Following Wisconsin

Like a lot of my friends, I've been following the Wisconsin crisis and the Republican assault on collective bargaining that's both designed to clobber both the Democrats and the remaining institutional resistant formation of civil society, ie. labour opposition. I live in Canada, not Wisconsin, in a province where there has been a history of general strikes (which the labour leadership and the NDP were quick to throw wet blankets on). So it's tempting to say, "well, it's not my job is not directly at stake, and I don't want to seem like I'm telling Wisconsin what to do." I've lived in the informal economy for years, I have no kids, and it's not me facing the prospect of being one of a potential mass firing of thousands.

At the same time, though, the right wing in Canada has sent out readable signals that they plan the same sort of assault on teachers, librarians, etc. So I think everyone in Canada has a lot riding on what happens in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and so many other U.S. states. If the government succeeds in making Wisconsin, effectively, a "right-to-work" state and the rest fall like dominoes, it seems inevitable that union-busting on a massive scale will be tried here sooner rather than later. It's more accurate to say that we're simply facing a tough decision in which each of us has something at stake — careers, kids, being able to make the rent — tomorrow rather than today.



So my intent here isn't to tell Wisconsonians or offer a map for "what to do," but call attention to the way the choice to strike, or to organize a recall, is being presented and discussed. First, to state my position, I think that the strategy of a general strike holds far more promise than a legal and electoral effort (in lieu of job action) where so much has to "go right" for it to work. To me, the comparison to recalling California Governor Gray Davis does not make the recall prospects against Walker a slam dunk, because with Davis, multiple issues were aligned in such a way that everyone seemed to dislike and distrust Davis. Not only would the recall effort have to be successful in all of Wisconsin's districts for the Republican senators to be vulnerable, but the ensuing election would have to not result in the re-election of Republicans. The Democrats elected would have to be absolutely committed to not only restoring, but embellishing labour rights, to punish the Republicans so severely and decisively that this is never attempted again, even with their now-basically-limitless campaign money. It also wrongly assumes that over the next 10 months the Republicans and Koch Brothers will be twiddling their thumbs. At so many points there are ways for the recall effort to go wrong, I can't imagine it succeeding without the additional leverage of serious job action on a massive scale to drive the point home that there will be disruption after disruption if bargaining rights aren't re-secured.

I think, however, that there's a problem with the way that a general strike has been presented (particularly by the Socialist Equality Party) as an abstraction. The general strike is being presented as a tactic, not a strategy, by many of its proponents and its Democratic Party antagonists. Nobody seems to be talking about the strike as something that must be, and can be, built and prepared (like the famous buttons say: "Prepare the General Strike!") For that matter, the recall effort is also presented as a tactic, especially when it is simply presented as the way for Democrats to smother the efforts of the working class. We don't seem to ever address or evaluate the kernel of sensible-seeming strategy in the recall effort that makes it safer-seeming and superficially appealing to workers.

When the strike is presented as this kind of abstract, tactical, either-or choice it seems to end in dead-end arguments like "strike now!" versus "we don't dare!" that make the whole notion of strikes far scarier than it has to be. Presented as either/or and as tactics, the choice also seems to eliminate complementary options in the palette of actions (rolling sick-outs, for example). The tactical choice also depicts real people and communities as frozen in their current position, and not as resistant communities of workers are built and developed through strikes and other activity.

So, I think it's really important for folks to read history of general strikes in the US and Canada and recognize that they were organized and developed, and learn strategies from them. Yes, Wisconsin is not Ontario, but I'd really recommend that everyone check out this article about Ontario's Days of Action in the 90s, for example (hat tip to Phineas of Recomposition Blog for sending this my way):

http://www.labornotes.org/2005/01/ontario-days-action-citywide-political-strike

The short story version of this article is that unions really couldn't rely on their relatively low numbers alone. A whole lot of pre-existing community building, that anticipated the Harris government's moves, was done by both labour and community organizations.

Now, what I've heard from some Wisconsonites that I've talked to online is a total lack of awareness of any community organization outside of labour, that Walker pulled off a blitzkreig, and the recall, 10 months away, is the only course of action that will work. I'm not so sure. If Egypt is sending you a pizza, among other things, and cops and firemen, who aren't directly affected, are supporting you, it seems likely that community support is something that is out there but isn't being heard. (That would be consistent with the trend in unions over the past decades to retreat into the role of service organizations for their members, in spite of the revival of recruitment.) Moreover, in Ontario's case, while community organizing was done before the "crisis," it's clear that the Days of Action themselves drew people out of the woodwork into the fray.

A visiting union rep from Canada perhaps gave me the most informative update I've read so far about Wisconsin from talking to folks on the streets of Madison. He reports that the sizes of the protests in Madison and surrounding cities are the direct result of progressive and radical organizing from the past few years. He speculates that this is why workers seem to be stronger in Wisconsin as opposed to other states.

So I think those of us with more confidence in the strike as a strategy need to present it as such. I don't think we should get caught up in strike vs. recall, and fall into the rhetorical trap of using the recall option as a foil in which one does one or the other. I think that when recall is presented as an exclusive option that can work if we keep our heads down at work and trust the Democrats, this should be challenged by asking its proponents how recall can possibly work without strikes and job action. But most of all, I think we need to present the general strike as something that can be built through job action, and on foundations that are already there.