OCCASIONAL PAPER NO.

2 FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2012

The Lessons of 2011:
Transcending the Old, Fostering the New,
and Settling Outstanding Accounts
By Kali Akuno, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement
The militant working class struggles of 2011
from the strikes and occupation in Wisconsin,
to the countless demonstrations against Wall
Street Banks, the direct action and broad
resistance to the Keystone Pipeline, to housing
occupations throughout the country, to the
defeat of regressive anti-Union legislation
in Ohio, to the (inter)national explosion of
the Occupy Movementdemonstrated the
critical fact that the multinational working class
contained in the United States can stop the
shock doctrine measures being imposed upon
it by transnational capital and the neoliberal
state.
The initial returns on these struggles are not
insubstantial. Just two months into 2012, we
have witnessed ILWU Local 21 coming to an
agreement with transnational conglomerate
EGT/Bunge in large part due to the impact of the Port Shut Down actions in Seattle,
Portland, Oakland, and Los Angeles on December 12, 2011, and the threat of mass
industrial action in Longview by the Occupy Movement allied with the Million Worker
March Movement and militant rank and file members of the ILWU. Inspired by the
Occupy Movement, the mass action in Oakland on November 2, 2001, and the
coastwide actions of December 12, port truck drivers in California and Washington
State took independent organizing and industrial action to win wage and safety
concessions from employers and potential legislation in Washington State that that
will enable the Port Truckers to unionize. The victory in Longview halts the concerted
drive to destroy the ILWU and further weaken organized labor, and the pending
Washington State legislation could potentially reverse decades of circumvention of
the Wagner Act and provide an opening for sectors (and with it oppressed peoples)
historically excluded from its protections.
None of this would be possible without the militant mass action of the multinational
working class, both unionized and non-unionized, acting in open defiance of the rules
of engagement established between organized labor, capital, and the state in the
1930s with the New Deal. As the power struggle between capital and the working
class intensifies over how and in whose interests the economic crisis will be resolved,
the working class would do well to recall the lessons of 2011 and build on them. In
addition to reaffirming the lesson that the working class must rely on militant mass
actionthat is, strikes, occupations, blockades, general strikes and other forms of
industrial actionas a primary means of exerting its own will and power, several
other critical lessons we believe must be affirmed. These lessons include:
1. That in order to halt and reverse the slide of the labor unions, the unions must
wage struggle beyond the confines of the National Labor Relations Board
(NLRB) and/or the Wagner Act framework.
2. That mass action will only be successful if it pulls in and engages broad sectors
of the working class, particularly critical sectors of the 89% of the multinational
working class that is not unionized, and directly addresses their issues and
demands.
3. That new forms of working class organization must be constructed capable of
organizing workers as a self-conscious class that encompasses and incorporates
the broad diversity of its totality as differentiated by race, nationality, gender,
sexuality, and legal status.
4. That the multinational working class must build, maintain, and exert its political
independence from the Democrats (and Republicans), and not rely on electoral
politics and processes (such as the recall efforts in Wisconsin that worked to
negate mass action) to exercise its power, realize its demands, and build the
society it envisions.
5. That the struggle for equity and economic democracy necessitates struggling to
reclaim and redefine as much public space as possibleparticularly the Ports,
given their strategic importance to the distribution of the necessary goods
that sustain lifein
order to rebuild the
commons and exert
democratic control over
various processes of
social production and
exchange.
6. That the decolonization
of the entity presently
known as the United
States national state
is fundamental to the
social and material
liberation of the
multinational working
class, particularly its subjected and colonized sectors, i.e. Indigenous Nations, New
Afrikans (Black people), Xicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Native Hawaiians.
However, it should be noted that the struggles of 2011 and the lessons gleaned
from them did not come out of nowhere. The resistance of 2011 was in large part
a culmination of an escalating number of militant initiatives of resistance throughout
the United States following the financial and economic collapse of 2007 2008.
These initiatives not only established critical precedents, but served as catalysts for
the transformation of social consciousness that stimulated the resistance of 2011.
Some of the most notable of these pre-2011 initiatives included the occupation
of the Republic Windows and Doors Factory in Chicago, Illinois by UE (United
Electrical Workers) Local 1110 in December 2008; the national Take Back the Land
Movement housing occupation initiatives started in the fall of 2009 by the Land and
Housing Action Group (LHAG) (which initially consisted of the Chicago Anti-Eviction
Campaign, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Picture the Homeless, Survivors Village
and Take Back the Land Miami) of the US Human Rights Network (USHRN); and
the Oscar Grant Justice Movement which commenced on December 31
st
, 2008
January 1
st
, 2009 in Oakland, California following a national day of racist carnage
against New Afrikans which saw the police execution of Adolph Grimes in New
Orleans, Louisiana and the police shooting of Robbie Tolan in Bellaire, Texas. Of all the
critical initiatives that occurred prior to 2011, the Oscar Grant Justice Movement was
perhaps the most pre-figurative of the dominant feature of resistance in 2011: the
Occupy Movement.
From its inception, leading elements in the Oscar Grant Justice Movement worked
to establish a General Assembly as a model of collective decision making and social
liberation and advanced the notion of organizing a General Strike to attain justice
and transform social relations in Oakland and the Bay Area. The Oscar Grant Justice
Movement also made critical links with organized labor, particularly ILWU Local 10,
which conducted a demonstration and critical work shutdown of the Port of Oakland
on October 23, 2010. Also, from its inception the Oscar Grant Justice Movement
confronted major repression from the Oakland Police Department, but gradually
drew the attention of the Feds and massive monitoring and infiltration. What
occurred in 2009 2010 was in effect a semi-national occupation of Oakland, which
is a majority Third World city with a long and brutal history of police occupation and
terrorism, particularly targeted at its New Afrikan population. As with the shooting
of Scott Olsen on October 25, 201,1which prompted the call for a General Strike
on November 2, 2011, the police repression of the Oscar Grant Justice Movement
prompted several militant confrontations with the police. It was these militant
confrontations that played a decisive role in securing the conviction (however minor
the charges) of Oscar Grants executioner, Johannes Mehserle. These experiences
played a critical role in inspiring the militancy of 2011 and set the mold and tone of
what is developing on the West Coast at present.
2012 can be a year of critical advances for the multinational working class, but only if
it takes hold of these and other lessons about organizing to serve its own interests
and in its own name. It must also take great pains to not repeat errors of the past
and present, particularly the reactionary politics and polices of white settler trade
unionism that views itself as a partner with capital and a defender of the US national
state; promotes the ongoing dispossession of Indigenous nations; excludes New
Afrikans, Xicanos, Asians, and other oppressed peoples; fosters the super-exploitation
of immigrant and imprisoned labor; devalues the
labor and contributions of women; stigmatizes sexual
and gender non-conformity; promotes economic
growth over ecological sustainability; and partners
with US imperialism (i.e. the strategic partnership
between the US government and US-based
transnational corporations and financial institutions)
to undermine radical unions, social movements, and
national governments in Africa, Asia, Latin America
and the Caribbean.
The opportunity now exists to set a course of action
that creates new forms of working class organization
that can meet the challenges of imperialist
globalization and relegate the limitations of settler
trade unionism and the co-optive restrictions of the NLRB framework to the dustbin
of history. Occupy and the militant orientation of rank and file union resistance
presents us with a vision and process to move forward. As we dream new dreams,
struggle to decolonize the United States and fully emancipate the working class, let us
press forward boldly to transform the world and ourselves.
For further information, or
to link up with us for future
actions and joint organizing,
please visit our websites:
MXGM.org
NavigatingTheStorm.
blogspot.com