Re: [Marxism] Comments by Steve Bloom on the Million Worker March

[andrew c pollack <andypollack@xxxxxxxx>]

I couldn't agree more with the paragraph below -- which is why the unions
are key. The percentage has been equally low in previous periods,
including periods just before huge upsurges (throughout the 1920's almost
no industrial workers were organized other than garment or mining). But
the work of commies inside those sectors to prepare for them to reach out
to new unorganized sectors, to reorganize defeated sectors, and to make
alliances with other movements, was the key.

Certainly the next wave of labor upsurge will have far more ties to
grassroots immigrant, people of color, women's groups than ever.  But
even for organizing "non"labor movements I'd just as soon start in a
union -- for instance, with a railroad union militant like E.D. Nixon
helping show somone like King how to organize at the start of his career.
And those caps on the heads you saw behind King at the Lincoln Memorial?
District 65 union caps!

Today that means being with the Black, Latin, South Asian, Chinese, etc.
workers in UNITE/HERE, hospital unions, government workers, etc., to find
a core there to build a new labor movement, and to work with them on
existing and new community movements based in their neighborhoods.

But by all means -- let's have the discussion Junaid calls for!

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 23:50:40 -0400 "M. Junaid Alam"
<mjunaidalam@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> I think what is thoroughly needed more than anything is a serious
> and > honest assessment of the composition of the modern American
> working-class, what job sectors are on the decline, what ones are
> becoming more prevalent, what kind of self-organizing capacity
> exists in > minority, including immigrant, workers, all to try and at
least make
> > some educated guesses as to where it makes the most sense to
> concentrate > our energies.

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