class – The Multiracial Unity Blog

March on May Day for Working Class Liberation, 2024

By Karyn Pomerantz, 4-14-2024

May Day is the most important day for workers everywhere. It is commemorated on May 1^st throughout the world when millions march to smash capitalism, abolish wages, and take power.

Maybe you never heard of it. There are no May Day greeting cards or TV ads. The US ruling class doesn’t want us to celebrate it and know that the struggle for the 8 hour day in Chicago in 1887 inspired it. The media, therefore, hides this important holiday and separates US workers from our brothers and sisters by turning May 1 into “Law Day” and creating Labor Day in September. The time has come to end this division and join the millions of workers throughout the world in demonstrations, marches, and social gatherings. As WWIII threatens and millions of workers live in squalor, it is more important than ever to build this movement! It is critical to support workers in Palestine, Sudan, Ukraine, and many others under attack by capitalist powers who want to control resources and dominate other countries.

Movie Review: Pride and Billy Elliot and the UK Miners Strike 40th Anniversary

by Juliana Barnet, 3-26-2024 (from 2023)

Introduction (ed):

This year, British workers are commemorating the 40^th Anniversary of the strike. These two movies remind us of this enormous struggle.

Movies have a tremendous impact on the public’s understanding of politics and history. This year, Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon presented strong portrayals of the development of the atom bomb, the theft of Native American lands and oil, and the role of the FBI. In the past, Birth of a Nation promoted racist tropes of sexually aggressive black men that live today.

In this blog post, Barnet reviews two older films, Pride and Billy Eliot, that feature the UK Miners strike of 1984-85 when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher closed 20 mines, threw 20,000 miners out of work, and ripped apart social programs as President Reagan was doing in the US. The closures inspired a massive, militant strike of 140,000 miners across the UK that was supported by workers around the world.

Here, Barnet depicts activists, unions, and social movements in a political context. She contrasts the disparaging of the union in Billy Elliot with the positive portrayal of union people, organizing and building solidarity in Pride.

Arab and Jewish Working-Class Solidarity

by Karyn Pomerantz, 11-19-23, Updated 4-13-24 (Thanks to Charles O’Connell)

It’s hard to imagine a more divisive time in the history of Israelis and Palestinians. I’m writing this as Israeli tanks roll through Gazan hospitals, and refugee camps collapse under bombardment. To many of us, it is reminiscent of Nazi Germany with the fascists switched from the Germans to the Israelis. Activists who call for unity of Jewish and Palestinian workers may seem delusional, but there is a history of community cohesion and comradeship among them in different periods of history, including today. There are also many examples of the Israeli and Palestinian governments using nationalism, religion, ethnicity, and repression to break these relationships. This article will review acts of solidarity from the 1920s to 1948 and more recently. These examples can inspire us to build a resilient multiethnic movement that will eventually throw out all capitalist rulers and establish a joint worker run society.

This article covers recent and past historical events, lessons learned, and suggested reading.

Walk Out or Strike Out!?

by Karyn Pomerantz

9-26-2023

The surge in union struggles in the United States has energized and inspired hope among workers throughout the country. Sick and tired of non-living wages, dangerous conditions, and long precarious hours, baristas, students, and nurses and industrial workers are demanding economic and lifestyle changes in worksites as varied as Starbucks, schools, UPS, auto plants, and railroads. Will this increase union membership, encourage more strikes, and slow our worsening living conditions?

This article discusses the successes and failures of organizing on the job and strategies for building an anti-capitalist movement within unions. It gives current examples of how corporate bosses, politicians, and union leaders collaborate to defeat workers’ struggles and ways we can overcome their betrayal.

This leads us to consider several questions:

What has emboldened this movement?
Are union leaders maximizing the potential of these actions or collaborating with the companies and government to control and limit them?
Does the government protect the public or big business? Is it a neutral arbiter between bosses and unions or is it trying to limit worker demands and action?
Can we build a movement within unions to challenge racism and capitalism, and even consider and build for system change, a revolution for workers’ power?

CLASS is the FOUNDATION of Inequality in Capitalism –

Inequality is Reinforced and Masked by RACISM and SEXISM

by Bill Sacks, 8-13-2021

A frontpage article in the Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/07/22/noose-construction-industry-racism/) tells of recent incidents at many US worksites in which nooses have been left in plain sight by unidentified persons (read cowardly racists). The intent of fomenting fear is derived from the ugly history of US lynchings, particularly in the South after the Civil War during Reconstruction and well into the 20^th century.

The article calls lynching an “implement of terror and murder used primarily against Black people.” This description is important both for what it says and what it only implies – though the implication emerges only if one is prepared to read between the lines and thinks about the word “primarily.” The fact is that out of more than 4,000 lynchings, roughly a quarter of the victims were white working-class persons. In many (or most) cases their “crime” was associating with fellow workers who happened to be black. Thus, whether the persons lynched were black or white or any other ethnicity, the motivation was always inspired by the ideology of racism, and the purpose was always to maintain and employ the practice of racism as a means of keeping black and white working-class persons apart and convinced that each was the enemy of the other.

This article argues that ruling class exploitation is the foundation of capitalism, affecting black and white workers, although to lesser degrees, and gives examples from literary sources.

Book Review: “White Fragility” versus Anti Racist Agility

By Karyn Pomerantz, June 29, 2020

“White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo ranks as the number one best selling book on many publisher lists and has a months long waiting list at public libraries. It clearly has an important message to garner such attention. What does this message mean for a multiracial fight against racism as we’ve witnessed in the protests around the world? What kinds of strategies does it encourage to overcome the racist nature of capitalism?

Dr. DiAngelo is a white woman educator who helps companies and organizations diversify their workforces and develop more harmony between workers of different “racial” and ethnic backgrounds. She creates and delivers an antiracist curriculum to the employees, mostly white, in order to expose white people’s racism and, as she states, to encourage them to recognize their privilege so they can stop oppressing black people. (The book focuses on black and white people).

Comrade or Ally? Book Review of : COMRADE, An Essay on Political Belonging by Jodi Dean

By Karyn Pomerantz, 6-12-2020

The uprisings over the horrendous oppression and killing of black people in the US have united people in ways we have rarely seen. Most protests in the past have been comprised of a single demographic group: mostly white in anti-war marches, Latin in immigration demonstrations, and black in anti-racist protests. The multi-racial and multi-ethnic participation in the rebellions stirred by police violence, disproportionate Covid19 deaths in black and native families, and sacrificial back-to-work decisions creates an enormous potential for working class solidarity and revolutionary change.

Lucy Parsons, Working Class Anarchist

by Karyn Pomerantz, Dec. 2, 2018.

“The wealth of this country should be equally distributed … if one man through shrewdness should then amass more wealth than his neighbor, his surplus should be taken away from him. Every man should carry arms and have the right of self-defense. Shops and means of transit should be free. There would be no need of elections, police or standing army… Every man should bring his products to an immense clearinghouse in each city or town, and every family to receive an equal portion.” Lucy Parsons, 1891.
The life of Lucy Parsons holds many lessons for the working class and students today, especially since we recently witnessed a polarizing election, increased xenophobia, and racist, anti-Semitic murders. Lucy gained fame as the widow of Albert Parsons, the labor leader and anarchist whom the city of Chicago executed for his role in the fight for the 8 hour day in 1887. Known as the Haymarket Massacre, cops threw a bomb into the crowd that killed 7 policemen and blamed the deaths on the anarchist and socialist leaders, including Albert. May Day, the international workers’ day, commemorates this event. Lucy spent her life celebrating her husband’s and her political ideas. Today she is honored as a revolutionary leader in her own right. Continue reading “Lucy Parsons, Working Class Anarchist”

Intersectionality: A Marxist Critique

by Barbara Foley, September 26, 2018

This is a slightly revised version of an article with this title that appeared in Science & Society 82, 2 (April 2018): 269-75.

Intersectionality, a way of thinking about the nature and causes of social inequality, proposes that the effects of multiple forms of oppression are cumulative and, as the term suggests, interwoven. Not only do racism, sexism, homophobia, disablism, religious bigotry, and so-called “classism” wreak pain and harm in the lives of many people, but any two or more of these types of oppression can be experienced simultaneously in the lives of given individuals or demographic sectors. According to the intersectional model, it is only by taking into account the complex experiences of many people who are pressed to the margins of mainstream society that matters of social justice can be effectively addressed. In order to assess the usefulness of intersectionality as an analytical model and practical program, however—and, indeed, to decide whether or not it can actually be said to be a “theory,” as a number of its proponents insist—we need to ask not only what kinds of questions it encourages and remedies, but also what kinds of questions it discourages and what kinds of remedies it forecloses. Continue reading “Intersectionality: A Marxist Critique”