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Andrea Haverkamp, president of CGE 6069, joins Laborwave to discuss chapters 5 & 6 of No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age by Jane McAlevey; "If We Can Change the White House, We Can Change the Hog House!"
Our conversation highlights the importance of connecting our movement histories to fight against the consistent bracketing of social movements as self-contained and insular phenomenons, making the role of staff transparent and accountable for developing the leadership of the rank-and-file, and also pose some hard questions for the IWW asking why is it so prone to the "one-man organizing show" written about in Organizing Work and what prevents its own policies and structures from being consistently implemented?
Chapter 5 analyzes the strategies of UFCW's multiple union campaigns at Smithfield Foods, where in their third round after 10+ years they finally won a union through a deep organizing model that brought in community allies under a banner of social justice to win.
Chapter 6 examines the "mobilizing model," with promise, of Make the Road New York, an immigrants rights organization with more than 15,000 dues-paying members. McAlevey argues key ingredients for their success include "high-touch" participatory democracy and power over staff afforded by MRNY members.
This and more in our penultimate episode of Comrades Read Together: No Shortcuts!
Join us in discussion and some reading sessions on our Discord server! You can get in on the fun by becoming a Laborwave Patron at patreon.com/laborwave and joining as a Rank-and-Filer, or Committee Member, or Strike Captain. Once joined, you'll receive an invitation to our Discord where we have a pdf of the book, multiple channels for discussions, and voice channels for periodic reading and chat sessions together!
Organizing Work, Beware the One-Man Organizing Show organizing.work/2019/07/beware-th…-organizing-show/
Music: Thee Oh Sees- Bloody Water