DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT

"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels … upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

-Mario Savio, In a speech during a protest with his university at the time, but the words always seem appropriate to these situations.

In this case I attach free to “free to live without fear that losing your job means losing your life.”

Unlike Vogue, Teen Vogue has been pretty political ever since one of their writers (Lauren Duca, who is pretty cool) argued with Tucker Carlson on his show in 2016.

It is, surprisingly, one of the better publications to get news and commentary from nowadays, because nobody really expect it.

That’s a really well-written article, the complete opposite of a fluff piece.

I encourage folks to go read it.

I hope Mr. Fain keeps good security around him. His actions are challenging the current order and threatening both the billionaire and political classes. There is no doubt in his mind that there are members of those classes working out how to make him disappear from the public stage, one way or another. He would not be the first labor leader in this nation to come to a violent end at the hands of corporate or political leaders.

It seems more and more lately that organized labor is the only viable route for meaningful political change. Recasting the individualistic neoliberal interpretations of social justice in to the context of labor organizing and agitation seems like the right message to be sending right now, and not white-washing reactionary aspects of that history either but explaining how they undermined it.

The challenge in the present day is that this really requires going beyond culture war factions for greater common cause, working with people you may disagree yet have shared material interests with, with the hopes that the effort itself will absolve these barriers and lead to a better class solidarity. I don’t know if this is possible in the US right now with the rise of the fascist impulses on the right, is it possible for the left to acknowledge the structural stresses pushing people in that direction and offer a more appealing solution? The liberal strategy of dismissing those structural causes only seems to be further enabling the right. “An injury to one is an injury to all” may be too radical a notion for this context, and you can bet the bosses are happy about this working class division. I refuse to accept the workers cant find each other again. Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one.

I tend to find calls for a general strike laughable and unrealistic, so believe me when I say this is an amazing article. The general strike being referred to here would be a targeted effort by some unions spanning industries. Fain cleverly surmises that would bring the country to a halt. He recognizes that you don’t need a ton of people. You don’t need much to clog up the works, and I think it’s actually better this way. Other sectors and industries will gradually be effected by those striking, which creates even more pressure for companies to concede to union demands. It’s a domino effect.

The author deserves a lot of credit here. He isn’t just waffling, there’s a lot of substance. Other progressive publications would do well to view this as a prime example. This author has written a very logical and sensible article, where others tend to write fluff pieces which feel like campaigns and preaching.

After reading the article I not only signed up for Teen Vogue’s political newsletter, I signed up for the United Autoworkers Union newsletter too and I’m not even part of a Union!

If you enjoyed the article check out a book by the same author. Fight like hell, the untold history of American labor