Welcome to the Remix, as we take our latest spin around the economy. This Remix column reports on a conversation at a conference on building worker power held earlier this spring in Massachusetts. The conversation involved two prominent movement actors—Kali Akuno, cofounder of Jackson, Mississippi-based Cooperation Jackson; and Chris Smalls, president of the Amazon Labor Union—and their search for common ground.
In some ways, the two couldn’t be more different. Akuno is a longtime Black nationalist theorist and organizer based in Jackson, Mississippi. Smalls, by contrast, only began organizing a labor union three years ago and is based in New York City. And yet several common themes emerged in the conversation between them. A few nuggets:
• Know Your Community: Both Akuno and Smalls talked about the importance of careful listening in organizing. For Akuno, organizing in Jackson, Mississippi, he does not have to spend a lot of time convincing Black residents of Jackson that they are oppressed; the central challenge is to convince folks that they can do something about it. For his part, Smalls discussed the importance of building trust, conversation by conversation. As with Akuno, Smalls found that persuading people of the possibility of change requires patience, and building a culture where it was safe for workers to talk with each other, and, ultimately, challenge Amazon management.
• Learning from History: Both Akuno and Smalls built their strategies based on historical lessons. For Akuno and his colleagues, Hurricane Katrina spoke to the need to focus organizing in the South; the experience of Katrina also reinforced for Akuno the importance of developing strategies that centered food and economic self-sufficiency, based on a vision of a solidarity economy. Smalls, in his organizing, learned from the failure of past union organizing campaigns at Amazon. Since traditional organizing had failed, Smalls and his team decided that they needed to adopt an independent union approach to organizing to improve their odds of success.
• The need to build stronger networks: Both Akuno and Smalls acknowledge that even though their victories are significant, additional network building is required to advance worker justice and build a solidarity economy. As Akuno observed, “There is more organizing now than at any time in my lifetime. It is just small and fractured.”
As you read this article, I encourage you to reflect on the state of economic justice organizing—and what might be done to build on current achievements.
Until the next Remix column, I remain,
Your Remix Man:
Steve Dubb
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