How Organizing for Change Is Very Different Than Winning Elections

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/labor/how-organizing-change-very-different-winning-elections



***SNIP

McAlevey sat down with AlterNet to talk about organizing in so-called “right-to-work” states, the too-close relationship between unions and Democrats who leave them high and dry, the brutality of fighting the boss, and why the worst thing to happen to labor in the U.S. might just have been purging the Communists from the movement.

Sarah Jaffe: You start the book out with the aftermath of the 2000 election in Florida, and of course we just finished a presidential election where organized labor went all-out to elect President Obama. Having come through the 2000 battle, I'd love to hear your thoughts on labor and elections.

Jane McAlevey: The point I'm really trying to raise is that the Democratic Party has way too much control over what the AFL-CIO and the other unions are doing. Instead of labor telling the Democratic Party what they're going to do, the Democratic Party scripts out for labor what they're going to do. Which isn't really working for unions very much at all.

In Florida it was a slightly different situation, but it's reflective of the same problem we have right now. Many of us could see that it was going completely wrong, that we needed to be in the street, doing street theater. We had a million ideas a day about what we needed to do to turn the heat up, that this was going to be a political fight, not a legal fight. But there was just no possibility. Just none. And I was just so naïve back then. Super naïve that we were actually going to break and have a different idea.

[davidpdx]

1. One thing is for sure

Apart from the passing ACA, we lost our organizing structure after the 2008 election. We need to be recruiting candidates AND pushing for issues.