.
Overall, we can think of ourselves as one of the smaller wheels that move bigger wheels, and act accordingly.
4. Aim for a leap in political and operational unity
The Left has an opportunity to make not just an important but a unique contribution to the broad resistance by offering a positive, motivating, and convincingly realistic vision of a post-MAGA-in-power society .
Gaining mass traction for such a vision is important for two reasons. First, it strengthens the resistance. We learned from the 2024 election that opposition to MAGA is not enough to move a large portion of the anti-MAGA majority into action; a positive vision of what MAGA’s opponents are fighting for is required. Two, if and when MAGA is pushed back, in the absence of a progressive force with a credible post-MAGA vision, some variant of the “back to the pre-MAGA status quo” perspective that characterizes a big section of the Democratic Party leadership will win out. That kind of arrangement will not address the needs of the US majority, and leaves the door open for MAGA to posture again as an agent of positive change and for future elections to look a lot more like 2024 than 2020.
Over the last several years, a broad swath of US radicals have gravitated toward advocacy of participating in a broad electoral front against MAGA while working to increase the independent strength of social justice organizations. (Convergence formulates this as “Block and Build.”) When describing the political and economic arrangement this current is fighting for, the most common approach as of now is to advocate for a robust political democracy that is anchored in the interests and needs of the multiracial working class. And in organizational terms, since January 20 there has been a leap in interaction between groups in or close to this political ballpark, and an increased measure of cooperation in mass education, message coordination, and practical organizing work.
Building on that progress, leaps forward both on the political/strategic and operational/organizational levels are now required.
The vision of a multiracial working-class democracy, and the strategy to gain enough governing power to put the country on that path, must be fleshed out and made more concrete. The key issues that process will need to address include:
- Getting specific about different strategies for power at the local, state and federal levels, and in red, blue and purple areas;
- Deepening both components of an inside/outside strategy—fighting inside government and Democratic Party structures and engaging in disruption and mass non-compliance outside those structures;
- Understanding the ways in which today’s fights around gender and patriarchy are central to the MAGA vs. anti-MAGA conflict;
- Figuring out how to win or “win back” sectors of the Black, Latino/a and Asian-American constituencies that have drifted toward MAGA;
- And, since without an internationalist vision any progressive movement in the US is vulnerable to an imperial version of patriotism, developing our foreign policy vision in today’s rapidly changing global landscape.
As the Left takes up these and other matters, I think drawing on the framework of fighting for a Third Reconstruction can be of great help. This framework roots us in US history, sheds significant light on the ways democratic and class struggle intersect and interweave and highlights the driving-force role of the Black working class. The Third Reconstruction outlook is already part of Left discussion (See Peniel E. Joseph, Rev. William Barber, Carl Davidson and Bill Fletcher, Jr., and my own writing) and propels those who take it up to look (or look again) at the work of W.E.B. Dubois, which is valuable even beyond its bearing on this framework.
Even the best radical vision and strategy needs to be offered by a force embedded in the conditions and struggles of workers and the oppressed. And here too there is a foundation to build on. Increasingly, both veteran and new activists agree that skilled paid staffs alone are insufficient for building a durable working-class movement. What’s needed is a large cohort of activists who are embedded in the workplaces, neighborhoods, and cultural and religious institutions of working-class life and act as catalysts to unleash the energy, combativeness, and all-around political leadership potential of those with whom they share the conditions of life. Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) makes a large contribution here and could make a bigger one if the organization shed its political ambivalence—in some factions downright opposition—toward positioning itself solidly within the broad anti-MAGA front and seeing the strengthening of the front’s progressive wing (not just its socialist component) as a prime strategic task.
Facing a common threat, organizations building bases among workers and the oppressed are breaking out of silos. Cross-organizational dialogue and cooperation are on the rise even as outward-facing activity is intensifying.
As this process moves forward, a few centers of gravity are emerging for forces that oppose MAGA and center working-class interests. Two show particular promise of being able to bring together large portions of today’s progressive trend, forging a political force whose participants range from elected officials to scholars, podcasters, professional organizers, and grassroots activists.
One is the Working Families Party, which has built working alliances on the national level with MoveOn, Indivisible, Public Citizen, Seed the Vote, the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) and Showing Up for Racial Justice and with numerous state-based power building organizations in the states where it has active operations. WFP has thrown down hard for Palestinian rights and was the initiator of the largest post-election mass call on Zoom with 150,000 participants registered and 200 endorsing organizations.
The second is the motion in the labor movement generated by UAW President Shawn Fain’s call for unions to align contract expiration dates for May 1, 2028 and prepare for a nationwide strike on that date. That initiative taps into the new militancy bubbling up from rank-and-file workers and the growing support for unions fighting for the interests not only of their members but of the working class as a whole, manifested especially in the work of Bargaining for the Common Good.
The political landscape is changing fast. Perhaps other formations with comparable savvy and reach will emerge. The key point is that even as we go all-out in day-to-day resistance to the MAGA blitzkrieg, we need to be investing in an effort that can spearhead the development of a united radical force where the whole adds up to more than the sum of its parts.
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Most recently, criticism of the Democratic spokesperson’s weak-tea response to Trump’s lie-and hate-filled State of My Kingdom address – and outrage at the ten Democrats who voted to censure Texas Rep. Al Green – bubbled up from the grassroots. And progressives offered alternatives: newly elected Rep. Latifah Simon gave a far different response to Trump on behalf of the Working Families Party, calling for Democrats to fight back with a progressive political agenda. And a broad spectrum of Black activists and leaders spoke in the State of the People 24-hour program under the banner of “We refuse to let the lies go unchecked.”
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A Note on Resistance
By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
The people of the USA are experiencing the equivalent of an invasion. The “enemy” is moving quickly, taking few prisoners, and aims to annihilate all opposition. It is stoking fear even though it represents, in this case, only a minority of the U.S. population. We had months, if not years, to prepare for this “invasion,” yet too many good activists and thinkers either believed that the return of the prince of darkness —and his MAGA followers — would never happen or that the threats inherent in this movement were simply campaign rhetoric. Worse yet were those who thought that sitting out the November 2024 election was an acceptable response to an unacceptable situation.
The response to the MAGA assault by the Democratic Party establishment has been mixed, at best. The “Squad,” of course, champions resistance, as do forces aligned with Sen. Bernie Sanders. Democratic state attorneys general are planning various important legal strategies. Many organizations ranging from the Working Families Party to the Sierra Club to the Service Employees International Union have been engaged in struggle against the attacks. That said, it is not enough.
Resistance to an “invasion” necessitates strategic coordination. It necessitates a cold assessment of our opponents, including both their strengths and weaknesses. It also necessitates a self-assessment and the recognition that this is an asymmetric fight. As such, we cannot combat our opponents using the same approach or resources they possess.
What needs to be done? Here are a few suggestions:
Noncooperation: Do not give in to the impulse towards so-called bipartisanship; “…they go low, we go high…”; and fatalism. Not only was the November 2024 election a very close call, but the anti-MAGA forces remain the majority and the antics of the prince of darkness seem to be taking a toll. Resist!
Join or build organizations that are resisting: Standing4democracy.org, a group that I cofounded, is an example of an effort to focus on building a force among workers to combat the far Right and create broader coalitions to not only defeat the attacks but lay the foundation for a counter-assault. Get involved in an organization that is actually doing something.
The activities of any one individual organization are not enough: There are countless organizations that are doing great work in the resistance, but they are largely doing it on their own or, at best, in some level of interaction with elected officials. To defeat the MAGA “invasion” we need strategic coordination. For instance, unions and other organizations need to be uniting together to get relief assistance to Los Angeles and the Southeast to help in the recovery from the natural disasters. The Republicans are attempting to put conditions on that assistance. NO!! We need to have activities in every state supporting assistance. This cannot be done by one organization. We must join together.
Begin thinking about and drafting a program for the “Third Reconstruction”: The term “Third Reconstruction” has emerged over the last 20+ years to signify the need for radical structural reforms that address social and economic injustices and the environmental catastrophe. Defeating MAGA necessitates having a program that not only points out the irrationalism of MAGA, but also points us in the direction of progress and rebirth.
There is no longer any time for mourning. The time now is for inspiration, resistance, courage and vision.
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This post originally ran on Progressive Hub
On National Day of Action
By Steve Early
Federal Union Rank-and-Filers Protest Musk & Challenge Their Own Leaders
In Washington, D.C., there’s now a ritual formula for labor gatherings outside a government office to protest the latest depredations of the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) created by President Trump.
Paid staffers from national union headquarters and the AFL-CIO arrive with neatly printed signs and approved messages. Worried federal workers mill about on their lunch hour, share the latest rumors, and hold the signs. PR consultants buttonhole the press and hand out media advisories. Often the news of day involves another lawsuit being filed against DOGE.
Top union officials and their putative friends on Capitol Hill show up to deliver fiery rally rhetoric or leave statements of support in their wake. In some cases, these are Senate Democrats who just voted to confirm the Trump cabinet member now working with DOGE to downsize their own agency.
Inside the Beltway, the epi-center of astro-turf organizing, everyone is most comfortable training their fire on the evil genius of Elon Musk. Not busy enough running Tesla, Starlink, SpaceX, and X, and having his 14th child with an employee at Neuralink, the world’s richest man is now directing Trump’s multi-faceted assault on federal workers and the services they provide.
No United Front?
Despite representing hundreds of thousands of those embattled workers around the country, none of the AFL-CIO affiliates representing them have come together and developed a multi-union plan for taking the fight against Musk, DOGE, and Trump to the grassroots level.
“… with no national union encouragement or resources, they called for a nation-wide “day of action” to resist federal funding freezes, the elimination of 200,000 jobs, the disruption of vital programs”
As VA occupational therapist Mark Smith explains politely, that’s because federal employee unions are “a bit siloed.” Instead of looking for ways to unite all workers in the federal sector, their top officials and staff like to promote their own organizational brand, cultivate separate connections to politicians and agency managers, and focus on their particular bargaining units, which too often have low membership and weak locals.
To save money, some national unions did agree recently to share the mounting cost of DOGE-related litigation. But a month ago, 39-year old Smith and other younger local union leaders in the Federal Unionist Network (FUN) decided this limited form of cooperation was not good enough to meet the challenges of the moment.
So, with no national union encouragement or resources, they called for a nation-wide “day of action” to resist federal funding freezes, the elimination of 200,000 jobs, the disruption of vital programs, and their further privatization by Trump.
Their email blast was issued in the name of the “nurses, scientists, park rangers, protectors of our country, researchers, and attorneys who serve our communities every day.” As the FUN organizers reassured their often angry but frightened co-workers, “If we speak out together, we can make it clear to the public why Trump’s attack on our jobs is designed to make all of our lives worse…”
A Rank-and-File Initiative
The results of that rank-and-file initiative to “save our services and build workplace solidarity were on display last Wednesday, Feb. 19– in more than 35 locations across the nation.
Federal workers, along with labor and community allies, responded to FUN’s appeal in Portland and Seattle, Boise and Boulder, Philadelphia and Baltimore, Chattanooga and Boston, Troy, NY and NYC, where 1,000 protestors gathered in Lower Manhattan’s Foley Square to hear speakers like longtime VA defender, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Here in San Francisco, outside the (now much protested) Tesla dealer at the corner of Van Ness and O’Farrell, a crowd of 300 assembled, including members of National Federation of Federal Employees Local 1, which elected Smith its president two years ago.
They were joined by local staffers of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Board, the Park Service, Army Corps of Engineers, National Labor Relations Board, the General Services and Social Security Administrations, and the federal Departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development.
As CFPB attorney Hai Binh Nguyen told The Chronicle, she was there to protest a stop work order issued earlier this month, which has stalled investigations of consumer fraud cases. “I think it’s really rare, “she said, “that we get to be in a place that has a really amazing mission. And our mission is to make the market fair and protect everyday consumers.”
Stop The Coup
Members of the crowd chanted, cheered, and hoisted banners and placards that were home-made and hand-lettered, rather than union issued. One sign-waver called for “National Parks, Not Oilfields,” while another wanted “No Muskrats in Our VA Hospital.” Other personal demands included: “Stop the Coup,” “Protect Our Clean Air Act,” “Fire and/or Deport Musk!” and “Keep Your DOGE off My CFPB!”
The message from a yoga practitioner was simply “Down DOG-e.” Another placard read: “Federal Workers: Here to Serve, Not Afraid and Not Leaving,” which pretty well summed up the sentiment of the crowd.
In his speech to the group, Smith reminded everyone of who does the real work of the federal government. “I’ve never seen a billionaire carry the mail,” he said “I’ve never seen a billionaire put out a forest fire. I’ve never seen a billionaire make sure people get their Social Security checks on time. I’ve never seen a billionaire answer a phone call from a suicidal veteran on the VA crisis line.”
Another speaker, Army veteran and VA patient Ricardo Ortiz recalled the role played by working-class vets in the long campaign to create a healthcare system, based on public provision of care, not for-profit medical treatment. That achievement is now at risk, he warned, because of bi-partisan efforts to privatize the VA-run Veterans Health Administration.
Belated Backing
On the eve of FUN’s after-work events and coordinated workplace solidarity activities, the DC-based headquarters of NFFE, the National Treasury Employees, and the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) finally endorsed the “day of action.” The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest federal worker union, and National Nurses United (NNU), which represents 15,000 VA nurses—never officially embraced this bottom up effort.
For their part, FUN organizers like Smith in San Francisco and Colin Smalley, an Army Corps of Engineers geologist who leads IFPTE Local 777 Chicago, began making contact, via a WhatsApp chat, with other like-minded workers prior to last year’s national Labor Notes conference.
At that April, 2024 meeting of 5,000 union activists, they conferred, face-to-face, with federal employees from throughout the U.S. They also compared notes with trade unionists from abroad who, as Smalley recalls, were already dealing with “autocratic and, at times, even fascist regimes, which exploit public employees as scapegoats.”
Since Trump’s re-election, locals from multiple federal employee unions, who are doing membership education and mobilization, report rapid growth. At the VA Medical Center on Clement St., NFFE Local 1 holds weekly “lunch and learns” to keep its new dues payers fully informed about their contract rights and how to use them in current and past fights with VA headquarters and local management.
It’s definitely not fun to be a federal worker these days. But thanks to this latest example of Labor Notes-backed rank-and-file networking, many DOGE targets are not waiting, any longer, for a fight-back plan, handed down from above. Instead, they’re developing one of the own and, in the process, pressuring the labor officialdom in Washington to get on board (and not just at the last minute).
“Everybody right now needs to become an organizer,” says FUN supporter Chris Dols, president of IFTPE Local 98 in New York City. “If you’re a federal employee and you don’t know what your union is, get involved with the FUN, we’ll help you figure it out. If you don’t have a union, we’ll help you learn how to organize one.”
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Resisting Trump
By Mike Miller
“How do we resist Trump’s doings and at the same time build something that can reverse a point in American politics that has been a long-time coming.“
Evidently, little of what President Biden did on the economic front actually materialized as jobs on the ground, so the actual political beneficiary of when people are hired will be Trump because he inherits it. This fact alone makes it difficult to evaluate whether sheer “economism” —i.e. jobs, even good ones, or income (guaranteed annual wage) are sufficient for a program to defeat Trump, and more generally to defeat the right.
Some History
We would do well to recall that the turn toward the right started in the mid-1960s with white working class voters’ support for George Wallace, and grew stronger especially after the assassination of Robert Kennedy. Friends of mine who worked in the Appalachian Volunteers at the time told me how RFK supporters became Wallace supporters in the time it takes to blink an eye. We cannot understand that shift by looking only at the economy.
On his campaign ’72, “One of [Wallace’s] supporters, who was horrified [at his rabid use of racism in the campaign], came up to him after his speech and said, ‘George, why are you doing this?’” recalls Wallace biographer Dan Carter. “And Wallace, sadly he thought, said, ‘You know, I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened.’” “I’ll never be out nggrd again” he concluded after this earlier campaign in which he was a racial “moderate”.
It’s worthwhile remembering that in the 1964 Democratic primary in Wisconsin he got upward of 30% of the vote; in his 1968 American Independent Party third party run his votes were 20% or more in Oregon, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania; 30% or more in West Virginia Maryland, and topped 40% in Indiana, Tennessee, North Carolina and Florida; and in the 1972 Democratic primary topped 20% in Oregon, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Tennessee and North Carolina. In “white ethnic” working class precincts in the suburbs of Detroit, it was over 50%.
Further, around the same time (1966) Ronald Reagan defeated the previously popular Governor Pat Brown of whom the Los Angeles Times recalled in 1996 “was a third generation Californian whose main ambition was not higher office, but to be a great governor for his native state. He succeeded.
“Brown turned California from a Republican to Democratic State with his major programs and public expenditures, so you can’t even say, ‘Too little, too late.’ He was on-time.
“While voters may not have appreciated his greatness 30 years ago, millions probably do today. And historians certainly will tomorrow.”
The point isn’t to enter an “either/or” question (economics versus ______) but a “when/where/why” one. When are questions of economic welfare of sufficient electoral saliency to overcome various issues raised by those who well understand, and are quite ready to use, the strategy of “divide and conquer”.
If Not Economics, Then What?
New York Times columnist David Brooks goes too far in the opposite direction: “The Biden administration was built on the theory that if you redistribute huge amounts of money to people and places left behind, they will return to the Democratic fold. It didn’t happen because you can’t use money to solve a problem primarily about recognition and respect.” (NYT 1/19/25).
If we could answer affirmatively these questions, we would know a lot more:
1: Did Biden’s program actually create jobs on the ground? If so, where? How many? Paying what, with what benefits?, etc?
2: Are the deliverers of the message that “good jobs are coming” believable? Or are they “elitists” who now occupy most key leadership positions in the Democratic Party, and aren’t trusted by blue collar workers?
3: When, and under what conditions, is economic improvement, especially well-paying union jobs, sufficient? Where and when in the past has it overcome general alienation from the system and distrust of its everyday politicians? When does such alienation run so deep that it overrides material interests? When does it overcome racial and other prejudices?
4: Most basically, what are the facts on the ground for individuals, families, friends, neighbors and other associates? Whatever the GNP might be, are their lives better? Are there more-or-less of them living paycheck to paycheck? And even if it’s a close call, do pessimistic and painful stories travel farther and faster than do optimistic and hopeful ones?
The Turn To the Right Didn’t Just Start
We would learn a lot by carefully examining the shift to Wallace in Appalachia after the assassination of Robert Kennedy.
Let’s look further back. FDR’s speeches (i.e. “messaging”) and programs were a big part of the New Deal’s success. He assured the American people that things were going to get better, that he was on their side against the plutocrats, and that he could win politically in Congress. And he delivered, if not enough at least enough for the electorate in 1936, 1940 and 1944 to give him four more years.
What’s the difference between then and now? The barrier of race among working class people has been broken in unions that were intentional about getting workers to put class above race, and where relationships among those workers contributed to mutual respect. But not always.
What leads to those different outcomes in roughly similar circumstances? The truth is we don’t fully know.
There is no equivalent to the CIO or Popular Front “at the base” to make Presidential (or any other Democrat’s) policies or promises believable. Without rebuilding unions that don’t vigorously oppose racial/ethnic and other forms of discrimination; without a more generally vital civil society, we are not in a position to win because to win now requires big money for media, and that money comes from wealthy people who are pursuing their agendas, not from the bottom up.
The challenge is, “How do we resist Trump’s doings and at the same time build something that can reverse a point in American politics that has been a long-time coming.
Maybe that requires parallel strategies. If so, these considerations are central:
— Those engaged in direct action need to carefully balance the need for militancy required to express their anger at injustice with the need to communicate with those who don’t share that anger, or don’t share it that militantly.
— Those engaged in the more careful building for the long-haul processes have to persuade the militants to be more careful lest their action create a bigger counter-reaction. I believe we are dealing with the absence of such care in the recent past.
In 1961/62 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee field secretary Bob Moses traveled to Mississippi to meet an underground network of civil rights leaders who had worked with Ella Baker when she was Director of Branches for the NAACP. While they admired the courage of the “sit-ins” and “freedom rides,” what they really were interested in was the right to vote.
At the August, 1961 SNCC staff meeting, the issue almost split the organization. Ella Baker, who attended but rarely spoke at such gatherings, interceded with the question, “Why not both?” The problem was resolved. After a period in which SNCC had two divisions, it became apparent that voter registration work was as likely to get people thrown in prison as sit-ins or freedom rides.
Increasingly, SNCC became an organization of organizers building local “units” of Black people power across the Deep South. At the same time it is worth noting that SNCC couldn’t do both in the same place at the same time. That was tried in McComb. It frightened local Black adults, who backed away from the voter registration program.
The Amazon “plants” or “salts” are analogous to the voter registration people in SNCC. Protest action will inevitably go on. At the same time, some of the protestors or others who support the causes for protest need to dig deep roots in poor-to-middle class communities of all colors and build people power organizations that have the capacity to move from protest to power.
…
TO JANE FROM GENE
By Gene Bruskin
“My dear friend and comrade, Gene Bruskin, presented a beautiful poetic tribute to Jane McAlevey at her memorial on February 18th in NYC. Supporters and comrades there to celebrate and honor her included many Amazon workers. Jane’s teachings and training will live on with workers worldwide.” Peter Olney
Hey Jane
Good to talk with you again
I just wanted to say a few things
You were my friend
Comrade
Inspiration
Teacher
Sister
Sometime partner in crime
I remember visiting you in your tiny cabin in Marin
And meeting your beloved horse
And hearing your story about how getting a horse as a little girl saved your spirit after your mom died
I want to thank that horse
One of my finest memories of you
Was when you decided to include the Justice@Smthfield campaign
In No Shortcuts
And indeed, I watched you work on this project
Taking NO shortcuts
As you documented, the successful 15-year Smithfield worker struggle for a union
You always liked winning.
You said-I am coming to DC to see you on this
Bring up Smithfield workers to meet with me
I blanched
That is not easy, Jane-they live 5 hours south
And they’re working, you know
I need to talk to the workers, you said
So, I made it happen
Then you said,
“Get me Every single relevant Document”
Really, all I asked?
15 years’ worth?
This is only one chapter
Yes, I mean every document, you insisted
Leaflets, planning documents, videos, legal documents-everything
And you read them all, including all the sealed court documents that I took when leaving UFCW
And you asked me question after question, detail after detail and sent me draft after draft
And you created the Justice@Smithfield chapter for No Shortcuts
A beautiful combination of attention to both vision and detail
Which has been gobbled up by the many thousands of mostly young workers and organizers hungry for knowledge
I was proud to play a part
Of the power and scope and reach of the book
But most importantly
You brought the story back to life
The successful victory of 5,000 slaughterhouse workers in the South
When the national union ignored it
And it lives, in part, through your book
And Jane, it led so many people to me
People say “Hey, Are you the guy in Jane’s book?”
Can you talk about the lessons in that big campaign in the South?
So, the Smithfield victory matters more than ever.
Thanks Jane
And then of course
Our adventures with the Amazon Labor Union on Staten Island, the ALU
As soon as they won (again, you always like winning) I got your call- “Gene, get me in. I want to run the campaign with these workers.”
Again, I thought. No small feat
But they couldn’t resist you and in you came
And we conspired
I loved strategizing with you
Blow by blow
Watching you operate
And operating with you
Sharing love and respect
It meant a lot to me
I loved learning from you
I loved that you trusted my judgment.
And let me reign you in from time to time
While being awed by the integrity of your vision
And the way you connected to the workers
Watching you deal directly and definitively but always with respect
Teaching, challenging, leading, backing leaders
And to this day they often talk about you at JFK8 on Staten Island
“Like Jane said…” they say
And they throw around words like: Natural leader, structure test, super majority actions
And by the way Jane, the other day they told me that 40 ALU workers signed up for your latest Organizing for Power training
They know that you will be watching
And they say “she gave us her time, when she didn’t have much time left to give”
You left a permanent mark at ALU
Like you have with so many workers and organizers in so many places
Like the permanent mark you have left with me
Lastly, I remember when I visited you at your precious NYC apartment
As you counted down your final days
As you cooked me a pesto pasta lunch as we had a warm chat
We talked about health, our families, strikes, and even did some prep for your panel that afternoon with Sean Obrian
To the end, you were never one to miss an opportunity to teach
Hey, you asked, what should I say?
And so, we talked.
As I left, knowing your days were numbered, I missed you already
And I will always miss you
Never forget you
Cherish our friendship
And the lessons you taught.
And your love for the struggle and the people
Jane, you have moved on
But you will never be forgotten
Long live Jane McAlevey!
…