class struggle

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, September 6, 2023

By Meghan Krausch - Truthout, September 5, 2023

In Republican-controlled regions across the country, people are engaged in abolitionist organizing: Even though conditions vary, people are organizing for freedom virtually everywhere. This is nothing new. The South, for example, has been a site for abolitionist organizing for centuries, and it continues to be one, despite the attacks on long-settled civil rights being organized by Republican supermajorities in statehouses.

Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson is the first Black woman to codirect the Highlander Research and Education Center, a century-old nexus for abolitionist and labor organizing in Tennessee and beyond. She is also a cofounder of the Movement for Black Lives. Woodard Henderson says that if abolitionists really believe the most impacted and marginalized people are at the heart of the struggle, then red states and counties must be centered in organizing efforts instead of treated as lost causes. She notes that the South in particular is often ceded by national organizations — which, among other problems, makes it hard for organizations working in the region to secure funding from philanthropic foundations.

The sense of these places being lost causes is not only offensive, it’s deeply untrue. In fact, decarceral groups in red states and counties are seeing success even amid what many organizers see as the current fascist turn. For example, Florida Prisoner Solidarity, an abolitionist collective based in Gainesville that has members inside and outside of prison across the state, won a campaign earlier this year to make phone calls from the jail in Alachua County free and unlimited (down from a cost of $.21 per minute).

These efforts do not generally achieve the same visibility as those in blue states and so-called liberal areas — but this doesn’t make them less critical to abolitionist struggle. “Don’t give up on us,” asks aurelius francisco, co-executive director of The Foundation for Liberating Minds in Oklahoma City. “We’ve always resisted … and we’ll continue to do so.”

Organizers in red states and counties are bringing abolitionist struggle to the communities, in the process highlighting how their strategies seek to draw in people who might not normally see themselves as allied to “liberal” causes. This is a lesson that can be valuable to organizers throughout the country who are seeking new ways of growing solidarity.

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, September 5, 2023

By Frank Hammer, Shawn Crawford, Steve Zeltser - Labor Video Project, September 4, 2023

By Matt Weaver, Ashley M. Gjøvik, Stella Miranda, Dr. Ray Tomkins, Steve Zeltser, et. al. - Labor Video Project, August 2, 2023

By Luis Feliz Leon - In These Times, August 30, 2023

Thirty-year-old Rick Savage was among the first workers hired at Ultium Cells’ 2.8-million-square-foot battery plant in Lordstown, Ohio, in April 2022. ​“I heard about the battery plant and how it was going to be technologically superior to all other manufacturing companies,” Savage remembers thinking. ​“The future of the automotive industry is going to be electric.”

Ultium Cells was a high-profile joint venture between U.S. automaker General Motors and South Korea’s LG Energy Solution. The Lordstown plant — billed as the largest battery plant of its kind anywhere in the country — was predicted to cost some $2.3 billion and generate more than 1,100 new jobs. GM’s legacy as a union employer was part of the company’s sales pitch to new employees. 

“They were saying, ​‘Hey, it’s the next GM, you can retire here, it’s going to be great,’” Savage says.

Deindustrialization has been battering northeastern Ohio for half a century. Ohio hemorrhaged 50,000 jobs within five years after Youngstown Sheet & Tube shuttered its Campbell Works steel factory in 1977. In 2008, after GM shuttered its facility in Moraine, 2,000 autoworkers were left without jobs. The Chinese automotive-glass manufacturer Fuyao hired some of them when it took over the closed plant in 2014, but at much lower wages.

By Luis Feliz Leon - Labor Notes, August 28, 2023

Five hundred Auto Workers (UAW) from Local 862 held rallies in Louisville, Kentucky, August 24 and 25, part of a wave of practice pickets and rallies around the country.

Class struggle was on everyone’s lips. A variety of issues brought them to the picket, but the auto workers there were unanimous about turbocharged wealth inequality leaving workers behind.

At the Thursday picket, Local 862 member Aaron Webster said he’s grown tired of feeling squeezed, describing the contract fight as a fight between the rich and the poor.

Webster started working at the Kentucky Truck Plant in 2014 building Ford Super Duty Trucks, Ford Expeditions, and Lincoln Navigators. “As much as I may not want to strike, I believe it's necessary,” he said. He has been saving money and talking to his co-workers in the event Ford is one of the strike targets when the September 14 contract expiration deadline arrives.

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, August 23, 2023