The Forcefield of Solidarity

Abstract

For American workers, as Mike Davis once argued, defeat compounds defeat, creating an ever-growing legacy of workingclass organizations that either shatter or become compromised—racist, or corrupt, or ossified and bureaucratic, or in bed with their enemies, or tiny and weak. These organizations transmit their historical damage onto the subsequent generation; each cohort navigates a set of impossible choices and gives shape to the impossible choices facing the next one. Individual activists, militants, and organizers must confront these legacies, which play out not just within their organizations but within themselves. Yet on rare occasions, workers find an opening and the room to run, and summon the courage to pursue it. In the process, they may transform an existing organization, shoving it in a new direction, or they may shake it off like dead skin and create something new.