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(Heh-heh, Bouie cites Cedric J. Robinson. The Old Mole is on his way.)
NY Times Op-Ed, April 28, 2020
Another Way the 2020s Might Be Like the 1930s
By Jamelle Bouie
Class consciousness does not flow automatically out of class identity.
Being a worker does not necessarily mean you will come to identify as a
worker. Instead, you can think of class consciousness as a process of
discovery, of insights derived from events that put the relationships of
class into stark relief.
Or as the political theorist Cedric J. Robinson observed about the Civil
War and Emancipation,
"Groups moved to the logic of immediate self-interest and to historical
paradox. Consciousness, when it did develop, had come later in the
process of the events. The revolution had caused the formation of
revolutionary consciousness and had not been caused by it. The
revolution was spontaneous."
We aren’t yet living through a revolution. But we are seeing how
self-interest and paradox are shaping the consciousness of an entire
class of people. The coronavirus pandemic has forced all but the most
“essential” workers to either leave their jobs or work from home. And
who are those essential workers? They work in hospitals and grocery
stores, warehouses and meatpacking plants. They tend to patients and
cash out customers, clean floors and stock shelves. They drive trucks,
deliver packages and help sustain this country as it tries to fight off
a deadly virus.
The close-quarters, public-facing nature of this work mean these workers
are also more likely to be exposed to disease, and many of them are
furious with their employers for not doing enough to protect them. To
protect themselves, they’ve begun to speak out. Some have even decided
to strike.
At the start of the crisis, in mid-March, bus drivers in Detroit refused
to drive, citing safety concerns. “The drivers didn’t feel safe going on
the bus, spreading their germs and getting germs from anybody,” Glenn
Tolbert, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 26, said in an
interview with The Detroit News. “We are on the front lines and picking
up more sick people than doctors see. This was a last resort but drivers
didn’t feel safe.” Their actions prompted officials to increase
cleaning, provide masks to passengers and drivers, and eliminate fares
to keep person-to-person interactions to a minimum.
That same month, at an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island, a group of
workers walked out over safety concerns, chanting, “How many cases we
got? Ten!” in reference to workers there who had tested positive for the
coronavirus. Amazon fired Chris Smalls, the worker who led the
demonstration, supposedly for violating the warehouse’s
social-distancing policy, but this didn’t stop other workers at other
warehouses from organizing walkouts to protest a lack of protective
equipment. (Notably, Letitia James, the attorney general of New York,
has informed Amazon that her office is scrutinizing the firing of Mr.
Smalls.)
Workers at Whole Foods, owned by Amazon, went on strike to demand paid
leave and free coronavirus testing, as did workers for the
grocery-delivery service Instacart, who demanded protective supplies and
hazard pay. Sanitation workers in Pittsburgh staged a similar strike
over a lack of protective gear, and workers at America’s meatpacking
plants are staying home rather than deal with unsafe conditions.
It’s true these actions have been limited in scope and scale. But if
they continue, and if they increase, they may come to represent the
first stirrings of something much larger. The consequential strike wave
of 1934 — which paved the way for the National Labor Relations Act and
created new political space for serious government action on behalf of
labor — was presaged by a year of unrest in workplaces across the
country, from factories and farms to newspaper offices and Hollywood sets.
These workers weren’t just discontented. They were also coming into
their own as workers, beginning to see themselves as a class that when
organized properly can work its will on the nation’s economy and
political system
American labor is at its lowest point since the New Deal era.
Private-sector unionization is at a historic low, and entire segments of
the economy are unorganized. Depression-era labor leaders could look to
President Franklin Roosevelt as an ally — or at least someone open to
negotiation and bargaining — but labor today must face off against the
relentlessly anti-union Donald Trump. Organized capital, working through
the Republican Party, has a powerful grip on the nation’s legal
institutions, including the Supreme Court, whose conservative majority
appears ready to make the entire United States an open shop.
The inequities and inequalities of capitalist society remain. American
workers continue to face deprivation and exploitation, realities the
coronavirus crisis has made abundantly clear.
The strikes and protests of the past month have been small, but they
aren’t inconsequential. The militancy born of immediate self-protection
and self-interest can grow into calls for deeper, broader
transformation. And if the United States continues to stumble its way
into yet another generation-defining economic catastrophe, we may find
that even more of its working class comes to understand itself as an
agent of change — and action.
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