Labor

In America today, three people control as much wealth as the bottom half of us. So, are we stuck in this deadly spiral toward ever greater concentration of economic power? No, we can do better. We know we can because some of us already are. Worldwide, one in 10 employed people works in a co-op; and 1 billion in 96 countries are members of coops.

Two ways we can honor unions at this time of trial are to ask others to join union picket lines and to learn from their innovations and successes for whatever campaigns we are committed to today. According to labor historian Sidney Fine, the union breakthrough in Detroit and Flint, Michigan, was “the most significant American labor conflict in the twentieth century.” In some ways the struggle was more strategically sophisticated than many campaigns are today, which is why it offers important lessons on tactics, racism, using the spectrum of allies and sequencing the focus of organizing.

Politicians have made a mess of things for American workers, but a new Poor People's Campaign is rising to set things right.

In the ongoing structural crisis of the modern world-system, which began in the 1970s and will probably last another 20-40 years, the issue is not the reform of capitalism, but its successor system. If the Global Left is to win that battle, it must solidly ally the anti-austerity forces with the multicultural forces.

“I liken cooperatives – newer cooperatives – to being like … trying to construct a plane while it’s flying,” explains Andrew Alford, who is involved in one of three solidarity co-ops based at Montreal's Concordia University in Montreal. A look toward a cooperative cafe, bookstore, and bar at Concordia shows how an alternative model of business and work is possible.