January 13, 2023 • 40 mins
Part Two: The Road Ahead
Calls for a general strike go viral all the time - but what would it take for one to actually get organized? It's Going Down takes over It Could Happen Here in a special two-episode dive into the history of general strikes in the United States - from the Civil War to modern day. This episode includes an interview with activist and translator, Scott Campbell about Occupy Oakland and author and journalist, Kim Kelly about the potential for labor insurgency in 2023.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome back once again. You're listening to it could happen
here with the crew from Its Going Down taking over.
This is our second show and we'll be doing a
total of five episodes throughout the month of January. So
if you like what you here, please let the amazing
folks at cool Zone Media know. Yesterday we began by
looking at general strikes in US history, starting with the
mass plantation strike during the American Civil War. We spoke
(00:28):
with labor historian Robert Ovetts about the revolutionary and bloody
history of general strikes in the United States, and we
also looked at the immigrant general strike in two thousand
and six that successfully beat back drough Conian legislation that
sought to further militarize the border and attack and documented people.
On today's show, we're going to be looking at a
general strike that was called for by Occupy Oakland, which
(00:50):
took place on November two. Occupy Oakland was part of
the much larger occupy movement that beginning New York with
the occupation of Zukkati Park, but was seen as a
radical focal point for the growing struggle. Starting as an
occupation on October tent in front of Oakland City Hall
named Oscar Grant Plaza. On October, IRAQ war veteran Scott
(01:11):
Olsen was nearly killed after being shot with a police
projectile during clashes between police and demonstrators as law enforcement
attempted to evict the growing Oakland commune. Following the Olsen shooting,
thousands reoccupied Oscar Grant Plaza and the general strike was
called for A week later. Upwards of one hundred thousand
people took part in the strikes associated actions, which included
(01:32):
mass marches, a large anti capitalist black block which broke
bank windows, and the shutting down of the Port of
Oakland with upwards of one hundred thousand people participating. But
before we hear from our guests on the subject, I
wanted to talk a little bit about the occupy movement
and Occupy Oakland and why it was so important. The
occupy movement itself grew amidst this growing anger over the
(01:54):
economic crisis, but also this fading belief in the hope
and change promised by Obama. While not see it seemed
to kind of sort of come out of nowhere, there
were certainly things that really helped influence it. Naturally, there
was the occupation by Chicago workers at the Republic Windows
and Doors factory, which signaled a real turning point, as
well as the occupation of the Wisconsin State Capital in
(02:17):
two thousand eleven against anti union legislation, and all this
was happened against the backdrop of the Arab Spring, and
then in the Bay Area the Oscar Grant rebellion and
riots in two thousand and nine and two thousand ten
kicked off and had a massive impact, centering discussions around
police race and white supremacy, as well as the role
of rioting and social movements. At the same time, students
(02:39):
and graduate workers occupied college campus buildings in New York
and across California, which really spread the concept of occupying
across the social terrain, as well as slogans like strike, occupied, takeover,
and occupy everything. Now, the explosion of the occupy movement
in the fall of two thousand eleven cannot be overstated.
Occupying cam It's became a focal point for people angry
(03:00):
at the general state of the world to gather discuss
an act and they became a real focal point for encounter.
While some cities saw these encampments come and go pretty quickly.
Then he saw concrete projects and organizing come out of them.
People were fighting to resist foreclosures, for instance, of a
lot of cities, and for many people this was where
they were introduced to anarchist concepts such as direct action,
(03:22):
horizontal organizing, and consensus decision making, which really brought these
ideas front and center to hundreds of thousands of people
in a real and tangible way. And while a lot
of people on the left from a variety of backgrounds
took part, the real backbone of those involved and Occupy
were just everyday people who were new to social movements
and became activated by material conditions and just the zeitgeist
(03:45):
of what was happening at the time. Occupy was fascinating
for me, Like I was in the rest belt at
the time. Still at the occupy, I was a part
of the first march of five thousand people there. There
may be like two or three hundred people at the
general assemble the night before, So most of the people
that showed up were not people currently connected at that
point to any kind of political organizing. They were just
(04:07):
people that showed up because they heard about it on
the internet and they showed up to do the thing,
and that camp a lot lasted nine months, but we
can start to see the impacts that that kind of
breakdown of that division between people who declare themselves political
and quote everybody else. We start to move forward past Occupy,
we start to see that manifest during my Ground Uprising
and Ferguson. We start to see that manifest during the
(04:28):
George Floyd Rebellion, where this kind of division between those
that declare themselves to be political agents and those that
have not declared themselves to be so just ceases to
really exist. And it's in those moments where we really
actually see uprisings occur. Occupied pointed out an important thing
which is a fallacy in the way that we think,
and that we think that radicals make revolts happen, when
(04:49):
in reality, people make revolts happen, and our job is
to antagonize circumstances. And it's only at the point in
which that division breaks down between quote us and everybody else,
that revolts actually occur. And Occupy it was a really
important point in a trajectory of I think a sector
of the American anarchist movement and a sector of the
American political scene starting to really internalize that understanding, starting
(05:11):
to really grasp how different that is from the way
that we have been taught to organize. And we're still
seeing the ramifications of a lot of that work today,
many many many years later, looking at like occupy are
looking at any of these big moments. When we look back,
we can see all these things that like contribute to it,
you know. And I think that this thing that you're
spoking to Tom of like the kind of losing that
(05:33):
thing of like professional activists or like the political actor
in a situation is like so important, and I think
that that is something that can really inspire us in
terms of what's happening in this moment too, or like
how general strikes happen, or how something that occupy happens.
Is that things happen, like there are sort of moments
that are kind of outside of our control. It's not
something that can be like planned for, and if you
(05:55):
do all the right things, then you get a general strike.
But you can kind of like be related to circumstances
and to each other and then different things happen. Um
Like thinking about the George flood uprising in twenty like
none of us predicted COVID, you know, and like how
that might have contributed to what happened in that or
just like all these different circumstances that come together to
(06:17):
make these moments um and I think that you know,
something like what's going on now we could look back
and look at all these different things that are happening
that then make something big happen and we never really
know or can control that. A lot of the striking
and occupy it serves the purpose of not us just
coming together collectively, but it also serves as purpose of propaganda.
(06:38):
And it just reminds me of this idea important idea
of us occupying public spaces and the reason why we're
not allowed to occupy public spaces because it's like sort
of taking the power. And when there's lots of us
occupied in public spaces, the media covers it and then
it's like, well, what are these people talking about? What
are they doing? And that would then itself also serves
like as a propaganda mechanism to like spread so like
(06:58):
I like just like listening to and I remember when again,
like occupy was one of the moments that I was
one of the people who viewed myself as not political
but I cared about what was happening in the movement
because that was the first time I heard we are
I think about moments of radicalization that I think of
this one as being one of them as a person
who's just like recently and as a five years ago
recently awoke, Like these are moments that I remember, like
(07:18):
had an impact on me seeing people on the street
taking public spaces, and I think that perhaps that's something
that we should continue to do. And maybe it's not
one of those things where it's like maybe not as
large as occupy, maybe it's not consistently large, but like
maybe we as civilians to just take over public spaces
all the time, just as a reminder to ourselves that
we do have the power to do that. Like we
can't have a free store here because we want to.
(07:40):
We don't have to ask the government for permission to
do anything, Like I think it's a huge first step
of becoming ungovernable and speaking of things that belong in
a free store. We're now going to hear from our
sponsors for us understand how the Oakland General strike of
(08:02):
took place. We first have to go back to what
made Occupy Oakland so important to so many people just
a few short weeks in October. In the following interview,
you speak with It's Going Down contributor, author and translator
based in Mexico, Scott Campbell about his memories of occupy
and what set the stage for a massive strike on
November two. We didn't speak with Tova, who was involved
(08:25):
in the Occupy Oakland Labor Solidarity Committee, about Bay Area
labor unions becoming involved in the strike. So to kick
things off, Scott tell us about Occupy Oakland, what it
looked like, how life and Oscar Grand Plaza was organized,
and about this living, breathing thing many came to call
the Oakland Commune. If you were to walk into Occupy Oakland,
(08:45):
I think you'd be overwhelmed. Um. It was an amazing, vibrant,
self managed, auto jestive community where you had folks living
there in in Oscar Grant Plaza. You had food, childcare,
medical care, libraries, UM, all sorts of projects UM in
(09:07):
a self run sort of directly democratic assembly based, communally
organized space. And it was open to anyone except for
police and politicians who wanted to come and participate in
this sort of radical experiment, this radical form of being
with one another outside the constraints of how society normally
(09:28):
constructs us to perform and interact with one another. And
I think what really stuck out to me the most
during this time period was just the the welcoming atmosphere,
the sense of potential that the camp um and the
activities based around the camp held, the openness of people,
and really the wide range of individuals who were participating
(09:52):
in collectives who were participating, which certainly, of course led
to differences of opinions at times that made that created
some dynamics that were a struggle to work through and navigate,
but at the same time really added to a sense
of a space that went beyond a single project, that
went beyond a single vision, but that was horizontal, communal,
(10:12):
and open in a way that I had never experienced
before and that I have yet to experience again. It
definitely had an organic feel to it of of sort
of people coming together, lending what skills they had, lending
what resources they had across a variety of positions um
that may be broadly categorized on the left or or
(10:34):
post left spectrum, a spectrum of folks with a spectrum
of capacities of needs um. I mean a large number
of unhoused neighbors who were there, who brought their own
life experiences and their own knowledge and their own skills
to bear on the project, which I think was a really,
I guess, a powerful learning opportunity for a lot of
(10:56):
people who hadn't really been in direct contact with unhoused
folks UM, and who were unfamiliar with really perhaps the
impetus beyond Occupy Oakland and beyond Occupant, the impetus behind
Occupy Oakland, and the impetus behind Occupy Wall Street in general,
which was of course the two thousand and eight financial
crash and the Great Depression and the bailout of the
(11:17):
banks while people got fore clothes on their homes, especially
people of color and black folks, which which hit particularly
hard in England. And so we see all these dynamics
coming together and trying to work themselves out organically without
being mediated by any one organization or any particular ideology.
And it was a powerful, confusing, messy, lively beautiful experience.
(11:38):
How to categorize the general assembly is a is a
great question, I think for me, how I interpreted it
is it added a structural framework for how to navigate
issues that would arise within the camp within the sort
of occupation, for lack of a better word, of Oscar
grand Plaza, facilitating the day to day functionings of things.
(11:58):
In a lot of it was a decision making body.
I wouldn't call it a government as such, because it
tried to run on consensus or modified consensus, and anyone
was free to bring proposals to the General Assembly that
were free to bring their ideas for and promote their
events and promote their actions and activities. A lot of
(12:19):
decisions were also being made by people who just showed
up to do the work without necessarily consulting the General Assembly,
So you almost had different tiers of activity and different
tiers of organization occurring in the same space. That seemed,
again I go back to this word, that seemed to
organically work itself out most of the time, and within
the General Assembly that was the more formal structure where
(12:41):
people came together at times nightly to discuss issues facing
the camp, to discuss issues with in terms of um
dealing with the police and the city government and eventually
the state and federal government as they showed up to
determine how to respond to various acts of aggression and
attacks on the camp and attacks on the space, to
figure out how to better run the space. Even to
(13:02):
figure out how to better run the General Assembly itself
was a big question within the General Assembly, and these
were general assemblies that anyone could participate and you didn't
have to show qualifications or necessarily be living in the space.
Anyone was free except for the police and politicians, to
come and speak to the General Assembly. I remember one
(13:24):
time Gene Klon, then mayor of Oakland, wanted to come
and speak to the General Assembly, and she was told
she could, but she had to wait her turn, and
so she decided to leave because she didn't want to wait.
She didn't feel like she had to wait. It was
really a space of encounter for people to bring up
different aspects that there were concerning them, that they were
working on, that they wanted to see flourish in the space.
The biggest general assembly was happened around when to move
(13:46):
forward with the general strike, but there were also general
assemblies on on things like issues around smoking and people's
health and well being in the space, issues around cleanliness,
issues around safety, how to interact with the police, how
to interact with the government, do we put forward demands?
What should the name of it be? Is occupied Oakland
the problematic name? Should we change it to occupied to
colonize Oakland? These were all sorts of issues that were
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brought forward to the General Assembly, along with like how
do we meet the material needs of the space, and
how do we handle the supplies that are being brought
in and make sure that they're equally equitably distributed. Who
can do what for whom within the space. How do
people's skills get the most use out of them. It
was a very much a lively atmosphere. It felt like,
(14:30):
I don't know, I I know the word democracy is contentious.
It felt like a directly democratic process um. But there
were also you know, it's important to recognize that there
were some people who were more skilled and more familiar
with how consensus works, who are more familiar with the
process that was behind the running of the General Assembly,
which which has its roots and anarchist practice and anarchist
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forms of decision making, and so those folks definitely had
a hand up when it came to making decisions, when
it came to presenting proposals, when it came to even
administering and running the General Assembly itself, those tasks often
fell into the lapse of anarchists, who I think did
a good job of making sure that these general assemblies
ran smoothly and that they were inclusive and open to
(15:13):
all who wanted to participate, and people could bring their
ideas and sometimes they got approved, sometimes they got rejected.
Even if they got rejected, some some folks decided they
would implement them anyways, and and that also worked out
as well as sometimes creating conflicts. The city grew increasingly
frustrated with the encampment as they were, they found themselves
unable to make any progress in trying to recuperate, in
(15:37):
trying to gain favor sort of make the encampment their
own and extension of the electoral body right of the
electoral body politic. Ultimately, that's what moved Kwon, the supposedly
progressive mayor more to the side of the police way
of seeing things as force was the only option to
deal with these people who are you know, being unrealistic,
were being naive, who are being entrenched in and transigent,
(16:00):
and you know, at the same time, the police, along
with the city eventually started building up this narrative of
the camp as a violent and unsafe space where people
were being harmed in a variety of ways, and it
was necessary for for public safety's sake to move against
the encampment. I was there the night the encampment was evicted.
I think it was October or early morning October twenty five,
(16:22):
around three am in the morning, three thirty four am,
and I was actually arrested. I was one of I
believe eighty eight plus people were arrested. UM. During the
process of the camps eviction UM, the police came in force.
They massed up outside of Oracle Arena and the A Stadium.
It was a massive operation that came in from all sides.
People upon hearing word that the camp was going to
(16:44):
be evicted, UM set up barricades. They laced the entire
area with string, trying to impede the possibility of the
police getting injured. Quickly, there were battles with the police
as they tried to make their way into the encampment,
and eventually UM they came in from all sides and
until they took over the encampment and encircled the people
(17:05):
who remained in the camp. I was in jail when
Scott Olsen was shot. But I do recall the prison
guards or the Almeda County sheriffs who were making these
comments as we were being released finally after about twenty
four plus hours of being held, saying things like, oh,
go have fun rioting and that sort of thing. And
and we get out there and then hear about all
(17:26):
the events that had happened over the course of the
day that we had been locked up, of these people,
of folks in the thousands, just like you said, coming
out to try and retake the space of running battles
in the streets. I have so many friends and comrades
who were telling stories about getting tear gas, of getting
shot at with pepper balls, of Scott Wilson's devastating injury,
of getting shot in the head. It was violence that
(17:46):
occurred outside the normal narrative of violence deployed by the
police in Oakland, right, and so it made it exceptional,
even though much more brutal violence occurs daily by the
police in Oakland against primary the black black population in
Oakland and of people of color um. But we see
a huge upswelling of outrage at the rate of the
camp Um outrage at the injury against Scott Wilson, and
(18:11):
this ultimately the attempt to use force to quash a
movement tremendously backfired against both the police and the city
government in terms in terms of it building up even
more support for Occupy Oakland and its efforts. I recall
going to the General Assembly when the general strike was
decided to be moved forward, when the proposal was made
(18:32):
to have a general strike in a week, which was
just seemed like a completely impossible notion and completely impractical,
but also within the realm of the possible at the
same time, because what had been going on, especially the
response to people in terms of fighting against the police,
in terms of taking back Nancamin, of basically winning against
(18:53):
the government, winning against the police forces, reclaiming the space,
um taking injuries, supporting one another through the process, it
seems possible that we could pull up a general strike
within a week. When it came around, it was clear
that the word had been spread, that that energy that
brought on that impulse to move forward with the general
strike was still there a week later, and I would
(19:14):
say that that day itself was a tremendous success. We
had a hundred thousand people marching on the Port of Oakland,
shutting it down. We had a day's worth of activities,
everything that encapsulated Occupy Oakland. I feel like I found
a home UM in particular on that day on November two. Again,
we've been listening to Scott Campbell. Next we'll hear from Tovah,
who was involved in the Labor Solidarity Committee of Occupy Oakland,
(19:38):
which worked to bring in labor unions into the organizing
of the general strike. There were just masses of people
down there at Oscar Grant Plaza. Some of them were
working on maintaining or re re establishing the different services
that they had set up. I had been involved in
labor struggles the past, back in Detroit when I was
(20:02):
in the U a w. So UM volunteered to work
on the Labor Solidary Committee to do the outreach to
get support and participation of various unions, teamsters where it
played a very big role in in support UM for
that general strike as well. And that I think it's
(20:23):
the o e A, the Oakland Education Association as a
teachers union, and they were very much involved, and so
was the s c IU, particularly the SCIU, the City
Workers so the city workers were down there every day
and saw what was going on. UM, and we're you know,
very much involved and affected by it. You know, the
(20:44):
teachers Union had, like you said, been involved with in
support work before all the attacks by the police happened. UH,
there was a lot of involvement beforehand as well. UM
one or two Teamsters locals that were you know, supporting officially.
They you know, it wasn't just their rank and file members,
(21:05):
which had been great also, but you know, the we
had support from one or two Teamsters locals, and the
i LW is primarily Local ten. The longshoreman whole proposal
was to march down to the port UH and shut
down the Port of Oakland. We had people involved from
my LW. You although, I'm pretty sure that the i
(21:29):
LW Local ten officially was not involved in calling for
that strike, but there were members who were involved in
the i LW organization who were definitely involved in helping
to plan it and organize it as well. The Teamsters
added some logistical support in terms of trucking and supplies
(21:52):
and things like that. I think that the o e A.
The teachers also, in addition to participation, donated applies and
things like that, So there was a lot of donations
from the locals as well. We've been listening to TOVA
from the Occupy Oakland Labor Solidarity Committee. We're now going
to take a short break and be right back. As
(22:21):
the Oakland Commune and the Occupy movement faded into history,
it helped inspire and inform a new generation of activists.
As under Obama, we saw continued explosions on Ferguson, Baltimore, Minneapolis,
and later at Standing Rock. By the time that Trump
took office, autonomous resistance movements were bubbling beneath every surface,
(22:42):
as airports were shut down against the Muslim band, riots
broke out against the ault right, and thousands of teachers
started striking across Appalachia. Donny Red, Ben Dennis and omage
of the so called Redneck War of when striking coal
miners engage and grow a warfare with government troops and
the air Force dropped actual bombs on strikers. With the
(23:06):
current uptick and strikes under Biden continuing into and the
economic conditions of porn working people continuing to worsen, we
asked labor reporter and author a fight like hell Kim Kelly,
just what are the possibilities of mass strike action in
the coming year. You know, I think we're in this
really interesting moment where labor and workers and unions in
(23:31):
general are getting a lot more attention than we're used to,
and a lot of that attention is positive, and we
have a lot of these big wins that we get
to celebrate. We get to celebrate, you know, the workers
at Staten Island Amazon go on toe to toe of
Jeff Bezos and the union election winning. We get to
celebrate this ongoing wave of unionization efforts at Starbucks across
(23:54):
the country, hundreds of Starbucks and unionized. We get to
celebrate a lot of big wins. And there are also
a lot of struggles that have been kind of set
to this side, or not gotten as much attention as
they deserve, or kind of written off. I think that's
always the dichotomy of the labor movement in general, right
because it's so big, almost everyone is a part of it,
(24:15):
whether or not they like to think of themselves that way.
You know, I've been covering this coal minor strike in
Alabama since April one. They're still out there. They have
not gotten very much attention. They're kind of stuck in
a stalemate at the bargaining table because the bosses want
to starve them out. And this is Alabama, where workers
in or outside the prison walls do not have very
(24:37):
many rights, do not have any politicians on their side.
They're struggling and they're still out there. And that's kind
of the flip side of these big, energetic, inspiring moments
in labor right where we have these winds, and we
also have folks that are being left a slog or
being ignored entirely, like the folks that we're going to
see very soon in Pennsylvania who are going be launching
(25:00):
a strike and sound the Department of Corrections. I hope
that gets a lot of attention. I mean, we saw
a similar effort by a carcerated workers in Alabama a
couple of months ago, and that got a lot of attention.
And I'm really hoping that this kind of renewed interest
in labor and workers rights and then discussing even topics
like prison slavery, in topics like forced labor, incarcerated work,
(25:23):
and different types of work. I really hope that benefits
these workers as they embark on their action but we'll see,
you know, like I am very interested to see perhaps
the limits of this public support for labor actions. Is
it easier to support a barista than it is to
support a coal miner and acarcerated worker. There's all these
(25:43):
different pieces that go into this moment. And I love
being possy. I love seeing workers win and workers organized
and strike and protest, and I also like keeping an
eye out for the folks who aren't getting as much attention,
are getting much support and thinking about why that is.
So it's kind of a long, rambly answer to say,
(26:04):
I am cautiously optimistic, and I really hope that all
of the people who have thankfully and you know, I'm
glad they're here, who have showed up in the past year,
in the media, the political class, whoever, regular regular people
who have been paying attention to these these worker actions.
I hope they keep that energy for this year, because
(26:25):
we're going to need it, you know. Started we we've
had a pretty good We're in a decent spot, and
I really don't want to see a squander that. See.
I think this moment with the railroad workers, I think
that is something that's going to continue to resonate and
reverberate out, And I think that's going to have an
impact the next time the Democratic Party says, hey, where
(26:47):
the Workers Party like, you need to come vote for
us and keep us in power because well, we're the
only ones who will protect you. Well will you did you?
Were you there for us when we needed you or
when we needed your help? No? You know, it just
makes one wonder how much of the pro union uh
(27:09):
sloganeering that that this administration loves to do, how much
of it is pure public relations, how much of it
is actually attached to whatever personal beliefs that Biden has,
or if they just think it's politically expedient to, you know,
act as though we're the we're pro union, we're pro worker.
We're not going to pass any laws, we're not going
(27:30):
to investigate any worker death at Amazon facilities are helped elsewhere,
we're not going to use our power to help you.
But we're not Republicans, So you know, it's um. I
think it's going to be interesting to see how much
the railroad strike impacts people, because I think that the
political calculus that the Biden administration did in choosing to
(27:53):
crush the strike inside with the railroad bosses. I guess
they figured, oh, well, it's not that big of a
you know, maybe not that many people are paying attention.
We've got to make sure people get their Christmas presents
on time. But a lot of folks were watching that.
A lot of regular workers were watching that and thinking, oh, so,
if we were in that position at my job, the
government would help us either. I think, you know, a
(28:16):
lot of the chatter I saw from railroad workers, from
other workers, just from people in general, it is like, oh, so, okay,
this was the big moment where Biden could have proved
he cared about us, and instead he threw us under
the bus, straight onto the railroad tracks. And I don't
think that's a surprise to people that are sort of
paying more close attention to the way the state operates.
(28:38):
But I think it was maybe a revelatory moment for
folks who just sort of assumed, okay, like there's at
least a little bit of benevolence at least, you know,
the Democrats are in power. This guy says, it alls
unions that should help us out a little bit. But
seeing what happened there, I think it's going to be
a profoundly disillusioning moment for a lot of people that
maybe had a little bit more faith in the state
or at least assumed it was sort of looking out
(29:01):
for us. And I think that's gonna have an impact
when you know, the Democratic Party comes back knocking on
our doors and mostly asking for a vote in our support,
because I mean, you, we had a classic which side
are you on moment and we saw which way they
chose to go. We're gonna see more prolonged strikes, We're
going to see more unfair labor practices, are going to
(29:23):
see more organizing. I think that it is impossible to
put this lightning back into a bottle. Right Like, activity
and interest in unions and organizing is, if not skyrocketing,
it's had a really nice little bump over the past
few years, a noticeable improvement and a noticeable amount of
new worker workplaces being organized and going on strike and
(29:44):
fighting for their rights. Like, I don't think that's going away.
And two of the aspects of this, this entire scenario
that really interests me. First, the fact that we're seeing
so many workers who some my categories as quote unquote
white collar whatever, folks who work in nonprofits or at
book publishers, or journalism, other types of media, kind of
(30:06):
all of these other types of jobs that don't fit
into that traditional manufacturing or extractive focused of many more
manual labor oriented jobs that I think a lot of
people associate with the labor movement. They've been going on
strike and they've been making big waves, whether it's the
forty eight thousand grad student workers at the University of
California or hardpwerk HarperCollins Publishing workers currently still on strike
(30:30):
in New York City. I think there's been kind of
the shift and understanding of oh, Okay, you don't need
to be a certain type of worker or certain type
of person, or come from a specific background in order
to organize to join a union. Unions aren't just for
the classic white guy in a hard hat trope like
my dad, right Like, they're accessible to so many more
of us than perhaps we thought, and I think that's
(30:52):
going to be big because work has shifted. Work looks
different than it did thirty years ago. There's a lot
of different ways to be exploited, and we know the
employers have definitely looked into each and everyone and taken notes.
So we have that happening. I think that's gonna continue
propelling the energy behind this movement. And secondly, I'm really
(31:13):
intrigued by the rise, and that's as it's a smaller phenomenon,
but it is very much happening, and it is kind
of increasing slowly the exist this existence of independent unions,
because we saw, of course the Amazon Labor Union. They're
the big ones, They've gotten tons of attention, deservedly so,
but there are also efforts Trader Joe's Trade Joe's United
(31:35):
as an independent union. Chipotle workers formed an independent union.
There was an effort here in Philadelphia to form a
Home Depot workers independent union, and that one wasn't successful,
but I'm certain that that organizer has not given up,
but they're still gonna keep working on that. Like and
I think seeing these independent unions which are not affiliated
(31:56):
with other internationals, are not part of the afl CE.
Oh there literally just d I y you know. Thence
the fact that we're seeing this happen. I think it
just shows the cracks in the current labor movement as
it stands, and especially in the way that power is concentrated,
in the way that resources are organized, in the way
(32:18):
that the movements. Priorities in terms of public statements and
political power are kind of dictated by folks who tend
to be more conservative. And I mean that in like
a Democrat way and not like you know, Republican chaos,
but just more conservative compared to a lot of the
rank and file. Like we see with the railroad workers
(32:40):
that rejected rejected that deal that so many of their
leaders agreed on. You know, I think there's more radicalism
brewing in the rank and file and more militancy that
and it's it's manifesting in different ways. It's manifesting and
wildcatch strikes or an independent unions, or in organizing outside
of the traditional organized labor structure and gender like what
(33:00):
sex workers and incarcerated workers are doing and have been doing.
I think ultimately the bottom line is that a lot
of workers, a lot of people have realized that they
have options, and they're exercising their rights to organize and
to work collectively and to stand with their fellow workers
against the bosses and against capital in ways that you know,
(33:21):
perhaps I wouldn't have felt disavailable or seemed as possible
a few years ago, but now there's so many examples
of other workers doing it. Of course, have been there
throughout history too, like I read about my book, but
I think we're at this moment where people realize, Okay,
there are a lot of different ways to do this.
I have people with me, we have problems we need
(33:42):
to address. Let's see what works. You know, it's not
just picking up the phone and calling a union organizer,
though that works for some folks. Too, is recognizing the
problems we face in our workplace, in our experience, and
deciding together what we want to do, how we want
to go forward, and how we're going to win. Once again,
that was Kim Kelly, author of phil Hell. Over the
(34:05):
past two episodes, we've taken a deep dive into the
history of general strikes in the United States, looking at
everything from the mass strike of Enslave plantation workers during
the Civil War all the way up to current examples
during Occupy Oakland. I think one of the things history
has to offer us as a guide for the present
is that these upheavals are made possible not only by
(34:27):
people responding to material conditions, but also learning from struggle.
In the instance of the Great Upheaval, that general strike
came after a series of other smaller strikes. This fall,
thousands of prisoners across Alabama organized a general strike of
incarcerated workers, downing their tools and refusing to work their jobs,
(34:47):
bringing the prisons to a grinding halt. This historic strike
comes on the heels of many other prisoner led strike
actions in two thousand ten, two thousand sixteen. In two
thousand eighteen, non to mention the fact that many Alabama
prisoners saw themselves as acting in the spirit of the
Great Plantation Strike during the Civil War, as epitomized by
(35:08):
the strike slogan let the crops rot in the field
in my final thoughts, instead of putting our hopes in
a call for a general strike going viral, As the
saying goes, we have to walk before we can run.
So strengthening our ability to engage in collective direct action
and active refusal, as well as building our capacity for
community self defense and mobilizing against state violence and repression
(35:32):
and whatever form will ultimately allow us to expand and
grow our ability to do these things in the future.
A lot of times we're told that like we're powerless
and were these passive beings and creatures and we have
to wait for somebody to organize us. But every single
day we wake up in the morning and we make
capitalism happen, like we do it, like all of us,
every single one of us does it. Like this is
(35:53):
not like oh, like this is just something that's happening
to us, we're doing to ourselves. We're doing it to
each other. Like these little things that we can do,
like little acts of resistance. And I'm all about petty
resistance because I do realize that a lot of people
don't have time for the large resistances. So this is
for anybody who's like, yeah, I hate capitalism, but I
just don't have the breath on the space and the
time to necessarily like go out and do things. If
(36:14):
you can't, please do it. You can't like walk the
funk out do But if you can't, like there's still
stuff you can do. That's it for me. By you know,
what strikes me often about general strikes are two things.
First is that general strikes actually function very differently than
they do in leftist discourse. Like in leftist discourse it's
workers do general strikes. But in reality, if we really
(36:37):
look at general strikes, there are these moments of convergence, right,
There's these these sort of points in which distinctions break down, right,
the distinction between like organizers and everyone else, or the
distinction between workers and non workers completely break down. Right,
It's not just railroad workers don't strike in eighteen seventy seven,
is also their families, their neighbors, their whole communities on strike.
And this the second thing that that raises often for me,
(37:01):
is again this kind of long term cultural implications of
that sort of form of action. So growing up in
a place where you know, strike culture is a thing,
um still where there's still actual union density and people
do walk off the job, um, you grow up with
that as an idea, right that you don't just walk
off the job. But like the restaurant around the corner
(37:22):
also gives out free food, and people bring coffee down
to the picket line, and you know, workers from other
unions show up the block entrances because the judge said
you can, you know so and so on, and it
becomes this huge community initiative of autonomy and self defense.
And what that creates is a sense in which class
struggle is perpetual. Like you understand always when you grow
(37:46):
up in a place like that, but when you go
to work you're making somebody else money because you've been
told that your whole life right and that if you
get angry about that, that what you're supposed to do
is organize and go on strike. And that's a very
normal sort of narrative that was because we all up
in families where we were taught to do that. That
if the wealthy we're taking advantage of you, you just leave. Right.
(38:07):
That is not a normal thing outside of the rest
of America, right, Like people don't get brought up with that.
But I think as we're starting to see this kind
of rise of the idea of the general strike, and
we're starting to understand that is something that's not just
connected to employment, but we can start to think of
general strikes as social strikes and not just economic strikes.
We can start to understand like, even if those may
(38:28):
immediately not succeed, the long term impacts of those over
time really create the conditions for them to succeed later.
And if it hadn't been for that flame staying alive,
I think in parts of America, this wave of worker
action wouldn't be happening. There wouldn't be a foundation for it,
there wouldn't be a way to understand it, right, um,
And that's what's so critical about this moment is I
(38:50):
think in some ways we're almost reviving a thing that
my grandparents lived in the midst of just as a
very normal part of their lives. I think that's like
a really important piece about this survival. And I think
think that something that feels really important about general strikes
is the idea of like solidarity and that our liberation
is collective, you know, that it involves each other. And
I think that, Um, I feel like what happened between
(39:12):
like what you're saying to about you, like your grandparents
generation and now is like near liberalism in a lot
of ways, and just like this really strong promotion of
the idea of like individualism and that if you want
to make your life better you have to do it yourself,
and like it's down to you as an individual. That
I think it was pretty effective at decimating a lot
of ideas of like solidarity or the idea that I like,
(39:33):
freedom is with each other. Um. And I think that
that is starting to fall apart, Like people are realizing
however much they hustle or like have side hustles or whatever,
they're still fucked and just like I think that we're
seeing like a resurgence of this idea of like solidarity
and that we have to do together, that is going
to do it for us this week. Thank you so
(39:54):
much for tuning in. Check us out on macodon at
I g D Underscore News and be sure or to
tune in as the workers that it could Happen here
into their two day strike and return to the job.
But stay tuned. We'll be back next week for even
more episodes. Until then, It could Happen here as a
(40:16):
production of cool Zone Media or more podcasts from cool
Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone media dot com,
or check us out on the I Heart radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at
cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening
Welcome back once again. You're listening to it could happen
here with the crew from Its Going Down taking over.
This is our second show and we'll be doing a
total of five episodes throughout the month of January. So
if you like what you here, please let the amazing
folks at cool Zone Media know. Yesterday we began by
looking at general strikes in US history, starting with the
mass plantation strike during the American Civil War. We spoke
(00:28):
with labor historian Robert Ovetts about the revolutionary and bloody
history of general strikes in the United States, and we
also looked at the immigrant general strike in two thousand
and six that successfully beat back drough Conian legislation that
sought to further militarize the border and attack and documented people.
On today's show, we're going to be looking at a
general strike that was called for by Occupy Oakland, which
(00:50):
took place on November two. Occupy Oakland was part of
the much larger occupy movement that beginning New York with
the occupation of Zukkati Park, but was seen as a
radical focal point for the growing struggle. Starting as an
occupation on October tent in front of Oakland City Hall
named Oscar Grant Plaza. On October, IRAQ war veteran Scott
(01:11):
Olsen was nearly killed after being shot with a police
projectile during clashes between police and demonstrators as law enforcement
attempted to evict the growing Oakland commune. Following the Olsen shooting,
thousands reoccupied Oscar Grant Plaza and the general strike was
called for A week later. Upwards of one hundred thousand
people took part in the strikes associated actions, which included
(01:32):
mass marches, a large anti capitalist black block which broke
bank windows, and the shutting down of the Port of
Oakland with upwards of one hundred thousand people participating. But
before we hear from our guests on the subject, I
wanted to talk a little bit about the occupy movement
and Occupy Oakland and why it was so important. The
occupy movement itself grew amidst this growing anger over the
(01:54):
economic crisis, but also this fading belief in the hope
and change promised by Obama. While not see it seemed
to kind of sort of come out of nowhere, there
were certainly things that really helped influence it. Naturally, there
was the occupation by Chicago workers at the Republic Windows
and Doors factory, which signaled a real turning point, as
well as the occupation of the Wisconsin State Capital in
(02:17):
two thousand eleven against anti union legislation, and all this
was happened against the backdrop of the Arab Spring, and
then in the Bay Area the Oscar Grant rebellion and
riots in two thousand and nine and two thousand ten
kicked off and had a massive impact, centering discussions around
police race and white supremacy, as well as the role
of rioting and social movements. At the same time, students
(02:39):
and graduate workers occupied college campus buildings in New York
and across California, which really spread the concept of occupying
across the social terrain, as well as slogans like strike, occupied, takeover,
and occupy everything. Now, the explosion of the occupy movement
in the fall of two thousand eleven cannot be overstated.
Occupying cam It's became a focal point for people angry
(03:00):
at the general state of the world to gather discuss
an act and they became a real focal point for encounter.
While some cities saw these encampments come and go pretty quickly.
Then he saw concrete projects and organizing come out of them.
People were fighting to resist foreclosures, for instance, of a
lot of cities, and for many people this was where
they were introduced to anarchist concepts such as direct action,
(03:22):
horizontal organizing, and consensus decision making, which really brought these
ideas front and center to hundreds of thousands of people
in a real and tangible way. And while a lot
of people on the left from a variety of backgrounds
took part, the real backbone of those involved and Occupy
were just everyday people who were new to social movements
and became activated by material conditions and just the zeitgeist
(03:45):
of what was happening at the time. Occupy was fascinating
for me, Like I was in the rest belt at
the time. Still at the occupy, I was a part
of the first march of five thousand people there. There
may be like two or three hundred people at the
general assemble the night before, So most of the people
that showed up were not people currently connected at that
point to any kind of political organizing. They were just
(04:07):
people that showed up because they heard about it on
the internet and they showed up to do the thing,
and that camp a lot lasted nine months, but we
can start to see the impacts that that kind of
breakdown of that division between people who declare themselves political
and quote everybody else. We start to move forward past Occupy,
we start to see that manifest during my Ground Uprising
and Ferguson. We start to see that manifest during the
(04:28):
George Floyd Rebellion, where this kind of division between those
that declare themselves to be political agents and those that
have not declared themselves to be so just ceases to
really exist. And it's in those moments where we really
actually see uprisings occur. Occupied pointed out an important thing
which is a fallacy in the way that we think,
and that we think that radicals make revolts happen, when
(04:49):
in reality, people make revolts happen, and our job is
to antagonize circumstances. And it's only at the point in
which that division breaks down between quote us and everybody else,
that revolts actually occur. And Occupy it was a really
important point in a trajectory of I think a sector
of the American anarchist movement and a sector of the
American political scene starting to really internalize that understanding, starting
(05:11):
to really grasp how different that is from the way
that we have been taught to organize. And we're still
seeing the ramifications of a lot of that work today,
many many many years later, looking at like occupy are
looking at any of these big moments. When we look back,
we can see all these things that like contribute to it,
you know. And I think that this thing that you're
spoking to Tom of like the kind of losing that
(05:33):
thing of like professional activists or like the political actor
in a situation is like so important, and I think
that that is something that can really inspire us in
terms of what's happening in this moment too, or like
how general strikes happen, or how something that occupy happens.
Is that things happen, like there are sort of moments
that are kind of outside of our control. It's not
something that can be like planned for, and if you
(05:55):
do all the right things, then you get a general strike.
But you can kind of like be related to circumstances
and to each other and then different things happen. Um
Like thinking about the George flood uprising in twenty like
none of us predicted COVID, you know, and like how
that might have contributed to what happened in that or
just like all these different circumstances that come together to
(06:17):
make these moments um and I think that you know,
something like what's going on now we could look back
and look at all these different things that are happening
that then make something big happen and we never really
know or can control that. A lot of the striking
and occupy it serves the purpose of not us just
coming together collectively, but it also serves as purpose of propaganda.
(06:38):
And it just reminds me of this idea important idea
of us occupying public spaces and the reason why we're
not allowed to occupy public spaces because it's like sort
of taking the power. And when there's lots of us
occupied in public spaces, the media covers it and then
it's like, well, what are these people talking about? What
are they doing? And that would then itself also serves
like as a propaganda mechanism to like spread so like
(06:58):
I like just like listening to and I remember when again,
like occupy was one of the moments that I was
one of the people who viewed myself as not political
but I cared about what was happening in the movement
because that was the first time I heard we are
I think about moments of radicalization that I think of
this one as being one of them as a person
who's just like recently and as a five years ago
recently awoke, Like these are moments that I remember, like
(07:18):
had an impact on me seeing people on the street
taking public spaces, and I think that perhaps that's something
that we should continue to do. And maybe it's not
one of those things where it's like maybe not as
large as occupy, maybe it's not consistently large, but like
maybe we as civilians to just take over public spaces
all the time, just as a reminder to ourselves that
we do have the power to do that. Like we
can't have a free store here because we want to.
(07:40):
We don't have to ask the government for permission to
do anything, Like I think it's a huge first step
of becoming ungovernable and speaking of things that belong in
a free store. We're now going to hear from our
sponsors for us understand how the Oakland General strike of
(08:02):
took place. We first have to go back to what
made Occupy Oakland so important to so many people just
a few short weeks in October. In the following interview,
you speak with It's Going Down contributor, author and translator
based in Mexico, Scott Campbell about his memories of occupy
and what set the stage for a massive strike on
November two. We didn't speak with Tova, who was involved
(08:25):
in the Occupy Oakland Labor Solidarity Committee, about Bay Area
labor unions becoming involved in the strike. So to kick
things off, Scott tell us about Occupy Oakland, what it
looked like, how life and Oscar Grand Plaza was organized,
and about this living, breathing thing many came to call
the Oakland Commune. If you were to walk into Occupy Oakland,
(08:45):
I think you'd be overwhelmed. Um. It was an amazing, vibrant,
self managed, auto jestive community where you had folks living
there in in Oscar Grant Plaza. You had food, childcare,
medical care, libraries, UM, all sorts of projects UM in
(09:07):
a self run sort of directly democratic assembly based, communally
organized space. And it was open to anyone except for
police and politicians who wanted to come and participate in
this sort of radical experiment, this radical form of being
with one another outside the constraints of how society normally
(09:28):
constructs us to perform and interact with one another. And
I think what really stuck out to me the most
during this time period was just the the welcoming atmosphere,
the sense of potential that the camp um and the
activities based around the camp held, the openness of people,
and really the wide range of individuals who were participating
(09:52):
in collectives who were participating, which certainly, of course led
to differences of opinions at times that made that created
some dynamics that were a struggle to work through and navigate,
but at the same time really added to a sense
of a space that went beyond a single project, that
went beyond a single vision, but that was horizontal, communal,
(10:12):
and open in a way that I had never experienced
before and that I have yet to experience again. It
definitely had an organic feel to it of of sort
of people coming together, lending what skills they had, lending
what resources they had across a variety of positions um
that may be broadly categorized on the left or or
(10:34):
post left spectrum, a spectrum of folks with a spectrum
of capacities of needs um. I mean a large number
of unhoused neighbors who were there, who brought their own
life experiences and their own knowledge and their own skills
to bear on the project, which I think was a really,
I guess, a powerful learning opportunity for a lot of
(10:56):
people who hadn't really been in direct contact with unhoused
folks UM, and who were unfamiliar with really perhaps the
impetus beyond Occupy Oakland and beyond Occupant, the impetus behind
Occupy Oakland, and the impetus behind Occupy Wall Street in general,
which was of course the two thousand and eight financial
crash and the Great Depression and the bailout of the
(11:17):
banks while people got fore clothes on their homes, especially
people of color and black folks, which which hit particularly
hard in England. And so we see all these dynamics
coming together and trying to work themselves out organically without
being mediated by any one organization or any particular ideology.
And it was a powerful, confusing, messy, lively beautiful experience.
(11:38):
How to categorize the general assembly is a is a
great question, I think for me, how I interpreted it
is it added a structural framework for how to navigate
issues that would arise within the camp within the sort
of occupation, for lack of a better word, of Oscar
grand Plaza, facilitating the day to day functionings of things.
(11:58):
In a lot of it was a decision making body.
I wouldn't call it a government as such, because it
tried to run on consensus or modified consensus, and anyone
was free to bring proposals to the General Assembly that
were free to bring their ideas for and promote their
events and promote their actions and activities. A lot of
(12:19):
decisions were also being made by people who just showed
up to do the work without necessarily consulting the General Assembly,
So you almost had different tiers of activity and different
tiers of organization occurring in the same space. That seemed,
again I go back to this word, that seemed to
organically work itself out most of the time, and within
the General Assembly that was the more formal structure where
(12:41):
people came together at times nightly to discuss issues facing
the camp, to discuss issues with in terms of um
dealing with the police and the city government and eventually
the state and federal government as they showed up to
determine how to respond to various acts of aggression and
attacks on the camp and attacks on the space, to
figure out how to better run the space. Even to
(13:02):
figure out how to better run the General Assembly itself
was a big question within the General Assembly, and these
were general assemblies that anyone could participate and you didn't
have to show qualifications or necessarily be living in the space.
Anyone was free except for the police and politicians, to
come and speak to the General Assembly. I remember one
(13:24):
time Gene Klon, then mayor of Oakland, wanted to come
and speak to the General Assembly, and she was told
she could, but she had to wait her turn, and
so she decided to leave because she didn't want to wait.
She didn't feel like she had to wait. It was
really a space of encounter for people to bring up
different aspects that there were concerning them, that they were
working on, that they wanted to see flourish in the space.
The biggest general assembly was happened around when to move
(13:46):
forward with the general strike, but there were also general
assemblies on on things like issues around smoking and people's
health and well being in the space, issues around cleanliness,
issues around safety, how to interact with the police, how
to interact with the government, do we put forward demands?
What should the name of it be? Is occupied Oakland
the problematic name? Should we change it to occupied to
colonize Oakland? These were all sorts of issues that were
(14:09):
brought forward to the General Assembly, along with like how
do we meet the material needs of the space, and
how do we handle the supplies that are being brought
in and make sure that they're equally equitably distributed. Who
can do what for whom within the space. How do
people's skills get the most use out of them. It
was a very much a lively atmosphere. It felt like,
(14:30):
I don't know, I I know the word democracy is contentious.
It felt like a directly democratic process um. But there
were also you know, it's important to recognize that there
were some people who were more skilled and more familiar
with how consensus works, who are more familiar with the
process that was behind the running of the General Assembly,
which which has its roots and anarchist practice and anarchist
(14:52):
forms of decision making, and so those folks definitely had
a hand up when it came to making decisions, when
it came to presenting proposals, when it came to even
administering and running the General Assembly itself, those tasks often
fell into the lapse of anarchists, who I think did
a good job of making sure that these general assemblies
ran smoothly and that they were inclusive and open to
(15:13):
all who wanted to participate, and people could bring their
ideas and sometimes they got approved, sometimes they got rejected.
Even if they got rejected, some some folks decided they
would implement them anyways, and and that also worked out
as well as sometimes creating conflicts. The city grew increasingly
frustrated with the encampment as they were, they found themselves
unable to make any progress in trying to recuperate, in
(15:37):
trying to gain favor sort of make the encampment their
own and extension of the electoral body right of the
electoral body politic. Ultimately, that's what moved Kwon, the supposedly
progressive mayor more to the side of the police way
of seeing things as force was the only option to
deal with these people who are you know, being unrealistic,
were being naive, who are being entrenched in and transigent,
(16:00):
and you know, at the same time, the police, along
with the city eventually started building up this narrative of
the camp as a violent and unsafe space where people
were being harmed in a variety of ways, and it
was necessary for for public safety's sake to move against
the encampment. I was there the night the encampment was evicted.
I think it was October or early morning October twenty five,
(16:22):
around three am in the morning, three thirty four am,
and I was actually arrested. I was one of I
believe eighty eight plus people were arrested. UM. During the
process of the camps eviction UM, the police came in force.
They massed up outside of Oracle Arena and the A Stadium.
It was a massive operation that came in from all sides.
People upon hearing word that the camp was going to
(16:44):
be evicted, UM set up barricades. They laced the entire
area with string, trying to impede the possibility of the
police getting injured. Quickly, there were battles with the police
as they tried to make their way into the encampment,
and eventually UM they came in from all sides and
until they took over the encampment and encircled the people
(17:05):
who remained in the camp. I was in jail when
Scott Olsen was shot. But I do recall the prison
guards or the Almeda County sheriffs who were making these
comments as we were being released finally after about twenty
four plus hours of being held, saying things like, oh,
go have fun rioting and that sort of thing. And
and we get out there and then hear about all
(17:26):
the events that had happened over the course of the
day that we had been locked up, of these people,
of folks in the thousands, just like you said, coming
out to try and retake the space of running battles
in the streets. I have so many friends and comrades
who were telling stories about getting tear gas, of getting
shot at with pepper balls, of Scott Wilson's devastating injury,
of getting shot in the head. It was violence that
(17:46):
occurred outside the normal narrative of violence deployed by the
police in Oakland, right, and so it made it exceptional,
even though much more brutal violence occurs daily by the
police in Oakland against primary the black black population in
Oakland and of people of color um. But we see
a huge upswelling of outrage at the rate of the
camp Um outrage at the injury against Scott Wilson, and
(18:11):
this ultimately the attempt to use force to quash a
movement tremendously backfired against both the police and the city
government in terms in terms of it building up even
more support for Occupy Oakland and its efforts. I recall
going to the General Assembly when the general strike was
decided to be moved forward, when the proposal was made
(18:32):
to have a general strike in a week, which was
just seemed like a completely impossible notion and completely impractical,
but also within the realm of the possible at the
same time, because what had been going on, especially the
response to people in terms of fighting against the police,
in terms of taking back Nancamin, of basically winning against
(18:53):
the government, winning against the police forces, reclaiming the space,
um taking injuries, supporting one another through the process, it
seems possible that we could pull up a general strike
within a week. When it came around, it was clear
that the word had been spread, that that energy that
brought on that impulse to move forward with the general
strike was still there a week later, and I would
(19:14):
say that that day itself was a tremendous success. We
had a hundred thousand people marching on the Port of Oakland,
shutting it down. We had a day's worth of activities,
everything that encapsulated Occupy Oakland. I feel like I found
a home UM in particular on that day on November two. Again,
we've been listening to Scott Campbell. Next we'll hear from Tovah,
who was involved in the Labor Solidarity Committee of Occupy Oakland,
(19:38):
which worked to bring in labor unions into the organizing
of the general strike. There were just masses of people
down there at Oscar Grant Plaza. Some of them were
working on maintaining or re re establishing the different services
that they had set up. I had been involved in
labor struggles the past, back in Detroit when I was
(20:02):
in the U a w. So UM volunteered to work
on the Labor Solidary Committee to do the outreach to
get support and participation of various unions, teamsters where it
played a very big role in in support UM for
that general strike as well. And that I think it's
(20:23):
the o e A, the Oakland Education Association as a
teachers union, and they were very much involved, and so
was the s c IU, particularly the SCIU, the City
Workers so the city workers were down there every day
and saw what was going on. UM, and we're you know,
very much involved and affected by it. You know, the
(20:44):
teachers Union had, like you said, been involved with in
support work before all the attacks by the police happened. UH,
there was a lot of involvement beforehand as well. UM
one or two Teamsters locals that were you know, supporting officially.
They you know, it wasn't just their rank and file members,
(21:05):
which had been great also, but you know, the we
had support from one or two Teamsters locals, and the
i LW is primarily Local ten. The longshoreman whole proposal
was to march down to the port UH and shut
down the Port of Oakland. We had people involved from
my LW. You although, I'm pretty sure that the i
(21:29):
LW Local ten officially was not involved in calling for
that strike, but there were members who were involved in
the i LW organization who were definitely involved in helping
to plan it and organize it as well. The Teamsters
added some logistical support in terms of trucking and supplies
(21:52):
and things like that. I think that the o e A.
The teachers also, in addition to participation, donated applies and
things like that, So there was a lot of donations
from the locals as well. We've been listening to TOVA
from the Occupy Oakland Labor Solidarity Committee. We're now going
to take a short break and be right back. As
(22:21):
the Oakland Commune and the Occupy movement faded into history,
it helped inspire and inform a new generation of activists.
As under Obama, we saw continued explosions on Ferguson, Baltimore, Minneapolis,
and later at Standing Rock. By the time that Trump
took office, autonomous resistance movements were bubbling beneath every surface,
(22:42):
as airports were shut down against the Muslim band, riots
broke out against the ault right, and thousands of teachers
started striking across Appalachia. Donny Red, Ben Dennis and omage
of the so called Redneck War of when striking coal
miners engage and grow a warfare with government troops and
the air Force dropped actual bombs on strikers. With the
(23:06):
current uptick and strikes under Biden continuing into and the
economic conditions of porn working people continuing to worsen, we
asked labor reporter and author a fight like hell Kim Kelly,
just what are the possibilities of mass strike action in
the coming year. You know, I think we're in this
really interesting moment where labor and workers and unions in
(23:31):
general are getting a lot more attention than we're used to,
and a lot of that attention is positive, and we
have a lot of these big wins that we get
to celebrate. We get to celebrate, you know, the workers
at Staten Island Amazon go on toe to toe of
Jeff Bezos and the union election winning. We get to
celebrate this ongoing wave of unionization efforts at Starbucks across
(23:54):
the country, hundreds of Starbucks and unionized. We get to
celebrate a lot of big wins. And there are also
a lot of struggles that have been kind of set
to this side, or not gotten as much attention as
they deserve, or kind of written off. I think that's
always the dichotomy of the labor movement in general, right
because it's so big, almost everyone is a part of it,
(24:15):
whether or not they like to think of themselves that way.
You know, I've been covering this coal minor strike in
Alabama since April one. They're still out there. They have
not gotten very much attention. They're kind of stuck in
a stalemate at the bargaining table because the bosses want
to starve them out. And this is Alabama, where workers
in or outside the prison walls do not have very
(24:37):
many rights, do not have any politicians on their side.
They're struggling and they're still out there. And that's kind
of the flip side of these big, energetic, inspiring moments
in labor right where we have these winds, and we
also have folks that are being left a slog or
being ignored entirely, like the folks that we're going to
see very soon in Pennsylvania who are going be launching
(25:00):
a strike and sound the Department of Corrections. I hope
that gets a lot of attention. I mean, we saw
a similar effort by a carcerated workers in Alabama a
couple of months ago, and that got a lot of attention.
And I'm really hoping that this kind of renewed interest
in labor and workers rights and then discussing even topics
like prison slavery, in topics like forced labor, incarcerated work,
(25:23):
and different types of work. I really hope that benefits
these workers as they embark on their action but we'll see,
you know, like I am very interested to see perhaps
the limits of this public support for labor actions. Is
it easier to support a barista than it is to
support a coal miner and acarcerated worker. There's all these
(25:43):
different pieces that go into this moment. And I love
being possy. I love seeing workers win and workers organized
and strike and protest, and I also like keeping an
eye out for the folks who aren't getting as much attention,
are getting much support and thinking about why that is.
So it's kind of a long, rambly answer to say,
(26:04):
I am cautiously optimistic, and I really hope that all
of the people who have thankfully and you know, I'm
glad they're here, who have showed up in the past year,
in the media, the political class, whoever, regular regular people
who have been paying attention to these these worker actions.
I hope they keep that energy for this year, because
(26:25):
we're going to need it, you know. Started we we've
had a pretty good We're in a decent spot, and
I really don't want to see a squander that. See.
I think this moment with the railroad workers, I think
that is something that's going to continue to resonate and
reverberate out, And I think that's going to have an
impact the next time the Democratic Party says, hey, where
(26:47):
the Workers Party like, you need to come vote for
us and keep us in power because well, we're the
only ones who will protect you. Well will you did you?
Were you there for us when we needed you or
when we needed your help? No? You know, it just
makes one wonder how much of the pro union uh
(27:09):
sloganeering that that this administration loves to do, how much
of it is pure public relations, how much of it
is actually attached to whatever personal beliefs that Biden has,
or if they just think it's politically expedient to, you know,
act as though we're the we're pro union, we're pro worker.
We're not going to pass any laws, we're not going
(27:30):
to investigate any worker death at Amazon facilities are helped elsewhere,
we're not going to use our power to help you.
But we're not Republicans, So you know, it's um. I
think it's going to be interesting to see how much
the railroad strike impacts people, because I think that the
political calculus that the Biden administration did in choosing to
(27:53):
crush the strike inside with the railroad bosses. I guess
they figured, oh, well, it's not that big of a
you know, maybe not that many people are paying attention.
We've got to make sure people get their Christmas presents
on time. But a lot of folks were watching that.
A lot of regular workers were watching that and thinking, oh, so,
if we were in that position at my job, the
government would help us either. I think, you know, a
(28:16):
lot of the chatter I saw from railroad workers, from
other workers, just from people in general, it is like, oh, so, okay,
this was the big moment where Biden could have proved
he cared about us, and instead he threw us under
the bus, straight onto the railroad tracks. And I don't
think that's a surprise to people that are sort of
paying more close attention to the way the state operates.
(28:38):
But I think it was maybe a revelatory moment for
folks who just sort of assumed, okay, like there's at
least a little bit of benevolence at least, you know,
the Democrats are in power. This guy says, it alls
unions that should help us out a little bit. But
seeing what happened there, I think it's going to be
a profoundly disillusioning moment for a lot of people that
maybe had a little bit more faith in the state
or at least assumed it was sort of looking out
(29:01):
for us. And I think that's gonna have an impact
when you know, the Democratic Party comes back knocking on
our doors and mostly asking for a vote in our support,
because I mean, you, we had a classic which side
are you on moment and we saw which way they
chose to go. We're gonna see more prolonged strikes, We're
going to see more unfair labor practices, are going to
(29:23):
see more organizing. I think that it is impossible to
put this lightning back into a bottle. Right Like, activity
and interest in unions and organizing is, if not skyrocketing,
it's had a really nice little bump over the past
few years, a noticeable improvement and a noticeable amount of
new worker workplaces being organized and going on strike and
(29:44):
fighting for their rights. Like, I don't think that's going away.
And two of the aspects of this, this entire scenario
that really interests me. First, the fact that we're seeing
so many workers who some my categories as quote unquote
white collar whatever, folks who work in nonprofits or at
book publishers, or journalism, other types of media, kind of
(30:06):
all of these other types of jobs that don't fit
into that traditional manufacturing or extractive focused of many more
manual labor oriented jobs that I think a lot of
people associate with the labor movement. They've been going on
strike and they've been making big waves, whether it's the
forty eight thousand grad student workers at the University of
California or hardpwerk HarperCollins Publishing workers currently still on strike
(30:30):
in New York City. I think there's been kind of
the shift and understanding of oh, Okay, you don't need
to be a certain type of worker or certain type
of person, or come from a specific background in order
to organize to join a union. Unions aren't just for
the classic white guy in a hard hat trope like
my dad, right Like, they're accessible to so many more
of us than perhaps we thought, and I think that's
(30:52):
going to be big because work has shifted. Work looks
different than it did thirty years ago. There's a lot
of different ways to be exploited, and we know the
employers have definitely looked into each and everyone and taken notes.
So we have that happening. I think that's gonna continue
propelling the energy behind this movement. And secondly, I'm really
(31:13):
intrigued by the rise, and that's as it's a smaller phenomenon,
but it is very much happening, and it is kind
of increasing slowly the exist this existence of independent unions,
because we saw, of course the Amazon Labor Union. They're
the big ones, They've gotten tons of attention, deservedly so,
but there are also efforts Trader Joe's Trade Joe's United
(31:35):
as an independent union. Chipotle workers formed an independent union.
There was an effort here in Philadelphia to form a
Home Depot workers independent union, and that one wasn't successful,
but I'm certain that that organizer has not given up,
but they're still gonna keep working on that. Like and
I think seeing these independent unions which are not affiliated
(31:56):
with other internationals, are not part of the afl CE.
Oh there literally just d I y you know. Thence
the fact that we're seeing this happen. I think it
just shows the cracks in the current labor movement as
it stands, and especially in the way that power is concentrated,
in the way that resources are organized, in the way
(32:18):
that the movements. Priorities in terms of public statements and
political power are kind of dictated by folks who tend
to be more conservative. And I mean that in like
a Democrat way and not like you know, Republican chaos,
but just more conservative compared to a lot of the
rank and file. Like we see with the railroad workers
(32:40):
that rejected rejected that deal that so many of their
leaders agreed on. You know, I think there's more radicalism
brewing in the rank and file and more militancy that
and it's it's manifesting in different ways. It's manifesting and
wildcatch strikes or an independent unions, or in organizing outside
of the traditional organized labor structure and gender like what
(33:00):
sex workers and incarcerated workers are doing and have been doing.
I think ultimately the bottom line is that a lot
of workers, a lot of people have realized that they
have options, and they're exercising their rights to organize and
to work collectively and to stand with their fellow workers
against the bosses and against capital in ways that you know,
(33:21):
perhaps I wouldn't have felt disavailable or seemed as possible
a few years ago, but now there's so many examples
of other workers doing it. Of course, have been there
throughout history too, like I read about my book, but
I think we're at this moment where people realize, Okay,
there are a lot of different ways to do this.
I have people with me, we have problems we need
(33:42):
to address. Let's see what works. You know, it's not
just picking up the phone and calling a union organizer,
though that works for some folks. Too, is recognizing the
problems we face in our workplace, in our experience, and
deciding together what we want to do, how we want
to go forward, and how we're going to win. Once again,
that was Kim Kelly, author of phil Hell. Over the
(34:05):
past two episodes, we've taken a deep dive into the
history of general strikes in the United States, looking at
everything from the mass strike of Enslave plantation workers during
the Civil War all the way up to current examples
during Occupy Oakland. I think one of the things history
has to offer us as a guide for the present
is that these upheavals are made possible not only by
(34:27):
people responding to material conditions, but also learning from struggle.
In the instance of the Great Upheaval, that general strike
came after a series of other smaller strikes. This fall,
thousands of prisoners across Alabama organized a general strike of
incarcerated workers, downing their tools and refusing to work their jobs,
(34:47):
bringing the prisons to a grinding halt. This historic strike
comes on the heels of many other prisoner led strike
actions in two thousand ten, two thousand sixteen. In two
thousand eighteen, non to mention the fact that many Alabama
prisoners saw themselves as acting in the spirit of the
Great Plantation Strike during the Civil War, as epitomized by
(35:08):
the strike slogan let the crops rot in the field
in my final thoughts, instead of putting our hopes in
a call for a general strike going viral, As the
saying goes, we have to walk before we can run.
So strengthening our ability to engage in collective direct action
and active refusal, as well as building our capacity for
community self defense and mobilizing against state violence and repression
(35:32):
and whatever form will ultimately allow us to expand and
grow our ability to do these things in the future.
A lot of times we're told that like we're powerless
and were these passive beings and creatures and we have
to wait for somebody to organize us. But every single
day we wake up in the morning and we make
capitalism happen, like we do it, like all of us,
every single one of us does it. Like this is
(35:53):
not like oh, like this is just something that's happening
to us, we're doing to ourselves. We're doing it to
each other. Like these little things that we can do,
like little acts of resistance. And I'm all about petty
resistance because I do realize that a lot of people
don't have time for the large resistances. So this is
for anybody who's like, yeah, I hate capitalism, but I
just don't have the breath on the space and the
time to necessarily like go out and do things. If
(36:14):
you can't, please do it. You can't like walk the
funk out do But if you can't, like there's still
stuff you can do. That's it for me. By you know,
what strikes me often about general strikes are two things.
First is that general strikes actually function very differently than
they do in leftist discourse. Like in leftist discourse it's
workers do general strikes. But in reality, if we really
(36:37):
look at general strikes, there are these moments of convergence, right,
There's these these sort of points in which distinctions break down, right,
the distinction between like organizers and everyone else, or the
distinction between workers and non workers completely break down. Right,
It's not just railroad workers don't strike in eighteen seventy seven,
is also their families, their neighbors, their whole communities on strike.
And this the second thing that that raises often for me,
(37:01):
is again this kind of long term cultural implications of
that sort of form of action. So growing up in
a place where you know, strike culture is a thing,
um still where there's still actual union density and people
do walk off the job, um, you grow up with
that as an idea, right that you don't just walk
off the job. But like the restaurant around the corner
(37:22):
also gives out free food, and people bring coffee down
to the picket line, and you know, workers from other
unions show up the block entrances because the judge said
you can, you know so and so on, and it
becomes this huge community initiative of autonomy and self defense.
And what that creates is a sense in which class
struggle is perpetual. Like you understand always when you grow
(37:46):
up in a place like that, but when you go
to work you're making somebody else money because you've been
told that your whole life right and that if you
get angry about that, that what you're supposed to do
is organize and go on strike. And that's a very
normal sort of narrative that was because we all up
in families where we were taught to do that. That
if the wealthy we're taking advantage of you, you just leave. Right.
(38:07):
That is not a normal thing outside of the rest
of America, right, Like people don't get brought up with that.
But I think as we're starting to see this kind
of rise of the idea of the general strike, and
we're starting to understand that is something that's not just
connected to employment, but we can start to think of
general strikes as social strikes and not just economic strikes.
We can start to understand like, even if those may
(38:28):
immediately not succeed, the long term impacts of those over
time really create the conditions for them to succeed later.
And if it hadn't been for that flame staying alive,
I think in parts of America, this wave of worker
action wouldn't be happening. There wouldn't be a foundation for it,
there wouldn't be a way to understand it, right, um,
And that's what's so critical about this moment is I
(38:50):
think in some ways we're almost reviving a thing that
my grandparents lived in the midst of just as a
very normal part of their lives. I think that's like
a really important piece about this survival. And I think
think that something that feels really important about general strikes
is the idea of like solidarity and that our liberation
is collective, you know, that it involves each other. And
I think that, Um, I feel like what happened between
(39:12):
like what you're saying to about you, like your grandparents
generation and now is like near liberalism in a lot
of ways, and just like this really strong promotion of
the idea of like individualism and that if you want
to make your life better you have to do it yourself,
and like it's down to you as an individual. That
I think it was pretty effective at decimating a lot
of ideas of like solidarity or the idea that I like,
(39:33):
freedom is with each other. Um. And I think that
that is starting to fall apart, Like people are realizing
however much they hustle or like have side hustles or whatever,
they're still fucked and just like I think that we're
seeing like a resurgence of this idea of like solidarity
and that we have to do together, that is going
to do it for us this week. Thank you so
(39:54):
much for tuning in. Check us out on macodon at
I g D Underscore News and be sure or to
tune in as the workers that it could Happen here
into their two day strike and return to the job.
But stay tuned. We'll be back next week for even
more episodes. Until then, It could Happen here as a
(40:16):
production of cool Zone Media or more podcasts from cool
Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone media dot com,
or check us out on the I Heart radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at
cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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