A Year of Resistance – Kali Akuno on Lessons of 2011
Posted by Nat W on February 28, 2012
The following article is an important summation of the past year by Kali Akuno of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.
The Lessons of 2011: Transcending the Old, Fostering the New, and Settling Outstanding Accounts
The militant working class struggles of 2011 – from the strikes and occupation in Wisconsin, to the countless demonstrations against Wall Street Banks, the direct action and broad resistance to the Keystone Pipeline, to housing occupations throughout the country, to the defeat of regressive anti-Union legislation in Ohio, to the (inter)national explosion of the Occupy Movement – demonstrated the critical fact that the multi-national working class contained in the United States can stop the” shock doctrine” measures being imposed upon it by transnational capital and the neo-liberal state.
The initial returns on these struggles are not insubstantial. Just two months into 2012, we have witnessed ILWU Local 21 coming to an agreement with transnational conglomerate EGT/Bunge in large part due to the impact of the Port Shut Down actions in Seattle, Portland, Oakland, and Los Angeles on December 12, 2011 and the threat of mass industrial action in Longview by the Occupy Movement allied with the Million Worker March Movement and militant rank and file members of the ILWU. Inspired by the Occupy Movement, the mass action in Oakland on November 2, 2001 and coast wide actions of December 12, Truck drivers inCaliforniaandWashingtonStatetook independent organizing and industrial action to win wage and safety concessions from employers and potential legislation inWashingtonStatethat that will enable the Truckers to unionize. The victory in Longview halts the concerted drive to destroy the ILWU and further weaken organized labor and the pending Washington State legislation could potentially reverse decades of circumvention of the Wagner Act and provide an opening for sectors (and with it oppressed peoples) historically excluded from its protections.
None of this would be possible without the militant mass action of the multi-national working class, both unionized and non-unionized, acting in open defiance of the rules of engagement established between organized labor, capital, and the state in the 1930’s with the New Deal. As the power struggle between capital and the working class intensifies over whom and how the economic crisis will be resolved, the working class would do well to recall the lessons of 2011 and build on them. In addition to reaffirming the lesson that the working class must rely on militant mass action – that is strikes, occupations, blockades, general strikes and other forms of industrial action – as a primary means of exerting its own will and power, several other critical lessons we believe must be affirmed. These lessons include
- That in order to halt and over turn the slide of the labor unions, the unions must wage struggle beyond the confines of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and/or the Wagner Act framework.
- That mass action will only be successful if it pulls in and engages broad sectors of the working class, particularly critical sectors of the 89% of the multi-national working class that is not unionized, and directly addresses their issues and demands.
- That new forms of working class organization must be constructed capable of organizing workers as a self-conscious class that encompasses and incorporates the broad diversity of its totality as differentiated by race, nationality, gender, sexuality, and legal status.
- That the multi-national working class must build, maintain, and exert its political independence from the Democrats (and Republicans), and not rely on electoral politics and processes (such as the recall efforts inWisconsinthat worked to negate mass action) to exercise its power, realize its demands, and build the society it envisions.
- That the struggle for equity and economic democracy necessitates struggling to reclaim and redefine as much public space as possible – particularly the Ports given their strategic importance to the distribution of the necessary goods that sustain life – in order to rebuild the “commons” and exert democratic control over various processes of social production and exchange.
- That the decolonization of the entity presently known as the United States national state is fundamental to the social and material liberation of the multi-national working class, particularly its subjected and colonized sectors, i.e. Indigenous Nations, New Afrikans (Black people), Xicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Native Hawaiians.
However, it should be noted that the struggles of 2011 and the lessons gleaned from them did not come out of nowhere. The resistance of 2011 was in large part a culmination of an escalating number of militant initiatives of resistance throughout the United Statesfollowing the financial and economic collapse of 2007 – 2008. These initiatives not only established critical precedence, but served as catalysts for the transformation of social consciousness that stimulated the resistance of 2011. Some of the most notable of these pre-2011 initiatives included the occupation of the Republic Windows and Doors Factory in Chicago, Illinois by UE (United Electrical Workers) Local 1110 in December 2008; the national Take Back the Land Movement housing occupation initiatives started in the fall of 2009 by the Land and Housing Action Group (LHAG) (which initially consisted of the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Picture the Homeless, Survivors Village and Take Back the Land – Miami) of the US Human Rights Network (USHRN); and the Oscar Grant Justice Movement which commenced on December 31st, 2008 – January 1st, 2009 in Oakland, California following a national day of racist carnage against New Afrikans which saw the police execution of Adolph Grimes in New Orleans, Louisiana and the police shooting of Robbie Tolan in Bellaire, Texas. Of all the critical initiatives that occurred prior to 2011, the Oscar Grant Justice Movement was perhaps the most pre-figurative of the dominant feature of resistance in 2011: the Occupy Movement.
From its inception, leading elements in the Oscar Grant Justice Movement worked to establish a General Assembly as a model of collective decision making and social liberation and advanced the notion of organizing a General Strike to attain justice and transform social relations inOaklandand the Bay Area. The Oscar Grant Justice Movement also made critical links with organized labor, particularly ILWU Local 10, which conducted a demonstration and critical work shutdown of thePortofOaklandon October 23, 2010. Also from its inception the Oscar Grant Justice Movement confronted major repression from the Oakland Police Department, but gradually drew the attention of the Feds and massive monitoring and infiltration. What occurred in 2009 – 2010 was in effect a semi-national occupation ofOakland, which is a majorityThird Worldcity with a long and brutal history of police occupation and terrorism, particularly targeted at its New Afrikan population. As with the shooting of Scott Olsen on October 25, 2011 which prompted the call for a General Strike on November 2, 2011, the police repression of the Oscar Grant Justice Movement prompted several militant confrontations with the police. It was these militant confrontations that played a decisive role in the securing of a conviction (however slight) of Oscar Grant’s executioner, Johannes Mehserle. These experiences played a critical role in inspiring the militancy of 2011 and set the mold and tone of what is developing on the West Coast at present.
2012 can be a year of critical advances for the multi-national working class, but, only if it takes hold of these and other lessons about organizing to serve its own interests and in its own name. It must also take great pains to not repeat errors of the past and present, particularly the reactionary politics and polices of white settler unionism that views itself as a partner with capital and a defender of the US national state; promotes the ongoing dispossession of Indigenous nations; excludes New Afrikans, Xicanos, Asians, and other oppressed peoples; fosters the super-exploitation of immigrant and imprisoned labor; devalues the labor and contributions of women; stigmatizes sexual and gender non-conformity; promotes economic growth over ecological sustainability; and partners with US imperialism (i.e. the strategic partnership between the US government and US based transnational corporations and financial institutions) to undermine radical unions, social movements, and national governments in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.
The opportunity now exists to set a course of action that creates new forms of working class organization that can meet the challenges of imperialist globalization and relegate the limitations of settler unionism and the co-optive restrictions of the NLRB framework to the dustbin of history. Occupy and the militant orientation of rank and file union resistance presents us with a vision and process to move forward. As we dream new dreams, struggle to decolonize theUnited Statesand fully emancipate the working class, let us press forward boldly to transform the world and ourselves.
equalize said
“The victory in Longview halts the concerted drive to destroy the ILWU and further weaken organized labor…”
The settlement is complex and I won’t go into it here, but the polemic embodied in these two articles speaks to it:
http://www.portlandoccupier.org/2012/02/20/occupy-ilwu/
http://www.portlandoccupier.org/2012/02/22/a-contract-is-a-contract-clarifying-the-ilwuegt-outcome-in-longview/
Bottom line:
“This victory came at some cost, and clearly the struggles over port unionization are not over.”
To me, these lessons stand out:
- as different streams of resistance come into play in the course of development the mass upsurge that is developing, they will enforce and enable other streams. In this struggle, the occupy and other community movements were a key benefit in the labor struggle – the rank and file probably would not have won the concessions they did without that support. The demonstration of this power is the key victory for occupy that emerged from that struggle.
- the burden of the legacy of the past infrastructure presents a significant hardship as sections of people awaken. The mix of victory and shortcomings of that victory for the workers at EGT demonstrates the difficulty of breaking out of the morass of that infrastructure.
- Different streams surge at different times and is important to harness strengths in one to incubate or support others. Perhaps in a few years, it will be organized labor (or the struggle to empower unorganized labor) that ignites or supports other streams of rebellion.
- As revolutionaries join and engage sections of the people that awaken in struggle, we agitate to support other sections and to promote solidarity and a view that we are fundamentally in a united struggle against a common enemy.
Looking toward this spring and summer, it is clear that occupy, as important as it is that it deepen its mobilization of its social bases, must look to provide genuine support and solidarity with other streams of struggle as they emerge. The lessons learned from occupy’s successful alliance of awakened dispossessed professional classes with homeless and urban street youth give concrete vision to both the power and difficulty of further class alliances that need to come.
It is not my sense that, in the main, organized labor will be next to come into motion. I’m looking to undocumented workers, minimum wage earners whose economic positions are set to collapse, chicanos and mexican americans in the west and southwest, urban blacks and, maybe other urban minority groupings, and students. But, really, I’m guessing. And, hoping. I expect to be surprised by what particular form what segment of society breaks through. And, I might be totally reading everything, but I would be even more surprised if something doesn’t break this year.
Kasama has played an important role in overcoming ‘crankiness’ in relationship to the explosion of occupy. I am confident that it will play a similar role in overcoming whatever other blocks might emerge that might hold us back from engaging and embracing new forms of struggle as they break out.
Occupy Portland, Occupy Longview and ILWU Local 12 will host a celebration of our victory on March 18 in Longview WA. If you are in within striking distance in the Northwest, you are invited.
Carl Davidson said
Organized labor has already played a considerable role, if you take a wider or more diverse view of tactics.
–For more than a year prior to OWS, Trumka an the AFL-CIO has having mass demos at banks, demanding the financial transaction tax to fund jobs, including more than 5000 in Chicago. That’s why they were quick to back OWS
–Wisconsin’s labor upsurge, as well as Ohio’s and Indiana’s, preceded occupy and helped spur it later, espcially in there areas.
–Occupy, of course, returned the favor in a big way. They added to the labor turnout in the Ohio election to beat back the union-busting bill.
-The huge gathering of more than one million signatures for the recall of the Governor in Wiscon, preceded by two other recalls, was a new tactical achievement that’s very much part of new organizing by labor, that while not direct street action itself, combined nicely with it, pulling in new forces. For some, in this case hundreds of thousands, signing a recall petition will be a first step to more militant activity later.
There’s more than one way to look at ‘diversity of tactics’.
But yes, maintaining the alliances between the ‘critical force’ and the ‘main force,’ ie, between OWS and its wider allies among the basic masses, including through their existing organizations where we can, is a key task of the socialists and the revolutionary left generally.