RevolutionZ
RevolutionZ
Ep 293 NAR #10 - Gender, Race, & Class
Ep 293 of RevolutionZ is the tenth in the Oral History of the Next Next American Revolution Sequence. Miguel Guevara first interviews Alexandra Voline, Bill Hampton, and Lydia Luxemburg about combating misogyny and gender hierarchies including feminist strategies for democratizing nurturing responsibilities achieving gender-neutral parenting. Then Cynthia Parks and Peter Cabral discuss with Miguel RPS's strategies to address racism and other cultural community hierarchies including how RPS schools for organizers foster an environment of trust and positive energy and various campaigns around community control of police. Finally Emiliano Feynman and Anton Rocker discuss class issues including recounting experiences of the great Amazon sit-down strike and the national campaigns to reduce the workday and workweek as well as the challenges of bridging working class coordinator divides.
Hello, my name is Michael Albert and I am the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. This is the 293rd episode overall and it's the 10th episode in the Next American Revolution sequence, and it is based on the 10th chapter excerpted from the work that's titled An Oral History of the Next American Revolution, which was itself made available earlier on Z-Net this past week. The title this time of this episode is Gender, race and Class and, as with each new entry in this sequence, this one too includes interjections from me, which I add as I speak and hear the material aloud to record it for you. Speak and hear the material aloud to record it for you. So in this episode, alexandra Valine, Bill Hampton, lydia Luxemburg, cynthia Parks, peter Cabral, emiliano Feynman and Anton Rocker discuss issues of gender, race and class in RPS and beyond. You may be able to guess that this one is going to be long, like the last few. To begin, miguel asks Alexandra.
Speaker 1:Feminist insights had been front and center in left activism for over 50 years at the time RPS was born. Yet RPS made dealing with gender and sexuality differences in society and internally a core priority. Why was that still necessary? Well, we had certainly made huge gains over those decades we can see countless indicators. For example, in 1960, women doctors didn't just have a hard time at work. Rather, they were nearly as rare as black swans. Women had mainly household roles like nurturing and cleaning. Fully participating in social and economic life outside the household was largely precluded. Showing initiative more likely yielded women ostracism and even psychiatric confinement or brutal beatings than it yielded for them for full month. So, yes, we had won immense changes, but there is a difference between winning lots of change and winning all needed change, and there is also a difference between winning permanent change and winning change that is constantly under assault to revert. As long as very basic causes of male dominance persist and they still do then, even if many sexist symptoms are reduced or even wiped out for a time, the still operative underlying causes will keep pushing for a return to old ways. High heels are rejected, high heels come back, rapes decline, rapes climb again.
Speaker 1:Feminists changed people's thinking and choices over the years leading up to RPS and also changed many habits and laws. Nonetheless, something continued to cause sexism to continually reappear with each new generation. Something about society continually tossed up new pressures for males to dominate and women to suffer, the exploitation of women's bodies and energy and the infantilization of women were not wiped out. We won very real and meaningful gains, for sure, massively, but such gains were always at risk of reversal. Progress was unstable.
Speaker 1:In response, rps felt we had to overcome not only lots of manifestations of sexism, but also the deeper factors continually calling sexism back into existence against gains like abortion rights, access to jobs and income independence. But when we looked at our own activism, organizing and projects, if we were going to be honest about it, we had to acknowledge that the same tendency existed within our stuff. The most blatant manifestations of sexism inside movements had been reduced or even largely eliminated over the pre-RPS decades Violence against women inside movements, complete dismissal of opinions offered by movement women, exclusion of movement, women from positions of responsibility and vile sexual objectification of movement women had all diminished and during some periods, even nearly disappeared. And yet we knew that those gains were unstable and we saw that in the 2020s, some of the ills were coming back. It was not surprising that some people, women included, at times slipped into thinking that it was just the way things are. We sometimes fell into thinking that, instead of the natural order being what we were fighting for, the natural order was sexual hierarchy and we were fighting for an unnatural situation against which nature kept reacting. I think even most feminists had such thoughts or fears at times. I know I did I interject. Has anyone else noticed that of late, as but one example, there has been a considerable shift in writing and speaking on the left, with attention to kinship and sexism dipping and even sometimes disappearing as compared to attention to race and economy, and likewise that high heels and ads utilizing female sexuality are making a comeback. Alexandra continues are making a comeback. Alexandra continues as Hillary Clinton seemed about to win the presidency and many women were celebrating that milestone not very long before RPS emerged.
Speaker 1:The incredible misogyny that surfaced from the reactionary and then fascist Donald Trump, and really from right-wing movements worldwide, revealed that sexism was still powerful, albeit subterranean, in polite society. It could return to all sides of life. It was an ironic situation Woman nearly president, women under siege. If there wasn't an answer for this, feminism might dissipate. I can tell you that for myself at that moment, I was scared the latter would be the outcome. So, even on the left, even 50 years on from mid-20th century feminism, there was still more to do about gender. The saving grace was that RPS didn't shy away from it. Grace was that RPS didn't shy away from it, bill.
Speaker 1:Can you remember what gave you a sense that a powerful feminist component was essential? Regarding society, miguel, it was true that women earned way less than men for the same work. It was true that violence against women persisted and was even escalating. It was true that women's health was often subject to manipulation and that sexist assumptions about parenting persisted. But I think the even more troubling aspect, at least for me, was the situation of women in the movement, because the movement was where I had my hopes for the future.
Speaker 1:Gender in the movement was a mixed bag. Everyone talked about how much women's leadership there was, but was there? If you looked at organizations, movement, institutions and projects, there were certainly way more women exerting influence than 50 years earlier, but there was also well under half. If you looked at what was written and published, in many instances women were less visible on the left than in the mainstream, as writers or as focus. These were symptoms, to be sure, but symptoms of what. In my experience, I knew women were still afraid at night on the streets. I knew they were being hounded online. I knew they were often not really being heard. I knew they were being hounded online. I knew they were often not really being heard. It certainly wasn't remotely as bad as what women had endured a half century earlier, much less a full century earlier.
Speaker 1:But the battle wasn't yet fully won. Rps felt the key problem was deep in the structure of family life, as well as in many other institutions that had been pushed by kinship pressures into conformity with sexism. In the movement there had long been verbal agreement on the need for feminist advance and female leadership, but what agreement was there about actual structural changes in left organizations to generate such outcomes, much less in families? What was to be done? Bill within RPS and the movement writ larger Inside RPS, a number of innovations were enacted.
Speaker 1:The first was daycare at all organizational meetings and events, with a proviso, however, that while to ensure quality the daycare should be, at least for a time, under the guidance of women, daycare staffing should immediately be at least half male. That was innovative. To have daycare but reinforce the idea that it was women's work would have been one step forward but two steps back. We got beyond that. The second innovation was that public speaking at events, marches, teach-ins and meetings always had to be at least 50% female.
Speaker 1:I still remember men whining about how we were sacrificing quality for some kind of mechanical quota system For these critics. Apparently we weren't sacrificing quality by having men who were out of touch with the needs of half of humanity do all the talking and women waste away their talents in submissive acquiescence. I interject. What Bill described there, as I assume Bill knew, was a pattern that recurred over and over regarding gender issues, but also race and class. If those on top, with more power, means and status, are confronted by demands from those below to play a full role, the reflex go-to response was to assert that those below belong below, that those below belong below. They are incapable. If they are called upon to do what those above do, they will fail and we will all suffer. It is what it is. It can't be what they desire. The view had not only allowed those above to deny they were unjust, it had inculcated in those below a tendency that reduced or at times silenced demands for change. Bill continues Likewise.
Speaker 1:When there was need for some kind of leadership group for an event, again RPS said it had to be at least 50% female. At least 50% female when women were not available or were not felt to be prepared by prior experience to accomplish the task. The requirement was to redress that imbalance with training and practice before the talk could be given or the group formed. New norms were simple Deal with gender imbalance or don't proceed. I interject. So it seems RPS didn't deny unpreparedness but said it wasn't inherent but imposed. And overcoming persistent losses due to hierarchy of influence and reward was more than worth the short-run costs in training, practice etc.
Speaker 1:Bill continued movement. Women organized themselves. They didn't care about happy smiles and promises. They weren't appeased by someone saying have a nice day. They demanded structural action on penalty of their disrupting offending events and when need be, the threat of disruption was carried out. I remember being at a meeting where there were perhaps 60 women and 100 men. Suddenly the door opened and 20 more women came in all together and a few minutes late they were clearly acting together. They told the chair to sit down and I did. They then told all those present that from now on all meetings would have at least 50% women handling organization, chairing etc. And likewise at least 50% women addressing topics raised. If those in the room didn't want to comply, fine, they would have to hold their meeting over major disruption. There was no good argument for denying the demands. These types of engagement were very effective, albeit at first hard to endure. The then-rising tally of rapes on campuses spurred a sense of urgency, although I suspected at the time it was less that there was a lot more rape and more that there was a lot more attention to it. In any case, when a rape occurred after a radical conference in Los Angeles and a male movement leader was the rapist, all hesitancy dissipated. Women were going to win change.
Speaker 1:Many, but far from all, men argued that to hold back events to fulfill gender norms was harmful. They didn't see dealing with gender balance as particularly positive and essential, though no one on the left would admit that. Sometimes even some women agreed with not interfering. We are going too fast, was their logic. We are demanding more than can be readily accomplished, they argued. Worse, if we disrupt the left we abet reaction. But most women and many men no longer bought that kind of rejection of sober, careful efforts. We knew that to forego basic change inside the left was to consign the left to perpetual hypocrisy and weakness.
Speaker 1:The militant approach, always carefully undertaken to seek solidarity, always blaming structures and not individuals, set standards for everyone, the militants said. If we aren't able to do some things in a feminist manner now, then those things must be delayed until we get ourselves ready to do some things in a feminist manner now, then those things must be delayed until we get ourselves ready to do them right. The desire to have such and such talks or to do so-and-so projects would have to become attached to prior desires for a proper feminist achievement. If not, nothing would proceed. The opposition to these women's demands always claimed to be merely trying to accomplish important ends now and not trying to prevent feminist innovation. And while that was no doubt the sincere, actual motive for some opponents, 50 years of postponing solidifying feminist gains for future attention had to stop sometime, and this was the time.
Speaker 1:The main point ultimately was that the assault on sexism by RPS women wasn't seeking personal verbal commitments to being feminist. It wasn't even seeking personal changes from male leftists in accord with feminist values. No apologies were needed or wanted. No personal blame was asserted. The movement sought structural changes that would make overcoming sexism part and parcel of functioning at all. What was perhaps most innovative, since these type demands had existed in the late 1960s and 70s in a very similar form, was not the demands themselves, or even the militants, but the tone and surrounding actions Earlier totally justified anti-sexist efforts had, however, quite often been hostile toward and polarized men in a way that entrenched male opposition. This time anti-sexist efforts were hostile to structures and empathetic toward men seeking alliance and solidarity. I interject Bill isn't saying I think back in the 60s and 70s militant feminists were wrong to demand change. He is saying instead, I think, that how to most usefully win change and how to maintain and steadily enlarge the victories may not have been sufficiently on people's minds and that RPS was reinvigorating and expanding the aims and militants, but it was simultaneously prioritizing growing support both from women and men, beyond what earlier efforts had achieved and as well better getting to underlying causes. Bill continued.
Speaker 1:A last internal step, at first almost unnoticed by most, was far more subtle. The thinking went like this RPS had agreed that to avoid class division and classism we had to change our division of labor to include job complexes balanced for empowerment effects. By similar reasoning, some RPS women began to wonder do we have to change the kinship division of tasks to avoid gender division and sexism? We all knew we became to a considerable degree who our roles required us to be. We asked what changes in our roles would prevent men dominating women and, for that matter, women accepting being dominated? Of course some required changes were familiar and obvious. If men worked and earned more, then they would have means to dominate. If in dating, courting etc. Men and women have different roles, then we would wind up with different dispositions. But was there something like empowerment that had to be balanced among men and women lest the difference in proximity to whatever that something was produced a kinship hierarchy?
Speaker 1:Rps members came to a broad agreement that the answer might well be yes, if women do most of the nurturing and caring activity, whereas men are constantly competing and bossing while rarely empathizing. Perhaps men tend to be made perverse and thuggish and women tend to be made empathetic, but also, given the context in which this occurred, self-denying. The upshot was the idea that men needed to do a fair share of daycare and other nurturing tasks inside the movement and in society and families as well, and this too was pursued with the tone of solidarity and mutual support, not denigrating hostility. Lydia Miguel asked okay, what about society writ larger? What was innovative in RPS's approach? Most of RPS's feminist program Miguel was familiar from earlier feminist agendas that had undertaken campaigns against violence against women, for equal pay, for abortion rights and for daycare. All that and quite a lot more was familiar.
Speaker 1:Likewise, as RPS was forming, attention to gender definitions and roles, not solely by biology but in light of social relations, grew steadily more important, including the emergence of trans movements for diverse gender recognition and rights. On those many fronts, rps's innovations weren't that the campaigns were original, but that the rationale, discussion and also the groups battling for the changes altered. This owed to the RPS emphasis that efforts in each area should support efforts in other areas to strengthen them all. And it owed also to RPS emphasis on finding ways to talk about gender and sexuality that went beyond merely ratifying the views of feminist allies and trouncing the views of sexist opponents to continually challenge ourselves, to simultaneously address the concerns of opponents with sympathetic understanding, able to reverse their allegiances and to inform ours too.
Speaker 1:Rps feminism focused on replacing institutional structures that enforce sexism, rather than just criticizing the sexist ideas or habits those structures imposed. We didn't ignore the latter, of course, but altering current behavior was just a part of our agenda, and the lesser part at that. So for any institution you might name, we sought to change its roles so that men and women were not required to behave in ways that advantaged men and disadvantaged women. One place this quickly emerged was in worship. The organizing of women against sexist norms and requirements in nearly all religions was difficult and sometimes turned seriously ugly, but it also inspired worldwide attention. I remember way back to the draft card burnings during the emergence of anti-war activism in the 60s. Similar to that, but perhaps even more moving, inspiring and powerful, were the public moves by women to eradicate barriers to their religious visibility and participation starting in the mid-2020s.
Speaker 1:But the most controversial area we addressed, even beyond redefining religion, was in households, living units and families, and again it wasn't just a matter of trying to get equal income. To change the situation of women and families, though that was very important, we had to literally redefine what men and women did in their families, as well as even who constitutes a family. This was tricky. You can't impose behavior patterns on how men and women take care of their homes or relate to their children. Yet RPS wanted to impact those dynamics, because RPS felt that those dynamics, which occurred for children so early in their lives, produced and buttressed sexist beliefs and behaviors. I remember countless discussions that calmly and that was new in itself explored the difference between what was called, for example, fathering and mothering, and argued for gender-neutral parenting. We calmly addressed hysterical men, and sometimes women too, who thought our aims were unnatural. And when this was taken out into the broader world, based on the lessons gained within RPS itself, it was tumultuous Writing about it, speaking about it, creating dramatic plays and shows about it, street theater, lawsuits, formation of support groups, teachers taking up the banner and bringing it into classes Altogether. This activism slowly turned to tide and at every step, two criteria guided Winning gains now, but also not polarizing, but instead seeking to win support from men as equals to pursue more gains later.
Speaker 1:At this point, miguel's organization of his oral history changed focus. Cynthia Miguel asked when RPS started to emerge in some people's thoughts, the Black Lives Matter movement was still operating. Did RPS just take up their approaches or were there some changes? When Black Lives Matter first began, it made no specific demands and overwhelmingly confined its attention to protesting the precipitating situations which recall were instances of police violence against community members. A year or two passed, and then I think it was late 2016,. Various members of Black Lives Matter put together a very impressive document listing demands and issues. The program they proposed not only addressed police violence but all sides of life approach from the angle of race and the impact on black and other non-white communities. Since it wasn't a finished formulation but, as all programs should be a work always in progress, I think for the most part, it is fair to say. Rps not too long thereafter became part of that work in process. Where RPS innovations entered, I think, was regarding how to propose and seek changes in policing, income distribution and cultural relations.
Speaker 1:Rps emphasized that victory didn't depend on winning a debate but on assembling a massive majority. When debating issues, we had to not only put forth honest and uncompromising claims and desires, but also to sincerely address the views of opponents so as to create growing unity. We came to realize that we each had to live our lives not only for ourselves but as a model for others. It may seem obvious, but it really wasn't. For decades, around race and really around every focus of serious oppression, dissidents were too often trying to validate their own agendas and justify or even celebrate their own actions than they were about trying to actually win their agendas and justify or even celebrate their own actions than they were about trying to actually win their agendas. I interject. This seems to echo Bill earlier Be accurate, be true, be strong, work hard, but pay close attention to growing your support, not just to being accurate, true, strong and working hard, cynthia continued.
Speaker 1:So what would winning around race mean For RPS? It meant that, when the dust settled, not only would the structural bases for racial hierarchy be gone, but all those involved which was really everyone would see themselves not firstly as a member of a competing community or tribe, but rather as members of humanity. The differentiations by community would remain important, but they would become second order rather than primary. The human connection would become primary, and community differentiations, including different racial, ethnic, national differentiations, including different racial, ethnic, national or religious allegiances, would become not a matter of superior and inferior or even just of better and worse, but simply a valid happenstance of birth and preference. The key was for everyone to see themselves as part of a larger whole and especially to see their community differences as reflecting different, valid, contingent choices that all deserved respect, and especially to see their community differences as reflecting different, valid, contingent choices that all deserved respect and room to persist. We didn't want to homogenize culture to eliminate conflicts by eliminating differences, but nor did we want to exaggerate the source or implications of cultural differences, much less their exclusivity. That's pretty abstract, Cynthia. What did it mean in practice? It meant, miguel, that when an oppressed community was battling against conditions of oppression, it was crucially important to have long-run success in mind. Our stance wasn't about catering to the tastes of those in more dominant positions, nor was it about avoiding annoying them. It was about trying to communicate in a way that could lead to lasting solutions rather than to momentary feelings of success that were later wiped out by unaddressed or even needlessly provoked antagonisms.
Speaker 1:Ali, you are active in media and public speaking. Your written work focuses on popular culture and broad social trends, especially issues of political participation and race. In RPS. Your work has emphasized raising consciousness, developing organizing projects, developing media and aiding RPS internal relations.
Speaker 1:To start, I wonder if you remember first becoming radical In 2001, with my parents' help, I was just old enough to get a vague sense of the change in my situation due to my name and appearance, and indeed I think I was radicalized in significant part by later trying to understand Islamophobia and to survive and oppose it. I don't think there was one incident that radicalized me, but I do think there was one that had a lot to do with what kind of radical and later revolutionary I became. When I got to college, my roommate took one look and you could see him blanch and feel the fear and rising anger. For about two weeks we worked that through and then we became very close friends. Even to this day I would have to guess and I think he would agree that had I not been his roommate and had we not dealt with the tensions, he would likely have voted for Trump later, instead of backing Sanders and then doing a lesser evil vote for Clinton, having himself move left of all of them.
Speaker 1:And however anecdotal and personal that experience was, I took a lesson from it. We didn't navigate us both to a good place by becoming enemies. We didn't navigate us both to a good place by becoming enemies. We did it by listening to one another and working through confusions, biases, ignorance and worse. If you don't talk to much less if you dismiss and denigrate your potential enemies, they will certainly become your actual enemies. If you don't talk to your actual enemies, they will become steadily worse enemies. I have been asking folks if they could remember a particularly inspiring or otherwise personally important event or campaign they experienced during the rise of RPS. Could you do that for us, ali, please?
Speaker 1:During the early period around 2028, I think it was, I had the opportunity to teach a number of times in RPS schools for organizers. The schools had broadly two aspects they focused on skills and techniques of movement, building, organizing, outreach etc. And they focused on the substance behind and fueling activism partly analysis of the roots of society's ills, but more so developing a vision of what society could and should be and insights into how to get from the current situation to the desired future one. There were many such schools, sometimes on a campus, sometimes in a workplace, sometimes for people in some industry, like the Hollywood schools that began a bit earlier and in some ways birthed the whole extended project. Sometimes in an apartment complex and sometimes a particular school was for RPS members themselves, fellows. At any rate, in most of these efforts there would be intense classes, discussions and time to socialize, as they typically ran for at least a week and sometimes 10 days or even more Well along in each. After there was a remarkable level of trust and very positive energy, there would be a night session where those attending were welcome to address the question what in your life do you think is responsible for you being here to learn about revolutionizing society. Well, those events were, in case after case, nearly unbearable and at the same time indescribably inspiring.
Speaker 1:One part of the stories people told was somewhat cerebral or movement rooted. For example, people would tell a first reading some new author or radical and the eye-opening effect it had on them. Chomsky's name would come up so often it was surreal. But others were mentioned too. Or people would tell of a first rally or march launching them into activism.
Speaker 1:But the other part of people's stories was mainly visceral. Tears and trauma were palpably present. I was abused as a child. I was raped. I saw a friend gunned down in the streets. I lost a parent or friend or a friend's parent to drugs or suicide. I lost my home and lived threadbare for years. I became addicted and escaped addiction. I was abused as a child, repeatedly raped. I endured it for a long time. I finally ran away, lived hand to mouth. Luckily I found activism. Sometimes it was less extreme being bullied in school or even being a bully and the ensuing guilt, being cheated on or cheating.
Speaker 1:The stories were relayed in depth. It was wrenching. The overall impact was an incredibly intimate mosaic of America, not the America of reflex adoration, but the America of peoples rarely discussed and rarely even mentioned real lives. Part of what made it so compelling was the overall scale People who no one present would have expected to have had such stories told them. They often noted that even their friends had never heard what they were saying in this setting inspired by stories from others, and sometimes also no one had ever heard before. My brother raped me, my uncle, my dad. I saw a close friend gunned down. These are his initials tattooed on my arm. I hated everyone.
Speaker 1:In time, I focused my hatred on the system around me. I lost a parent, a friend and a friend's parent to drugs and suicide. What caused it, them or society? A radical social worker showed me the right answer. I became addicted but eventually got straight. When I did, I realized the solution for me was within, but the fault for it all was not within. I cut myself over and over and on and on. The mood was quiet, sincere and so cathartic that people chose to speak who hadn't even dreamed of speaking in such ways, people no one expected to tell.
Speaker 1:Such stories said publicly would have earlier been private. The suffering they reported so devastating, so widespread, so persistent, pernicious and most often hidden cemented my own radical commitments. The stories made me more of a listener than I had ever been before. I learned that what went unsaid, even among family and friends, was often profoundly important. The hidden injuries of oppression often outweighed what was visible. Sometimes the perpetrator hid it, sometimes the victim did. Often, neither knew that hiding the problems only made things much worse.
Speaker 1:Miguel then asked what was your view of the implication of race for issues of leadership inside RPS? The direct implication had been well known for a long time. An activist organization had to welcome and benefit from diverse racial communities. We had to elevate diverse communities to general leadership and to predominant say over their own affairs. Minority communities typically suffered low income, little influence and great danger. But we also knew that focusing exclusively on race would overlook other matters. We had to add to race a gender class and authority focus, and vice versa.
Speaker 1:After Black Lives Matter uprisings, these ideas became unavoidable. And what's complicated about that? Well, miguel, it is like what Cynthia was talking about. Do you accomplish this necessary step in a way that creates even greater antagonisms or do you do it in a way that reduces antagonisms? These two possibilities were in competition, in a sense. Do you get a momentary better look, so to speak they used to call it the optics of the situation while hiding new fissures beneath the appearance, or do you not only get the better look and better reality regarding present results, but also reduce and eliminate the fissures?
Speaker 1:Rps basically always had its eyes on winning a new society rather than only on being right about some short-term issue, whether internal or external, and there was another hard problem that had to be addressed. Of course, a major cultural issue on the left and in society was the relegation of minority communities to subservient roles Lower income, less influence, more danger, and so on. But even while tackling that problem, it was possible to focus so centrally on it as to be blind to other matters or downplay them, or even use a short-term vision about race to trump other concerns that also needed attention. So a second need was to be sure to add to a race focus a gender, class and authority focus. For the most part, though, overcoming latent and even very active racist attitudes and, even more so, overcoming racist structures, was continuous. Black Lives Matter was wise, and so was RPS, even from those early days, miguel continues.
Speaker 1:There was still another issue very controversial in which, if I remember right, you played a role. It was about who should organize whom right. Yes, I was in an RPS-sponsored meeting. It was in the early days. It was about working on an anti-racist campaign. It was a diverse meeting and there was the seeming understanding, I guess, among the experienced blacks present and more widely and this held, among women too about sexism. They each felt, and they aggressively enunciated, whenever the point somehow arose, that it was not their responsibility to organize among white people or, in the case of women, among men. It was not their task but instead only another burden for them, to expect them to explain racism or otherwise combat racism among white folks by talking with them, or to explain or combat sexism among men by talking with them. White folks and men had to do the talking to other white folks and men.
Speaker 1:This formulation, at least in the abstract, and whenever one wanted to call upon it, was accepted as being above argument. It had been repeated so often, so forcefully, so emotively, that it was kind of like an axiom. It had become just a given, and to doubt it when it was offered was itself taken as racist or sexist, which is probably why so few did challenge the view, at least out loud. Well, I doubted the view and I was forthright about challenging it out loud.
Speaker 1:I remember the time the controversy specifically erupted for RPS. A prominent black activist at a big meeting conveyed this view to some young white kid just getting going in RPS with a tone that said Newbie, you are backward. Newbie, you have to clean up your thinking that I have some responsibility for telling you about racism as compared to your educating yourself and other whites educating yourself and other whites. It burdens us for you to expect blacks to combat racism among white folks by educating white folks or to expect women to combat sexism among men by educating men. White folks and men have to address other white folks and men. And a white guy then replied but what if I don't feel I understand racism or sexism enough to be as convincing as someone who directly experiences the issues? He was told get smarter, stop thinking I should educate you, educate yourself and then other whites. This upset me. I guess it just brought my doubts to a head. So I said also aggressively, and it was recorded and transcribed later, which is why I can offer it to you now, essentially verbatim Quote Wait a minute.
Speaker 1:I am an activist, I am anti-racist, I am black and I am experienced. I get that in a wonderful world I wouldn't have to worry about educating anyone about racism, much less spend time educating racist white folks. I also get that doing so is time-consuming and demeaning, but I don't see how my agreeing on all that implies that I should never organize whites about racism. Why does that follow? If it follows because I shouldn't do anything, that, compared to being burden-free in a better world, burdens me. Then, compared to not having racism, organizing blacks burdens me too, but I do it, not every minute, but when I think it can contribute to overcoming racism. Will my sometimes educating whites help the anti-racist cause? My sometimes educating whites help the anti-racist cause? If so, then when I am in a better position to organize rights than our other whites, shouldn't I do it?
Speaker 1:Well, I got shouted down but I didn't fade away and I knew that a great many folks agreed with what I had said, not least because they told me so after the meeting, but were intimidated from saying so by fear of being ostracized, called racist and so on. So I kept at it and it got written up and discussions began. Before long the old viewpoint started dissipating. I interject. But do you wonder why that was so critical to Ali, so important for what followed for him. I'll bet he's about to tell us, and Ali continues.
Speaker 1:The more I thought about it, the more I felt the main issue was did we believe we could win or were we just hammering out a stance that felt comfortable and made modest gains without seeking long-term goals? And made modest gains without seeking long-term goals? I wasn't saying that blacks or women in the parallel case, should spend all their time talking with intractable white racists or male sexists. Of course not. But I was saying that often blacks and women know more and can better motivate what they know about race and gender than can whites or men. Whites and men could and should try to walk in our shoes, feel what we feel sufficiently to convey it, but of course they can't, at least not fully, and so sometimes only we can fully convey our experience and best motivate trying to overcome racism and sexism. I mean really, as all can see now, this should have been trivial to achieve, but it wasn't for reasons of identity, for reasons of habit, for reasons of people protecting prior assumptions, for reasons of people attaching the old stance to being anti-racist and opposing the new stance, my stance as racist, when in fact, if you wanted to pose things remotely like that. Arguably the reverse could be said, but mainly the opposition to what I was urging was not based on real evidence or logic.
Speaker 1:The underlying issue, I think, which was hard to surface, was the same as in many other cases. The issue was were we trying to win, did we believe we could? Or were we just hammering out a stance that felt okay and made some modest gains, without an eye on long-term goals? The point was that there were many situations in which blacks and women, members of the working class too, knew more and could better convey and motivate what they knew to whites and men or people in the coordinator class, for example, than could other whites or men, and in which a white audience or a male audience could have its consciousness raised by our efforts to do so. So in such cases we should do it among other valuable pursuits. So the right calculus asks, miguel, wasn't how much of a burden it was to do that, but how necessary it was doing that Exactly, and efforts are always as necessary as circumstances make them case to case to actually make progress. Miguel went on.
Speaker 1:Rps also jettisoned attacking white skin privilege as a label for its actions, and you pursued that battle too right? Yes, there was a similarly vexing and polarizing situation that arose about what was called privilege. Should we make identifying white, male or class privilege a priority and then call it out and demand that people reject their privilege? It was a way to see, a way to label and a way to then try to address oppressions. But was it a good way? Did it point those confronted toward institutions at fault? Did it convey knowledge to those called out? Did it make more or less likely consciousness of oppression and solidarity about fighting it? Or was it a way for an oppressed group to lash out but without their taking responsibility for institutions, for organizing etc.
Speaker 1:Privilege implies having something you should renounce. But when folks called out white privilege, they often mentioned safety from abuse, enjoying access and influence and getting fair treatment. Those aren't things anyone should give up. But talking about renouncing white privilege made many whites think our aim was to take basic things away from them rather than to guarantee to everyone those things and much more. These were real and important differences RPS offered. That allowed solidarity rather than opposition. At any rate, as time proceeded, rps played a role. I think that might be summarized as see what works toward winning and do it See what is nominally right but impedes winning and reject it. What about communications issues? There were changes there too. Yes, yes, miguel.
Speaker 1:Preceding RPS, academic leftists often felt activists were missing nearly incomprehensible ideas that needed to be communicated by way of nearly unreadable texts. So the academics dutifully wrote nearly incomprehensible ideas in nearly unreadable texts. Even if some of their views had merit, which I admit, I often doubted as presented they were useless. Did you feel they wrote that way merely to make themselves seem worthy with pompous language? That was one explanation I thought, sometimes applicable. But whatever their reason, the real problem wasn't that we had too few obscure ideas. It was that already known, clear ideas were not reaching large audiences. So RPS sought better ways to spread existing insights and vision. We involved ever more people in refining, employing and implementing thoughts. In their own words, we didn't compromise content, we clarified it. We went from activism made obscure by academia to academia renovated by activism. Miguel turns to Peter. Or just carries content from Peter into the flow, at this point, I guess. Or just carries content from Peter into the flow. At this point, I guess, peter.
Speaker 1:Earlier I forgot to ask you if you could remember an event or campaign or whatever else actually during the period of RPS growth that was particularly personally meaningful for your own history. Could you do that now? Oh, there were so many things. Mainly the sports organizing, like the Olympic campaigns and especially the athletes' boycotts for community safety. And then the prison and legal organizing, like the Community Control of Police campaign and the Legal Workers Conference, because I was myself so much closer to the sports and legal work than to other RPS efforts, closer to the sports and legal work than to other RPS efforts, but for something a bit less public and much, much earlier. I remember when I was in college, so it was still over a decade before RPS.
Speaker 1:I was an athlete but also a fan, and I heard a talk, an interview I think, that Noam Chomsky did, in which he was talking about sports and its role. There was a lot I found interesting in it, but one moment in particular had a huge effect on me. Chomsky described viewing people rooting incredibly passionately for a sports team when he himself was much younger, and his not being able to understand their attachment and their passion. They don't know anyone involved. He thought they had no close connections with any of the players on either team, yet they became invested as if their lives were at stake. How could that happen? Why did that happen? I thought about it a lot. It was true for me, I could be at a college sports event or watching a pro sports event and know no one on the field and even know nothing about anyone on the field beyond their talent level, and I could have very little discernibly in common with any of them, and many other fans would have virtually nothing in common and yet be incredibly vested in my team's fortunes, my favorite player's fortunes. I, like so many others, would even say we as in, we did this, we got such and such a new player, we look good or the ref screwed us, never them, despite my having zero connection to any of it. And perhaps even more incredible, I could be hostile to or even hate some player on some other team and then, when that player wound up on my team traded I would celebrate what I previously denigrated. So weird. Was there a healthy aspect? I wondered. What were the unhealthy aspects? It got me thinking and I believe it had a major long-term effect on my relations to sports, but also my understanding of how people formed and defended stances based on logic and evidence sometimes, or to some extent, but often based on other things entirely, like wanting to be part of something or just to go along.
Speaker 1:To get back on the current topic, can you talk about the situation around the initial race focus, police repression of blacks and other minorities? You can imagine how volatile that was. People were being killed on the streets, often for no offense at all, sometimes for minor violations, it felt like, and in its social implications it was in fact like a new kind of lynching. After all, lynching was a way to discipline the entire black community. It sought to induce fear in blacks and to simultaneously induce a kind of bloodlust in the public, also, ironically, often rooted in fear. How different than lynching was police execution of young blacks in the streets. Fear put residents of black neighborhoods constantly on guard to avoid irking. Police Drones flying over communities had a similar impact. Life was conducted by navigating even your own streets to avoid persecution. And it wasn't just killings that induced fear. So did getting stopped, frisked and arrested for being black. Us incarceration rates were unique in the developed world and they were worse for minorities.
Speaker 1:How do you deal with a community that has a quarter of its population, and sometimes more, in jail or on parole? It is not easy, especially once you take into account more of the situation. The communities were incredibly impoverished, unemployment was at depression level. Yet everyone knew about one means to get it by reasonably well, albeit with incredible risk Gun running and drug dealing. For decades drugs flowed into poor communities, particularly black communities, and with drugs came guns. So when police expressed fear, that too wasn't entirely make-believe. There was a real danger, and of course society fed it not only with stereotypes, but with gun policies that armed drug dealers and anyone who wanted to fire away. It got so that every little dispute held the danger of a gun emerging. Cops started to shoot first, and laws, incredibly, began to allow guns in public spaces and even in schools. So the only solution, ultimately, was to raise incomes and opportunities and to eliminate all the guns and drug dealing by eliminating their sources.
Speaker 1:But that wasn't going to happen overnight, and meanwhile the constant tension and fear and the violence from the police and all the incarcerations created an environment that to many looked like a hellish spiral of no return. And then something happened. First, lots of notable blacks, particularly athletes of renown, got really upset and decided they had to act. So they started to speak out, to bemoan the situation and even to protest it Remember the sit-downs during the national anthem. But of course, lone acts weren't going to achieve enough unless there followed a huge growth in participation. And then suddenly, after a long and Trump-induced lull, there was a press conference of various athletes not revolutionaries, very rich people but their relatives were getting shot, becoming addicted, living in fear of police patrols and getting sick as well at what some of their brothers in arms were doing. So the athletes said we will not play in any city until there is an all-day meeting organized by us in that city between police and community residents and leaders, with ourselves chairing, to discuss new norms and procedures for community safety, and until that kind of negotiation defines a program which is implemented. And then we will only play in the city when the community says it is safe for them and they want us to do so.
Speaker 1:I interject Can we imagine getting to that point to athletes taking such a stand in our world? If you can imagine it happens, you can imagine it works. What needs to occur for it to happen? Peter continues. Well, that was absolutely incredible. It wasn't just about temporary media visibility, momentarily raising a little more consciousness. It was about serious results and it wasn't going to go away. Either there was a solution for the city or that city was going to suffer huge losses and public bedlam and as well become a public pariah. Impressively, the demand was delivered without anger, without recrimination, as both a plea and a plan to solve a bad situation for all concerned.
Speaker 1:These athletes not only delivered this call, which was rapidly supported by steadily more players in diverse sports. They also went to the cities and, in the absence of meetings and plans, literally marched on City Hall with huge numbers of people, first mostly black, but then more and more diverse. Of course, at first there was a giant outcry against these athletes. They're rich jocks. Who are they to dictate to us? Who are they to withhold their own labor? Protest, injustice, call for cooperation and discussion leading to a plan good for communities and for police safety too. The athletes were so prominent and visibility was so high that the real agendas became visible and hysteria was muted.
Speaker 1:How do you think it started, asked Miguel. Why did it happen? After all, this could have been done any time, for decades. I think that is a pivotal question, but I think often we don't understand how hard it is to think outside the box and to even have an idea like what those athletes started. And then we also don't get just how hard it is to march to the beat of a different drummer, enduring the hostility and isolation and, for people like these, the family and neighbor and workmate pressures and also, it must be said, the potential loss of jobs and income. But as to how it got going, I have to say I think the key cause, looking back and thinking over the prior period, was quite ironic.
Speaker 1:When the quarterback of the San Francisco football team had earlier and well before RPS, refused to stand for the national anthem, two very important things happened. First, though, he was initially excoriated actually and surprisingly to many, it was just a few days before his calm reasoning and obvious passion began to win support, including from other athletes. It wasn't Armageddon for him, and while a significant athlete, he wasn't a really major star. He wasn't at that time essential to the team and therefore he could have been cut at relatively modest cost, but he wasn't cut. Then Sometimes people's fear exceeds real risk and athletes noticed, I think.
Speaker 1:But the even bigger thing, the ironic thing, was that the local police department threatened to not send cops to games as security if the quarterback his name was Colin Kaepernick kept up with not standing for the anthem. Set aside how ludicrous the attacks on him were After all, the NFL was routinely employing people who had violently abused spouses, among other horrible actions, and had policies that were literally treating players like expendable cogs, causing them to have brain injuries that shortened and impoverished their post-football lives. But it was outraged about an athlete admirably taking a stand against injustice. The hypocrisy was so evident no one could miss it. And yet I suspect that wasn't the key to the later emergence of Athletes for Community Safety, not least because that time around, kaepernick was finally muted and pretty much banished from sport. No, that honor goes to the police threatening to not do their jobs. Hold on.
Speaker 1:People eventually thought If the police can refuse to protect events because they don't like being criticized, why can't we refuse to play at events because we don't like our families, friends and ourselves having to live, and sometimes die, in fear? You think that thought for a while, slowly playing riffs on it, and you get angry enough. And well, some take a big step. So what did they win? Four things, miguel. Relatively quickly, in city after city and then nationally.
Speaker 1:Gun control laws that shut down distribution points and constrained production. Prosecution for drug violations shifted from incarceration toward rehabilitation, including rapid turnover of currently held prisoners who were in jail for nonviolent offenses. Regular events for whole police forces with communities and local sports teams surfaced and included setting up sports leagues and holding picnics, and then, as musicians, got involved, concerts too, with affordable prices and the funds donated back to communities. It was a bottom-up series of actions and choices that avoided politicians and, of course, as you know, it kept percolating new implications, for example, for sharing the costs of athletic events and for making social use of revenues. And then, with new levels of mutual understanding and trust and vastly increased police rejection of thuggery in the ranks, came community control of police, plus new training methods as well. I interject. This seems to me a kind of exemplary example of what all the RPSers seem to have found central resisting and rejecting oppression, seeking better, but doing so in ways designed to broaden support by reaching out. Peter finished up and it all fed into the larger issues of income distribution, job definition and the like, not to mention leading to re-evaluating the whole approach to sports, something the athletes certainly didn't initially have in mind including the levels of remuneration, too low and too high, the health aspects and so on.
Speaker 1:Miguel next turned back to Ali Ali. What impact did new understandings of class have on RPS internally? What was the problem to address? Of course we had to address, which is to say eliminate, private ownership whereby individuals reap the fruits from and rule over the operations of workplaces, mines and indeed all institutions of economy called, in our capitalist system, corporations. That had been known for ages. It wasn't new, but it was critically important. But our second problem for RPS was how could we attract, retain and elevate to influence working class members but also not lose too many coordinator class members?
Speaker 1:Of course some coordinator class members would not identify quickly, or perhaps even ever, with a project that would ultimately entail their doing a fair share of disempowering work and having a fair rather than inflated income, even just personally. It isn't a bad trade-off to give up those benefits but enjoy a classless workplace and society. But not all coordinator class members would be quick to see the upside or to discount the downside. Instead, until they developed solidarity with others, most coordinator class members would mostly cling to the idea that they are special and deserve better conditions and income. In their distorted self-serving worldviews they not only deserved it, but if they didn't get it, everyone would suffer because society would fall apart. So how do you reject that view and the associated social relations, yet cause there to emerge solidarity between, on the one side, coordinators who held that view and benefited from current relations and, on the other side, workers who suffered the ill effects?
Speaker 1:This was a tough hurdle to navigate. The flip side of the problem was that once workers became attuned to the reason for their plight being not only that owners buy and sell and rule over their labor, but also that coordinators monopolize empowering circumstances and use that advantage to gain great power and income, their visceral dislike for the kind of arrogance and dismissiveness that so often emanated from people filling coordinator class roles tended to morph into profound class anger. So that anger is on one side, and on the other side you have some coordinator class folks agreeing with the need for classlessness, but still harboring a whole lot of habits and assumptions that degraded workers who had suffered worse schooling and conditions. And you had other coordinators a large majority at first, who didn't even accept the aim at all, but instead persisted in believing that their dominance is simply a fact of life due to their supposedly intrinsic talents and capacities and not due to anything unjust. So that trying to overcome the differences would actually hurt everyone. This was actually not so different than navigating race divides and gender divides in ways that undid the oppressions but did not jettison those who had benefited from the oppressions. But it had been so much less discussed and addressed before RPS that, for all intents and purposes, rps was itself the first serious, large radical group to traverse that class terrain and explicitly encounter those class difficulties.
Speaker 1:The internal issue was to have self-management inside the organization, just as we sought it outside. We needed a consistent way of dispersing organizational tasks and responsibilities to make up for prior differences in training and confidence. We needed daily participation to elevate working class members and hold coordinator class members in check, sometimes even at the expense of under-utilizing various people's talents. And it wasn't just that we had to accomplish that. Just like racism and sexism have structural institutional bases that must be challenged and also have long-term effects on behavior and culture which, if left to fester, can easily bring back the old-role relations, so too for coordinator classism.
Speaker 1:Many types of movements, sometimes even labor movements due to their bureaucracies, and certainly ecology movements, feminist movements, anti-racist movements, anti-war movements and more local movements had for many decades largely embodied coordinator class preferences, it would appear in almost every facet, not just who made decisions, but also what TV shows activists would watch or denigrate, what sports, what foods and diets, and on and on. The coordinator radical would read the New York Times, even while proclaiming it was a monstrous hotbed of manipulation and lies. The worker would read the sports page of a local tabloid. Was that true? I don't know, but suppose it was. Who was the foolish one? I interject. I'll answer that the working class person reading, say, the local large audience mass media tabloid, who read the sports section and maybe the death notices and the pages announcing upcoming events, was reading stuff that was likely, at least largely accurate. The coordinator class person reading the front page and the editorial page was reading what he or she literally knew to be bent news, false news, as it had come to be called, incredibly biased opinions and so on. So who's the not so? Who is the not-so-wise reader? Ali continues.
Speaker 1:Indeed, often self-proclaimed progressive and even radical positions that were overall warranted would have, as a subversive part of their composition, classist attitudes, as in gun control, overtones castigating workers for favoring guns, or the anti-McDonald's franchise campaigns that were often as much or more about keeping low-income people out of neighborhoods. Ecological movements also often embodied such values and assumptions. I remember once asking an anti-nuke power plant activist and I oppose nukes too what he thought about the clear and present damage of coal mining and generating black lung disease and other ailments for the miners as compared to the quite healthy circumstances for the most part of nuclear power plant workers. And he had not only not thought about it, he couldn't even hear it. To me it's said that for him the plight of workers just didn't exist, or at least enter his consciousness. His no-nukes issue was plant failures could kill people like him. He had the right position about nukes only because what he left out didn't in fact override what he was moved by. But his tone and matter put off working people from supporting the no-nukes cause and matter put off working people from supporting the no-nukes cause, and understandably so. The same would occur in the utter inattention by some not all ecological activists to the plight of people's jobs when calling for an end to fossil fuels. This was later. What if no-nukes activists had held high as a banner no-nukes and no coal mines, as later occurred?
Speaker 1:In any event, we had to figure out how to simultaneously confront classist assumptions and habits and undo classist structures, even as we not only elevated workers to full involvement but also retained coordinators with progressive views, while preventing them from dominating, not to mention not letting concerns about class crowd out other focuses such as attending to race, gender or ecology. Not to mention what was obvious even before, well before the emergence of RPS the necessity to eliminate capitalism, the role of the capitalist owner. Then again, no one said attaining classlessness would be easy. So what steps, ali, were taken to deal with class differences inside RPS? First, we adopted the ideas of balanced job complexes and self-management as goals for our own chapters and organization. This entailed making up for deficits in learning and confidence on one side, and for excesses of arrogance and entitled expectation on the other side. Second, we recruited heavily among people with working class backgrounds and instituted changes to make their participation welcome, supported and elevated, given all the other pressures they faced. Third, we self-consciously had working people take the lead, even more so than in general, regarding the internal culture and forms of celebration and socializing within RPS, which, remember, we also made priorities as ways to develop mutual understanding and trust.
Speaker 1:Okay, says Miguel, but what did these entail in practice? In your local RPS chapter, say what did all this translate into and what difficulties had to be overcome. Did all this translate into and what difficulties had to be overcome? Even once you were doing the above? Everyone in each chapter had responsibilities. It changed as time went along, but even at the start there were diverse tasks scheduling meetings, preparing snacks, cleaning up after preparing an agenda, sometimes preparing materials, actively recruiting, coming up with and researching ideas for possible campaigns, writing instructionals and calls, and so on. Later there was more developing views and preparing materials for current and future campaigns, for example. About all this, we assign people tasks in a balanced way, or even sometimes unbalanced, where the idea was those with the most experience and confidence would actually do more of the less empowering tasks to redress and avoid aggravating the prior imbalance. And yes, even as we were doing this, folks would bicker about their having too many or even any rote tests and would sometimes even try to do other people's empowering tests About self-management.
Speaker 1:At first it wasn't just that we had Democratic votes. It was also more often about the process leading up to voting than about the final tallying of votes. We ensured that those with greater confidence and prior knowledge did not dominate and that those with less confidence and prior knowledge became steadily more vocal and involved. We had an unusual rule, for example, that votes could not be taken until working class members were collectively satisfied they had fully voiced their views and been sincerely heard and accounted. In the beginning this threatened often to create tension, but the emphasis on attaining real solidarity overrode such possibilities.
Speaker 1:Part of participating was people becoming knowledgeable about social change and specifically about RPS views and vision. People also had to become skilled in public speaking and making compelling arguments, so we realized we needed internal training and practice. But then something remarkable became incredibly evident the gap between a coordinator, doctor or accountant and a worker, driver or assembler or short-order cook obviously included a huge difference, in particular specific knowledge. To bridge that type difference would be very much about conveying knowledge of particular disciplines, but the gap between a coordinator citizen and an RPS member and a worker citizen RPS member regarding issues of social change involved quite moderate, modest differences in actual substance knowledge and was overwhelmingly instead just a matter of using different terms and having more or fewer references to book learning. There was certainly a big language gap. Workers and coordinator members talked about society, at least in the early days of RPS, using very different words, and there was a big confidence gap then as well, a big comfort with the topic gap, a big public speaking gap, especially if the speaking had to adhere to coordinator class norms. But it turned out that, as far as actual understanding and insights, there was no obvious large one-way gap. In short, there was a bit of a con game going on.
Speaker 1:When we sat around and asked a worker to explain RPS views and challenge or support them, he or she typically had a hard time of it at first, either not yet knowing the specifics or literally being too nervous. But when we asked a coordinator class member to do it, the presentation was mostly mechanical, that is, the coordinator class person could reel off a bunch of words but had a hard time explaining their meaning in daily life situations in any convincing fashion. It was almost rote, often with little ability to translate it from fancy language to palpable, relevant meaning or sometimes even to know what it actually meant. When working people saw that and really felt it, they saw reason to chime in and they began to do so. And as they got more confident they realized that they brought a level of understanding and a wealth of experience that the coordinator folks replaced with fancy words and rhetoric. These steps proved, in other words, beneficial not only for worker participation but for the substance of discussions and understanding. And this was, of course, all the more true for talking about relations between workers and coordinators, their implications and what should be done about it. On that topic, the coordinator class members were, in large numbers, close to brain dead, honestly, and the working class members were advanced experts schooled by life Regarding understanding certain class differences. In rule, it turned out that the fancy words of the coordinators didn't even masquerade as deep understanding. Rather, the words blocked understanding by denying the problems, at least regarding coordinator-worker relations. This is nearly 20 years ago and it is hard to be really specific about the various steps taken since.
Speaker 1:But regarding recruiting, we had another norm that was really demanding At the outset. We had 14 people in my chapter, nine of coordinator background and aspirations and five who were working class. So we talked it through and agreed that RPS would ultimately need to much more closely reflect societal conditions. Thus, at least 80% working class and at most 20% coordinator class. We, of course, did not want to not recruit people, yet that is what we agreed. Not recruit people, yet that is what we agreed. For every new coordinator class member, we would need to recruit two new working class members, and the task of recruiting would be assigned overwhelmingly to working class members as well, so that in time that ratio would get even better.
Speaker 1:Like everything else, this was difficult for everyone. For the coordinator class members, it meant they could not just go out and recruit friends, family members and the like, even if those individuals were strongly pro-RPS Recruiting more coordinators had to wait, and for the working class members it also imposed a real burden. They had to do some great recruiting of fellow workers and they had to push their fellow coordinator class members to do so as well, but among working class people, otherwise everything would stall To become an organization that fought against class division and class rule by empowering and elevating working people to controlling their own lives. All this had to be achieved, however difficult. When someone would say but we could be bigger quicker if we welcomed everyone who was interested without these silly requirements, we had to not just reject that view but also understand their feelings and convince them that being bigger, quicker, where what was being enlarged would not be able to retain its priorities, was not the aim and was not better. Better to go slower, but better was our norm, though not too slow Getting working people to join, to attend meetings and to relate aggressively and with energy was a problem even for those of us who were eager to do it.
Speaker 1:Working class life was tense and constrictive. Time was short, funds were sparse, energy was scarce. So we realized that our chapter and by extension RPS as a whole, had to provide a way for people with incredibly demanding work and home lives to participate. But what could we do? The answer was the organization could actually reduce their life difficulties. And so we seriously considered that and came up with lots of innovative ways to do it. For example, a chapter, much less an organization, had people with diverse skills and talents. These could be directed to reduce the time working class members had to spend dealing with bureaucracies. We could also collectivize and reduce the cost of certain life tasks, not least food, shopping, laundry and daycare. We realized that scale was critical for all of this, and so we proposed to RPS that when chapters grew and divided in two, the assembly of chapters take as a key priority utilizing the energies and talents across all the member chapters on behalf of all the members being able to better participate. And then there were broader societal demands to shorten the work week, for daycare, etc.
Speaker 1:Miguel next turned to Lydia. Lydia, what about class writ larger in society? It was and it remains the same basic problem, just on a different scale, and that has had positive and negative aspects. Positively, there are many more ways to address issues and more resources to bring to bear. Training is easier, for example, as is working out task assignments when there are more tasks and more people. On the other hand, the impersonality of dealing with people you don't know makes things harder. In any case, this was applying the same kinds of thinking and even program to society and its components as compared to applying it just to a chapter or assembly of chapters or even the whole organization. So we had campaigns for accountability in a great many workplaces but, even more important, for job redefinition to spread empowering tasks in whole workplaces and later even in whole industries. This meant battling for workers' power and day-to-day decision-making on the job, but regarding broad social policies as well, sometimes via union battles, sometimes via workplace councils, which were often in some ways just larger versions of workplace RPS chapters. It also meant applying the same participation and leadership norms to broad RPS campaigns and events as we were opting for in chapter-sponsored campaigns and events.
Speaker 1:Perhaps the largest example was the massive campaign RPS undertook for a shorter workday and work week was the massive campaign RPS undertook for a shorter workday and work week fought for in ways highly attuned to working class and not coordinator class needs. So the campaign began. Much like earlier campaigns around minimum wage increases, workers in particular industries in this case it was Walmart and Amazon and a few other mass suppliers began to agitate for more time off. This was initially partly about vacation time and partly about forced overtime, but relatively quickly these matured into more general demands for a 30-hour work week. But workers quickly imposed added elements. They could not afford to work three quarters as long as before for the same hourly rate as before. That would mean their total income dropped by a fourth and since it was already way too low for living, that was simply unacceptable. If the campaign required a loss of income, working class support would dry up.
Speaker 1:So seeking a shorter work week had to mean hourly wages had to go up so that total income did not drop, and that meant an hourly wage increase by one-third. If you were earning $15 an hour earlier, then after the switch to a 30-hour work week you would be earning $20 an hour, so your total income per week would not change hour, so your total income per week would not change. But wait a minute. What if you were earning $60 an hour or $150 an hour much less, even more, before? Should you now earn $80 an hour or $200 an hour after? No, if your income was too high before, why not have the battle for a shorter work week? Bring things more into line. It couldn't yet seek a cut in hourly rate for high-paid employees that would come later but it could rule out any raise in hourly pay going to those already overpaid. So now the demand was that everyone would work 30 instead of 40 hours, but only those earning less than, say, $30 an hour would also get an hourly pay increase of one-third. How would owners manage this? By earning less profit, of course. But what if, to avoid that, they imposed overtime to raise output to try to make up for their change costs. Okay, replied workers. Let's allow overtime, but always optional, not forced, and with overtime pay being not time and a half, but triple time.
Speaker 1:There was another exemplary aspect. Consider doctors in a hospital. After the change, the owners would have them working 30-hour weeks and would have to pay triple time to get more labor from them, which labor they certainly needed, as did society. What would happen? The answer was either the owners would pay the higher rate, supposing doctors were willing to work the extra hours, or they would have to redefine work to get more doctor-like contributions out of other employees, mainly nurses, and to start to pressure med schools to produce more doctors. These are all again trends that impact class relations positively, and it wasn't just hospitals, it was throughout the economy. To take one example, law firms notoriously worked young lawyers' ludicrous hours, just like hospitals overworked young doctors. The real logic in each case was to keep down the number of doctors and lawyers and socialize them into their roles, to keep up their relative power and incomes, since you had to pay triple time and even more in many cases, because now the young doctors and young lawyers could legally work only 30 hours and attempts to force them to do more were illegal and punishable by severe fines on profits, as well as by the growing militance of the workers involved, policies had to be reconceived. That is just a taste, of course, of the kind of struggles that developed.
Speaker 1:Miguel turned to Alexandra and asked did the efforts to challenge class division work? What was the turning point toward real success? It isn't finished, but yes, I think it all worked incredibly well when you consider it was challenging hundreds of years of uninterrupted class division and regimentation, and it was doing so not in a comparable number of centuries but in just a few decades and more. It was doing so at the same time as ownership was also under broad assault. As to the turning point, I doubt there was only one, and perhaps there was not even one, but rather only countless trends and events merging into the processes we have all seen. But okay, I will offer up as a possibility two. Actually, the first I would offer, at least without a lot of time to think about it, was the firestorm of strikes for a shorter work week. About it was the firestorm of strikes for a shorter work week and indeed the whole package of related demands that emerged just a few years after the first convention.
Speaker 1:I guess the key moment was when almost all Amazon workers sat down at their posts and declared that they would not move and would not allow anyone else to take their places and would not cease their sit-down strike until Amazon changed its policies in accord with their demands. That was monumental. I can still remember hearing reports of it, seeing videos on the news and then going to Amazon centers to lend my support. The mood was incredible. We had all bought from Amazon just by clicking links. Suddenly, hundreds of thousands of Amazon workers sat down to stand tall. Suddenly, they didn't accept that their relative poverty was their own fault. They didn't accept that poverty is unavoidable. They didn't accept that lack of dignity is unavoidable. They didn't accept that subordination is unavoidable. They began to think that their plight was imposed. Functioning like robots wasn't in their genes, it was socially imposed. It was private ownership and command, it was capitalism.
Speaker 1:The Amazon workers realized, and Moore began to act on the recognition that their work was not what it could be, which sentiment became a rallying cry of incredible importance. It was the most exciting moment I enjoyed up to that time. But how did people react At first? People throughout the country were flabbergasted. These workers, after all, were effectively invisible beyond Amazon's doors. How many were there? It turned out there were hundreds of thousands. We, who had bought our books, and indeed goods of all kinds, from Amazon, simply clicked the link and our package arrived. There appeared to be nothing human about it, much less so many people working in such harsh conditions, for such long hours at such low pay. So Amazon users wondered what the hell is this all about? We didn't realize at first such a huge workforce was involved and most of us had no inkling how powerful their action would turn out. But after a few days it became clear this was a massive escalation of militants and innovation in labor activism. Families and friends brought food and tents so the Amazon workers could make good on their threat to stay until victory. Students from nearby campuses turned out in force to bring needed supplies and stand outside providing a buffer against police intervention. Everyone was watching.
Speaker 1:And then came the turning point, or points, if you will. First off, the owners, the stockholders, said to the police Clean this up, break it up my workplace, my rules, and first attempts to do that were made. But the workers said no, you come in these warehouses. You won't go back out again with any of us in tow. We will die. First, the warehouses will be ravaged and you will suffer in the chaos as well. That was a hell of a message. This exchange from a worker, carried on camera, went viral.
Speaker 1:Quote we are Amazon's workers. We are not the cause of our hardships. Amazon is Capitalist, economy is Market competition is. We will not move. Scabs will not replace us. Enter this warehouse we will wreak havoc. Invade this warehouse we will dismantle it. Our work is not what it could be. We are going to redefine it, we are going to take it back, we are going to make it ours. Do your worst, but we are here to stay. We will not be moved.
Speaker 1:At the same time, thousands of supporters and more, depending on the city rallied outside and also pledged to ward off attempts at violent suppression. I remember that well because I was at one such site. The spirit was incredible. There, we were in the streets, ready to be bashed mercilessly, but hell-bent on staying. I got interviewed too. I said quote bosses, do as you will, but like workers inside, we too will remain. We are students, lawyers, mail carriers, we are cooks, farmers, assemblers, we are nurses, doctors, custodians and yes, off-duty cops. Amazon workers have our hearts. We have their backs. It was a standoff.
Speaker 1:Where I was, and at many sites, an organizer would come out and speak to all around, and mainly to Bezos, the owner, and to police awaiting their orders. One such speech I heard was and to police awaiting their orders, one such speech I heard was quote reject our demands, we will maintain our occupation. Issue court orders, we will scoff. Fuck your orders. Serve your injunctions we will laugh. Fuck your injunctions. Arrest us. We will clog your jails. Fuck your jails. Smash us. We will replenish. We will persist. Our plight is not our fault, but overcoming our plight is our responsibility. Officers, we know it is your job to follow orders, but we know you too want shorter hours. You too want better wages. You too want a better world for your kids. Bludgeon us if you must. We will talk with you. And so the workers were inside and set to remain.
Speaker 1:With such an atmosphere of resistance and solidarity emanating from Amazon workers, what could the owners and the police do? It became clear to Bezos, amazon, the police and everybody else that force would only breed more resistance. And right there and then a lot of people learned how to prevent the state or scabs or private police or anyone else from using force to suppress dissent. The trick was to make violence counterproductive for them. We had to create a situation where the use of force would do more damage to the interests of those employing it than would not using force. And it became clear as well that what could accomplish that in this case and, it seemed, perhaps in all cases was having so much support and so much clarity about what was at stake and what was going on, and so much willingness to not succumb and so much clarity of our communications that forceful interventions would totally backfire both on the immediate scene and, even more so, in the larger public reaction, and those trying to repress us would see for themselves the futility of their approach.
Speaker 1:Amazon workers and their supporters, myself included, learned from our daily experience of the sit-down, not only about warding off repression, but also about the ins and outs of collective struggle. Even more important, every day others were learning similar things all across the country from what they were seeing and hearing about the events. And after just a week, seemingly spontaneously, but actually after much discussion and reflecting plus, of course, a considerable history of their own strikes UPS workers stopped delivering, and then FedEx workers did so too, and by that point society was reeling and the companies had to give in Just like that. Bam new work hours, new payment schemes, and now, as the campaign spread and workers in other firms raised similar demands, everyone knew what was next. Say no and we will sit in our workplaces and you will lose. It couldn't have been that easy. Not easy, no. But mutual aid spread, sympathy grew. The potential for unified action was too much for elites to bear. Amazon had to give in New work hours, new payment schemes and even more, a new belief in our own power. We could win more.
Speaker 1:The owners, if we did our campaigns right, were weak, even pathetic. But you know, the speed with which we won gains did arguably obscure the difficulty we workers and supporters had to overcome our habits and fears to take the stand we did. The night before I went, I was petrified and couldn't sleep. Some slid easily into dissent. They were so courageous or so angered they were oblivious to the risks Not me. I knew the risks, I was really afraid and I knew, even if I didn't get clubbed or arrested, my life would never be the same again.
Speaker 1:The owners were hogtied, not least because police departments were of mixed mind. Police felt officially responsible to follow orders, but personally, a great many of them sympathized with the workers. Hell, they wanted normalized work hours too, and we didn't curse them. We listened to them, we talked to them. We had in mind to recruit them, and we did. Instead of regarding police as spawns from hell, which in truth they had often been, we realized they were citizens, workers like us, albeit in roles that bent them even more than our roles bent us, and we began to reach out and talk with them, meet with them, rally them, make it in their interest to listen and understand us and finally to refuse to repress us.
Speaker 1:A second but related turning point, I think, was about a change in underlying ideas, assumptions and habits bearing on coordinator-worker relations. It started with a small group at Harvard Medical School. Of all places, imagine that there had been a campaign on campus to raise the wages of Harvard's low-income kitchen and custodial workers. Initially this was undertaken by the workers with some undergraduate student allies, but it then became a broader movement. The students were in many cases RPS-influenced or RPS members, and they were engaging in the campaign not as an end in itself but to improve the condition of the workers, while also trying to educate the whole campus and even more widely about what incomes really ought to be and even about class relations writ larger, while the demands were for very specific wage increases, as they had been just a few years earlier in a prior similar but not nearly as aggressive and broad struggle, in this second attempt at change the rhetoric altered and began asking why those who clean classrooms should earn less than those who stand in front of them comfortably talking to students, the activists combined demands for today with hopes for tomorrow. And sure enough, after who knows how many dorm and classroom discussions occurred, alongside work stoppages and teach-ins, a group of med students some in RPS started to raise a ruckus about admissions policies, training methods and the culture of the profession they were preparing to enter. You can't know these things for sure, but my guess is that students in the Raise Wages campaign, talking with one another not only about the immediate wage demand but also about what wages really ought to be which they argued was more for rote workers than for professors morphed into an evaluation of their own futures.
Speaker 1:From its start, among medical students at Harvard there exploded into visibility groups like doctors for the people, lawyers for the people, accountants for the people, engineers, architects, university faculty for the people, and so on. I remember the kinds of rhetoric and focus that emerged, for example, at law schools, where, at a rally I heard quote we, the law students, know that we harbor bad habits of entitlement that operate obstructively. We know that we face intense resistance from many classmates, faculty and media. Let's face facts Money-grubbing is not yet in history's wastebasket. Nonetheless, we seek to be lawyers for people and not for corporations. This repeated the 60s dynamic that had the same name so-and-so for the people but had not, back then, gotten nearly as far, and in every case, not without some flaws and residual bad habits that operated obstructively and, of course, always encountering intense resistance from folks who did not want such radical change.
Speaker 1:The mood was sincerely about redefining the relations between each profession and the population, and even about redefining the responsibility of the profession and, most disruptively, redefining its tasks, remuneration and social responsibilities. Our own, andre Goldman, gave a speech at a rally at Columbia University that spread as a meme. I think they then called such things. It even appeared on shirts. I saw it and he said, quote I will not justify low wages, unemployment and alienation. I will not rationalize profits over people and celebrate growth over sustainability. I will do economics for workers, not for owners, for people, not for profits, for the planet, not for the plutocrats. Do likewise, be humane, Be true. Enough bootlicking for corporate owners, enough is enough. So I think these examples pretty much sealed the deal for me, though I am sure many other folks from elsewhere in the country would just as confidently propose other turning points.
Speaker 1:Not that the battle was over once these events occurred, much less alone. Due to these events. It still isn't over even now. But I do think the final outcome became evident for all with eyes to see Society was changing. Class difference had to be, and would be, not merely attenuated a good first step but eliminated. When I later became shadow labor secretary, I had no doubts that the future was classlessness.
Speaker 1:This was not about a nicer new boss in place of the old, nastier boss. It was going to take time and work, of course, but you know how sometimes you are trying to do something really difficult and you are not sure at the outset that you will ever succeed. And then there comes a moment when your evaluation reverses, after which you can no longer even conceive of not succeeding. That is what I think finding turning points is about. When we get past a turning point, it is not easy, but it is all downhill. No turning back from there For the economy, no bosses. So that is where Miguel closed out the chapter. But what about the next revolution's tactics? That's coming up in NAR 11. And so until next time, which will be NAR 11, or I may perhaps slot in one on the upcoming American election, or indeed I think I may be able to slot in one with Evan Hanshaw Plath on artificial intelligence. This is Michael Albert signing off for Revolution Z.