Seth Ackerman wrote:
>If you give up on the
>working class, you're giving up on certain hallowed desiderata in
>the process.
-Well, since most of us are working class (except me, I'm petit -bourgeois), any broad progressive movement would have to be domianted -by the working class. But I suspect a lot of us have a more race- and -gender-integrated cast that still bears a lot of resemblance to the -horny-handed sons of toil in the backs of our minds.
Only those who haven't walked a picket line in recent years-- which may be the problem.
Many to most major union actions and new organizing in recent years have been dominated by non-white and non-male workers such as janitors, hotel and health care workers. Race issues are usually quite integrated into those battles, just as gender demands dominate many union fights, a prime examples being nurses fighting mandatory overtime both on behalf of patients and to protect time with their families.
One reason I am such a complete and unashamed union apologist was my time as a young organizer in Las Vegas hearing stories from aging cocktail waitresses about their battle -- yes under an occasionally corrupt mob-associated local -- that challenged sexist management that traditionally hid older waitresses in the least lucrative parts of the gambling floor, with sexual favors being the coin of promotion. In the early 70s, those waitresses forced the hotels into contract agreements that established seniority bidding on the best spots in the hotel, meaning the high-tip craps tables for example end up with the oldest waitresses.
As I liked to say, the high rollers could come to Vegas and buy almost anything they wanted, except a twenty-year old to serve them drinks, since the women of the union had changed the rules and got rid of that kind of easy automatic sexism in the hotels.
-- Nathan Newman