Book Review

Los Angeles Tenant Union Founders’ Call To Action

October 14, 2024 Roshan Abraham, Next City. Organize! Book Review, California, Housing, Housing Crisis, Los Angeles, renter's rights, Tenant Unions

Tracy Rosenthal and Leo Vilchis first met in 2012 through an activist art project in Los Angeles called the School of Echoes. The project took Vilchis, Rosenthal and others to six different L.A. communities on listening tours to hear residents’ concerns. The concerns they encountered were largely about displacement, gentrification and the feeling that people were being pushed from their communities. Their attempt to address these problems led to the creation of the Los Angeles Tenants Union, which has a membership of 3000 due-paying households. And over the past 9 years, the pair has worked alongside some of the union’s local chapters to coordinate some of the most public, and often successful, organizing fights on behalf of tenants in the country.

Bargaining Is An Organizing Opportunity

October 11, 2024 Al Davidoff, Labor Notes. Organize! Book Review, History, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

After we won our union, in our first round of bargaining (in 1981) we had a seven-member bargaining committee representing over 1,000 workers. We relied heavily on our UAW rep. Initially they did all the talking. We were too afraid we would say something wrong. But in subsequent bargaining we made changes based on the belief that the formal bargaining process should be seen as an organizing and leadership development opportunity, not some isolated world where the experts resolved issues. First we expanded to a 10-person core bargaining team. Second, we made sure that each member of the bargaining committee spoke, starting from the very first session.

How Pandemic-Era Prison Life Shows The Stakes Of Abolition

September 17, 2024 Justin A. Davis, Waging Nonviolence. Educate! Book Review, COVID-19, health, Pandemic, Prison abolition, Prisoner rights

A few months before COVID became a permanent part of life in the U.S., the New York City Council approved a plan to shut down the infamous jail complex known as Rikers Island and replace it with four smaller facilities. (That plan was later delayed — and city officials have since acknowledged that they likely won’t meet the plan’s legal deadline.) The vote to close Rikers Island came from years of extensive grassroots organizing by reformists and abolitionists alike. But for those left caged there in 2020, the risks posed by COVID were immediate — not just illness and death, but new forms of the isolation, neglect and violence that already shape life inside.

Takeover! A Human Rights Approach To Housing

September 13, 2024 Ann Garrison, Black Agenda Report. Create! Book Review, Homelessness, Housing, Human Rights

Cheri Honkala and the Poor People’s Army, also known as the Poor People’s Campaign for Economic Human Rights, produced their book about how to take over abandoned federal properties. In the City of Philadelphia, where the Poor People’s Army is based, scholar Elsa Noterman reports that there are 10 abandoned properties for every single homeless person. Nevertheless, the wait times to receive public housing are years long. Their neighborhood, Kensington, has been devastated by factory closures since the passage of NAFTA. “Call to Movement: The Politics of Love,” the first section of the introduction to TAKEOVER!, is inspiring, heartrending and, like the rest of the book, beautifully written.

How To Be A Nonviolent Second-Wave Feminist

June 20, 2024 Eleanor J. Bader, The Indypendent. Strategize! Book Review, Feminism, History, Nonviolence

During the 1970s and 1980s, many feminists pushed the armed forces to allow women to serve in combat. Many also organized to demand that police forces diversify and bring more women and people of color into their ranks. But this segment of the women’s movement did not represent everyone. A smaller but hugely vocal constituency opposed violence, militarism, police expansion and colonialism, and argued that an equal opportunity to maim or kill would do nothing to create the equitable societies they sought to build. Unfortunately, their efforts often get short shrift in historical accounts of the era. The anthology, Feminism, Violence and Nonviolence zeroes in on the influence of pacifist thought on Second Wave feminism.

‘Power Lines—Building A Labor-Climate Justice Movement’

June 15, 2024 Steve Early, Convergence. Strategize! Book Review, climate crisis, Climate Justice, Labor Movement

A familiar scene played out in the city council chambers of Richmond, California on May 22, 2024. For the last 20 years, since members of the anti-Chevron Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) first got elected to the council, any measure before that body affecting the city’s largest employer and business tax payer has been hotly debated. Local environmental justice organizations, like Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) and the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN) mobilize their working-class members to attend and sign up to speak during the time allotted for “public comment.” To rebut the resulting complaints about pollution and arguments for stronger health and safety protection, the $290-billion company that operates Richmond’s massive 122-year-old refinery deploys its own defenders.

How Reformers Doubled Vermont AFL-CIO Membership

May 23, 2024 Gordon Simmons, Labor Notes. Organize! AFL-CIO, Book Review, Labor Movement, Unions, Vermont, Worker Rights and Jobs

Transforming an existing union into a more democratic and member-run organization has often proven to be a daunting—though possible—task. The pressing need to revitalize organized labor in the U.S., however, depends on such movements. Beginning in 2017, a slate of reform-minded union activists won leadership offices in the Vermont state federation of labor, reinvigorating that organization. Within just a few years, the federation’s membership doubled. Insurgent Labor: The Vermont AFL-CIO, 2017-2023 is two-term president David Van Deusen’s participant-retelling of the emergence of the UNITED reform group.

Putting Members First: Ron Carey’s Lessons For Labor Movement Reform

April 2, 2024 Steve Early and Rand Wilson, Popular Resistance. Strategize! Book Review, Labor Movement, Teamsters, UPS, Worker Rights

Books about union presidents are usually penned by professional writers -- either academic historians, labor journalists, or paid flacks. Past accounts of the life and work of labor organization chiefs like John L. Lewis, Walter Reuther, Jimmy Hoffa, or Cesar Chavez have run the gamut from hagiographic to constructively critical. Few have had a biographer whose view of their leadership role is rooted in first-hand experience as a blue-collar worker in the same industry and union. Ken Reiman’s personal connection to the subject matter of Ron Carey and the Teamsters (Monthly Review Press, 2024) resulted from his own career as a UPS driver and activist in the local union that Carey led before becoming president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in the 1990s.

What Is Anti-Racism? And Why It Means Anti-Capitalism

March 10, 2024 Ann Garrison, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Anti-capitalism, Anti-Racism, Book Review, Capitalism, Racism

In 2020, a white Minneapolis police officer arrested George Floyd, threw him to the ground, and pressed a knee into his neck, murdering him by asphyxiation. In response, “Black Lives Matter” protests erupted across the US, and it briefly appeared as if a racial reckoning might be taking place. However, its meaning was soon appropriated by Amazon, Walmart, and other prominent corporations declaring that Black lives mattered and dedicating funds to diversity training and other efforts that amounted to no more than what Black Agenda Report has long criticized as putting “Black faces in high places.”

Fighting Wall Street’s War On Workers

March 2, 2024 Steve Early, Labor Notes. Strategize! Book Review, Corporatism, Wall Street, War on Workers, Worker Rights and Jobs

One of the occupational hazards of being a labor activist is over-exposure to “corporate bullshit”—on the job, in the community, and in politics. When workers try to win collective bargaining rights, employers conduct propaganda campaigns to spread every imaginable falsehood about the union. Once forced into negotiations, management shows up at the bargaining table with a new line of BS about not being able to afford union wage demands or agree to a grievance procedure. And in the legislative-political arena, corporate interests have long used disinformation to thwart labor campaigns.

Disappointing ´Rush To Judgment´ On China’s Role In The Congo

February 19, 2024 Dee Knight, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Book Review, China, Cobalt, DR Congo, Imperialism, Mining

China’s role has been to bring new, large-scale investment on a new basis: combined financing for industrial mining and public infrastructure – roads, railroads, dams, health and education facilities. The result was “After decades of almost non-existent industrial production, the country became and remains the world’s leading producer of cobalt and, by 2023, became the world’s third largest producer of copper.” The new deal “puts an end to the monopoly of certain Western countries and their large companies whose history shows that this exclusivity has not brought development to the country.” The arrangement has dramatically reduced the role of artisanal mining.

Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks To Climate Action

February 14, 2024 Michaela Herrmann, DeSmog. Strategize! Book Review, climate crisis, Climate Justice, Media

Professor Dana R. Fisher answers this critical question in her new book, Saving Ourselves: Climate Shocks to Climate Action. Building upon years of research on activism, democracy, and climate politics, Fisher explores the state of the climate movement today to understand how radical direct action is evolving as the climate crisis worsens. In an interview with DeSmog’s Michaela Herrmann, Fisher outlines why she thinks “severe, durable climate shocks” will be required to shake the world out of the fossil fuel status quo once and for all. She draws upon years of data gathered from climate protests as early as COP6 in 2000 and lessons from the world’s response to COVID-19 to understand how civil society has responded to 30 years of ineffectual international climate negotiations.

The ‘Human Rights Industry’ And Nicaragua

February 8, 2024 John Perry, Resumen English. Educate! Alfred deZayas, Book Review, Human Rights, Nicaragua, Regime Change

Why do United Nations human rights bodies focus on some countries, but not others? Why do organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International appear to ignore important evidence presented to them? And why do the media repeat stories of human rights abuses without questioning their veracity? These issues and more are examined in one of 2023’s most remarkable books: The Human Rights Industry by Alfred de Zayas. It is remarkable for two reasons. One is that it brings together the insights of de Zayas and other experts into the ways in which “human rights” have been distorted to serve the interests of Western governments, principally those of the United States.

How Can Workers Organize Against Capital Today?

January 26, 2024 Benjamin Y. Fong, Catalyst. Strategize! Book Review, Capitalism, Labor Movement, Worker Rights and Jobs

Labor Power and Strategy, the new book edited by Peter Olney and Glenn Perušek, officially aims to provide “rational, radical, experience-based perspectives that help target and run smart, strategic, effective campaigns in the working class.” But by the end of it, it is difficult to avoid the sneaking suspicion that Olney and Perušek have a different goal: to make clear just how far organized labor is from having a strategic conversation about its present impasse. The book is organized around an interview with economist and historian John Womack about the twin needs for an analysis of the weak points (or “choke points”) in contemporary industrial technologies and for the labor movement to exploit that analysis to cause disruption and gain leverage.

Cobalt Red, How The Blood Of The Congo Powers Our Lives

January 25, 2024 Ann Garrison, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Book Review, Cobalt, DR Congo, Electric Vehicles, Human Rights, Resources

“Unspeakable riches have brought the people of the Congo little other than unspeakable pain.” So writes Siddharth Kara in Cobalt Red, How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives . It’s one of the many poetic phrases that make this book easy on the ear but hard on the heart and mind. There’s pleasure in turning the pages of such finely crafted prose, pain in knowing that, if you have half a heart, you’ll never be able to see your smartphone, laptop, tablet, solar power system, or electric car quite the same way again, that you’ll see blood all over the supply chain that put them in your hand, on your roof, or in your driveway.

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