Marvin wrote:
>Existing unions alone will never be able to raise the level
>of class struggle from below. Currently unorganized workers have to
>discover such tools of industrial struggles as sit-downs and
>work-to-rule on their own and use them.
There is no "work to rule" for non-union workers. That's a tactic of unionized workers constrained by no-strike clauses. As for sitdown strikes, where do you have examples of workers outside the union movement successfully using such tactics?
The CIO workers who used them in the 1930s did not have collective bargaining agreements but they were certainly organized-- the UAW and other unions had been working to organize them for a number of years. Of course there were spontaneous aspects of those events, but "spontaneous" actions usually happen on the base of years of hard organizing.
What frustrates me about the "activistas" (to cite Doug) is that they want action without the real work of organizing. They think a series of events where the same old same old activists show up once again is effective. The antiwar rallies of 500,000 people were nice but that's just a bit more than 0.1% of the US population, so even the larger of mass actions mean little if they are seen as being just a marginal group of people willing to show up once again for the newest hot cause.
I've seen many times when a handful of people -- unexpected people -- showing up in a small meeting with an elected official had more impact than giant rallies. Tip O'Neill -- who was one of the earliest Congressional leaders to come out against the Vietnam War -- told the story that he ignored all of the big antiwar protests, but was profoundly moved when a handful of working class constituents began writing him to protest the war, because it was unexpected.
Ultimately, this is why Chuck's program of action is useless: not just because it would fail but because the powers that be can easily incorporate it into their narrative since a few marginal lefties "acting out" is not unexpected. Seattle was successful because it was unexpected to see "Teamsters and Turtles together" -- an unexpected grouping that disrupted expectations about the political environment.
The antiwar movement needs to organize more unexpected people if they are going to really have an impact. And they need a message for what the world should look like instead of Bush's military vision, since while people may not support the Iraq War, they want to hear an alternative. That's obvious or Bush would have been driven from office.
Nathan Newman