Police, class solidarity, and Strike!

I mentioned it in the comment section on the Strike! page, but it's this bit referring to the 2011 protests in Wisconsin (which preceded the Occupy movement) against a state bill that attacked collective bargaining rights for state workers, among other things:

Brecher wrote: In a blatant effort to divide the public sector workforce and pacify the public, the governor’s budget repair bill had exempted local and state law enforcement and fire employees from the gutting of collective bargaining. But members of the uniformed forces showed extraordinary solidarity with other workers. A firefighter’s bagpipe band, some members in kilts and full regalia, some in their work uniforms, periodically marched through the capitol “to wild applause.” The firefighters’ participation in turn influenced the police. Police organized “Cops 4 Labor” and dozens of members of the Wisconsin Police Union joined the occupation overnight.

Firefighter and police support for the demonstrations reportedly helped prevent the governor from ordering attacks on the protestors. Capitol police chief Charles Tubb refused to remove demonstrators and commended their behavior and cooperation. Although on one occasion police carried protestors away from a hallway, during ten days of continuous protests there was not a single arrest. While some observers portrayed this as an exercise of the authorities’ “soft power,” it was clearly also an expression of class solidarity. Dave Poklinkowski of the IBEW described a young cop imported for duty from Manitowoc saying to him, “It’s truly inspirational,” then adding, “and we know we are next.”

Just to muddy the waters, there was a bit in a documentary on the Spanish Civil War where a cop explained they couldn’t go along with orders to suppress the CNT-FAI in Barcelona, as they had spilt blood together.

I think the only time when we can seriously speak of "class solidarity" between the police and actual workers is when the former stop being police and cross over to join workers (the same applies to the military). You can't really speak of "class solidarity" when the police are just being "strategically gentle or conciliatory" with protesters, especially when a harsher approach might escalate protests, or when they set up some "Cops 4 Labor" group. If the police who sympathized with the protesters were ordered to clear them away (or to not join in, which I'm assuming they were to some degree), then we could have easily seen which side they were actually on. I'm also not sure about all the details of the 2011 Wisconsin protests, but I imagine that city officials or whatever authority could have removed the capitol police chief had there actually been serious pressure on him to crack down on the demonstrators. In that scenario, if he then refused to act accordingly and was removed, then I think we could potentially talk about "class solidarity" (or more accurately: the defenders of the bourgeois order crossing over and joining the ranks of the working class), but that's not what happened. The capitol police chief seems to have instead freely resigned in 2012. We also can't really speak of "class solidarity" when lower-level police are just following orders from above and are instructed to not act aggressively, seeing as how that's hardly some genuine expression of support for protesters.

Despite the criticisms from some Wisconsin Republicans, it seems that other Republicans also praised the capitol police chief for his non-aggressive approach at the time, including the governor's secretary of administration:

Tubbs drew criticism from Republican lawmakers such as Rep. Steve Nass of Whitewater for not being forceful enough with demonstrators.

But he received praise Tuesday from Gov. Scott Walker's secretary of administration, Mike Huebsch.

"During some of the most challenging times in the history of our state capitol, Chief Tubbs maintained a steady and even hand in meeting the goal of protecting public safety. In the face of, at times, very vocal criticism, I appreciate Chief Tubbs remaining professional and focused on the core mission of the capitol Police," Huebsch said in a statement.

It also seems like the governor himself was more or less in agreement with the police chief's non-aggressive approach, seeing as how his spokesperson praised him around the same time too:

Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie said Tubbs did “an exemplary job” managing security at the Capitol and praised him for working well with both the administration and the public. “He was fair, reasonable, and showed a true willingness to protect and serve the public,” Werwie said.

So yeah, I'm not at all convinced by Brecher's argument that the 2011 Wisconsin protests provide an example of "class solidarity" between workers and police, especially when the two are fundamentally and structurally at odds with one another within capitalist society.

As I said in the other thread, I was in Wisconsin during this time and I do not really agree with Brecher.

It is true that the police were less aggressive and less prone to brutality and arrests during the time the movement was active. I don't think this is necessarily because there was some kind of widespread sympathy by the cops for the movement. I think there were other factors

-The movement was partially kicked off when state senate Democrats fled the state, thus paralyzing the state senate from being able to pass the bill that would have severely limited public sector collective bargaining rights. So the movement was always associated with one of the two main political parties in the state. I'm not sure if that would matter in 2025, but I think it mattered in 2011.

-Madison, Wisconsin has a long history of activism and building occupations and I would bet that the police there have strategies for dealing with that are different than other places.

-The participants in the movement were overwhelmingly working class or 'middle class' white people, often older. It is one thing if everyone sees a cop beat up a skinny 20something black bloc kid, or someone black or Latino/a. It's another thing entirely to club a 55 year old white high schoolteacher from Sun Prairie or a 42 year old Ironworker from Waukesha. Cops absolutely respond differently based on demographics. This is why we often had a tall middle aged white guy be the person dealing with police when doing pickets or protests in the Twin Cities IWW.

I also don't really understand why he skipped over the mill girls (textile workers) in the early nineteenth century and instead started with the 1870s. There is definitely plenty of material there (and "turn-outs"/strikes!) to write about for that part of American labor history (e.g. the 1845 Allegheny Cotton Mill Strike). Ware's book The Industrial Worker and Foner's book The Factory Girls (primary source collection) are two works that deal with this period.

Brecher argues that strikes were relatively rare until after the Civil War, which is something I don't really agree with at all:

Brecher wrote: Strikes occurred in North America as early as 1636, but for the next two centuries they were rare, small, and local. Strikers and their organizations were often prosecuted as illegal conspirators.

[...]

Yet until after the Civil War, the great majority of workers were self-employed. They might protest by voting, by demonstrating, by rioting, even from time to time by armed rebellion, but they could not strike.

Thus this book starts a dozen years after the Civil War, with the Great Upheaval of 1877—the first event in U.S. history to bring to the country’s attention the vast new class of workers who possessed neither workshops nor farms, and thus had to work for those who did, the new class of industrial capitalists.

I could point to numerous instances of workers striking during the first half of the nineteenth century (e.g. textile workers in Lowell, Allegheny and Fall River), so I don't think it's at all accurate to describe them as rare occurences. Sarah Bagley and other women textile workers in fact formed one of the first women labor unions within the US during this time (the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association). Nonetheless, I still appreciate Brecher's contribution to American labor history.

Fair enough, it's been a while since I read Brecher's book, so I must have overlooked how he was specifically concerned with "mass strike" events. I still don't feel it's accurate to describe strikes as rare occurrences before the Civil War though, or even small in nature. The strike in Allegheny for example included around 4,000 operatives,[1] and there were also discussions to link this struggle up with the struggles of textile workers in New England as part of the broader Ten-Hour Movement:

Pittsburgh Spirit of Liberty wrote: We labor not only in hope, but in confidence of ultimate triumph in the ten-hour movement. We have made arrangements for continuing the warfare by meetings, associations, &c.; a correspondence will be opened with the operatives eastward [in New England]; a publication devoted to the cause is projected; and we have received the first number of a monthly tract commenced by the Lowell operatives, since the strike took place here. They are blind who do not see that we have every reason to stand fast, and be confident of triumph. The manufacturers will not risk another five weeks' suspension for a slight consideration. They have lost three hundred and forty hours by the suspension—more than half a year's loss, at two hours per day.

However, I don't think much ever really came from these discussions by workers in Pennsylvania and New England to unite against the manufacturing system. According to Ware, who deals with this strike in his book, it seems like things sort of fizzled out:

Ware wrote: The contention of the employers that they could not compete with the Eastern mills unless the latter adopted the ten-hour day led to a rapprochement of the two movements. A correspondence was opened up by the Pittsburgh operatives and their friends with the operatives of Lowell, and the latter seem to have sent to Pittsburgh one of the Factory Tracts. The two movements reached a point of agreement in the resolution at Cluer's Manchester meeting in December, to concur in the plan of the Pittsburgh and Allegheny operatives "that the Fourth of July, 1846, shall be the day fixed upon by the operatives of America to declare their independence of the oppressive manufacturing power which has been imported from old monarchical England, and is now being ingrafted upon the business institutions of our country." No such declaration of independence was ever made, though the New England operatives busied themselves with preparations and talked about it. (p. 142)

Similarly, it's not really accurate of Brecher to describe the Great Upheaval of 1877 as the first event that brought to the country's attention a new class of wage-workers:

Brecher wrote: Thus this book starts a dozen years after the Civil War, with the Great Upheaval of 1877—the first event in U.S. history to bring to the country’s attention the vast new class of workers who possessed neither workshops nor farms, and thus had to work for those who did, the new class of industrial capitalists.

Virtually everyone in the north was aware of the rise of the manufacturing system, centered primarily around the textile industry (Lowell is literally nicknamed the "City of Spindles"), during the first half of the nineteenth century. Countless periodicals and newspapers dealt with the rise of the factory system and criticized it from every possible angle (e.g. the Voice of Industry and the Harbinger). They drew attention, for example, to the appalling condition of the operatives and attacked the capitalists themselves for enriching themselves through other people's labor, which they argued was not very Christian given how they were indolent and did not earn such gains "by the sweat of their own brow." Slavery's advocates in the south (e.g. George Fitzhugh) similarly cited the condition of northern factory operatives as an argument against freeing slaves, claiming that slaveholders supposedly "treated their slaves better" than the manufacturers who had no obligation to look after their wage-workers. The factory system, together with the new class of propertyless wage-workers, was actually a major topic of discussion within the US well before the Great Upheaval of 1877.

1. Other sources, such as Ware's book, place the number at around 5,000 (p. 141).