Another world is possible
Last week, UPS employees were poised to go on a historic strike for higher wages and safer working conditions. If the company’s 340,000 unionized employees had gone on strike, it would have been the largest single-employer strike in U.S. history. And, their collective power worked - the Teamsters have won a historic contract for UPS workers.
Here’s what we can know with clarity: 1) UPS workers are primarily Black, brown, and femme 2) Living wages and job safety are the bare minimum, and racial capitalism is denying us our humanity 3) The people driving the extraction of our livelihoods and resources are terrified of what we are capable of. Working class people have the collective power to shut the machine down and demand more.
In local labor history, the city of Minneapolis celebrated Aquatennial last weekend. This celebration was conceived by business owners in 1940, to distract energy and attention from the anniversary of Bloody Friday, when 67 striking workers were shot and 2 were killed by Minneapolis Police during the 1934 teamster strike. In the years following the strike, Teamsters organized inclusive picnics and commemorative celebrations, with over 20,000 members and their families in attendance. The Aquatennial replaced these events with exclusive, business-sponsored performances in order to “take the minds of Minneapolis citizens off past troubles and focus all minds throughout the state on some pleasant event occurring in Minneapolis”.
As we grapple with our histories and know that they continue to be erased and sanitized, we hold onto what we know in the present; that the Minneapolis Police Department is internationally famous for its racist violence and corruption, and that our communities have been organizing for change since its inception.
We commit to remembering, and to not being distracted. The Teamsters won their 1934 strike in spite of corporate greed directly collaborating with police in an attempt to break the strike with violence. Their victory led to more workers rights and protections. What else could be possible in Minneapolis? We honor this legacy of organizing by carrying it forward.
The corporate and billionaire classes are building bunkers and causing further displacement of the multiracial working class by buying property in “climate refuge” cities like Duluth to try to escape the climate disaster their reckless wealth hoarding has caused. We continue to experience the hottest days ever recorded, the unbreathable air of wildfire smoke, and floods and droughts that kill millions of people every year, while wealthy folks plan to buy their way to safety. Their exit strategy does not include us.
The legacy of labor organizing, its ongoing historic power, and the threat it poses to the machine of racial capitalism ground us in possibility.
What if this moment could be our collective exit strategy into a new world, one where clean energy is prioritized and climate solutions are implemented in a way that cares for those who have been, and continue to be, the most vulnerable and impacted? We have the will, the power, and it is possible. We choose to imagine winning, and we choose to put our imagination into action.
Opportunities for learning and action:
Learn how the largest single-employer strike in U.S. history could frame worker power as a climate solution.
“Apocalyptic thinking is due to another narrative failure: the inability to imagine a world different than the one we currently inhabit.” Read Rebecca Solnit’s (lengthy), brilliant, and necessary article on the importance of popular imagination and collective memory in overcoming the climate crisis.
“Westerners always seemed to be looking for a linear course of action, ‘to figure out how to feel, then figure out how to act, then act. But here, we just act, and we feel things during, we feel things after, and then we act again.’” Jia Tolentino’s article explores “climate emotions”, privilege, and action.
In Minneapolis, Relationships Evolving Possibilities (REP) is reimagining collective safety, and creating access to caring crisis responses. The values guiding their work are: Black love and liberation, ancestral knowledge, and radical consent. Learn more and volunteer with REP.
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