Author: Bryan

Still fighting to cleanse the world of ancient evils, ancient ills. Union for life, Southern until I'm dead.
Organizing and Strategy by Bryan

Defragmenting The Movement: A Model For Building Working Class Solidarity

(This is a joint post between Cato and Douglas.)

The words on the flag of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers are a perfect summation of the labor movement at its best: “JUSTICE ON THE JOB, SERVICE TO THE COMMUNITY.”

It is that sense of solidarity that drives aggrieved workers to reach out to union organizers in the first place. They know that they are not just signing up to join a local or negotiate a contract, but to be a part of a movement that has been the last line of defense for many a worker since those Mill Girls first walked off the line in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1845. It is a movement that has come out of the shadows of its craft union past to embrace an industrial unionism that places its priorities in growing the ranks of the organized.

Well….not exactly.

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Organizing and Strategy by Bryan

On Right-Wing Political Violence

Yesterday, I wrote the following:

[T]he main worry I have is that the gap between disorganized political violence and organized political violence is minuscule, and is already being jumped over.

Today brings word that five people protesting police violence in Minneapolis were shot by three white supremacists in front of a police station. Some reports have the cops refusing to render aid to the wounded and macing the protestors, which is entirely believable. Thankfully, the specific Nazi scum that opened fire on the crowd are poor shots and those targeted were just wounded and not killed. However, this is not an anomaly but is instead a reflection of an ongoing march of right-wing political violence.

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Politics by Bryan

It Can Happen Here, Unless…

“When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled ‘made in Germany’; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, ‘Americanism.’”

Halford E. Luccock, Keeping Life Out of Confusion (1938)

The emergence of Donald Trump, Republican frontrunner, is not a joke.

His rise isn’t, say, indicted former Governor of Texas Rick Perry developing sudden amnesia during a GOP debate in 2012. It isn’t former awful pizza company CEO Herman Cain’s creepy grin. As much as Trump is a blustering buffoon like Perry or a caricature of the greedy businessman stereotype like Cain, there’s nothing funny about his emergence at the head of the Republican pack.

It’s not funny because the folks coalescing around Trump as supporters and allies are already hurting people. A Trump supporter in Mobile, AL proposed permits to murder undocumented immigrants at the southern border. Trump supporters in Boston beat and urinated upon a homeless Hispanic man, and the most recent incident of ad hoc political violence against a protester at one of Trump’s rallies is the third by my count. The implications of this all are not good, and the main worry I have is that the gap between disorganized political violence and organized political violence is minuscule, and is already being jumped over.

Just like discussions of killing baby Hitler as a hypothetical way to head off atrocities like the Holocaust ignores the fact that the NSDAP was a political movement with a base of support that was actively able to contest state power, focusing too much on Donald Trump the person conceals the conditions that are allowing a malignant political movement to form around him. When you get right down to it, the only way to stop ‘Trumpism’ (if you can call it that) is by understanding the groups of people who are feeding his rise.

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Labor by Bryan

An Open Letter On ‘Right To Work’ To All Union Members And Allies

To every union member and allied working person in the United States:

I hope this missive finds you well. As those of you who follow the news know, Wisconsin has become the 25th state to allow those in workplaces with unions that fall under the Wagner Act’s jurisdiction to not pay dues while still receiving the hard-fought benefits that come from a union contract. This is a terrible state of affairs, not the least of which because historical union bastion states of Indiana and Michigan preceded it in implementing similar laws. While I am confident that we will eventually reverse this development, this is not why I am writing you. I am writing you about the use of the phrase, ‘Right to Work’.

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Social justice by Bryan

The Past Isn’t Even The Past: Modern Fascism and Hatred of Muslims

Fascism did not die in 1945.

I sit here writing this less than a day after three people were brutally murdered. The slain, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, her husband of one month Deah Barakat, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha were all under the age of 26. Barakat was studying at UNC to be a dentist, but he was also busy raising money to provide much-needed dental care for Syrian refugees. His wife Yusor was finishing her studies at NC State before joining him at UNC to become a dentist herself, and her sister Rezan was also studying at NCSU in the School of Design. If you are listening to the media, they were murdered in cold blood over a parking dispute. Nothing to see here, move along, this is just one of those things that happen. This is bullshit, a comforting lie draped over the shoulders of people who have perpetuated hatred against the Muslim community.

The murderer is a man by the name of Craig Stephens Hicks. A ‘militant’ atheist and libertarian, Hicks had a history of harassing his neighbors for their religion. According to the slain sisters’ father, Dr. Mohammad Abu-Salha, Yusor said, “He hates us for what we are and how we look,” and that he had a history of picking on the newlyweds. He came to their door at least once clutching his rifle. Some might say that this isn’t enough to prove that he had an animus against these three people for their religion. This is an attempt to deflect guilt by those who have profited off of churning up hatred and contempt against Muslims since September 2001. The fact is that Hicks was able to murder these three people because he did not see them as human beings because of their faith.

Fascism did not die in 1945.

Continue reading The Past Isn’t Even The Past: Modern Fascism and Hatred of Muslims