Mike Lee, RIP
How do we deal with a Karen or a Ken?
Predictive Dialing For Dollars: Phoning at the Cutting Edge of Technology
In response to the release Boots Riley's film Sorry to Bother You in 2018, I wrote this piece about my own experience working in a call center -- and how it took place against the backdrop of my own political radicalization. I post it today in honor of Juneteenth, where my former union, ILWU, will shut down all 29 ports on the U.S. West Coast as part of protests against racism and police violence.
The Black Rebellions (1967) by Dave Dellinger
Dave Dellinger, principled anarcho-pacifist revolutionary (and one of the Chicago 7 defendants in 1969), wrote this essay in response to liberals – like Martin Luther King – endorsing federal troops being called in to suppress the 1967 Detroit Riots. His position is that we support "the side of the oppressed and exploited," in this case fighters for black liberation during the uprisings in Newark, Detroit and Spanish Harlem, not the "establishment" – meaning the state's repressive forces in the form of cops and the military.
Working Class Decomposition and Gig Economy Work
On 8 May 2019 around 300 protesters, mostly Uber and Lyft drivers, blocked Market Street in San Francisco in front of Uber's international headquarters as part of a global strike by drivers timed to coincide with Uber's IPO. This brief analysis attempts to situate these struggles against working class decomposition, with its roots in neoliberal deregulation, and the rise of so-called "gig economy" work.
Oakland Strike: Balance Sheet, Lessons, and What Next?
Reflections on Chicago labor conferences 2018
The following is my personal, subjective account of my experiences in Chicago for two back-to-back gatherings of working class militants and activists from April 5-8, 2018. The first was the Railroad Workers United Convention and the second was the Labor Notes Conference (I apologize in advance for my stream of consciousness digressions and clunky note-taking style).
IWW and radical influences on the San Francisco waterfront
For May Day 2017 Local 10 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union invoked a contractual "stop-work" privilege and refused to work any Bay Area docks in celebration of International Workers Day for the third consecutive year. This speech, originally delivered at the 75th Anniversary of the 1934 San Francisco General Strike at the Marine Firemen’s Hall in San Francisco, was adapted for the rally preceding the May Day march on May 1, 2017.
Bay Area bigly tells Trump: Get your small hands off my pussy
With the inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the United States, protests occurred in at least 370 cities around the world. The following is a subjective account of the Women's Marches that filled the streets of Oakland and San Francisco, California with hundreds of thousands on January 21, 2017.
Black Panthers at 50: Reflections on their legacy
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, founded in Oakland, California. I went to the Oakland Museum of California to see the exhibit "All Power to the People: Black Panthers at 50" and it got me to reflect on how the Panthers and other movements of that era affected many radical projects that continued in their legacy.
James Green- R.I.P.
James Green, labor historian, professor at University of Massachusetts, and writer died June 23, 2016 in Boston. He was the author of the definitive work Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America in 2006. Here's the New York Times obituary.
Grace Lee Boggs R.I.P.
Reflections on "Straight Outta Compton"
I just saw Straight Outta Compton near my home, in a tiny theater that dates back to the silent era (1913) and which has miraculously survived the wrecking ball. It brought up so many vivid memories and thoughts since N.W.A.'s music was kinda the soundtrack of my life as I grew into adulthood and was politicized by events depicted in the film.