Ep. 2 Comrades Read Together w/ Nick Driedger: No Shortcuts, But to Where?

Join the conversations around this book in our Laborwave Discord by becoming any type of patron of the show at patreon.com/laborwave!!!

This is our second episode of Comrades Read Together where we're discussing, chapter by chapter, the book No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age.

We follow up our conversation tackling the introduction and chapter 2 with a review of the book by Nick Driedger, labor activist and contributing writer to Organizing Work!

Driedger asks the tough questions about the political horizons achievable under a labor relations framework, and whether it's possible for "business unions" to break out of such constricting frameworks. He also argues that McAlevey's ultimate aims in labor organizing leads us down the path of left electoral politics, where the power that has been built by workers through these deep organizing methods are undercut by the top-down system of politics available within the electoral realm.

We also talked about the IWW approach, why it succeeds and why it fails, and speak about the prospects for independent radical unions.

Read his full review, No Shortcuts, But to Where? at organizing.work/2019/12/no-shortcuts-but-to-where/

We're continuing with this series by reading chapters 3-4 and engaging with folks on our Laborwave Discord!

Comrades Read Together- No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age by Jane McAlevey

Andrea Haverkamp, President of CGE 6069; Sarah Pishioneri, labor organizer based in Oregon; and Alex Riccio, labor organizer based in Philadelphia; have a comradely discussion about the first two chapters of No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age by Jane McAlevey.

Join us in discussion and some reading sessions on our Discord server! You can get in on the fun by becoming a Laborwave Patron at patreon.com/laborwave and joining as a Rank-and-Filer, or Committee Member, or Strike Captain. Once joined, you'll receive an invitation to our Discord where we have a pdf of the book, multiple channels for discussions, and voice channels for periodic reading and chat sessions together!

We cover the main arguments put forward in the introduction and chapter two concerning theories of power, the difference between advocacy, mobilizing, and organizing strategies, and whole-worker organizing. We also hiss and boo at the villains taken on by McAlevey named Andy Stern, former president of SEIU, and Saul Alinsky, overall weak-sauce organizer pushing a mostly advocacy and mobilizing approach to social change where organizers pretend to be neutral support with no agendas or positions.

This and more in our first Comrades Read Together!

#comradesreadtogether #laborwaveradio #janemcalevey #noshortcuts #AndreaHaverkamp #SarahPishioneri #AlexRiccio

Rent Strikes w/ Liza Featherstone & Tenants United Corvallis

Full audio and transcript will be available at laborwaveradio.com/rentstrikes

Two part episode on Laborwave, we speak with tenant organizers from Tenants United Corvallis (TUC), a committee of the Mid-Valley IWW, about their efforts to scale up a rent strike in the Mid-Willamette Valley. We follow that segment by speaking with Liza Featherstone, a journalist featured in The Nation and Jacobin, about rent strike activities in New York as well as a broader conversation about relations of power between the tenant and landlord classes.

Tenants United Corvallis (TUC) can be reached via their website at midvalleyiww.org

Liza Featherstone penned the piece, On Strike- No Rent, for Jacobin which served as the baseline for our conversation. https://jacobinmag.com/2020/05/rent-strike-may-coronavirus-new-york-city-nyc-tenants-housing