Saturday, June 18, 2011

Is there a Will?

1945, one month after V-J Day, the Oil Workers’ Union called a national strike 
I often wonder where the backbones of the Progressive movement and the Democratic Party have gone? We are the children of Kent State, of the War protests, of the civil rights movement and yet we seem unable to rise when the stakes get higher and higher. FDL had a book salon with Joe Burns, Author of Reviving the Strike.
In Reviving the Strike, union negotiator Joe Burns draws on labor economics, history, and current analysis to show how only a campaign of civil disobedience can overcome an illegitimate system of labor control that has been specifically constructed over the past thirty years to reign in the power of the American worker. The book challenges prevailing views within the labor movement that say that tactics such as organizing workers or amending labor law can resolve the crisis of the American worker. Instead, Reviving the Strike offers a fundamentally different solution to the current labor crisis, showing how collective bargaining backed by a strike capable of inflicting economic harm upon an employer is the only way for workers to break free of the repressive system that has been inflicted upon them for the past three decades.
It is time to stop waiting for sanity to prevail. Time to stop letting the corporate agenda dictate our lives and our fortunes. Time to stop waiting for things to get better.

I don't advocate violence but I do advocate rising up and refusing to be a part of the systems that are destroying america. The clock is definitely ticking.

No comments:

Post a Comment