<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid"> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid"> </blockquote> <div> </div> <div>"And you and they have to stop blaming US law, because that's not going to change. "</div> <div> </div> <div>I have been watching this debate with fear.  Mainly because I didn't see, at first, why Nathan was so angry at "this list."  </div> <div> </div> <div>The problem of organizing U.S. workers (in and out of unions) is the problem of organizing in general, in and out of unions.  We should stop blaming unions for not organizing when we ourselves have not broken through - organizing, educating, connecting, mobilizing the citizenry at large.   We can be as pro-union as we want to, in our heads, but we have forgotten how to organize in solidarity with our own working class struggles. </div> <div> </div> <div>I am very pro-union.  I think even a corrupt union is better than no union at all.  On the other hand I know from first hand experience, that a union leadership can sell out its members even to the point of committing union suicide, just so the little selfish interests of the leadership are somehow satisfied. I see no contradiction in being very pro-union and being highly critical of practically everything most unions do - how they negotiate, strike, organaize, etc.  I think this is simply a result of my experience of being in unions and trying to get them to change.  </div> <div> </div> <div>So I can be sympathetic with both Doug and Fitch in many of the things they write.  </div> <div> </div> <div>But let me tell you the truth.  "We," non-union members, non "ruling class," are also responsible..  </div> <div> </div> <div>The TWU was on strike here in New York, so who among us searched out a picket line and went there?  I did.  And it was a problem even finding where to go to do so.  At first I blamed this on the union....  Why isn't the TWU coodinating a "Subway Riders Auxilary" to experess union support among the citizens?  Why isn't the TWU putting out a strike newspaper, and why doesn't it at least have a good strike website and strike weblog, instead of the lousy thing that they actually had?  Why didn't any other unions organize protests when the dispicable Bloomberg (a member of the ruling class if I ever saw one) called the strikers thugs?  </div> <div> </div> <div>But then I began to think!  Why didn't I help to do any of these things?  I didn't contact the TWU and say "Are you guys doing a strike blog because I bet I could help get a bunch guys together to do one for you?"  Why haven't I been campaigning for a regular strike newspaper or for union owned radio and television stations?   Why weren't there even buttons, saying "I support the TWU"?  Everytime I go to an antiwar rally somebody prints up thousands of buttons.  They are everywhere.  Does the "left" in general ever do these things for organizing workers? for striking workers?  </div></blockquote><br> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid"> <div> </div> <div>Partially, the reason is  that now that I am not now a union member. I am "outside" the union movement.  But if you will notice above a mass of French non-union members don't consider themselves "outside" the union movement.  So if I somehow "blame" American "working class culture" (or the lack of it) what I am actually doing is blaming myself.  All of us are to blame for our lack of organzing, or for our inability to change lousy labor laws, (Taft-Hartley, Landrum-Griffinth, the Taylor law in New York) whether we are in the union movement or not.  I think all of us who are not bosses are to blame, for not considering ourselves a part of a broader working class movement of which the union movement is only a subsection, and not organizing and mobilizing on that basis.  </div></blockquote> <div> </div><br> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> </div><br>