Labor Notes at a Dead End and How to Get a Fighting Labor Movement: Discussion with Elliot from COFTU and Chantelle from MCU & TM

Lital and Edward are joined by Elliot from the Committee for One Fighting Transit Union (COFTU) and Chantelle from the Maoist Communist Union (MCU) and Teamsters Mobilize (TM) to talk last month's Labor Notes conference. Both were part of a panel held the same weekend as Labor Notes, "A Militant Critique of Labor Notes: For a Fighting Workers Movement," and talk both their experiences on the job, at Labor Notes, and what strategy is needed to rebuild the labor movement in the United States. Not surprisingly, they don't see DSA's current labor strategy as being up to snuff.

You can check out the panel Elliot and Chantelle participated in at Labor Notes here. 

The Committee for One Fighting Transit Union's website can be found here and you can follow them on X and on Instagram.

You can find the Maoist Communist Union on their website, on Instagram, and on YouTube. They also have a Telegram channel.

Teamster's Mobilize can be found here on their website, as well as on Instagram.

As always, the best way to follow the work of the Just Break Already Caucus is by taking a look at our Linktree, where we post all of our statements, resolutions, petitions, and everything else we've been up to lately. You can follow us on X and Instagram. Love the show? Hate it? Have commentary or comments? Want to come on the show and debate us? Our DMs are always open! Shoot us one, we'd love to get your feedback and anything else you want to send our way.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You know, in various labor notes workshops over the years. I think that there's a lot of really useful stuff on the nuts and bolts level of organizing, you know, how you talk to your coworkers, how you do, you know, a campaign with building something around a petition or how you do X, Y, and Z. But it's it's the political questions that they refuse to engage in. And I think like Robbie alluded to, they had this workshop and it was incredibly well attended, and it was talking about building independence politically from the Democrats. But the panelists, when it came down to it, were really what was their bottom line. We're gonna continue to vote for labor-friendly candidates, i.e. Democrats, while we try to do these other things, right? And what are these other things? You know, I think mandami being a classic example, right? We're gonna run candidates on the party line, but we're actually socialists, we're actually fighting for the working class. But within the Democratic Party, how does that play out? Right? They're in a capitalist organization. They are constantly, I mean, we've already seen it from the first weeks of his administration, reniging on his promises, stabbing workers in the back, endorsing other openly capitalist elements within the Democratic Party and their re-election campaigns. And so the need to build an alternative that is clearly based on the political independence of the working class, both in ideas and in organization. We need to rely on our own forces. We need to be self-funded, and we need to be very clear that the Democrats and the Republicans are enemies of the American working class and the working class of the world. But then the question is, how do we do that, right? We're not going to win the workers simply by proclaiming these truths, right? We need to go into the struggle, and like they talked about in Labor Notes, we have to find the felt needs of our co-workers and find the ways to tackle and address those felt needs. But that's exactly where we will win because it is the Marxist program, it is class struggle that offers the real way forward in meeting the needs of the masses. And so that's what we've seen. You know, it's not easy work, right? It took us months to establish the program of the committee to organize the unorganized and finding what are the obstacles. And then the next hard part is how do we concretely overcome those obstacles?

SPEAKER_02 2:55

Hello and welcome to this episode of Gimme a Break, the podcast of the Just Break Already Caucus in the DSA. I'm your host, Lee Tall, along with Edward. Hello. And the audio you heard at the beginning is of Matt, an IBEW militant with the Committee to Organize the Unorganized in Northern California. He was one of the speakers at a panel held during the last day of the biannual Labor Notes Conference, which took place in Chicago, the weekend of the 13th and 14th of June. The panel was not part of Labor Notes, but was organized by Labor Militants, and the panel was called For a Fighting Workers Movement, a Militant Critique of Labor Notes. And today's episode is focused on a report back on this year's conference. And we're going to dig into what the relationship is between the DSA and Labor Notes and how the fight for class independence in the DSA is connected to the fight for class independence in the unions and for the working class to defend itself and better its conditions. Our guests today were both participants in the Labor Notes Conference, as well as speaking at the panel for a fighting workers movement. So welcome, Elliot. Hello. Elliot is a transit worker from Los Angeles and a member of the Committee for One Fighting Transit Union, and he also supports the JBA. And welcome Chantel. Chantel is a member of the Maoist Communist Union, a supporter of Teamster Mobilize, and a member of Unite All Workers for Democracy. So welcome everyone. So I thought to begin, Edward can start off here and explain what Labor Notes has to do with the DSA. Um, how do the ties of the DSA to the Democratic Party play out with the Labor Notes events? How does that intersect the issue of the trade union leadership's ties to the Democrats? So maybe you can explain some of these dynamics.

SPEAKER_05 4:45

Sure. Broadly speaking, there is a lot of overlap between the so-called union reform movement within the unions and the DSA. A lot of the people involved are in both organizations or get involved in the unions through DSA and have this sort of social democratic approach to work in the labor movement. A lot of these guys and gals go into go into the unions, try to build reform caucuses, or get jobs as staffers, and they tend to be on the so-called progressive side of the union bureaucracy in this country. In the past, it was people who were involved with things like the TDU, the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, involved in other opposition caucuses within the unions. In the last few years, you can see this pretty evidently in some of the people that Labor Notes will bring in as keynote speakers to address union activists who come to Labor Notes. I believe it was four years ago they brought Bernie Sanders in to give a big speech to Darling of the DSA. Two years ago, it was Brandon Johnson, the so-called progressive mayor of the city of Chicago, who's not a DSAer, but it has deep ties to the teachers union, which has a lot of DSAers in the leadership here in Chicago. It really is kind of a labor wing of DSA insofar as that exists. A lot of people who go into DSA to do labor work end up in a lot of LaborNotes places. There's also this aspect of it where a lot of people who are maybe union activists or whatever come in from across the country to try to learn some basic trade union, like, you know, how to organize your workplace or how to file a grievance, that kind of stuff, right? That's part of the pull of Labor Notes. The way a lot of these more quote unquote progressive union types use it as a way to make the connection between that and then these so-called progressive democratic politicians. I mean, we'll talk about it more in depth, I think, throughout the podcast today, but I think that just sort of a general sense, right? It's the idea broadly that you can go into the unions and also use the federal government as a means to change the unions, which is very DSA coded.

SPEAKER_02 6:57

Like suing the unions.

SPEAKER_05 6:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Basically, I mean, in a lot of cases, suing the unions or going to the labor department, getting them to rerun elections. For most people in the DSA, this is not a principled question. They see it as, oh, the best way to reform the union is to get the government to come in, clean out the corruption, and then uh put somebody we like in charge. Whereas we view this as completely unprincipled for a Marxist, right? Getting the capitalist government to come clean house in the unions is uh a violation of class independence. It's most basic forms.

SPEAKER_02 7:28

Yeah. So you have basically a lot of union bureaucrats, staffers who are somewhere or another affiliated with DSA, and then you have a lot of union activists and unionists who come because they want to get help, advice, whatever, on how to fight on basic shop floor issues, and maybe more broader than that. It's kind of that mix at this thing. You mentioned um the Teamsters for a Democratic Union connection to uh labor notes this year. They made it pretty clear that they did not want critics of uh these kinds of union formations at the conference, and they even excluded a member of Teamster Mobilize Colleen, who had paid and registered, and then they deregistered her without any explanation and refunded her money and wouldn't let her attend. So maybe Chantel can speak to that. What happened with that?

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Yeah, definitely. I've had my criticisms of Labor Notes as an organization and their political approach, which I know we'll be talking more about, but but this is a new low, even for them. They banned a member of Teamsters Mobilize, Colleen. She's on the steering committee of Teamsters Mobilize. It's quite a dangerous thing. It clearly shows this rightward shift within within Labor Notes. It's good that you brought up TDU, Teamsters for Democratic Union. It was founded in the 70s by self-professed socialists, same with Labor Notes. And for a time, TDU did fight for some reforms, but they have not done so for quite a while. They allied with Sean O'Brien and Fred Zuckerman, who are the current leaders of the Teamsters. They backed them for their first run for office, and at that point ceased any and all criticism of O'Brien. And just to give some context for people who might not know as much about him, he's one of the most outright reactionary union leaders in the country. He is standing by and doing nothing as tens of thousands of UPS workers are getting laid off with no prospects to get their jobs back due to the concessionary contract that he pushed in 2023, which of course TDU and Labor Notes upheld as this historic victory. And politically, he thinks that ICE is a great institution. When Mark Wayne Mullen was appointed the new DHS head, he put out these crazy social media posts of like all these hearts between them. He said in interviews, they're good friends and they may have had their differences in the past, but it's time to put those behind them and work together. DHS and the Teamsters. When Renee Good was killed by ICE, he basically said she had it coming. TDU has not issued a single word of criticism of the IBT leadership for years. So Colleen registered for Labor Notes in time before they they closed registration. And then there was a documentary screening about the UPS contract here in New York City, which I attended with Colleen and some others. And we talked to David Levine after the screening, who was in attendance. He is, as far as I know, the only paid staff member of TDU. He keeps a fairly low profile publicly, but he plays a very important role in that organization. And there's a video on the Teamsters Mobilize Instagram that people can check out if they're interested of myself and Colleen filming him and asking some very basic questions about why TDU banned Teamsters Mobilize members from attending their last convention last fall. This is after they'd already banned some people previously. They had taken away the membership of a different Teamsters Mobilized steering committee member, Jess, who had run for the TDU steering committee. And so we asked him, why are you banning TM members? And he gave this response of organizations can decide to ban anybody. Okay, but what's the reason? What's the political reason? And he wouldn't answer. So we posted this on Instagram. And I think it was two days after that, Colleen gets an email from LaborNote saying, we're not going to be able to accommodate you. So it's a pretty direct connection there that she was banned for her role in Teamsters Mobilize of being a vocal critic of the IBT leadership and the TDU leadership. At first they didn't give any justification. She followed up and asked, obviously, for a reason for why she was banned or deregistered. And what they said is we've heard that at the last Labor Notes conference in 2024, you snuck into workshops without a badge. Okay, first of all, she was she was in Chicago at that hotel because she was at the Railroad Workers United conference, which happens at the same hotel with overlapping dates. That's how they did it this year as well. They're a caucus across different railroad unions. They talked about how the Democratic Party really sold them out in the 2022 uh potential rail strike. Yeah. Anyway, so she was there in the hotel. She attended the RWU events. That's all documented. What she said to LaborNotes is, I didn't attend any LaborNotes events, but if you have any proof of this, please provide it. And they never responded. This argument is so obscene, honestly. Labor Notes says they're the troublemaker school and they're they're here to help especially low-income workers fight the boss and fight against corrupt union leadership. So even if Colleen had attended a LaborNotes workshop two years ago, having not registered, or any other worker, and was there and thought, I would like to learn about how to make change in my union, and then the Labor Notes leadership comes back two years later to say, Oh, you're absolutely banned and we're not gonna even consider letting you back in. It's honestly disgusting. It was two years apart the time. Yes. Oh what? And again, like she registered, yeah, remained registered for a while, and then we had this video out about David Levine banning TM members for criticism of Sean O'Brien. Right, right. And then she gets the email. So it's pretty, pretty direct.

SPEAKER_02 12:59

What is Teamster Mobilize? Maybe if you want to just explain what Teamster Mobile is. That's a good idea, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

Uh yeah, so Teamsters Mobilize, it's an organization of militant fighting Teamsters across a number of different workplaces, but there's a lot of UPSers given how many Teamsters are UPS workers. And it was formed by actually members who were in TDU of part-time UPS workers. The vast majority of all the warehouse workers who constitute the majority of UPS workers are part-time. There's a guarantee of three and a half hours per shift. And uh, it's a certain job classification at UPS that has been really screwed over for decades. Much lower wages than drivers, very dangerous working conditions, and the union has no interest in actually fighting for part-timers. So at the 2022 TDU convention, a number of UPS part-timers said we'd like to make a caucus specifically for part-timers to fight for our demands for the 2023 UPS contract. And the leadership of TDU, which includes David Levine, but also people like Ken Path, who's one of the co-founders, also, along the lines of what Edward said, a number of leading TDU people are DSA people in DSA labor sphere. They said, no, that's too divisive. We're only gonna have certain caucuses or committees for basically like identity groups. So that's that the impetus for the creation of Teamsters Mobilize as an independent organization, because it was forced to be because TDU had no interest in organizing for part-timers. And we organized a vote-no campaign for the 2023 contract. That's about when I got involved. I was a part-time warehouse worker in New Jersey, and it continues today as a group of fighting teamsters that's organizing to transform the Teamsters Union, but also to fight for a worker-led country.

SPEAKER_02 14:38

Okay, cool. I attended Labor Notes four years ago. It was after Amazon had uh first success with Chris Smalls organizing the Staten Island warehouse, and he was there at Labor Notes and he was like a total celebrity. I mean, everyone was going gaga in awe. And you had this new wave of union organizing. Two years later, Sean Fain was there, and Sean O'Brien spoke, and they were being promoted as the greatest class struggle heroes coming off the UAW strike and the UPS non-strike, but it was still promoted by Labor Notes as some great fight back because he said the word strike. That was like all it took back then. From what I understand, the mood was pretty different. This year, I'd read an article in Jacobin, which is like a mouthpiece of the DSA on Labor Notes. And the article concluded with this year's conference did not project certainty. The dominant mood was more sober than in recent years. The challenges facing workers were constantly present in conversation, yet the conference's size is a reminder that workers are looking for places to not only talk about those challenges, but collectively strategize about how to overcome them. Sobriety and hope might be thought of as opposites. At this year's labor notes, they could be found alongside each other. Now, I just thought that was kind of funny because we usually talk about being sober or about what's happening in the class and not having false projections. And so I thought that was kind of funny because they usually don't talk like that. So maybe you guys can speak to your experiences and discussions with workers at this year's conference and what the mood was.

SPEAKER_04 16:15

Sure, I think there were definitely a lot of people coming out from different unions who were trying to figure out what to do in their workplace. Even some people who aren't organized and were trying to organize, they were coming here to talk about their experience and also to connect with others. So I do think there's a true to that part of that. And of course, as far as the sobriety, there was a lot of different workshops that specifically referred to growing authoritarianism, how to fight against authoritarianism, both in the United States with Trump, there's also some international panels about that. So I think that's basically what's behind this idea of sobriety is the rising attack of Trump, which of course is very true. I think that was an underlying part of it. It was interesting because on the one side, a lot of these people who are from the the base of the unions who are looking for something, and then you also have a lot of the leadership of different unions. Not mine. There was not very many uh Los Angeles representatives, to be honest. But there was a lot of, I'm in the amalgamated transit union. There was a lot of ATU presence there from different places, including a lot from Minneapolis. There's a lot of talk about Minneapolis. There is a lot of the leadership there. And that's something that also I read that Jacob and Peace you referred to. They mentioned the leadership buy-in to labor notes now and from different unions and the fact that they have brought people out. There are a lot of people who came out on tickets that were paid for by the leadership. I think there is that kind of aspect to it that this is not actually such a opposition anymore, like maybe it once was. It is now a constituent part of the labor movement, of the leadership of the labor movement in this country. I feel like a lot of the workshops were night and day to go from like one, for example, trying to organize the unorganized, and then go to another that was entirely led by leaders who clap simply for having been a president of some local, who would then talk about the need to get out the vote for the Democratic Party or to teach your children that they should not waste their vote, which is going, is the reason we have Trump and the reason for all these attacks. So you have those two sides of the very same event. And that very much makes this connection to those people who are looking for something different, is basically sending the message these are the people who have done it. These people are the so-called reform movement. You should go follow in their footsteps. And that gives them the the cred that they this left-leaning reformist kind of cred to this leadership that really is pushing the same status quo over the years, maybe from the Democratic Party angle rather than the Republicans, but the same kind of a thing.

SPEAKER_01 19:02

Yeah, I agree with your analysis. And the point Jacobin is making in this article, we shouldn't have naive optimism or hope. We can see that idea in slogans like when we fight, we win, basically, which we hear very often on the picket line or at protests, and it's just not true. We can fight and be defeated. But that's not a reason not to fight, but we should have an objective view of the situation, what the challenges are that we face, but also what kind of potential we have to win a given struggle. But even if we're defeated in a given struggle, how this can be part of building up organization and consciousness amongst the working class. Labor notes, it's not actually providing people a kind of sober and objective view of the situation because, like we talked about earlier, they call all kinds of things victories, right, which are absolute defeats. They called the JBS strike a huge victory. They called the UPS non-strike a historic victory. The stuff came out around 2023, including at the Labor Notes conference the following year. You don't even need to strike, you just need to give a strike threat, right? Which is a very dangerous idea. In terms of having real hope, that has to be based on understanding our struggle and what our interests as a class are. A fundamental issue with Labor Notes is that they are not at all talking about how the working class has an interest in overcoming of all exploitation and oppression, has an interest in revolution, cannot exist in harmony with the capitalist class. That viewpoint is not there. They're working very hard actually to squash that kind of consciousness.

SPEAKER_02 20:36

The opposite that the Democrats are. Yeah, exactly. So or I guess with Sean with uh Sean O'Brien, the Republicans too, but yeah, can work out for the working class. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

They have no real strategy, and you can't have a strategy for working class emancipation while you're funneling everyone into supporting the Democrats.

SPEAKER_02 20:54

I assume there wasn't any reflection this year on why some of these bureaucrats went right or why it was not like correct to support them. There was such cheerleaning for these guys in the last few years as having brought great victories. And one of the points it had in the article, I think it said that 200 Amazon workers came to this year's labor notes, but that they described just like how difficult it is to organize and how you would get a worker on board and then they would be gone the next day because there's such high turnover firings. You would think that would maybe lead to like some debate, discussion over like what is a correct strategy to organize the unorganized, and why the strategy of Sean O'Brien, Sean Fain, even Chris Smalls is not the correct strategy to win, actually, and why that is. So there was no discussion about that.

SPEAKER_04 21:51

You're right about the Amazon workers. There were a lot of them. There was one panel that I went to that did have an Amazon worker. She obviously was. Very genuine trying to organize her place, but she didn't really have answers to anything. I think she wasn't quite sure. It was just somebody had come to her with the idea of starting to organize. She thought that's a great idea. And then she's just in the dark after that. What you mentioned about the TDU, for example, there were banners at the seating area for eating where everybody was at, and they had a whole wall spread of the history of the TDU. That kind of connection is very, very real with the Labor Notes and the TDU. What they have to show for it at the end of the day is Sean O'Brien. This is not actually changing things. The whole kind of reform idea, reform on the basis of internal union democracy, which is what a lot of these reform movements and labor notes is trying to push. It's like obviously we need internal democracy in the unions, but the the lack of democracy is coming from something. It's not just bad actors that don't like to hear voices. There's a reason they don't want to hear voices. A lot of what happens is these movements, you want something democratic. And then for somebody who wants to get into a position who's on the outside and wants to have the presidency, for example. Like Sean Feyn was a good example of that. Like, is on the outside. You can say a lot of things when you're not in power. You can talk about transparency and militancy and all these things. That's easy to say when you're not in charge. And then they get put in power, and then the reform movement had put a lot of faith in these particular individuals, and now it's their people, and they're on the other side, and they're actually enforcing the whole mechanism. The main underlying point is these leaders are defending their position in power. They're defending their wages, their privileges, their closeness they have to power, the sense of prestige, all these different perks of office, but they're actually put there to defend the interests of the membership. This schism creates the need for the whole bureaucratic mechanism and for double speak and for clamping down on democracies. That's why that ends up duplicating itself if you don't get to the core issue here of having a leadership that isn't there for its prestige and power, but actually for the interests of the membership, which means taking on and harnessing what is going on from the membership. The push for democracy will come from any kind of leadership that's actually fighting to put power into the hands of workers. Because if you want to put power into the hands of workers, you obviously need to know what they think, and you obviously need to organize them and have them be a part of the solution. So that's kind of what flows from the class struggle strategy as opposed to simply the idea of a more democratic sounding of the same.

SPEAKER_02 24:47

I feel like anything that has democratic, like Democratic Socialist America or the Teamsters for Democratic Union, are like the least democratic organizations of all.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

It's just clear that the leadership of Labor Notes, I agree with what you've both said. There's a lot of people actually who go to Labor Notes because they are actually fighting or they want to learn how to fight. But the leadership of it has absolutely no interest in that. It's quite a conscious thing by the part of the capitalist class to want to create these dead ends. You know, they have to have some kind of organization and mechanism in response to when people are like, why is our union run by the mob? Or why are our leaders so corrupt and like stealing millions of dollars of dues money? Or why is it when I go to my union meeting and I try to bring up a resolution or an idea, I get shouted down by the leadership. So they have to create some kind of way to capture people's outrage and discontent and then funnel it into a dead end. And I think, like Elliot was talking about, often with the model of fighting for change within the unions that Labor Notes is really the lead organization for within the country, they say that the problem is lack of democracy. Maybe we need one member, one vote, or there's certain leaders who are bad. But it's not at all about how workers need to be conscious of our own interests and be in a position to actually become the masters of society, to run the country, to be in political power. That would require for us to critically think about what's going on. You know, what happened with Sean O'Brien and Sean Fain and Chris Smalls. Right. They want to stop critical thought, labor notes.

SPEAKER_02 26:22

Jacobin had this hit piece against Chris Smalls, not over the question of like strategy over how to organize Amazon. It was against him for telling the truth about AOC and the Democrats. That's after like cheerleading Smalls at Labor Notes. And now he's too much of a dagger against AOC and the Dems. So we have to do a whole hit piece to like destroy him. I had read a report on the conference on the left voice website, which was not sober. Their report called it the most political labor notes ever. Their article mentioned there was this book by Les Leopold called The Billionaires Have Two Parties. We need a party of our own that was made available for free to attendees, and that there were all these discussions about the Democrats and how much the Democratic Party brand is toxic in a lot of the a lot of the country. And my understanding is the book basically argues for like a labor populist answer. And then there was also this Jacobin article about it as well that describes how there was a survey done of workers in the rest belt asking them would they support independent political candidates committed to a platform that included guaranteed work for everyone who wants it, decent paying jobs, raising the minimum wage, focused solely on economic questions. And there was also a recent article in The Guardian by Baskar Sankara, who's the president of the nation magazine, but he also founded Jacobin. And he was recognizing that there was just elections in New York City where there are all these DSA-supported candidates, the red wave that won. And, you know, Baskar Sankara was recognizing that they can't win nationally and that in rural districts you need like labor populace, basically. And he was like pushing Dan Osborne, who led the Kellogg strike, who's all about not being quote, left or right and fighting for American workers. Um, but of course, he doesn't touch the racial divide, the divide between native and immigrant workers, the gender divide, all of these divisions that are very deep in the working class. And if you don't, if those divisions persist, the class can't collectively fight back in its interests. So I'm just curious, how did this uh play out at the conference? What did this actually look like? These discussions on the Democratic Party. I think Chantel, you went to the workshop.

SPEAKER_01 28:48

So I actually didn't, but I have comrades who did and shared the report from it. I don't know, Elliot, if you went to that one.

SPEAKER_04 28:54

Not that one. No.

SPEAKER_02 28:56

Okay. So okay. Well, maybe you could share like what people said about it first. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

Yeah, definitely. So I mean a few things stand out. First of all, in how they structured it, they I don't know if this was the case for any other panel or workshop, but they said at the start, we're not going to be accepting audience questions. Oh yeah. People can write down their questions on a note card and then we'll take them. And there was some discontent about that amongst the audience. People were like, wait, what? And then later one of our comrades raised it and why can we not even ask questions? Like if we're talking about the need for working class political independence and breaking from the Democrats, what are you so afraid of? And got booze from some of the attendees and derision from the who was whoever was leading the panel. One of the things that the one of the panelists said was, we need to be ready to endorse a Democratic Party, even if they don't want our endorsement. And I don't know like more about that line of logic. I think what we saw at the last Labor notes, as well as this one, is that the Democratic Party is honestly so reviled at this point by a lot of the working class. And so they know they can't just say rah-rah, Democratic Party, but they also are not gonna say break from the Democratic Party. Basically, their line, uh, people leading Labor notes and the people who they select as panelists is like, oh, there's some issues with the Democratic Party. Yeah, we should build a labor party. That's gonna take some time though. And it's definitely better to vote Democrat in the meantime.

SPEAKER_02 30:21

Yeah. Were they pushing any of these labor populist candidates or not really?

SPEAKER_01 30:25

There was like a working families party member who was on the panel, but further than that, I'm not really sure.

SPEAKER_02 30:33

Basically, they had a thing on like the need for a third party or the break with the Democrats, but the punchline is that was not what was being I guess. My other question is like given how much focus there is, you know, the Democrats are hated, and it seems like a lot of the focus is then on like economism, focusing on economic issues, not talking about divisions in the class, war. Why is that not an answer? Elliot, maybe you can speak to this. I know you've you've been involved in a number of struggles, in particular around immigrant rights and against ICE.

SPEAKER_04 31:08

Yeah, sure. There were workshops, uh, quite a few workshops under the title of divisions or crossing divisions within your union or across language lines, or there were also things about ICE and certainly a lot of references to Minneapolis. One, for example, that I went to, which was about organizing in a multi-ethnic workplace. There was a speaker who helped lead a strike in Minneapolis University system. He was talking about how he speaks five languages, and this is how they cross the divide. When I was asking him, well, okay, so how are you addressing the white workers and winning them over to the Costa Defend, which what I understand, or at least the way he was explaining, was a pretty immigrant and minority heavy workforce there. I don't think these are like the professors or anything. This is like a staff. And um basically there was no answer there. It was it was just further on I make these WhatsApp groups and I talk in five languages. There is some some desire for that, but there really wasn't any answer through the course of the labor notes that I saw. As far as the situation for ICE in Minneapolis, there was clearly a lot of talk about that, but there was a lot of playing it up of what happened in Minneapolis as if it was the grand answer that we need to replicate everywhere. I did go to Minneapolis in in January for the supposed general strike. It was a huge rally and there was a lot of people out there. The schools were closed, though not because of job action. It was closed because of the cold, and also because one half of Minneapolis St. Paul, right? One half of them were previously gonna be closed anyway, and the other half closed because it was the coldest day in years or something. That definitely added weight to the demonstration. But I'm a transit worker. I came looking for fellow ATUers, which I did find the ATU contingent, but we were a very small contingent, at most a dozen of us, I think less than that. You could get there by public transit.

SPEAKER_02 33:14

Yeah, transit did not shut down that day.

SPEAKER_04 33:16

Right, exactly. And and not only that, the president of the local was on social media, on Labor on the Line and all these things, hinting very strongly. Oh, wouldn't it be great if we could shut the whole city down? Nothing would run. But then he's actually telling his own membership, you know, cannot violate the no-strike clause. That was explicit to his own membership. You cannot violate the no-strike clause. So it was left up only to individuals to take sick days. There was people who took sick days, but I wouldn't say it was the masses, certainly not in the ATU. That individual kind of action is actually foisting onto an individual member the whole risk of the action instead of the whole point of having a union, right? To have that kind of collective answer and that collective action. It put a lot on individual businesses to shut down. There was, there was some of that, actually shutting down the core of the city that did not happen. I was in Los Angeles for May Day. That's supposed to be a repeat of that. And it's like, what is it? First time tragedy, second time farce. It was very much a farce. The repeated attempts at this are only getting more and more farcical. So, you know, that was one kind of response as far as what to do.

SPEAKER_02 34:29

Minneapolis was played up a lot at the Labor Notes conference as like the model or very much so.

SPEAKER_04 34:35

There was quite a few talks about Minneapolis. There was actually quite a lot of attendance I noticed from people from Minneapolis, and it was very much played up. This is supposed to be the example.

SPEAKER_01 34:46

There's clearly a conscious effort on the part of the the ruling class, and then these Democratic Party arms like Mayday Strong and 5051 and so on, especially Mayday Strong, calling January 23rd in Minneapolis like a big general strike. And like Elliot said, and that's supposed to set the example of like, whoa, okay, that's big mass political action of the class, like a big strike, which didn't threaten actually the capitalists. This is the model of quote unquote struggle that the ruling class wants people to get drawn into because people are obviously very outraged with this stuff with ice. We need to do something, have some correct understanding that the working class has a unique role in the society and uh can actually paralyze the economy for some time. They put forward this thing, oh, just some people call out and don't shop, then that's a big general strike. I mean, we've seen how the ruling class has responded historically in the US to actual general strikes, you know, like they have all the armed state forces come in and crush it.

SPEAKER_02 35:41

I think somebody made this point. Maybe you did, Elliot, maybe Matt too, about how it it's generally been difficult in people's workforces to get workers to come out and defend immigrants and fight ICE. But when it's a personal case inside the union or it affects workers that they know, then they're more willing to do that. With Minneapolis, the government had just gone so hard in Minneapolis and really terrorized everybody. And a lot of the workers in the unions and the ATU and Ignite here, a lot of them were uh immigrants that had been detained by ICE. So there my understanding is there was a lot of sentiment amongst working people in Minneapolis to actually do something. And I feel like that was really uh squandered and uh with this kind of yes, it's a general strike, doesn't actually do anything to help advance the kind of struggle that is actually necessary.

SPEAKER_04 36:40

Yeah, I mean, a hundred percent. The ATU just prior to that, there was an ATU member who was disappeared by ICE for over a month. Nobody knew where he went. He was just taken and then summarily brought back with no explanation. Of course, Renee Good was shot and killed, right? On recording on social media, there was a lot of real direct anger, and people very much experienced this and is played up a lot about the kind of community response. And right now, people are actually facing imprisonment for roles they have played to try and just record um what was going on, and that was a very true thing. And there was a real community response in general to the ice presence. That was very real, and the anger was very real. In Los Angeles, we had our own surge just the summer before. There was also a lot of community response and everything. I do think, though, that it came to a certain point where people are like, we need something more to stop this. They don't care. Know your rights, they don't care about that. Recording videos, they don't care about that. They shoot people on screen, on TV. This is not stopping them. So what can we do? Simply like mentioning the idea of getting the working class involved, what is actually like hugely taken in and accepted, and people are very, at least in these community groups, very hungry for that kind of response. And here was a moment where it wasn't just, I would say in Los Angeles, though, the difference between what was going on in the community and the left and what was going on in the working class was starkly different. In this case, in Minneapolis, because it had affected workers directly, they did have a lot of interest in this. ATUers did have a lot of interest in this. And so then the role that the leadership is playing to make it seem like they're doing something, but they're doing it in such a way as to not affect the actual profits of the capitalists in Minneapolis, or to actually not have a real impact. Hey guys, you still have to go to work no matter what. That is such a dangerous position. And so, like, then the the labor notes crowd steps in defending this leadership by saying this was still a general strike, or in some cases it's not a general strike, it's a mass strike, or something like that. Like, yeah, yeah, like that's you kind of here right now because there was a lot of blowback to the idea of general strike, but still trying to play it up as if what the leadership did was good. No, there was so much anger at the base, and that was a pivotal moment that could have actually done something. But they they played a really pernicious role in that the leadership.

SPEAKER_02 39:20

Yeah, and then um, didn't some of the people who were active in Minneapolis, didn't they get arrested like right after Labor Notes who had participated?

SPEAKER_04 39:30

Exactly, yeah. A couple of people who actually participated in Labor Notes, but a total of 15, yeah, are facing who knows what. And like what happened to the Perryland defendants in Texas, they just got 30 to 100 years apiece for protesting. Like, in one case, just for moving a box of zines, what they could face in Minneapolis too is this is very dangerous. This is a real attack.

SPEAKER_02 39:52

Yeah, the government seems pretty emboldened to go after working class and left activists that have been fighting against these ice attacks.

SPEAKER_04 40:00

So I guess your question about uh when it affects people straight, obviously Minneapolis is uh the biggest example because of everything that was happening during Operation Metro search, but there are smaller cases too. And in Los Angeles, we tried something in in transit directly related to that time when there was the surge going on in Los Angeles, where uh Metro was trying to fire two bus operators who had gone to the press saying they will not open the doors to ICE. That never even happened. ICE hadn't gone on to their buses, but simply having said that to the press got them fired. That kind of thing where now it's touching workers, like you could get fired simply for speaking out. And these are bus operators that perhaps they know themselves, that is certainly a moment to show to workers that this attack is also part of the point. It's about people they know, it's also about the fact that it spills across the edge. So if you are not the targeted group, being an immigrant or whatever, it doesn't mean you're safe when they go out and the ice does these kinds of things, rounding people up. This really is a part of a broad frontal attack on the working class. Whatever sector of the working class you happen to be from, you're not safe in this. It's still a broad front. Because like a lot of the workers right now, people feel like they just gotta keep their head down, they just gotta clock in the day, get home. And if it's not affecting who they think they are directly, they're just this too shall pass kind of attitude. No, this is really about attacking the working class as a whole. That's the whole point. Finding those moments that do show it broader and then can hopefully mobilize it. We did have a protest against this, and they did get their jobs back, but it was not a huge protest. This is a small protest. This is not Minneapolis or anything like that. The very fact that there was something, we're not just taking it lying down. Of course, the the leadership was all against that, right? The leadership of the unions was they didn't organize the protest. Exactly, not at all. They did whatever they could to try and make it more and more difficult for us to do that or to have any statement. There was originally a statement by my president in defense of these guys. We weren't allowed to talk about it, we weren't allowed to say it or even read it out. These different kind of little maneuvers they're doing to actually put gum in the works of uh defense of a union member shows where their loyalty lies as well and what they're actually about.

SPEAKER_01 42:33

Yeah, I think the stuff about ICE this year, and I would say also the war uh in Iran have provided openings to actually talk about political questions in this country and for, I think especially people who are socialists, communists, Marxists, who have an interest in revolutionary politics to talk about actually the need for the working class to be in political power, to be the masters of society. But then we saw how there was a very coordinated effort amongst the the ruling class to make sure that that didn't happen. I wanted to bring up this point briefly on this question of economism because I'm very glad you brought it up because it is a such a serious issue uh within the working class movement. And I think there's certainly the most kind of blatant forms of economism where people say, let's not even talk about political issues, period. But I think as Lenin wrote about and what is to be done and his other writing, economism, the most dangerous uh strands within it, economism is a deviation within Marxism. Like amongst people who are at least self professed Marxists who say, Oh, we're all for working class political power. Uh, there's certainly many in DSA leadership who I think would say this, although some also don't. Yeah. But they'll say that nominally, uh, but then say, we should figure out how to build political power and how we can actually fight ICE and how do we deal with the most powerful imperialist ruling class in the world and this huge state bureaucracy and military and national guard and ice and all this are like, we should talk about that, but let's focus on the top floor stuff. Or maybe just talk about the these political issues that we're facing with no strategy for actually how we fight this stuff. It's a huge problem. And especially as Elliot was bringing up, we're seeing what I think is a definite trend towards fascism. I think a certain section of the ruling class is seriously contemplating and testing out having a more fascist form of rule that applies to you know the whole population that we saw with ICE that we could see with ramping up of surveillance and censorship and so on. Labor notes had a few panels of like authoritarianism, it's kind of bad. We see it, but let's support the Democratic Party who feels like yeah and you know like under Biden how much more like censorship on social media was there and yeah so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:58

Yeah really for a lot of workers that go through these experiences of certain strikes and things where they really get sold out by these bureaucrats that their whole strategy is is trying to have some deal like co-partnership whatever and and getting Democrats involved that really demoralizes workers. Chantel mentioned the JBS strike in Greeley Colorado which was a meatpacking strike and I think it was almost 4,000 meatpacking workers went on strike. It lasted about three weeks every week past the first week was because the workers didn't want to go back with nothing which is what the bureaucrats were trying to lead to I think the president of that of that union as UFCW Local7 Kim Cordova I think she was one of the featured speakers at Labor Notes that was very clear example of the connection between immigrant defense and defending immigrant workers and and how that intersects the cause of all of labor um but it was just totally sold out horribly betrayed that strike but I understand that Labor Notes promoted it as some great victory.

SPEAKER_05 46:05

I think their exact phrasing was that they had struck at the heart of the modern jungle or highfalutin crap like that. Right. If the union tells you you are going to go out on strike and you're going to get the safety equipment you need in a plant where you don't have you don't have enough I mean JBS is meat packing, right? Cutting up the meat, getting it ready to go, right? This is a plant where there aren't enough there aren't enough knives to go around, where you don't have enough time to take a break to get out of your safety equipment where there's not enough safety equipment where workers are threatened with deportation if they complain because this is a workforce which is recruited from all over the world by JBS where 57 different languages are spoken the plant and the union leaders say you know what we're going to fight for safety and we're going to get you what you need and then when you go on strike the union leaders these progressives like Kim Cordova the great leader of the strike does everything she can to sell you out. The workers were the only reason the strike lasted for three weeks she had already announced at the beginning she was telling JBS oh this is only going to be a two week strike but then there was so much pushback from the workers they had to extend the strike a week and then after that happened she made a deal behind closed doors they went and said okay we've come to a TA this is what it's going to be a lot of workers couldn't even read it. You pile all that up and then they didn't even get the safety stuff they were asking for. You pile all that up together and I think it's pretty clear like why a lot of workers look at that and say well what's the point in having a union if everything's exactly the same way it was before we went out on strike. Nothing has really fundamentally changed. The strike had a lot of real potential power right it was a living example of these immigrant workers they're people with everything to lose you know and they stood up and fought and then their union leaders just knifed them in the middle of the strikes. It's a pretty good illustration of this strategy of making deals with the bosses and looking for a partnership with the companies getting letters from Bernie Sanders against their congressmen about safety like good luck. It really does breed a lot a lot of cynicism a lot of demoralization and it makes workers a lot less willing to to actually go out and fight when the result oftentimes is you're in the same position you were before you went out on strike.

SPEAKER_02 48:29

The class collaborationist pro-democratic party labor leadership when this is how they lead strikes it's it's like okay you're gonna talk about all these attacks and authoritarianism it weakens the working class it doesn't strengthen it. It also makes a lot of workers really hate their leadership hate which they also associate not incorrectly with the Democrats and these other forces that are not doing anything to help the situation for immigrants and for workers. I heard that at Labor Notes the DSA announced that they had over a hundred thousand members nationally but out of that only 15,000 union members which makes DSA's union density pretty low probably similar to union density in the country we've been talking about it but there's this big gulf between the working class and the left and there's millions small little groups that all say they're for a workers party and then you also have people in the DSA that say they're for a workers party even though that's not what they do. But you need workers to build a workers party that's kind of a basic thing. Workers really hate liberalism and particular DSA liberalism. So for us in the JBA breaking the DSA from the Democrats is totally connected to building an independent socialist workers movement in this country.

SPEAKER_04 49:46

I don't know if you guys wanted to speak a little more on that this contradiction between I mean union bureaucrats and staffers are DSA but the actual working class is pretty marginal to DSA and the left more broadly yeah yeah good sure there is some resolutions for the DSA Los Angeles chapter meeting coming up that actually mention this disparity and they talk about the fact that in Los Angeles it says high membership density in K through 12 higher education entertainment in the public sector but low membership of course there's entertainment in LA yeah yeah exactly they're they're big in Hollywood and they have a lot of teachers they have a lot of grad students UAW 4811 but they don't have much in areas that may serve as critical economic choke points during the Olympics such as hospitality logistics and transit. I can tell you from transit is very true. They're definitely not not very high in transit and they've gone to some transit meetups that DSA has done. I hope they continue that was more than a year ago the last one but the actual transit members that were there are very small and there was a couple of people in nonprofits that were reaching out to the homeless population that uses the system. So not to knock people who do that but this is clearly not the height of the industrialized working class. So that kind of divide is very real and in fact one of our members before he was a member of COF2 of the Committee for On Fire Transit Union went to one of these transit meetups to try and meet the DSA and he decided that was it. The whole thing kind of turned him off unfortunately I would say turned him off to the the DSA it just seemed like it was a you know a bunch of graphic designer types I'm like do they still have jobs they're still well right I mean of course that would be going down a whole nother tangent but there was like a huge interest I think in like the AI kind of stuff at at labor notes precisely because DSA has a lot of people who are facing job precarious precarious very much precarious situation due to that. But in these motions they're talking about how to get more people into these these places and and for sure it's very good to have DSA job fairs, trying to get people in I would love to get some more anybody join transit, join whatever kind of working class job we we need leftists in there. But there's also the underlying question of why is it not so appealing to workers? Why is the DSA politics not particularly appealing to the workers that are already there. I do think the kind of nature of the the individuals that that make up DSA and the politics of DSA is not a coincidence that those two things kind of go together. There's a big push of course in Los Angeles for people like uh Nithya Rahman or something who who was in fact censored like not too long versus I think right exactly but continues to be a member of the DSA who's running for she's running for LA mayor against Karen Bass who herself is endorsed by those uh DSA council members that who are in office right now city council yeah what exactly about this is uh appealing what has continued in Los Angeles is um really screwed over the working class and and you know bassers in particular is widely hated by workers especially after the response to the LA fires last year is pretty detested by a lot of the city. The continuing tie to these politicians is actually really undermining not just the DSA brand but any idea of the the left and socialism to keep this connection because for workers if they know of the DSA if they know of the left at all it's the DSA and if they know of the DSA they just think of them as being part and parcel of the Democrats right LA has been run by the Democratic Party for decades in conditions of everything homelessness, housing, education every question has just gone really to shit for working people.

SPEAKER_02 53:59

That's what the Democrats do.

SPEAKER_01 54:01

It's a very exciting thing I think to see how many people and young people are interested in organizing amongst the working class and organizing the unorganized. But also I think there does seem to be an increasing trend of people going into existing unions. It seems particularly within DSM but then as we're talking about the whole political approach uh given by the leadership is to lead things into a dead end and there's not really clarity on the necessity for more people to go into the industrial proletariat like Elliot was talking about. I mean uh for Marxists uh there's a lot of writing and that Lenin wrote about how the industrial proletariat is going to be like the leading vanguard section of the working class and like that section of the working class that can also reach the other oppressed and exploited sections of the society. And so I likewise would encourage anyone who's listening who's kind of interested in what we're talking about to get involved in you know in the union movement and I think in in particular in amongst the industrial proletariat. And I wanted to talk about what DSA nationals approach was to the UPS contract. Because I think in in 2023 a lot of people who were in Teamsters Mobilize were basically like okay yeah DSA maybe they don't know so much about DSA but they say they're a socialist group so for those in TM who are sympathetic to socialism it's like okay cool. If they want to support us that's great. DSA would go out to support practice pickets for the contract. But then when the tentative agreement came out the statement that DSA leadership put out was basically this is great but also essentially it's whatever the workers decide is going to be what's right for the workers. Even if it's a concessionary contract and gets voted on, we're gonna still call that a victory. And I know actually there was a lot of hostility towards the DSA members who did work at UPS who were part of the vote no campaign that Teamsters Mobilize helped to lead who were critical of the contract the DSA leadership just I think they actually kicked out one of the people from the chat. So I mean the stance that DSA took on on the UPS contract made a lot of people activists in the Teamsters just be like, okay, well then fuck that. I mean we're fighting for our jobs and our lives and you're saying this is a historic contract and you're backing Sean O'Brien as we still do to this day.

SPEAKER_02 56:18

Which is crazy. He's gone so right I think that we talked about at the beginning of the episode about this panel that took place Sunday of Labor Notes weekend on so maybe you guys can talk a little about what that panel accomplished. It was a number of oppositionists in the unions and militants in different unions. I assume it was pretty well attended and I watched it on Zoom, but I I feel like a number of younger maybe not so young too in the audience spoke about how much they appreciated the panel and how hungry they were for this kind of critique. I think it's true what Chantal was saying that there are younger socialists leftists going into the unions that really do want answers for a what kind of strategy can actually organize the class and can advance working people in this country.

SPEAKER_04 57:08

The estimates I would give maybe I'm not the best at crowd judgment but I think it was like 80 people I would say in the audience at that time and what we heard is at least 50 not counting two watch parties that were watching it on Zoom live. Obviously you can still go to YouTube and and watch it now. Yeah we're gonna we'll put it in the show notes the link to the up to the panel yeah I was very impressed with that turnout obviously labor notes uh was huge probably multiple thousands at labor notes four thousand four thousand so there you go we're not talking anything on that magnitude but nonetheless it was I think quite a good showing people were definitely very hungry if you listen to the the questions from the audience people were very uh happy that this was there a lot of people commented that it was very refreshing in in counterposition to labor notes itself to to have this kind of critique and to have some sort of idea of exactly what we should be doing within the unions of trying to do that I think is very encouraging. And obviously I think the majority of the people there are are leftists or round groups or maybe not, but nonetheless consider themselves leftists of some sort and that really is what we need. We need that within the unions to be doing the work there to try and fight for some sort of real opposition and real change within the leadership and to try and replace the leadership that is currently maintaining the status quo and overseeing the slow death of the union movement in this country everybody can look at the percentages of unionization in this country over the years to actually instead fight for something new, fight for a new leadership and and how to do that. There was six of us on the panel myself was there, Chantel was there for Team Sur mobilize there was machinists in the the IAM the Machinist Reform Action Caucus there was a transit worker from New York in the Transit Workers for Fighting Union there was the Committee to Organize Unorganize in the IBW and there's the Class Struggle Action Network there as well which is over a few different industries and myself for COF2. We all were able to speak both to our criticism of labor notes which I think we've been able to do on this podcast already and also share some of our experience on how to fight for something new in each of our cases and what these committees that we've formed that are trying to fight for a new leadership within the unions, what what they're doing and how they're going about it in the hope that we'll also inspire others in in their respective unions and industries to start forming these kinds of nuclei that we need to make a change.

SPEAKER_01 59:48

Yeah it was an incredibly exciting event. I haven't been to anything quite like it I've been involved in in Teamsters Mobilize for a number of years and then more recently UAWD and I've certainly been on calls with different people talking about the issues in the union movement and what we need to do to really fundamentally transform it. But then to be in a room with that many people as well as hear all the questions from people online, it was really exciting. We've talked throughout today that there's a real hunger and interest for how do we actually break the working class movement out of its current bind? How do we actually fight ICE? How do we fight the attacks by the bosses by the government? There's this new bill that just passed in the House and is going to the Senate the Faster Labor Contracts Act, which is sponsored by like Cory Booker and Josh Hawley. And it basically will have any if it passes any workers who are forming a new union if they don't come to an agreement with their boss within I think three months federal arbitration board will come in to do binding arbitration and force a contract that the workers have to take for two years that the workers have no you know right to vote on. It's a huge attack. There's a lot of things like this we are facing a a worse and worse situation for the working class and the people are broadly in the US and people are like what do we do? How do we fight it? And Labor Notes is like talk to your coworkers start a group chat and vote for the Democrats. Yeah so I think like have hope yeah exactly have hope and like you're telling people the most hopeless stuff. Well I think it was a very exciting event and I think it spoke to the the successes that we've had in these various groups and the need for more groups like them to have militant organizations within the unions. I think there's been a general understanding for some time in the US that there's a need for groups within the unions fighting for certain reforms. And we could see a lot of these historically but it's becoming clearer and clearer the dead end of just fighting for certain reforms and especially of being tied to the Democratic party.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:46

We're not going to be able to change the situation for the working class if we remain that way. One of the unifying ideas of all of the groups that were involved was that we need a break from the Democratic party and we need the fight for real political independence as a class. And that's something that people were very excited about. What was quite exciting about the event was all the questions that were about okay how do we actually work within the unions and change the union movement. But also a lot of people were coming from different socialist and communist groups or just individuals asking more broadly for strategy. Like what do we do? How do we actually make revolution in this country? There's very interesting questions like how do we actually make a communist party do we kind of like fuse all the existing groups do we need something else? Like are we in a revolutionary situation? These are great, great questions. One of the main comments from a few people was it's so refreshing to see that there's actual debate like that we're actually discussing these things and we have differences. All of us who are on the the the panel we have we have certainly have some unity but also some some different ideas and disagreements but we're serious about talking them out like actually figuring out a way forward together despite what disagreements we have and that's so lacking on the left I think I think that was also a success coming out of the event. Okay, we're coming from different groups or different tendencies we have different ideas but we see the need to unite on some basic principles including breaking from the Democrats to advance the working class movement.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:08

I think um Chantel at the part of the panel you talked about the AI bubble and how there were IBW electricians that were like the AI stuff is great because they hadn't had jobs for a long time and then they're building these data centers and they have all these jobs. Of course on the other side of it there's real problems with the data centers too and you know the water and whatever but I think you mentioned it before too we're facing some very difficult times ahead seems very clear that the economy at some point will crash which is going to hit working people and the oppressed very hard there's really gonna be a real need to defend ourselves against these attacks in in places like New York and where a lot of us are at it's gonna be the Democrats it's gonna be Mamdanis it's gonna be these people that are going to be enforcing the austerity and the attacks coming I think for working people we have to fight. We have to defend ourselves and we have to fight we have to try to minimize the damage as much as possible so that the working class is is standing to be able to go on the offensive when the situation is right for that. So I don't know if you guys have any thoughts on that, but I think there's been a relative long period of kind of status quo stability, but it really seems like all indicators are that's changing. So what does that mean for the working class?

SPEAKER_04 1:04:32

I say earlier that there's a slow death of the union movement, but the fact is there still are unions, right? There still have been strikes strikes have happened even if we have our criticism of the results the fact is that it's not like the working class is completely dead. That is something that we definitely have to protect and defend because it it could be in a lot worse situation. It could easily be even more on our backs and have that much more of a hole to crawl out of after this right now it's clear that the wind is in the sails of of the governments and the sails of the right wing. The attacks are gonna keep as far as the the connection for example like with the war in Iran I'm a transit worker so that's a government worker obviously all this money they're spending bombing the crap out of Iran and everything they've been doing is going to come from somewhere and it's not going to come from the rich, right? They are going to come and start cutting the budget. They're gonna start cutting back and they're gonna try to make the the working class pay for all these things and we have we can't just be complacent. I think the the current leadership is just carrying on like everything's gonna be the same and we're gonna get our 4% to 5% raise that we have in our contract. And like this is gonna satisfy us so don't worry guys this is a historic contract. It was so great and wonderful. And no it's gonna come so we better build up our defenses now while we can while we're still in this position right Now, well, we haven't been completely decimated. Let's like build up our defenses. Let's deal with the situation with the divisions that are wrought along race and gender and citizenship status and all the different ways that they try to keep us divided because they're going to use every crack they got against us to to really come after us. And we we want to be able to see ourselves to the other end of whatever comes.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:25

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think uh the Jacobin article that you quoted earlier, I can't remember the exact quote, but it was something like it's a very somber tone. And of course, we need to be aware of the challenges that we face, but it also means with the war in Iran, the fact that the majority of the working class does not support it, which I think is maybe the first time in like US history that at the start of a war there's such low approval for it. People are constantly talking about how high the price of gas is due to the war. And with the situation with the ice crackdowns, the release of a lot of the Epstein files and the mass outrage over that, there's actually a lot of openings for struggle. We have even the example of the JBS strike is a good one because here's a group of workers who are in a pretty precarious situation, but they're also forced to fight. Like they see that they have no other option. And I think we will see that more and more. And so it actually provides a lot of opportunities to advance like the day-to-day struggle and then especially the consciousness of the working class. And I think people on the left, people who are socialists, who are communists, have an important role to play in leading those struggles and throughout the course of the struggles, clarifying what's the best way forward, how do we actually understand the different forces at play? How do we not get co-opted by the Democrats or their related NGOs and institutions? So I actually have a lot of hope for I think for the future and what possibilities there are for revolutionary organizing. What's very important for us to study the lessons from history also in the history of the US working class movement, people have faced a lot of difficulties and what was going on that in the midst of the Great Depression, the Communist Party was actually able to lead very significant struggles. And I think there's a lot for us to learn. And then I think as we've been talking about throughout today, like for people in DSA or or others who are listening to this who are who see the need for the working class to lead some of these mass struggles, it is really important, like you said, that we're actually able to wage these defensive struggles within the unions against shitty contracts, against wage cuts and speed ups and layoffs. If workers are not organized to wage those fights, we're not going to be able to wage a real fight against ICE to abolish ice. So that's why it's so important that we take these day-to-day struggles very seriously, that people on the left get involved and actually investigate the situation, like what's going on in the given workplace. And even if you're not there and you're doing strike support or something, actually talk to people and don't just take whatever the DSA leadership is saying is the right line to take.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:52

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:53

Yeah, I think it's very clear that the only hope there is organizing the class for itself in its interests against the capitalists. And there's no hope in the Democratic Party, in bureaucrats that tell workers to put their faith in the Democratic Party. There's definitely no hope there that it's just led to one defeat after another. And so I think what was so important about the work you guys are doing and the panel is to really like provide an alternative for workers, for socialist youth who don't want to just eat it. They don't want to just accept that this is what's coming down. So then how do you fight? What kind of a strategy is necessary to defend ourselves in the face of what's coming, what's happening now and what's coming down in the future.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:40

Before we go, do you guys want to tell everyone how they can find you guys, say a little bit about anything you have coming up, or how people can get involved with KOFDU or Teamsters Mobilize or MCU?

SPEAKER_04 1:09:54

Yeah, sure. So the Committee for One Fighting Transit Union at Los Angeles Metro, trying to unite the different uh unions here in Los Angeles, ATU that I'm part of, TCU, smart for the operators, Teamsters as well. We have a website, uh, for one union.org. We're on all sorts of social media with the the handle for one union. So you can definitely check us out there. We're trying to push a little on the issue right now about the attack that started with Trump and was completely pushed through by Newsom, the governor of California as well, to take away a commercial driver's license to people who may have been driving even for years with that, but who don't have a green card. They may have legal status, but not to the level of a green card. That affects 200,000 people across the country, and it affects uh hundreds of operators at Los Angeles Metro who have been forced to take lower paid positions in different in a different union. That's the split union situation here, and they have to restart. So that's something that we uh we are kind of pushing the issue on right at the moment. And there's an article on our website that you can check out to read about it, and please uh stay posted there for any new events that we may do.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:13

Yeah, we'll put that in the show notes as well. I'm a member of Mao's Communist Union. And if people are interested in learning more about MCU, you can go to our website, Mao's CommunistUn.com, and Mao's Communist Union on Instagram. We also have a Telegram news channel. The two places I'd recommend are Instagram. We post pretty regular reels giving our analysis on current events and and also some things about revolutionary history and theory. We also put on presentation events on, again, current events or or history, and we post those to our YouTube. So I'd recommend people check that out. We just had one last week on United States of Surveillance, talking about the ramping up of surveillance that we're seeing and and how people and the working class in particular can fight back. And we will also be having an online study of Marxism open to people that we'll be posting about in a few months. So if you follow us on Instagram, you can learn more about that there. If people are interested in reaching out to MCU about how to organize as you know, a communist or socialist leftist in the unions, please do. That would be great. To get involved in Teamsters Mobilize, website is Teamstersmobilize.com, Instagram is Teamsters underscore mobilize. Uh right now, T is planning on putting out a bunch of stuff about basically how do we actually fight within our unions against the boss, both on the level of we need to file grievances and use the mechanisms that exist, but also see the shortcomings and limitations of them. And also how do we fight for reform within our locals and on the international level? How do we deal with stewards who are working hand in hand with the boss? Things like that. I am also a member of UAWD, so people can find UAWD just by looking it up. You might find the old website that's like, oh, this has been dissolved, but that's a lie. It was efforts by the basically Labor Notes TDU wing of people who were in UAWD, tried to dissolve the organization because they didn't want to actually continue any kind of a fight or to criticize Sean Fain. But UAWD continues on, is continuing to fight within the unions. Great. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:14

Cool. All right. So that concludes this episode of Give Me a Break. You can follow all of the work of the Just Break Already caucus in the DSA by checking out our Linktree, which is linktree.com slash DSA underscore just break already. We are on X at Clean Breaknow and on Instagram at DSA underscore just break already. Uh we look forward to reading any comments you have about the episode. You can comment on the links we post to the episode. You can DM us. We're also very interested in having debates with people in other caucuses in DSA. You can also send us your hate mail, comments, criticisms, whatever. Just send it along and we will be in touch. We do have a very special episode coming up, which I'll just kind of tease here on the so called red wave elections in New York City that we'll be recording in between our regularly scheduled episodes. So be on the lookout for that too.