People have always been fighting to make things better, and that fight has never been easy, but has always been just. Kim Kelly's book chronicles the working-class heroes who were pushed to the margins or simply left out of U.S. labor history.
Throughout U.S. history, class has been bound up with other forms of oppression—so the disenfranchisement of Black men after Reconstruction decisively shifted class relations.
This op-ed argues that Black labor organizers have long recognized that better conditions for Black and brown workers result in better conditions for everyone.
At the turn of the last century, Ukraine’s labor movement was subject to tsarist domination and divided along linguistic lines. The revolutions of 1917 inspired calls for self-determination and the formation of a common Ukrainian identity.
Critics often say the working class doesn't fight back against exploitation because it's confused about its real interests. But this ignores how capitalism itself leads workers to resign themselves to their situation — and how we can overcome that
The goal isn’t merely eliminating barriers to ascending the strata, but rather flattening the hierarchy altogether. If “equity” is to be a worthwhile word, it will have to mean de-stratifying the systems that impose sexist and racist hierarchies.
Discussions taking place in liberal political circles in this country increasingly define class according to education level. Here, from the United Kingdom, is a different and perhaps more complex approach to this issue.
"I discover a cultural, political and economic legacy that was radically different from the reality I had grown up in: a legacy that had workers and farmers at its core ... as agents in the development of a new society, economy and culture"
US politics have become hyperpolarized along partisan lines. But they don’t have to be. Millions of Americans worry more about paying the rent or medical bills than what’s on cable news. They can be won over by a working-class economic agenda.
The stories in Standing Up are linked thematically and appear in chronological order, beginning with 1970. For those of us who have similarly spent time as organizers, the book feels like an anthropological field trip into the past.
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