One should not assume that demanding economic justice for Boeing workers means rolling over and playing dead in the face of the companys threat to move to another state (or country). Tshama Sawants response to this threat is a perfect example of why her election is so exciting and important: she recommends that the workers occupy their plants and shut the company down. This, of course, would require solidarity and support from the citizens of the state of Washington, including the workers families and friends, who would need to join them in the factories and/or in marches, pickets and rallies on the streets. This is neither a new idea or as crazy as Boeing and the rest of this countrys rulers would want you to think it sounds. The United Auto Workers engaged in such actions decades ago, and the workers of Seattle shut down and occupied the entire city in a general strike in 1919. Ordinary people need to accept that these are extreme times were living in, that the state of our economy, our governments, and our society is radically dysfunctional, and that radical solutions (which have been proposed and experimented with in multiple variations in the past and in the present) are called for. Nor can they cower in fear and submit every time a bullying corporate thug like Boeing chooses to menace the lives and livelihoods of so many in its greed to protect obscene and skyrocketing profits and executive salaries. Ms. Sawant and the brand of socialists backing her are not in the mold of old-line social democrats like great-hearted Bernie Sanders -- bless his soul -- whose primary focus tends to be on economic redistribution and political reform, and who the ruling class would like to portray extreme left wing of legitimate political discourse, in order to better dismiss and discredit more radical alternatives. Socialist Alternative, groups like it, and movements like Occupy Wall Street and its various local affiliations, have resurrected -- or rather, kept alive -- the original impetus of the socialist labor movement: that socialism involves not just an equitable distribution of wealth within a bureaucratic and hierarchically organized society, but is primarily concerned with the dismantling of those oppressive and restrictive structures and a broad democratic restructuring of society. And central to that is the need for workers to take ownership and control of the means of production for themselves, and of the nations and the worlds natural resources on behalf of and for the benefit of all the people. It would appear the victory scored by Tshama Sawant was due in large part to a united effort by disparate forces on the left who, as in so many other areas of the country and the world, in the past have often expended more time and energy in internecine ideological bickering and political rivalries. It is refreshing to see that they have been able to put that sort of foolishness behind them, finally realizing the critical needs of the historical moment in which we are living, and have thus taken an important step toward the new possibilities and the new world that for so long have been waiting for us to seize them. For the first time in decades it would seem that a just and democratic society are within our grasp, if we will just recognize the opportunity. kirotv/news/news/seattle-city-councilmember-elect-shares-radical-id/nbxbC/
Posted on: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 04:47:44 +0000
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