A group of several hundred protesters is currently sitting on the Brooklyn Bridge, taking over the Manhattan bound side. Organizers have told them to "get comfortable."
If this Labor Day feels a little different, that’s because it is.
Workers are fighting and winning in a way we haven't seen in decades.
And this could be just the beginning. Thread 🧵
1. There’s so much good news it’s hard to know where to start.
Maybe the biggest and clearest sign of real change is that more new workers joined unions in the first half of 2023 than we’ve seen in over 20 years. jphilll.com/p/this-labor-d…
2. There’s also a powerful energy in the air, which is changing the culture in this country and making people more and more excited about unions and labor.
That energy is translating into support for labor struggles:
It just isn't serious when people claim to be on the left then insist on assessing each billionaire by how nice and kind they are rather than understanding their position as shapers and upholders of policy and of this oppressive capitalist system more broadly.
We can work towards a world where we treat those who currently oppose us with kindness and where we build a world of abundance, while understanding that there are very powerful people actively working to maintain the current status quo and all the violence it requires.
These are people who not only create and maintain conditions of mass poverty and death, but work to eliminate regulations, work to keep housing precarious, work to keep people hungry. They are responsible for a number of deaths and an amount of misery that is hard to calculate.
1, these beliefs should have combatted in many ways as to eradicate them over time. 2, there should be an understanding that dialogue isn’t how we deal with these guys. 3, we have greater numbers. We need to our-organize them, as I know folks are doing, but this takes all of us.
We currently live in a society with a capitalist power structure that is more comfortable with fascism and Nazism that they are with leftism, with anti-capitalism. in large part because white supremacy is very deeply intertwined with propping up our capitalism system.