Democracy is supposed to be …
By Michael Gibelyou
Democracy is supposed to be about the will and interests of the people. While we have in the past been reminded to expand the definition of people in our laws, the proliferation of money in our political process threatens to narrow that definition once again to those with the money to buy a seat in Congress.
Through advertising and ownership the wealthy have drowned out the voice of opposition to their agenda, treating anyone with a differing opinion as crazy, or dangerous. Through Super PACs the wealthy have whispered lies into the ears of voters turning elections against those that would not do their bidding. In the last few years, the mask has come off, and some congresspersons have privately admitted that the system is rigged with money.
Over the last few decades the Supreme Court, with the help of various lobbying groups such as the Federalist Society, have removed constraints on campaign funding when it comes to the highest levels of our Government. Buckley V. Valeo ruled that limits on independent spending were unconstitutional, opening the door for Super PACs that pour money into races and flood voters with ads, money that is impossible to match legally by candidates who are not themselves obscenely rich. Citizens United likewise removed limits from corporations doing the same thing by ruling that spending money was the same as free speech. When the state of Montana attempted to reveal the names of those spending the money in this manner, their law was struck down. The government has legalized the spending of unlimited money to elect candidates. When a candidate breaks the rules and coordinates with their Super PAC, as Hillary Clinton did in 2016, nothing is done.
The impact of this can be clearly seen in everyday life. There is almost nowhere in the United States where a single income at minimum wage can afford rent, let alone the other inflated costs of living. Young families are outbid by corporations for single family homes. Rent control is forbidden in half of the country. There are more empty homes than homeless people in the United States. These policy choices do not serve the interests of everyone, just the owners of property.
Labor unions are supposed to protect their members rights, yet unions alone are not enough in the face of this corruption. Railroad companies, empowered by congress into forcing rejected contracts on their unions, are lobbying to reduce safety by only placing a single employee on each train at a time. The PRO act, a measure intended to strengthen unions, failed to pass in 2021, and while it has been reintroduced the chair of the house committee has already voiced opposition. Meanwhile some states are stripping protections against child labor.
For those who fear that eliminating campaign corruption would remove the ability of a union to lobby, it’s important to remember that unions will never be able to outspend the owners. Unions’ power has always been in their members’ actions and solidarity. Strikes are the true leverage successful unions wield, and the employees’ power is strongest when their voices can be heard. No matter what anyone’s personal goal for change is, this obstacle has to be removed for that change to succeed. Fortunately for everyone, there is a way to do this.
There are two ways to counteract a ruling by the Supreme Court. The first is the Court itself changes positions, as it did when it overturned Roe V. Wade. Given the makeup of the Court as it currently stands, it is doubtful that the Supreme Court will change any of its positions; at least not in the way that we would wish, hope for, or support. Since all Supreme Court rulings must derive from an interpretation of the Constitution, if the Constitution were to be changed, as to address a specific issue, any ruling to the contrary would be immediately rendered moot. This has been done in the past through a direct act from Congress. The difficulty with that is that Congress is the very body that must be regulated. Given how difficult it has been just to ban stock trading by legislators, it is unimaginable that congress as a whole will renounce campaign corruption willingly.
Therefore the only feasible way to get this accomplished is utilizing the other way that Article V of the Constitution allows: a convention, applied for by 2/3 of the States, to draft and propose an amendment for ratification. Simply put, remove Congress from the equation by using state governments to appoint delegates to discuss the matter and design a solution. Ratification would then be passed by the state legislatures.
WolfPAC, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to this exact goal, has already managed to convince five states to pass calls for this convention. With your help, we can get the rest. You can take the opportunity to get involved, not just with the legislative process, but by discussing the issues with those in your life. No matter what you have time to do, it will help our collective cause.
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Brandon Johnson’s Chicago Mayoral Victory
By Mike Miller
Brandon Johnson’s victory elicited the expected euphoria from most liberal, progressive, and left observers of the American political scene. Having watched several generations of “reform” mayors, many of them Black, I have some skepticism. I expressed it in a note to a long-time Chicago community organizer friend of mine. Our exchange:
Mike 4/18/23): “I am very nervous about the capacity of those who elected Johnson to respond to what the business community is going to do if he attempts anything they view as threatening their interests. And if he doesn’t do that, I’m nervous about what that will do to the morale of those who supported him.”
Jane (4/19/23): “Your concerns are well-taken, and in addition, finding the $$ to do what he proposes will be a very heavy lift. [Chicago is financially constrained.] Maybe a head tax on employees of Chicago companies (although that has been proposed before and could never get enough support when push came to shove). The problem is, to some extent, Chicago (and Illinois) is surrounded by states with much lower taxes, and lower cost of living, and companies do relocate claiming that’s the reason. Indiana is literally next to Chicago, and Wisconsin is about 60 miles away. It’s almost funny, I have done literally no Chicago door knocking for a candidate since 2008, because we always get shipped to Indiana, Wisconsin, or Michigan.
“[T]his was to some extent a contrast between public sector unions and private sector unions (who mostly sat it out, but some endorsed Vallas, [including] Fraternal Order of Police, of course, but also some building trades. Chicago Federation of Labor sat it out, of course).
“AFSCME usually doesn’t endorse, but this time they endorsed Johnson.
“It was also interesting to see which wards went for which candidates in the primary and then the runoff. Initially, Johnson won only the North Lakefront liberal wards, and also an area called the Milwaukee corridor, which is a combination of Latinos and more white liberals (mostly young). He took no Black wards, not even his own. They were won by the outgoing mayor, Lori Lightfoot. Once Lightfoot was eliminated, then the Black wards went for Johnson. Voter turnout was lighter than predicted in the older Latino wards on the South and Southwest sides. In the Latino community, support for Johnson was high among the younger, Democratic Socialists of America type activists, much less among older folk.
“There was also a huge generational aspect to this race. Even once the election was between Johnson and Vallas, a large number of older Black elected officials and retired elected officials endorsed Vallas, including half of the sitting Black alderpeople. These were people with very solid credentials as civil rights activists/defenders of the Black community. Most people think this reflects Johnson’s support for defund the police – a mistake that many people made, but no elected officials did who were listening to their constituents on the South and West sides – as well as the teachers union’s refusal to go back to in-person school after vaccinations became available.
“His big challenges will be getting more money for the schools, when they already spend $29,400 per student (but they do need more), and dealing with the street crime issue in the moment, which everyone on all sides agrees is critical.”
“Johnson is a really good campaigner (he is my County Board representative, so I’ve been following him for a while). He is one of the Chicago Teachers Union leaders who have energized their ground game — which certainly had a big role in his victory — and worked well with some community organizations that also did door-knocking and voter turnout…[O]n crime, he proposes to hire 200 more police detectives (or rather promote them from the ranks) so as to clear more violent crimes. No one objects to that. On education, he proposes to limit standardized testing. Everyone likes that. He wants to spend more on violence prevention workers — everyone seems fine with that.
“His big challenges will be getting more money for the schools, when they already spend $29,400 per student (but they do need more), and dealing with the street crime issue in the moment, which everyone on all sides agrees is critical. He put his foot in it this week by going soft on a mob of teens who more or less rioted downtown last Saturday, including shootings… Teens are already supposedly planning a flash mob at a mall near me for this weekend. Oh great. They always end up with people getting hurt, and stores being trashed.”
The Chicago Tribune story fills in some background: “One warm evening last July, SEIU Local 73 President Dian Palmer got a call out of the blue from Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson, who wanted to meet.
“The two had interacted during labor actions, including the longest strike in Local 73′s history the year before. But they weren’t close, so the call took her by surprise. The two met at Park Tavern near Palmer’s Chicago office and sat on the outside patio, where Johnson said he was considering a run for mayor.
“‘Of course, my No. 1 questions were: What is your platform and what is your path to victory?’ Palmer said.
“The meeting was so intense that, as the night went on, they realized neither of them had ordered anything. Palmer felt bad for taking up a table and just ordering ice water, so they shared a pretzel and continued the dialogue.
“I walked away from that meeting thinking, ‘Hmmm, he might have something here,’ she recalled.”
Pay Attention to A. Philip Randolph
Some, especially public employee, unions, and a whole new generation of left and progressive “grassroots” organizations have a capacity to mobilize voters. They also lack the capacity to do what former Sleeping Car Porters Union President and civil rights movement leader A. Philip Randolph said was required of those seeking significant social change:
“At the banquet table of life, there are no reserved seats. You get what you can take and keep what you can hold. If you can’t take anything, you won’t get anything. And if you can’t hold anything, you won’t keep anything. And you can’t take anything without organization.”
Any Johnson attempts to raise the revenue required for some of the substantial reforms he proposes will precipitate a strong reaction from Chicago’s business community: “The action is in the reaction.” Strategic people power planners seek a reaction they believe their forces can withstand and overcome. In so doing, they demonstrate their power to both adversaries and skeptics who believe “you can’t fight City Hall.”
What will Johnson and his allies do when businesses threaten to move or shut down a part of its operations in Chicago? Or when the cops stage a slow-down, sick-out and refusal to enforce the law?
Organizations that have the capacity to mobilize may or may not have the capacity to enforce what they might win, either in an election, or as the result of a strike. No place better teaches this lesson than Chicago, where the old year-round, regularly-on-the-scene Daley Machine withstood Martin Luther King, Jesse Jackson and the civil rights movement, strong community organizations and numerous electoral challenges. With a combination of patronage and services to constituents delivered by precinct-captains, it had deep roots in Chicago’s lower income communities. What provides that depth among the people for Johnson and his supporters? The lesson of that difference remains to be learned.
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For further reading:
Chicago Tribune and the New York Times
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Justice for Joe Evica! Support this unionist, fired for organizing
By Ben Ratliffe
Ben Ratliffe reports on the firing of OPEIU Local 39 Chief Steward Joe Evica in retaliation for union activity during an ongoing contract fight with CUNA Mutual Group.
Joe Evica
Workers at CUNA Mutual Group (CMG) with Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) Local 39 in Madison, WI have been deadlocked with management in contract negotiations for months. Despite clear justifications for their demands and increasing levels of militancy and public support, CMG management has utilized a variety of tactics to obstruct bargaining and break their union. Last week, the company fired Chief Steward Joe Evica in retaliation for his and his coworkers’ efforts to hold CMG accountable to its own mission and ensure just compensation and stable employment.
CUNA Mutual Group is an insurance company that sells a variety of insurance and investment products to other credit unions worldwide. The company established its headquarters in Madison in 1935. Today it operates out of offices in Washington D.C., Iowa, Kansas, and Texas. It runs international operations out of the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and Trinidad and Tobago. In addition to services provided to credit unions, CMG sells auto, life, and other types of insurance to individuals and companies under its TruStage brand.
The company prides itself on an orientation to social justice and philanthropy, and credit unions are often perceived as progressive alternatives to traditional banks. CMG’s “good cop” reputation is being challenged now as workers expose its treatment of the people who make the company run.
Negotiations began in February 2022. After reporting “exceptional growth” in 2021 with a year-end net income of $622 million, CMG management tried to cut their employees’ health insurance plan, freeze pensions for new hires, and continue outsourcing without offering wage increases nearly commensurate with inflation. Over the last twenty years, CMG has outsourced 1,200 union jobs, reducing its Madison-based workforce from over 1,600 to about 450 employees and contracting with non-union firms to avoid paying respectable wages and benefits. Meanwhile, managers have awarded themselves 22 percent bonuses, recently spent $1.3 billion acquiring another company, and spent millions more on new construction at the Madison office.
At the beginning of 2023, CMG management threw up significant obstacles to bargaining that have stalled what little progress was being made. Many CMG employees, including most of the union’s bargaining team, work remotely and negotiations had been held virtually. In a blatant effort to exhaust union leaders, CMG management began requiring the union bargaining team to meet in person and off the clock. This meant a loss in pay if they chose to meet during work hours or, for those working remotely from outside Madison, a drive into the city at the end of the day.
Union leaders have filed unfair labor practice lawsuits with the National Labor Relations Board, citing these and other blatant violations of the company’s legal obligation to bargain in good faith. The workers have also engaged in several spirited informational pickets, joined by other union workers and community allies. Their union has found support among members of the County and City governments, which passed resolutions supporting good-faith bargaining between the parties. The workers have also sent letters to more than seven thousand credit union leaders with whom CMG does business. Finally, in what veteran union activist and journalist Frank Emspak calls a “possible game-changer”, the union filed charges with NLRB under new “joint employer” rules, claiming the nature of the supervisory relationship between CMG and non-union contractors should obligate the company to bargain over their wages and working conditions as well.
Instead of listening to its employees and the Madison community, CMG has doubled down and begun targeted retaliation. On March 14, Chief Steward Joe Evica was placed on two weeks paid leave, pending the investigation of management’s claim that he illegally shared company information. OPEIU started a petition charging that the action taken against Joe was clear retaliation for “his role as a leader on the bargaining committee and in the union, and his effectiveness at organizing a collective response to management’s bad faith bargaining tactics.”
“The union intends to fight Joe’s termination on legal grounds and workers are considering a legally-protected unfair labor practice strike.”
To run the investigation, CMG paid a notorious union-busting firm, Ogletree Deakins, and in short order, Joe was fired. His union next created a GoFundMe page that’s already raised over $9,000 to help Joe and assist with future organizing. The union intends to fight Joe’s termination on legal grounds and workers are considering a legally-protected unfair labor practice strike.
Joe Evica explained the situation. When asked why CMG was playing so dirty when the company was doing so well, he replied,
“CUNA Mutual Group is resisting our union’s reasonable proposals for fair wages and benefits for the same reason all companies do: they would prefer to run their company like a dictatorship where workers have no control over our working conditions. This time around though, they’ve met serious resistance in the form of hundreds of union members standing together for what we know is fair.”
Eight months ago, while on the picket line, union steward Bryan Barber said CMG was dragging negotiations out in order to demoralize workers, but that this was having the opposite effect, as workers’ militancy and public support grew. Since then, and in the face of the bosses’ attacks, solidarity in the union has remained strong, and workers plan to continue their fight.
You can support Joe and his family by donating to the GoFundMe page organized by members of the union.
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This piece originally ran in Tempest Magazine
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A Handy Reference for Committed Organizers
By Peter Olney
The Activist Spirit – Toward a Radical Solidarity Victor Narro
In April of 2016 we published a powerful essay by Victor Narro entitled, “The Need for a More Radical Solidarity in the Labor Movement based on Spirituality, Mindfulness, and Self-Care”
The focus of Narro’s article was the importance of injecting and embracing spirituality in the community of labor and community organizers who over the long haul can be subject to physical and emotional burnout if there is not a support community sustained by love and comradeship. Narro’s essay predated the presumptive Republican nomination of Donald Trump for President of the United States. Trump’s surprise victory and his subsequent toxic presidency have fueled a very polarized climate in our country. But it is also a movement moment with tremendous potential for growing a powerful labor movement and a political left.
Victor Narro steps up again with a tight little volume of spiritual guidance for activists entitled: The Activist Sprit Toward a Radical Solidarity. This 139-page book is presented in short accessible chapters with Victor’s thoughts, an appropriate poem and then a space for making notes of self-reflection. It can work as a field manual and a sharing tool. Each short chapter has a thematic and cites famous contemporary and historical philosophers and spiritual leaders.
I was particularly interested in Narro’s treatment of the topic of anger. In a national moment when anger seethes from every pore of national and social media, how do we channel anger as organizers? My training has emphasized the importance of stoking and channeling anger as part of motivating workers for the difficult challenges of organizing in a climate infested with fear and intimidation. Narro writes in Chapter 3: “feelings of anger are normal for many of us who work for justice.” What matters more is how we channel those feelings of anger. With the right perspective and awareness, we are able to transform feelings of personal anger towards someone like Trump into what South African Bishop Tutu refers to as “righteous anger.” In Chapter 6 Freedom Rider Ruby Sales distinguishes between “redemptive anger and non-redemptive anger. “Redemptive anger is the anger that moves one to transformation and human up building. Non-redemptive anger is the anger that white supremacy roots itself in.”
I have the utmost respect for Victor’s willingness to explore topics of love, compassion and spirituality. He is a soothing antidote to some of the hard and biting Marxist materialism that animates much of political discourse in the left progressive movement.
The Activist Spirit is a quick read but a constant reference book. It is published by, and available from Hardball Press.
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NO PAPERS? LOSE YOUR HOME!
By David Bacon
Farmworkers in California labor camps see unprecedented rise in evictions. As growers bring in more H-2A workers, affordable housing for local farmworkers has become sparse.
Lidia Torres got scared when the new eligibility clerk at the labor camp knocked on her door. She would have to come to the office, Vanessa Carter told her, and reverify the immigration documents she’d provided when she first moved in six years earlier. So, Torres showed them to her. “She said my documents were not valid,” Torres remembers. “No one had ever questioned them before. Then she gave me three days to get out.”
Carter threatened to give Torres’ papers to a lawyer, even to a judge. “I said they were same as most people here in the camp. But then Vanessa said she was checking theirs too, and they’d have to leave as well. I thought she’d call the migra. If I made a fuss, she said I’d have to pay thousands of dollars.”
The Linnell Farm Labor Center, where Torres lived, consists of one hundred ninety-one single story cinderblock apartments near Visalia, in the southern San Joaquin Valley. They’re scattered around a dusty playing field and children’s playground filled with weeds, behind a locked gate and fence. Torres’ rent was $513 a month for two bedrooms. Fearing that her problems could escalate, she found another place to rent for $1800 a month and left.
Carter did as she’d threatened and questioned the immigration documents of other families in the camp. In a March 23 email Ray Macareno a member of the Board of Commissioners of the Tulare County Housing Authority (TCHA), said that 17 families received 3-day eviction notices, which threaten $600 fees and court and attorney costs for non-compliance. The notice, which residents were told to sign, says “You admitted to HATC staff that you do not have permanent residency and further admitted that you had provided HATC with fraudulent citizenship documents.”
Two community organizations, the Central Valley Empowerment Alliance (CVEA) and the Unidad Popular Benito Juarez (UPBJ), say they’ve gathered documentation from over fifty families evicted or threatened with eviction from the Linnell and three other Tulare County camps. In February they held two community hearings, and then went to a board meeting to demand that the families be reinstated.

Similar enforcement actions could affect thousands of other farmworker families, far beyond Tulare County. “People have been telling us about evictions like this in other parts of the valley,” said UPBJ executive director Hector Hernandez in an interview. “It’s not visible, but it feels like a wave.” Increasing the potential for an eviction wave is a law passed during the Trump administration. An amendment to Section 514 (f)(3)(A) of the Housing Act of 1949 makes it possible for growers to use the nationwide system of farm labor camps, not for farmworkers who have worked and lived in the U.S. for years, but as barracks housing for contract temporary labor under the exploitative H-2A visa program.
Tulare County manages 495 units of housing for farmworker families in six labor camps, including Linnell. The U.S. Department of Agriculture provides funding both for construction of the camps and rent subsidies for residents. According to a USDA Rural Development spokesperson, families get rental assistance in 5,466 units in California, and in over 12,000 units nationwide.
To rent an apartment in one of the camps, a family member must show that she or he works in the fields, meets USDA low-income guidelines, and is a U.S. citizen or legal resident. The camps are filled with farmworker families who reflect the demographics of the farm labor workforce. Nationally, the USDA estimates that over 40 percent of farmworkers don’t have legal immigration status, and that this is higher in California. The families living in camp apartments are often mixed, with some members having legal status and others without it.

Torres’ children, for instance, were born in the U.S. When Carter questioned her status, she asked that her son, living with her and attending college, sign the rental agreement instead. Carter said he’d have to go work in the fields to qualify. “I would never take him out of school and put him in the fields,” Torres told her.
In the workplace, farmworkers without papers face the same problem of showing documents about immigration status. Federal law, since 1986, has required employers to check workers’ papers before hiring them. In a workforce of 2.4 million nationally, hundreds of thousands of farmworkers provide what employers need, sometimes borrowing or buying the necessary ID’s. And it’s not just farmworkers. All the estimated 11 million undocumented people in the U.S. have the same problem when they get hired.
According to the U.S. Customs and Immigration Services, however, once a permanent resident card (green card) is accepted by a prospective employer, future reverification is not required. Given the demographics, constant reverification in the fields would mean a million workers in agriculture losing their jobs.
USDA and Housing Authorities could follow the process established in employment law, where reverification is barred once the original documents showing legal status are accepted. There is no requirement for yearly reverification in the USDA-supported labor camps, written into the language of Section 514. And as Torres says, camp managers understand the reality, and in the past didn’t ask to reverify immigration papers once a family signed their first rental contract. As the years went by, tenants simply signed new rental agreements every year.
Suddenly, in Tulare County, the Housing Authority changed the rules.
Mario Padilla and Concepcion Vargas, a couple in their 60s, signed their first Linnell rental contract 19 years ago, after arriving from Sinaloa and getting work in Tulare County’s grapevines and orange orchards. “I showed what I had to,” Padilla says. “No one raised a question about it. The people in the office see our tax returns every year, and they could see that I was filing with a TIN, so they knew we didn’t have a good Social Security number.” The IRS allows people without Social Security numbers to use Temporary Identification Numbers (TINs) instead.

“All of a sudden,” he recalled, “we were told that our old papers were no good, and that they’d investigate us. We felt intimidated, but we protested. We have a right to our home, because of our years living and working here.”
At the community hearings and subsequent Housing Authority board meetings, most of the farmworkers said they’d been evicted over the immigration question. But some testified that they’d been told to leave because their children made noise, left toys outside or had therapy equipment for disabilities in their apartments. Almost any small question raised by Carter and Esparza led to eviction.
Fabiola Cortez, who’d lived in her apartment at the Woodville camp for eight years, couldn’t work because she was pregnant. She was told she no longer qualified as a farmworker and was evicted. “We had to leave in three days, when all the storms were pouring rain. We stayed in the parking lot in front of my mother’s apartment in my van, me with my three kids,” she recalls.
One possible explanation for the rush to evict residents surfaced at a March Housing Authority meeting, when board members revealed that the USDA told them of a third immigration status that makes it possible to rent space in the labor camp. Workers with H-2A visas also qualified, the board announced.
The number of H-2A workers in the U.S. is increasing rapidly. Last year growers received 371,619 certifications allowing them to bring in contract laborers, about a sixth of the country’s farm labor workforce – a number that has doubled in 5 years and tripled in eight. These workers, whose pay is set close to minimum wage, can only work for the grower who recruits them, usually in Mexico, and must leave the country after their work contract ends. They can be fired for protesting, organizing, or simply working too slowly. Fired workers lose their visa and must leave the country, and then are usually blacklisted by recruiters. This makes them very vulnerable to pressure and illegal conditions.
The regulations governing H-2A visas require growers to house the workers for the duration of their stay, limited to less than a year. That housing requirement has been bitterly opposed by agribusiness because of its cost, and because the existing rural housing is very limited.
Farmworker housing is in crisis in rural California, as in almost every agricultural state. Despite $100 million budgeted for it in 2021, grape pickers in the San Joaquin Valley still sleep in cars during the harvest. Yearly earnings for agricultural laborers in the state average $20,500, making it virtually impossible to rent homes at market rates. The consequence is severe overcrowding, which had deadly effects during the pandemic.
One study by the California Coalition for Rural Housing found that “Most households of farmworkers interviewed included non-family members who were for the most part other farmworkers. There are consistently stunningly high rates of residences that are above the severely crowded condition of 2.0 people per room. … Often more than 5 people per bathroom.” Another study stated, “San Joaquin Valley communities face increasing housing challenges, yet there are ever fewer State and Federal resources that support the development of needed affordable housing.”
As they bring in increasing numbers of H-2A workers, growers are competing for housing against local workers, even taking over small motels in many rural towns. In one Tulare County town, Porterville, the rundown Palm Motel became the housing for Porterville Citrus’ contract laborers during the pandemic. When the company abandoned it after worker protests, notices appeared on some of the windows, warning that the rooms had been quarantined and needed to be disinfected. In Santa Maria the city council passed an ordinance to stop growers from packing H-2A workers into rented houses, after resident farmworkers began having trouble paying the rents that rose as a result.
To subsidize their costs, growers have tried to access public housing funds. In Washington State they won a fight in 2016, allowing them to use state funds for farmworker housing to build barracks for their H-2A workers. California passed AB 1783 to stop growers from using the Joe Serna Farmworker Grant Housing Program for the same purpose.
There are 31 vacant units in six county-run camps, with 107 families still on waiting lists.
Ilene Jacobs, Director of Litigation, Advocacy & Training for California Rural Legal Assistance, says that programs like the Tulare County labor camps “were designed to provide housing for farmworkers and their families here. It’s a crisis for every low-income family, but farmworkers are among those who need housing the most. It defeats the purpose of these programs to let employers use them for H-2A workers. It’s really a double subsidy – growers get the benefit of the H-2A program, and the added benefit of using public housing.”
There are no H-2A workers living in Tulare County camps, Macareno said. But when I asked if the housing authority had talked at any point with growers about housing their H-2A workers, I received no reply. “If we got any applications we’d look around and see what’s available,” HATC general counsel Julia Lew told me. Rudy Flores, a young activist living in the Linnell camp, says the units where families were evicted are still standing vacant. Macareno confirmed that there are 31 vacant units in six county-run camps, with 107 families still on waiting lists.
In one of its meetings packed with protesters, board president John Hess said the Housing Authority had received permission from USDA to allow the families, evicted because of immigration status, to sign new 1-year contracts. They could move back in, at least until those contracts expire and they once again might have to show their papers. “In effect, they [USDA] were not going to enforce the rules, at least temporarily,” Hess told me. But Flores says he knows of no families who have been permitted to return to the Linnell camp, as of the end of March.

“The Linnell camp is a product of struggle,” CVEA co-director Mari Perez told me. She pointed to photographs taken by Dorothea Lange, when she and her husband Paul Taylor documented farm laborers sleeping in cars and tents at the height of the Depression. Their pathbreaking report with her photos, An American Exodus, convinced the New Deal administration to set up the first Federally-funded camp for farmworkers in neighboring Kern County. Taylor became its director.
In 1964 Linnell’s residents organized an historic rent strike against bad camp conditions and high rents. The following year the organizers who cut their teeth in that conflict converged on Delano, where they helped start the 5-year grape strike in which the United Farm Workers was born. “It should be no surprise to anyone that we are not going anywhere,” said Perez. “We will fight these evictions, like our people fought before.”
But fighting the competition with growers over farmworker housing will be more difficult. The Biden administration seems intent on continuing policies from the Trump administration favoring the H-2A program.
At an April 2017 White House meeting Trump told growers that, although he was targeting undocumented people for deportation, he would make the H-2A program easier for them to use. In that meeting Steve Scaroni, CEO of Fresh Harvest, one of the nation’s largest contractors of H-2A workers, told Trump he would bring even more of them to the San Joaquin Valley if he could find places to house them.
The following year Congress passed the amendment to Section 514 (f)(3)(A) of the Housing Act of 1949 that allowed USDA to open the camps for growers to use for their H-2A workers. Trump signed the bill. While he was still in the White House in 2019 Bruce Lammers, head of USDA’s Rural Development division, wrote a set of instructions to housing authority managers, advising them on regulations for implementing the new rule.
A labor market study to determine the impact of increased competition for housing on local workers is not required, his memo says. “Farmworkers who are admitted to this country on a temporary basis under the H-2A program, are now eligible to occupy … units which are currently or becoming unoccupied or underutilized,” it continues. The one-year contracts all other applicants must sign will not be mandatory for H-2A workers since they must leave within a year.
Because H-2A workers arrive in the country needing housing right away, growers may sign the leases to guarantee payment, and housing managers are permitted to “work with the sponsor on providing housing for the incoming H-2A workers.” The memo tells housing authorities to track the H-2A applications using a specific code. An FOIA request for the number, location, and employers of H-2A workers in USDA-supported housing has not yet been answered.
Once President Biden took office, the administration began sending emissaries, including Vice-President Kamala Harris, to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The intention was to provide alternatives for potential migrants, other than leaving in the migrant caravans, for which the administration has been attacked by Republicans. One alternative was increasing corporate investment in the hope it would produce jobs. The other is leaving, but with H-2A visas.
Samantha Power, former Obama advisor and now administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, thanked one meeting of growers at USDA last September for working with the Biden administration on “a critical priority – expanding the pool of H-2 farmworkers from Central America, specifically from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.”
“We have got your back,” she promised them. “We are committed to helping maintain a strong pipeline of experienced farmworkers to support you.” A recent policy brief by the Migration Policy Institute even recommends paying growers’ costs of transporting the workers to and from the U.S.
Since these policies will add to the numbers already being brought by growers from Mexico, the competition over scarce farmworker housing will undoubtedly grow as a consequence. Growers themselves are reluctant to spend money to build any new housing for H-2A workers. Only two sizeable projects have been built in the last decade, in Salinas. For agribusiness, competing for the existing housing stock is easier, cheaper, and quicker.
The evictions at the Tulare County labor camps may be only the beginning of a much longer and bigger fight.
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Can labor seize its ‘movement moment’?
By Rand Wilson and Peter Olney
One measure of the labor movement’s relative power is the percentage of the workforce covered by union contracts. From a post-war high in 1955 of 35% in the private sector represented by unions, the percentage has steadily plunged—now to a low of only 6% . That low private sector number is buoyed to just over 10% by the higher percentage of unionized public sector workers.
These dismal membership numbers hide the promise this moment holds for union organizing. Public support, resources, and organizing momentum point to some of the brightest possibilities for the US union movement in decades. Workers around the country stand to benefit most directly—but all who care about preserving democracy have a stake as well.
Support and resources
Public opinion about unions has rarely been more favorable. Polls show that 71% of the public supports unions (the highest it’s been since 1965). The numbers are even higher among young people in their teens and twenties. Such a climate makes this an optimal time to abandon fortress unionism and begin a massive recruitment drive.
The labor movement certainly has the resources and the talent. Today, the financial condition of American unions has never been better. The combined assets of U.S. unions now total $35.8 billion, thanks to real estate holdings and shrewd investment strategies. Put in perspective, labor’s combined assets would rank it as the second largest foundation in the U.S., trailing only the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Labor’s sizable war chest could be used to help millions of workers organize in manufacturing, logistics, and services where they now work without the benefits of collective bargaining. While most unions don’t disclose their budgets for organizing, the data is very dispiriting for the few that do.
Two unions that propelled organizing in the 1930s, the United Steelworkers (USW) and the United Auto Workers (UAW), devote meager resources to organizing today. In 2020, the UAW allocated only 6% of its budget to organizing, while the USW only earmarked 3% of members’ dues to recruitment. On a slightly more positive note, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters spent 13% of its budget on organizing in 2021. Hopefully that will increase under the new reform leadership. More encouraging is the approach taken by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which by its constitution requires locals to spend a minimum of 20% on organizing.
Organizing momentum
Despite the paltry resources dedicated to organizing, there are some very positive signs of labor’s resurgence. In 2022, there were 424 work stoppages that involved approximately 224,000 workers, up from 52 percent in 2021. Also important, the total number of workers involved in work stoppages increased by 60 percent.
Another positive sign: the increase in organizing campaigns to win collective bargaining rights. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) reported that it supervised 1,714 representation elections in 2022, a 52.4 percent increase from 2021. Workers voted in favor of unionizing in 72 percent of those elections, up from 61 percent in 2021.
Much of the increase in union elections was driven by organizing among baristas at Starbucks. Starbucks has 9,000 retail locations in the US, and over 293 outlets have voted in elections supervised by the NLRB to join Starbucks Workers United, an affiliate of SEIU.
While Starbucks workers do not occupy a classical “strategic” position in the economy (although overpriced Starbucks coffees do fuel worker productivity or lack thereof), their campaign has captured the imagination of the American public and has energized a whole generation of labor activists.
The leader of the first Starbucks organizing victory in Buffalo, New York in 2021 was Jaz Brisack, a Rhodes Scholar turned barista. Now she is using her organizing talents to assist workers forming a union at a Tesla factory in Buffalo. The hope is that like Ms. Brisack, many of these young activist workers will carry their experience into other sectors of the working class.
A strike by 48,000 University of California teaching assistants and graduate researchers paralyzed the state’s higher education system and led to dramatic gains for these campus workers who are united in the UAW. Important campus organizing by adjunct faculty, graduate students, and resident assistants is occurring on many other campuses as well.
The new organizing outside of the UAW’s traditional base in auto manufacturing is having a major internal impact on the union. UAW members recently concluded an historic internal election after years of “one party” rule. The reform movement that successfully pushed for a referendum to win direct, one-member, one-vote election of top officers recently swept a majority of seats on the executive board and elected a reform leader, Shawn Fain, as president. Now these reformers will take the reins of the union going into negotiations with the big three: Stelantis (formerly Chrysler), General Motors, and Ford, where contracts expire on September 14.
The presence of a large number of graduate-level education workers in the UAW was undoubtedly one factor that led to the reform of this once powerful union. Today, there are approximately 1.3 million workers in auto assembly and auto parts but fewer than 300,000 are members of the UAW. Ironically, the large presence of campus workers in the UAW may enable a new and more vigorous organizing capacity that the union desperately needs to focus on organizing in the auto industry once again.
Bringing the fight to Amazon
One of the most important current organizing campaigns is by workers at Amazon. The company now employs more than one million workers in the U.S., with about 850,000 of those employees in warehousing.
Amazonians United is organizing in New York City, Philadelphia, and elsewhere to build power in warehouses using a combination of solidarity and NLRA Section 7 rights. The independent Amazon Labor Union won a union election victory in April 2022 at a warehouse on Staten Island that energized the labor world. And organizing by Amazon workers continues to spread. Amazon workers are forming unions with RWDSU—a division of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW)—in Bessemer, AL, and with the American Postal Workers Union in several northern cities. No other union is facing more of a threat from Amazon’s low-road employment standards to the wages and working conditions that it has achieved for its members than the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. As the largest “logistics” union, it has made a major commitment to building organizing committees at multiple Amazon locations.
In addition to helping workers at Amazon build power, the Teamsters union is engaged in a huge contract campaign for its 340,000 members at UPS whose collective bargaining agreement expires on August 1. Teamster leaders are waging an aggressive campaign to win significant contract improvements and eliminate a two-tier wage system. This crucial battle will hopefully inspire more Amazon workers to see the benefits of collective bargaining and rise up and organize.
One final bright spot on the American labor scene is an active reform movement growing within UFCW. While the union has a substantial presence in grocery and retail, it has not been up to taking on the challenge of organizing at Wal-Mart or newly emerging grocery stores like Whole Foods. The movement, dubbed Essential Workers for Democracy, will be organizing at this year’s convention to elect new leadership and make major changes to the union’s constitution. If the reformers are successful, it could lead to another major advancement in growing a more democratic and militant union movement.
The increase in strikes and organizing by a restless working class and the renewed membership energy stemming from several vigorous reform movements are hopeful signs. However, the great paradox remains that even as public opinion is swinging in favor of unions and activity is increasing, labor leadership is not devoting sufficient resources to seize this “movement moment.”
However, if we agree that a revived labor movement—and more worker organizing—is essential for any hope of combating the rise of the far right or tackling pernicious economic inequality, then we can’t wait for the union treasuries to open. It’s imperative to unite as much of the labor movement as possible with a far broader Left to defend our entire democracy.
That challenge has never been more urgent or relevant than today. In 2020 and then again in 2022 several unions set a shining example by deploying labor “ballot brigades” in battleground states. They partnered with community organizations like LUCHA in Arizona or electoral action groups like Seed the Vote to make a key difference in states that Democrats carried by very slim margins.
Think of 2024 as labor’s Bella Ciao moment, akin to when left Italian partisans fought the Fascists, often in an alliance with broader popular forces. Their united front stood them well in postwar Italy and enhanced their political credibility.
If the MAGA forces try to steal the election again in 2024, labor must be ready to engage in dramatic direct action. But first we must regroup again in another broad united front to win the election—or the far right will have nothing to “steal.” Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao!
The Stansbury Forum is happy to be co-publisihing this article with Convergence
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Workers on Work: Clinical social worker and therapist
By Joe Sciarrillo
From time to time the Stansbury Forum will post workers talking about their jobs. Today’s post is by Joe Sciarrillo, a licensed clinical social worker and therapist. He works outreach with the unhoused and addicts in San Francisco, California.
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I’ve been a social worker for about 9 years now. I’ve always wanted to be a social worker. I grew up in a family that was very influenced by Jesuits, and I got involved in the progressive side of the Catholic Worker, service orientated, the more liberal side of the Catholic Church. I had some teachers at my Jesuit school who were activists in the Tenderloin and that really influenced me to do something that addressed the inequality on the street.
Social work is great. It lets you have a therapist’s hat, but it also lets you get involved in the systems, connecting the dots among all the agencies that are supposed to be serving people.
I work with people who are mostly unhoused in the Tenderloin, Mission, Bayview, and SOMA neighborhoods. Mostly (I) do therapy on the street with people who are unhoused, and a little bit of case management: connecting people to housing, to doctors, to therapy, to job programs.
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Our organization’s motto is, “Come as you are”, so therapy on the street involves letting people approach you with whatever issues they’re going through, being non-judgmental and willing to listen. That often involves being attentive to someone’s trauma, possibly their depression, and anxiety. Being able to listen with compassion, affirm people’s identity, what they’re going through, and provide emotional support and encouragement, as well as to support people to make whatever next steps they need to make.
For me the most frustrating thing is knowing that in a city like San Francisco there are thousands of people who are in dire straits, and me talking to someone can be a positive interaction. But there is so much more support the city needs to provide. The city needs to do a better job of providing access to housing, access to medical care. The most frustrating thing is feeling like I’m just a band aide amidst many gapping wounds. There needs to be a lot more services, medical and housing, addressing the economic system that doesn’t fit for everyone.
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The common issue is someone having past trauma. Whether that being the jail system, being in foster care, a traumatic divorce, or an accident, and not having enough of a safety net, or support, to cope. Or being very isolated and struggling and that leading to depression. But all that is sparked by a trauma. They’re struggling to figure out how to heal.
It’s very common, but not always the case, for people to be using drugs as a way of coping.
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[Do you take all this home with you?] My wife would say yes. I would say I’ve always had these social injustices in the front of my mind, since I was a kid.
I think that by being involved in the work, being face to face with the issues, I’m able to compartmentalize it a lot more than when I wasn’t a social worker. I feel like I am able to do my self-care when I get home – go skateboarding, watch movies, watch music – and I can decompress. But I always need to talk to someone about what I’ve gone through throughout the day.
It was worse when I wasn’t doing this work, when I was just a student I would be consumed by reading the news and theoretical things about society and injustices. I was emotionally a lot more wound up in being frustrated back then than I am now.
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I’ve only formally been a social worker for 9 years. Before that, for 20 years, I was either a paralegal or a caseworker. I would say all of that was social work without the name. So, I’ve been doing it for over 20 years because it’s just ingrained in how I see the world.
It gives meaning to my life by feeling like I am a factor in trying to create positive change in society, or some individual’s life. And it’s reciprocal. I take meaning out of it, and I hopefully give meaning to someone, as well. That’s how I see the world.
It makes life so much more meaningful if we are there for each other. If we’re able to do that for our 9-5 job, that’s so much greater. So, I intend to do something like this for the rest of my life, if I can.
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I would just say that when people like me say the city should do more, I’m saying city agencies should do more, but also individuals, as well.
I think if more people saw people on the street as their neighbors, that would have a ripple effect how the average person interacts with someone on the street, even if it just means looking people in the eye and saying hi. That can have a ripple effect into what type of policies we vote for, how we put pressure on our supervisors, and city departments, to implement more humane programs.
As far as what needs to be addressed, the list could go on: affordable housing, more protections against evictions, more access to pro bono attorneys for tenants’ rights.
There needs to be more green spaces, more safe spaces for people to nap on the streets. More access to healthy food – not just soup kitchens – but more affordable healthy food. It’s been good to see more water fountains open.
There needs to be more public toilets, not just for the unhoused but for everyone who’s out and about during the day.
There needs to be safe injections sites. There are 700 people dying of overdoses a year and we just keep sweeping that fact under the rug. It’s not going to go away unless there is more of a safe community to support people as they go through their addiction.
We know even if they want to, they can’t quit right away. We need more crisis response teams, not just during the day but overnight.
Yeah the list can go on.
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About addiction, I never realized, up until this last year, how addiction can be so inexplicably difficult to step out of. I’ve been able to meet people that have gone through rehab programs – AA or inpatient treatment – that maybe worked for them for a few weeks, a few months, but didn’t work for them in the long-term sense. That opened my eyes because I always assumed that doing one or two rehab stints could be a long-term solution. But I’ve learned how complicated and nuanced addiction is.
There are so many variables to treating addiction that we have to have an open mind to harm reduction programs, [but] also to those more traditional programs that do work for some people. Addiction isn’t a one size fits all.
I have a lot more patience now with listening to different approaches to addressing addiction. I’m more humble about addressing it and talking about it, than I used to be.
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I think the biggest tool and skill is compassion, that’s the foundation when I’m encountering whatever traumas, or whatever social ills, injustices, sufferings people are going through.
Having my grounding in figuring out and believing that we are all connected. That we all have a purpose to help each other, to support each other, and that all comes from values that I’ve grown up with.
Listening! I think listening is a tool that is not talked about very much. Being able to be fully present with someone and listen more than you talk.
Compassion can be an issue when it connects to the issue of boundaries.
I’ve struggled with working overtime, and that bleeds into my family time, or people learning more about my personal life than they need to. And me sharing too much.
You have to balance the compassion with some type of self-care.
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Silent No More
By Stewart Acuff
Marching through Beckley, West Virginia, on March 4, the crowd of 150 friends and families of Quantez Burks and Alvis Shrewsbury stretched a full block. I was there with others to honor the memories of the two men killed not far away in the Southern Regional Jail.
It was the first anniversary of Burks’ death. Shrewsbury had died Sept. 17, 2022, after he was in jail 19 days.
State corrections officials told Burks’ family that he had died of natural causes. But an independent medical examiner who examined the body of Burks found he died with numerous broken bones, including a broken nose, one leg and both wrists as though he had been handcuffed during the beating.
State officials haven’t publicly stated how Shrewsbury died, but before his death he told his family how he was beaten by other inmates who were stealing his meals.
Burks was in jail after being arrested for wanton endangerment after discharging a firearm in his home. Shrewsbury was in the Raleigh County jail serving 90 days for a second drunk driving convention. Neither deserved to be beaten to death. And nobody has been charged in their deaths or held accountable in any way.
Just this past year 13 men died inside the Southern Regional Jail, leading the state in that statistic. But it is the Eastern Regional Jail in Martinsburg that leads in the number of suicides occurring in state jails.
Massive heroin and opioid addiction that plagues all of Appalachia, including Jefferson County has crammed West Virginia regional jails far beyond capacity. Men sleep on concrete floors, have food stolen, use broken facilities and are denied medical care.
Now the Burks family and the Shrewsbury family have joined with the Poor Peoples Campaign to seek justice for their loved ones who were not adequately protected from attacks and abuse. The families, one black and one white, gathered before the march for prayer led by Pastor Walter Leach of St. Paul Baptist Temple. In his prayer the pastor promised, “We will not give in. We will not give out.” I heard that promise echoed over and over throughout the day.
While waiting for the march to start Alvis Shrewsbury’s fiancée, Justine Bradley, said: “I’m glad to be here and not let our tragedies be swept under the rug. It’s sad that animals in animal shelters are treated better than people in West Virginia jails.”
Mary Mullins, Shrewsbury’s sister-in-law, said while at the rally, “Jail is supposed to be for reform. Not killing.”
Under a sky spitting freezing rain with a cold whipping wind, Kimberly Burks, the mother of Quantez Burks, helped assemble the 150 marchers and stepped us off from the home of Quantez Burks at noon. We marched through the neighborhood and out to well-travelled thoroughfares and around the Beckley Police Station. We then lined a block of the main street through town holding and waving signs, some folks crying, others remembered the two men and the shock of their deaths.
Josh Eagle, a friend of Burks, held a sign that read: “What if Quan was your son? Brother? Father? Husband? Friend? Uncle? We want answers. We demand justice.”
Rosetta Eagle, Josh’s mother, said, “I cried for days after Quan died. He was like a son.”
Quantez Burks’ daughter, Kiera Burks, is a 22-year-old senior at Ohio State University studying social work. Of her father, she said, “He was the best dad. Loving and caring. Always there for me. It’s heartbreaking. I miss him so, so much. I think about him every day.”
It is the families and friends of men who are beaten to death behind bars who suffer the longest. It is the deepest most evil corruption that covers and enables cruelty and torture unto death.
A class action civil rights lawsuit with dozens of family members of inmates abused and/or killed in West Virginia jails has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia. Stephen New and his law firm are representing the families.
Justice in these cases must include an acknowledgement by the state of overcrowding and abuse and public acknowledgement of what happened in every death or beating. Justice must include immediate relief of overcrowding using innovative sentencing alternatives such as community service. Justice would include prosecution of everyone involved in the jail abuses from other inmates to corrections officers to corrections administrators. Justice would include a complete overhaul of both the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the West Virginia Department of Homeland Security which oversees the corrections division.
Last Friday, March 10, national leader, and founder of the Poor Peoples Campaign (PPC) Bishop William Barber came to Charleston to stand with grieving families and former inmates to tell their stories of casual cruelty in West Virginia jails.
Led by mothers of beaten and dead inmates we marched inside the Capitol to confront the governor with terrible secrets of torture.
In the hallway of the governor’s office surrounded by police and state troopers each mother spoke truth to power to the governor’s staff. Then breaking down, crying as one cries for a dead son, they were followed by sisters, fiancées and one former inmate beaten but surviving; they all told everything.
Giving the staff the petition signed by more than four thousand we asked that the governor join our call to the U.S. Department of Justice for a full federal civil rights investigation.
The families, PPC and Barber promised one another to pursue this state outrage till justice is won.
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Nerve Centers
By Nicola Benvenuti
My initial contact with a powerful and class concious labor movement came in 1971-72 when I was studying at the University of Florence in Tuscany, Italy. I witnessed massive marches of workers protesting the war in Vietnam and carrying the red banners of the Italian Communist Party! I also played on an Italian rugby team in Florence. One of my teammates was Nicola Benvenuti, at the time a miltant in the PCI – Partito Communista Italiano. He has remained a lifelong family friend, and I always go to him for interpretation of Italian current events. When we published Labor Power and Strategy, I immediately sent him a review copy because I value his wisdom on these matters. What follows are his observations on the book from the perspective of someone who has particpated in working class politics in a society where the PCI commanded the loyalty of the working class and polled 34.4% of the vote in 1976.
Peter Olney, Co-Editor of the Stansbury Forum and
Labor Power and Strategy
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Labor Power and Strategy PM Press 2023 – A Review from an Italian Comrade, Nicola Benvenuti
The first thing that strikes me about this book is its title. It reminds me of political literature published in the year 1968. Two of the expressions it contains come across as especially reminiscent of those times: “Worker Power” and “Strategy”.
Workers’ Power (Potere Operaio) [1] was also the name of an extra-parliamentary self defined revolutionary student and workers’ organzation, that like other left political groups and parties, traced its roots back to an original Marxism, the concept of the working class as the general class embodying the values and principles for a radical reorganization of society. Worker Power was the vehicle for the socialist revolution: laborers could blockade the whole of society by choosing to abstain from work. The method of struggle deriving from that idea was the general strike, which presupposed the overall organization of the working class, or at least the majority of it, at both the union and the political level.
Everyone in those years associated the word “Strategy” with the effects of the workers’ actions. In this view, workers’ material needs, as theorized by the spontaneists, were leveraged to foster a natural class consciousness. Others emphasized the role of the revolutionary party as a collective intellectual capable of blocking the mechanisms of capitalist production and power, thus actualizing the workers’ power in new institutions and organisms.

This book, on the other hand, sets out to analyze a different type of workers’ “power” that concerns the ability to block the vital nerve centers of production in order to bend managerial resistance to wage and regulatory demands. In a situation of low unionization, the issue becomes whether a minority of workers in crucial positions can stop both production and profit-making processes. Emphasizing the term minority is hereby essential because this theme plays a central role in the history of all trade union movements.
In pre-Fordist factories, not only did the worker sell their brute physical force but also their skills and competencies, to the point that the more trained and qualified the workers were, the more they became valuable for production. In many cases, this category of workers was seen as a working-class aristocracy with better wages and greater accomodation toward their superiors. Consequently, they were generally viewed as the natural conveyors of reformist consciousness.
Although not entirely, in those years the decision to go on strike depended mainly on the workers’ self-awareness. The German unions, for instance, always kept a keen eye on the exchange market of local goods to understand when their company would receive new orders and become unable to afford a strike that would jam production. This power of the “worker aristocracy” certainly failed within the Fordist organization of production when a new type of worker was established. Such laborers, referred to in Italy as the “mass worker”, did not possess any particular qualifications but exhibited a solid work discipline. As recently as the 50s and 60s, in Piedmont, vast groups of workers who had immigrated from the south to work on the FIAT assembly line fled the factory because they could not bear the rhythms and constraints – i.e., its discipline – and would often end up pursuing a life of crime. Therefore, the laborer’s power depended on their being part of a mass rather than on personal skills. It was the time of large mass unions capable of mobilizing entire industrial sectors and exercising notable political influence.
Today the entire process of valorization of goods has been restructured in keeping with the global market to overcome market bottlenecks by customizing the product, relocating to take advantage of wage gaps, and outsourcing non-productive functions that have become increasingly important. Another effect of this process is the re-employment of workers previously expelled from production in functions such as those indicated above, e.g., in logistics, transforming employees into self-employed workers, and offloading the cost of labor through indiscriminate tax evasion. This reconversion often constitutes a defeat for the trade unions as well as for the political left, as proven by the outcome of several local political elections.
Although the book analyzes many of these points, the interview format does not appear to be the most suitable for expanding the themes dealt with. As global as its vision may be, some ideas within it have unfortunately yet to be developed. Even so, the book’s value and intent primarily suggest effective methods for a trade-union struggle. This also applies to active minorities that are essential to encourage workers to join organized labor. As well as highlighting the need for an accurate analysis of the work processes, with specific reference to the worker’s substantial experience, there comes a solid suggestion to adopt the Network Analysis Methodology typical of the Internet. This approach can accentuate the weight of the connections between the various centers involved in the articulated value chains, i.e., the hubs on which the operation of many nodes depends. Among these, the logistics node emerges pre-eminently, as shown during the historic 1934 strike of the stevedores in the port of San Francisco. Logistics also plays a vital role within the Amazon corporation, i.e., the true bete noire of US trade unionism, both inside the company and in distribution to external customers.
The research on the junctions and bottlenecks on which the unions can act to put the company in difficulty and force it to improve wages and regulations is therefore crucial. It is also interesting that the interventions reported underline the value of involving local communities and organizations. In this regard, I would add that winning a trade-union battle is certainly important but often not enough for the purpose of building a stable and solid support front for labor. The victories of the workers in the crucial nodes must be extended to all workers to prevent the formation of a privileged elite and ensure the continuity of the achievements acquired. The struggles and organizations must aim at the industrial level, not just the professional and the sectoral dimension, ultimately involving the other industries of the sector to contrast the competition coming from companies in the same sector with lower wages. Transitioning from the local to the national level means taking a crucial political step which can grant concreteness to the power of labor making it an active part of industrial policy.
[1] Workers’ Power (Potere Operaio), or PO, rejected the parliamentary politics of the Italian Communist Party (PCI).
Sin Fronteras
By Joel Ochoa
A note from Peter Olney Co-Editor The Stansbury Forum
On the evening of the second Saturday in February, Christina Perez and I attended the first Sin Fronteras Awards celebration at Casa Pico in Los Angeles. Casa Pico was the mansion of the last Mexican governor of California who served until 1846. In its time the building was the tallest in Los Angeles at three stories high. The celebration, which featured food and music, honored the lives and contributions of four distinguished individuals who have dedicated themselves to the fight for social and economic justice for all: veteran Chicano movement activist Evelina Marquez, labor leaders Dave and Carole Sicker, the UCLA undocumented student organization “IDEAS,” and late civil and immigrant rights lawyer Jorge Gonzalez.
They were recipients of the first-ever Sin Fronteras Award, uplifting their relentless commitment to improve the lives of working people, students, and their families. The event was a lively and very moving evening, and the high point was the intervention of the UCLA student organization. A new generation of activists and organizers is rising!
The principal organizer of this event was Joel Ochoa, retired US labor organizer, émigré from Mexico and a member of CASA – Centro de Accion Social Autonomo. He has written a brief description of the Sin Fronteras initiative.

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Immigrant workers changed the face of Labor in Southern California
On February 11 under the umbrella of the Sin Fronteras Committee we gathered in the historic Plaza Olvera in Downtown Los Angeles to honor some distinguish individuals for their lifelong commitment to the struggle to improve the life of all; and to announce the formation of this new network of community, academia and labor rights activists.
The concept of Sin Fronteras emerged during a 1974 meeting of the National Coalition for Fair Immigration Laws and Practices held in Chicago, Illinois, at the Shoe Makers Union Hall. The name of Sin Fronteras highlights the link between workers justice movements in the U.S. and Mexico.
Sin Fronteras was also the name of a bilingual newspaper of CASA Centro de Accion Social Autonomo (Autonomous Center for Social Action), the pioneer organization in the struggle for the defense and organization of the undocumented workers and their families.
CASA was founded in 1968 by a well-known and respected community and labor leader named Bert Corona. Its purpose was twofold: organize undocumented workers and their families to fight to legalize their status and to make Unions understand that workers are workers, regardless of their legal status; and as such, are part of the working class; Unions have a historical responsibility to bring them onto the House of Labor.
It was a revolutionary idea; but hardly a new one. With the formation of CASA, Corona was following a well-established tradition among Mexican Americans and Mexican Immigrants to fight for social and economic justice even under the most adverse conditions.
Mexican Americans and Mexican Immigrants were influenced by socialists and anarchists in the formation of some of the Mutual Aid Societies, especially in the Southwest of the U. S. This Mutualistas (here and here), as they were known, helped people at the community level to alleviate some of their basic needs, but also filled up a vacuum created by the AFL for their rejection to organize them. By nature, this mutualistas were anti capitalist organizations and the Unions they helped to create organized regardless of trade and nationality.
Mexican Americans and Mexican Immigrants had a clear understanding of the importance of trans border solidarity. Alliances formed by Emma Tenayuca, Luisa Moreno (Guatemalan) and Bert Corona are well documented and paved the way for future acts of solidarity on both sides of the border.
Based on this tradition young Chicano students and activists formed alliances with their counterparts in Mexico and the rest of Latin America; and it was precisely because of this alliances that many activists, first from Mexico and later from the rest of the continent, found shelter in places like Los Angeles, Chicago, and many other cities.
With the formation of the Sin Fronteras Committee we want to celebrate that tradition. And in doing so, we will honor the contribution of those pioneers who are still among us. We will also engage, by promoting conferences and debates, in acts of solidarity to support the struggle for social and economic justice for immigrants toiling and fighting in the U.S. And, last but not least, we will build support for the struggles taking place south of the border.
Here we are fifty-five years after the formation of CASA, demanding once again for Organize Labor, especially in the private sector, to be more creative and aggressive in their approach to organize immigrant workers. It is not only a question of survival of an institution, but rather way for a significant sector of the working class to find a tool, a collective bargaining agreement, in the struggle for economic justice.
We should all learn from our immediate past and remember the Justice for Janitors campaign, American Racing Equipment campaign and the Drywallers campaign as the moment when self organized, on two of the above mentioned cases, immigrant workers changed the face of Labor in Southern California and created a more inclusive, colorful and combative movement.
Los Angeles, CA. February of 2023
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