Labor organizer Jane McElevey grew up with workers’ rights
being part of a package with a lot of other social movements.Her father was
also a union organizer and later a politician who was elected due to his strong
union ties. The movements that she herself had started working with seemed like
they working with smaller goals and were not as eager to name the capitalist
class as a common enemy.
Through this smaller, more Establishment-oriented approach,
individuals won some short-term gains, but worker power has become more and
more diluted since the early 1970s. “I
think it was a fundamental misunderstanding of power,” McElvey told approximately
100 Democratic Socialist members from most of the 50 states on Saturday.
“We didn’t understand the extent to which,
once the ink was dry on our wins, The Right would try to take them back.” This
led to the decline of worker power and the rise of neo-fascist activity, including
that that helped elect Donald Trump.
Still, she sees many reasons for hope in the teachers’
strikes that happened in many states last year.She specifically referenced the
LA teachers’ strike because it had 100% participation across such a large
district, and unity is a big key to worker success and getting more power than
you might have even dreamed at the outset.
“The key to unity is not to shy away from divisions and difficult
topics, but to get into them and not let them derail our opportunities.” She
pointed out that some divisions arise naturally, and some are fed, or even provoked
by outside forces.
This call was the first of three training sessions based on
material from Jane McElvey’s book “No Shortcuts”
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