A questionnaire about political/workplace organisation

Hi John,
It's actually a good set of questions. The only thing is that it presumes the network/organisation has peaked and declined or is dead, and the MWR specific thing.

Also be good to tighten up the wording on 'more traditional organisations'. I'd suggest changing that to "why were other types of organisation not seen as appropriate?", or to change that into a positive statement - "what are the positives, negatives and quirks of organising the way you have?"

I'd also say to ask a question on what others could learn from your struggle(s) for what they're up to as the question on what the interviewee sees as the important things is a bit open to interpretation and might be viewed kind of philosophically.

Haha my pessimistic side coming out!

Cheers for the input, will update the questions later

There's a thread about it here

Link fixed- pingtiao

be sure to spread that outside of Libcom too john.

Gün Zileli used to be No.2 in the Isçi Partisi (Worker's Party) in Turkey, a reasonably large organisation, which in his day was Maoist, and today is semi fascist in my opinion.

He broke with them and is now a 'left anarchist' (He agrees with us on unions, and national liberation) in London. I have only met him once, but I think that Ret might know him. I don't know if he speaks English, but he has been there for over ten years so I presume he does.

Devrim

If it's the same guy who was involved in the Libertarian 5th May Group, I think his group wrote the piece in the library about Turkish anarchism

http://libcom.org/history/1986-1996-anarchism-in-turkey

Regards,

Martin

OK, here's nothing . . .

This is about the "workplace resistance group" called Uprise!

I reccomend these articles on our efforts:

http://nefac.net/node/98

http://www.ainfos.ca/02/oct/ainfos00440.html

WHO AM I? I post under the sophisticated & sublime name kdog. I describe my politics as revolutionary anarchist. I am a past member of several midwest (U.S.) anarchist collectives and two attempts to organize anarchist federations. My partner and I have two young sons. I am a worker.

THE GROUP? The group Uprise! was an attempt to organize what y'all call "workplace resistance groups" and what i/we thought of as an explicitly revolutionary "extra-union" organization at United Parcel Service (UPS) in Chicago, IL (U.S.)

HOW BIG? Our group never got very big. Four core members, and a number of supporters over it's two years of life (2002-2003 I think). We were able, however, to influence events somewhat and learn alot.

STARTED HOW? It got started by myself and another older radical seeing each other at union meetings and seeing the need for a more radical grassroots approach -especially toward the hundreds of part-time workers.

THE UNION? We did critically participate within the union - two of us were elected stewards. But we did not limit our political work to the union structures or to the role of union opposition. Our main constituency were workers who did not orient to the union,we emphasized organizing solidarity amongst grassroots workers at work. But we didn't exclude intervening at union meetings or steward meetings either. Thus "Extra-Union".

PROBLEMS? Where to begin? The main problem was that although we were able to strike a chord with the many workers we were unable for a variety of reasons to bring them into the organization or into consistent joint organizing and action. The two original members of our group were both white amongst a heavily Black workforce, and that was a big obstacle to folks actually joining.

Our explicitly revolutionary stance, while useful for distinguishing ourselves from the socilaists (ISO, like the brit SWP)who oriented to the bureaucracy and reformism, made it a big jump for workers to consider joining. In retrospect maybe organizing the group around direct-action and direct-democracy might have been able to include more workers in a collective dialogue and action planning.

Other problems include our relative poverty and lack of resources made it hard to meet the needs of the workers that did approach us the one moment when we did have an actual opportunity to become a mass organization. The anarchist collective I was a part of - with just a couple of exceptions - was not able to give any support either. These anarchists were just not ready politically or psychologically to engage with the poorer sections of the working-classes.

We faced a bit of repression from the company and the union. It's all in the articles linked above . . .

ACTIONS? There were a number of small steward type battles that we were involved with all the time (over management doing union work, someone getting fired, sexual harrassment, a one day strike by the union, etc.) but there were three episodes that stand out the most:

-The first was a small job action in which 9 UPS package car drivers briefly joined an anti-police brutality demo together in our UPS trucks.

-The campaign to vote down the union & company's contract. This was a fairly well organized effort with stickers flyers lots of leafletting. It provoked some major confrontations with the company's security goons at one large facility where one of our members worked.

-finally anti-war organizing at the lead up to Bush's invasion

Our actions were varied. From using the steward position and our leaflets to agitate around all kinds of daily abuses, to the VOTE NO campaign, to interventions/confrontations at union meetings, to the rde over to the demo while on the clock. (there were many little things I'm forgetting)

during the Vote No campaign, because of the excellent reception our agitprop and rap was receiving at the massive CACH facility (2nd largest UPS facility in N. America) it became a goal to reach a point where a mass walk-out could be called over the Living Wage demand. If we had been better organized and had more resources/outside support this was a real possibility. Such an action would have had a huge impact . . .

WHO WE WERE?
Our four members:
me -irish amerikan dude early 30's anarchist veteran of ARA & L&R and at that time FRAC

other dude- older white jewish guy veteran of the 60's struggles, was part of a Panther-affiliated project to do community organizing in Chicago's "white ghetto" Bridgeport neighborhood.

other dude - Black mid twenties worker with no political history. Natural "solidarity steward" and good friend.

other dude - young working-class mexican, singer in punk band, member with me of the BRICK anarchist collective (FRAC).

We had a number of other workers who supported us - from passively to at times pretty firmly (voted with us, came to meetings we called, helped get out flyers and stickers, took action) Like the workforce as a whole they were mostly African-American and a disproportionate number of our supporters were women tho our core membership was all men.

we were never able to develop a base beyond the UPS workplaces organized under TEAMSTERS LOCAL 705.

ENDED HOW? One of our core was fired. Two others quit and I transferred to another city where I was fired. (both firings were clearly retalitory for our activities)

I would really refer comrades to the two links above for more.The highpoints are described there . . .

Thanks.

Tacks - yeah you can sense him grappling with the very concept..

John. - Hey you got more than you bargained for with the previous two posts there.. Normally in life you tend to get less than you ask for.. more is cool.

Re: your qs - the third and fourth from the bottom appear to be virtually identical and can be merged.

I agree that the most imp. q to ask is for the interviewees views on the applicability of their groups experiences to overall workers struggle.

I also agree that it is great when an interview has a natural flow and the MWR interview is a prime example of that. You have picked a great template to use here.

Love the observations of Dundee and co of the negative slanting of the qs - assuming that the glory days are in the past and the group is declining or folding. If I had seen this thread before Dundee i would have beat him to it with that observation.

I look forward to reading these interviews and will let you know of any more suggestions.Its a bit late now..

Btw what happened to that much touted super-long libcom users questionnaire discussed last year? You know, the one with all the intrusive questions??

Love

LW X

Er yeah but what do you mean, spread it outside of libcom? The idea is to get it to people who've been involved in different kinds of libertarian workplace organisation (i.e. not many peopl), and to try to get them to send responses to us. I'm not going to print the questions out and hand them out on the street or round my office, if that's what you're asking.

I want to do the same with struggles too, prol-pos have a struggle questionnaire but it's too long, i will email them about it first though.

Thugarchist,

What class is Andy Stern a member of? Jimmy Hoffa Jr.? How about the Democratic party politicians (and Republicans)that SEIU throws millions of dollars and hours into electing. Which class are they beholden to?

Why have you chosen to participate in this union as an unelected paid staffer, instead of working as a janitor or other rank and filer like the rest of the dues base has to?

Duke (Thugarchist) refuses to answer seriously therefore I feel compelled to answer da k-dawg

Class of 75 University of Pennslyvania

University of Michigan 1966

Organize an anarchist boycott of the elections!! Organize fellow workers to stand outside polling places and hand out fliers with punk rock pictures that say "no matyter who you vote for government wins!"

Only rich kids with something to prove "choose" to work as a janitor etc. Most working class kids do everything they can to get out of that situation.

you go too far.Let's keep this comradely

Dude, don't upset the DOG!

This comment has been moved here.

Guys, this is a serious thread in organise, if you want to throw idle threats and insults around cyberspace can you do it elsewhere please. cheers.

Edit: right that took ages to split and i don't want to have to do it again, so play nice kids