Posted by grillcover on May 21, 2022
Originally published: 5/08/2021
Reflections: (December 2020 - January 2021)
This update is coming much, much (edit: much) later than I'd like, but to keep striving toward that proper "monthly update" goal I'm going to make this post about just two months (down from three) and then hold myself to making February (and March, and now April) their own posts. I think the key is going to be starting a post draft at the beginning of every month and then leaving myself notes as I go. Otherwise it becomes so, so daunting to try and sit down and write all this out. And, dear reader, I doubt I need to tell you that December & January were... eventful.
Like last post, it's gonna be helpful for me to break this down into life & art, and then protest & organizing by issue. Or darkest days in American history.
Life & Art
At the end of the last update I'd predicted "a period of relative quiescence" not out of any rational analysis of my life and the world, but merely a deep desire for it to be true. While it didn't quite play out that way, I did find some stretches to rest & recuperate. What I've found is that my organizing work is very much like a muscle, or learning a skill; so long as I don't burn myself out, when I return to it after some recovery I feel that much stronger and more capable.
But amidst all the politics, on December 29th I had a wonderful evening of artistic celebration with Broken Box Mime Theater for our 9th Annual Black & White Ball. This is usually one of the most fun winter parties in independent theater, and it felt like only yesterday we were at the The Dumbo Loft gathering in person. But in keeping with the company's commitment to community and making something out of nothing (get it?) the world-beaters on the staff whipped up an amazing digital event, full with multiple streams, games, a nostalgia-filled viewing room, and a lot of hype and support from our artistic community. For an evening things almost felt normal.
And then on a bit of a whim on New Year's Eve, and then following up the next day, I decided to formally parse my two main Twitter accounts, place the display names where they belonged, and commit to these different personae online. Now, it's a bit too complicated to lay out here why this is so meaningful to me, and I'm working on a full article detailing the personal philosophy & media theory behind it, but briefly I'll allow my shadow self explain:
Above: My new pinned thread confirms to passersby that, yes, I'm a weirdo.
Next up, I'd considered including my first wave of emails to the Big List of Everyone in the "Organizing" section below, because as it's unfolded it's lit up my political imagination in how these personal re-connections feel like a sort of "deep relational organizing," in the way we talk about "deep canvassing" sessions, as opposed to merely door-knocking or pounding pavement for short campaign convos.
See, all the calls across a variety of political campaigns to do "relational organizing" have long paralyzed me with social anxiety, because despite assurances and anecdotes that, "Friends really like hearing from you!" there's something deeply uncomfortable and transactional about hitting up people I'm no longer in close touch with to participate in some issue I'm working on. As an introvert who struggles with maintaining relationships already, never mind during the pandemic, "relational organizing" felt like a great way to trigger panic attacks and further self-alienate.
But these emails have been something else entirely, which is why they're up here in "Life." So far, before burning out, I've written 127 personal emails, received amazing replies from 50 people, and have tried to keep up with responding to as many as I could, despite some falling through the Gmail cracks for a bit (why does it sometimes group the same subject lines and sometimes have fresh threads??). This was totally overwhelming, but I'm happy to say in mostly good ways.
On an existential level, reaching out and sending my update / rundown felt like asserting myself on the probability space of distant noumena-- abolishing indeterminant or outdated understandings or projections of my being, and bringing me a deep confidence in my personhood. But more importantly, the feedback from this cohort, this first batch of the people I care to keep in my life, was a kind of love & friendship bomb that went off in my soul right when I was really, really needing it.
That some folks decided to subscribe to the newsletter or even become Patrons still gives me chills. It's not much, but it feels like the start of something. I still have a few hundred people I intend to reach out to, and I'm still finding the right balance of input/output/throughput, but it's wind in my tattered sails like you wouldn't believe. And if you're reading this, chances are you're a treasured gust yourself.
Before moving on I'd be remiss to leave out a dumbass meme I made in December based on a classic format that honestly kinda captures both "Life" and "Organizing" looking back on 2020-- so I'll put it here in the awkward space between. What I love about it is how every word is true, and it makes me feel silly and proud and vulnerable and strong all at once. It's low brow, and you might not get it, but it's art that nevertheless means a lot to me.
Below: Not actually a call-out to anyone I know; this is me vs. The Discourse™.
Protest & Organizing
Again I'll be breaking this into the various areas and events I was involved in. For most of December & January I was in the same boat as last time: too much up in the air personally and professionally to take on many responsibilities, and filled with nonstop fear & dread about the transfer of power and ongoing coup. It even had me again writing Vote Forward letters to Georgia to do what I could to eke out the Senate wins there.
I tried my hand at fundraising a bit for a City Council candidate, but wasn't especially successful. Thankfully he's had one of the most successful grassroots fundraising efforts in the city, so I didn't feel like I'd dropped the ball too badly. I did activate one potential constituent for the campaign, an organizer I really admire, so I think that made it worth it.
But by the end of January, I'd started to take on some small responsibilities, which have since snowballed into my becoming much more enmeshed in NYC-DSA campaigns. I suspect this is because of the real field work that finally compelled face-to-face, non-anonymous contact with my comrades that helped dispel the alienating effects of "meeting" and "working" with people on Zoom and Slack. This was a serious psychological hurdle I needed to get over before feeling really involved, and it started back in December with a week of action for:
Tax The Rich!
As alluded to in the last update, I was bearing down on a week of action to kick off this crucial state-wide campaign. The long and short is, New York is facing a major budget shortfall and considering massive cuts to services while not even bothering to raise money from NY-based billionaires, who'd increased their overall wealth by $90 billion during the pandemic alone.
So with a coalition of groups around the state, and in collaboration with the socialists already in Albany, six new bills to raise taxes on the wealthy were conceived and written as a part of the Invest in Our NY Act. These sensible bills included a billionaire tax, financial transaction tax, capital gains tax, and more to raise $50+ billion for the state each year. Coalition partners, fueled by DSA volunteers, led a massive operation targeting lawmakers and activating the public around the rally cry, "Tax The Rich!"
In practice, this meant thousands of emails to legislators, phonebanking constituents and passing them through to legislators' offices, and a massive field campaign to place door hangers containing tons of information, including a sample script and their target representative's phone number for them to call. The week of action was meant as a campaign kick-start to test the outreach and be a shot across Albany's bow before the New Year.
Eager to recapture the earnest optimism of my Bernie 2020 canvassing, I signed up for as many shifts as I could in South and Central Brooklyn, December 8th - 12th. Each shift meant visiting ~150 targeted residences in a given area (or, "turf") cut up by the data wonks upstairs and passed along to the field team, with my door-hanging progress all synced via app to our central database. Using the app, MiniVAN, can make it feel a bit like a real-life video game, which is all the more satisfying for my well-trained dopaminergic system. And getting out of the apartment and into the community was a real soul salve.
By the end of the week I'd spread the word to 750+ homes, and Tweeting at my own Assembly Member about it got a positive response immediately. What makes this especially satisfying is knowing that as BK Dem Party chair she's actually furious about the campaign, and that her Tweet was immediately "Liked" by her private "community relations" PR & crisis management firm. I had plenty of good conversations with folks I'd canvassed along the way, but seeing that was the first taste, even just from the ground level, of how this campaign might rustle some feathers.
After the holidays and transfer of power, the campaign kicked off again the weekend of January 30th - 31st. The plan from then until the end of March, when the final state budget is due, was to host regular phonebanks and hit the bricks every weekend for targeted door-hanging shifts around the city. In January, I dove back in as a rank-and-file volunteer, and signed up to lead shifts starting in February. It felt good to begin an important campaign with a concrete timeline at a time when the future felt so indeterminate.
#ForceTheVote / Movement for a People's Party
I genuinely don't know where to begin with one. While important in many ways, this saga is undoubtedly the most difficult to explain to folks not already involved in left subculture, political wonkery, and grassroots infighting. I don't want to be glib nor overstate my influence on how it all played out, and someday I intend to really chart out the juicy drama (with receipts!), so for now I'll do my best to give a brief overview-- but unless you're curious this might be a good section to skip.
"Force The Vote" (FTV) became a catchphrase and hashtag back in November to describe an idea popularized by comedian-turned-political-commentator Jimmy Dore to make sure Medicare For All (M4A) got a vote on the House floor ASAP. The premise was that with the slim House majority a handful of Congressmembers, namely the "Squad," had the power to hold Dems hostage by withholding their votes from Nancy Pelosi as speaker in the Jan. 3rd vote, in order to compel her to bring M4A to the floor as soon as she was selected.
Through December the idea was hotly debated, but gained little support among the broad coalition of groups long fighting for M4A, for a variety of practical as well as personal reasons. But there was one group all-in: the Movement for a People's Party (MPP), an organization purporting to be building a third major party along populist lines. I'd been a casual observer for years and onboard in theory, even watching with some excitement the "convention" in August that included luminaries like Cornel West and firebrands like Chris Hedges.
But then literally overnight, MPP announced they'd selected an Advisory Council, and they would be supporting the FTV effort with volunteer support and publicity. This was odd, because my understanding was that MPP wasn't anywhere near being an actual party, or even an organization with proper bylaws and the promised democratic processes, and this move was putting the cart well before the horse. And the unelected Advisory Council was really just the speaker list from the summer, made up mostly of celebrities and left media figures. And now their combined fanbases were maligning people I knew to be doing good work and it was becoming a serious disruption. Something felt very off.
Things really heated up for me on December 30th when the same Jimmy Dore who'd been pushing FTV went on a high-profile, unhinged tirade, attacking the Squad, other leftists, and even his own collaborators with totally inappropriate vileness. Immediately the wagons started to circle, people with skin in the game leapt to his defense, and the various fanbases of aligned media figures dug in their heels in wildly unproductive ways.
I had previously joined the FTV Slack organizing space and had been trying in good faith to provide political education, positivity, and liaising with these newly activated folks, because there was a lot of good, genuine energy there. With a little bit of structure and little less Twitter drama these folks could certainly be allies. But when things started exploding, I had my work cut out for me.
From there, the story becomes a labyrinth. I was smelling smoke from MPP so I joined their Slack and sure enough found a flaming battlefield with warring factions of volunteers, leadership, and anonymous shit-stirrers-- a mishmash of real organizers, inexperienced power-trippers, con artists, possible spooks, real jackasses, and a whole mess of earnest, caring people caught in the middle wishing things could pull together.
Back on Force The Vote, after the speakership vote came and went January 3rd with the Squad doing what they actually needed to do to set the legislative stage for the term, people were dug in worse than ever. I did my part to keep the discussions substantive and had put in a lot of effort to educate folks, to no avail. On the plus side, I do think my efforts contributed to the moral high ground that emerged beyond the organizing space for the critics of FTV. A lot of us were earnestly engaging the diehard FTV volunteers in good faith but some people calling the shots, for a variety of reasons, conscious or unconscious, seemed more motivated by the entertainment value of the feud than the hard work of coalition-building.
The saga came to a dramatic climax on January 24th when Jimmy Dore, originator of the meme himself, invited a Boogaloo Boy onto his show and obliviously platformed a deeply disturbed movement dedicated to (racial) civil war to his hundreds of thousands of viewers. That linked video also does a good job of placing all of this in context, and how these sparks of left drama and right-wing infiltration are a part of what sets dry cultural tinder aflame.
For days I found myself in both FTV and MPP Slack spaces with other critics having heated arguments and posting evidence of Boogaloo / Neo-Nazi / fascist militia overlap before people began to be troubled by the associations and were finally questioning their faves. Since then as both groups continue to evolve my involvement has been relatively minimal-- with the silver lining being that I'm much more familiar with Slack now for my actual org work.
January 6th, 2021
I've gone back and forth whether to recount this story, and in what level of detail. I've wondered if I should save it exclusively for a locked post. I'd considered writing the whole section as a counterfactual entitled, "If I Had Gone to D.C. On The Sixth." But a few months out, after a relatively peaceful transfer of power, finding relief & (some) closure in watching the impeachment and still no FBI knocking on my door, I feel comfortable being more open.
The premise of the story is that I went on a day trip to D.C. on January 6th to stand in solidarity with BLM and antifascist counterprotesters who'd been dangerously outnumbered on two previous "Million MAGA Marches" in November and December, that also took place in support of Trump's Big Lie and the delusional "Stop The Steal" movement, and had turned violent. The date had been on my radar for a while, as it had been for many antifascists. I'd predicted the putsch even before that second event, more than a week before Trump named the date and sent the MAGAsphere into a fit:
Above: Something to keep in mind next time you're tempted to consider my analysis "paranoid."
Later in December, I had a sockpuppet account lurking on a MAGA chat server before the whole thing was nuked and everyone banned, and what I saw there didn't look like harmless event travel planning. Sure, some of those folks seemed like silly earnest MAGA types, but 1/6 being Trump's specific call to action was circulating between average GOP supporters with the means to travel and some seriously dangerous characters as something historic: the storm that had been gathering and predicted and talked about for years.
Despite what mainstream media would have you think, letting Proud Boys and other fascists go uncontested in the street doesn't actually work to dissuade or disappoint them; rather, it emboldens them, helps them recruit, and makes violence much more likely, with their potential targets expanding to include unsuspecting locals, especially BIPOC and other vulnerable populations caught minding their own business once the fash start roaming.
The best way to mitigate violence is to have experienced organizers, a hardcore front line, intel keeping tabs on right-wing movements and the most dangerous elements, and backing it all up with a massive crowd of liberal "normies" coming out to peacefully protest and show solidarity. These standoffs, imperfectly mediated by police, are much, much safer than the alternative. And that's what I was going there to support. To keep the numbers up of people who know to walk, not run, when something scary happens-- unless you need to run.
Thankfully, I was running just a bit late. White-knuckling the steering wheel, wide-eyed, jaw actually at times agape, I listened to Trump on the radio say all the things I was afraid he would say. All the key phrases to trigger a cascade of beliefs amounting to his Big Lie, tied up with a bow by saying he'd lead the way on a march to the Capitol.
Below: Side-by-side comparison of my speech transcript guesstimate in Gchat two days prior versus DJT's insurrectionary slam poetry on the day.
As I had a few times over the past year-- a sunrise in Kansas listening to stunned pandemic cancellations in real-time, or watching the inside of the Minneapolis 3rd Precinct burn live on stream-- I could see the branching timeline I was balancing on as it unfolded beneath my feet, like some magical bough extending over a chasm.
By the time I arrived at BLM Plaza, north of the White House where most counterprotests had been gathering in recent months, I was aware there'd been something of a stand-down order by local counterprotesters. Lacking mass liberal support, aware of the huge MAGA crowd, and acutely aware of the various militias and broad dangerous element in town that day, it would be literal suicide to mount any serious counterprotest.
And so I found myself with just a handful of people milling about the plaza, nervously checking in on our various friends and public safety Signal & Telegram threads giving us play-by-play updates from the Capitol, with even what appeared to be the Not Fucking Around Coalition deciding they needed to make themselves scarce while this played out and leaving while I was there. For my part, I didn't think my presence would spark RaHoWa and I had to get a closer look. Besides, what set me apart most from the MAGA crowd, besides a lack of "patriotic" merch, was wearing my masks correctly-- and no one was looking too closely. (yet)
Swimming upstream through a dispersing crowd of thousands, avoiding clumps of militant or drunk-looking chuds, I made my way the couple miles to the Capitol. The atmosphere was that of a stadium parking lot after a particularly good game. Some were annoyed to be told to leave early but seemed pumped about the folks they left behind. I just kept what distance I could and donned my best "New York commuter" sidewalk invisibility cloak and made it there without incident.
I had no idea what I'd find when I finally got there, and I didn't get much closer than safely across the street to the north, behind a row of police vehicles. But through the bare trees I could clearly see the solid ring of thousands surrounding the upper entries of the building, as well as the greater crowd that fed it. That pulsing, roiling ring would occasionally spit off the wounded or dispersed, with periodic flashbangs or smoke rising, but mostly it was just the low din of the siege.
Some other non-MAGA onlookers had also gathered on that sidewalk, and we watched in dumbstruck awe for some time. Everyone in D.C. had gotten a text about the curfew so I knew I'd be leaving soon, but it was hard to look away. It became easier when I spotted a particularly angry, kitted-out group of guys exit the siege and cross the street a bit up the road: my cue to leave. It would be getting dark soon, and these were the rovers to be afraid of.
The rest area in Maryland I stopped at was filled with hundreds of reveling (presumable) insurrectionists mixed in with bog-standard MAGA Boomers swapping war stories and stuffing face with Wendy's burgers. Somehow it was harder to blend in there as I made my way to and from the restroom and decompressed with comrades via encrypted texts.
Re-entering my apartment that night, I felt the same deep uncanny of greeting "who I left behind" that I've felt after much, much longer trips.
It was a long day.
The Next Day
As you can imagine it was difficult to focus on anything else the following day. I couldn't keep up with my own thoughts, much less my personal responsibilities or The Discourse™. But there was clearly enough of a consensus that what had occurred was unacceptable and that people were mobilizing nationwide in protest, as well as politically organizing for impeachment of Trump and expulsion of those Members of Congress that had supported him. I wanted all of this and more. My vision filled only with what I'd seen the day before, my eyes had never been more clear.
So on the evening of January 7th I joined a rally organized by NYC-DSA, in coalition with the Working Families Party, NY Indivisible, and more at Atlantic-Barclays to affirm that immediate action was required and had popular support. I wasn't aware when I arrived what the plan was but I was ready for just about anything. (To the agent reading this: sorry pal, the "just about" exclusion phrase genuinely covers everything you'd have cause to target me for.)
The size and energy of the crowd reminded me of the first autonomous gatherings last May-- diverse people congregating, vibrating with energy needing direction, knowing something was deeply wrong and change was needed but bridled by a conflicted responsibility to remain "peaceful." The absurdity of the double standard was never more clear. Following speeches from Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and State Senator Jabari Brisport and others, the crowd of at least a couple thousand took to the streets en route to (as-of-two-days-earlier) Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's Park Slope apartment building.
Above: (Left) A still from John Carpenter's They Live (1988), a science-fiction film where special sunglasses reveal alien invaders' hidden messages in advertising.
Above: (Right) An all-too-real photograph I took of the insipid and dystopian ad marquees Barclays chose to bathe us in as we gathered. They still play it.
Between others' worthy attempts (that I faithfully boosted!) I offered my own more colorful versions of common refrains until the drums got going and the main crowd found its voice. I wasn't seeking attention or had any real desire to lead, but I certainly wanted to offer the maelstrom of righteous energy that had built in me over the previous 36 hours. It's no brag, just facts, to mention I'm usually louder than the dozen people nearest me-- and that night I wasn't holding anything back.
Unlike other marches, I have no recollection of the route we took; I was focused entirely on helping conjure the energy of the crowd. At one point after the drums changed rhythm, I could hear the leaders up front iterating and then testing out a new chant that seemed to really work on the beat. "Impeach, expel--" something? I strained to hear it, aching to figure out those last four quick syllables. No one around me knew either, until it clicked-- "Investigate." It was fire. I picked it up on the very next refrain at my tippy-top volume, and ten seconds later a thousand voices were echoing it off the canyons of the apartment complex we were passing through. This is, if I'm honest, the reason I attend protests, and the value I feel I add. Human amplifiers are smarter than wireless speakers. Run faster, too.
When we arrived at Senator Schumer's building on Prospect Park West, we gathered in the road out front and listened to more speeches by Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani and others and chanted our demands. We reminded Schumer that he held the cards, now-- after all, the Senate Majority leader is a position long thought to be structurally overpowered. Now was the time to flex. And like other rallies I'd been to at this building, the "official" portion concluded with chants of, "We'll be back." While many people left, I remained with a sizeable group that had some spare words for the many police in attendance guarding the apartment.
Above: Just some of the many, many police that showed up and were roundly mocked, shamed, and driven back for their explicit support of Trump & tacit support of 1/6.
What happened next, though, was unlike any police confrontation I'd ever seen before or since. It began under the awning outside of the building, where an unrelenting handful of the remaining protesters hurled taunts at the officers, while the rest of us stayed blocking the street.
The tone of their taunts was pure, righteous hellfire, but the message was mostly just astonishment and disgust. Our peaceful protest and reasonable demands had seemingly summoned more NYPD than there had been officers stationed to protect the Capitol. The protesters openly challenged and shamed the police, comparing the beatings we'd all sustained over the summer to the relative wrist-slapping the right-wing had received the day before.
And it was probably true. Only a dozen or so officers now guarded Schumer's entryway, but we were surrounded in several directions, with jail transport vans and Special Response Group bicycle cops standing by and helicopters overhead, and an army of 36,000 more officers in reserve ready and willing to stomp out dissent as they had all year.
Maybe it was clear the Senator was no longer the target of the demonstration, maybe the chants of "shame" and handful of in-your-face protesters finally got to them, but after a bit the unit stood down from Schumer's apartment building and the overwhelming force of police began to disperse. But still we held the street and refused to leave. Down to a hundred or so left blocking the road, a new line formed across Prospect Park West, and the impassioned shaming of the police continued. A few voices stood out for their unceasing, unabashed truth-telling, and the pain and horror in their voices and stories, as the rest of us stood firm.
The police tried for a moment to shift into their old mode: they'd decided the action was over, they'd given us our free speech time, and began warning us they were going to clear the street by force and people would be arrested. Led by those strident voices we all simply said, "No." In light of the day before, in light of their likely support of the day before-- or really their disappointment in the outcome of the day before-- they had no legitimate authority over us. Our actions weren't in defiance, because their orders carried no meaning. Again there was fire in our voices, but the "strength" we showed was that of gently prying open the lion's jaws from the Waite-Smith tarot. And again, they stood down. For some brief silent moments we just stood in the street and held space. It was like a spell.
At this point the tactics shifted. The NYPD brass and community affairs folks were out and attempting to mediate with the crowd. We met them there. No longer facing their imminent arrest and abuse, our defiance shifted as well. But lowering the volume just let the righteous rage and truth shine through. Those leading voices again took up the call and burned the offered olive branch, blew the ashes in the pigs' face and told them to leave. The street was ours. And so they left.
They didn't quite leave all the way, of course, but they stood down again and most of them did get out of sight. If anything, the tactic was to take the dressing down further onto the large sidewalk while the rest of us got tired and drifted away. As I left, we returned the road to traffic and the remaining protesters gathered in clusters around various NYPD employees reading them a kind of Riot Act. One person loudly reiterated the police oppression they grew up under to a silent, browbeaten white-shirt as I walked up the block-- and then I scurried past half a dozen full riot units stationed throughout Grand Army Plaza on my way to the subway.
The next day I was heartened to see that The New York Times had covered the protest, but outraged to see their coverage yet again border on outright counterinsurgency. They never mention any of the organizers / organizations that put out the call for the Brooklyn action that turned out thousands, or the politicians who showed up to make speeches, or the remarkable series of standoffs after. Instead, "Refuse Fascism," the notorious front group for the age-old political cult RevCom (mentioned, with disgust, in my last update), gets name-checked twice for their "notably smaller" action in Manhattan.
What more could I do but call them out of Facebook, to at least inoculate my NYT-reading friends from my own org's erasure? But the more closely I see how these things operate, the less personally I take any misunderstandings of my politics by people I know. But on the heels of the Capitol Riot, looking at that kinda coverage was some real "which side are you on?" shit.
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
I think after the events of 1/6 it became that much more important for me make good on all the organizing and activist ideas that had been percolating since even before the pandemic began. This included making the leap and applying to join one of the most important and storied organizations in American labor history, the Industrial Workers of the World.
I'd long known the general importance of the Labor Movement, but I first really learned about the IWW in 2017 after the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, where a woman named Heather Heyer was tragically killed when a fascist plowed his car into a crowd of protesters. Immediately identified as a "Wobbly," I was curious what the silly-sounding nickname meant and why it seemed to carry such extra weight for some leftists.
Reading about the surge of radical, militant union activity around the IWW in the early 20th century, how the movement was brutally stomped out by government and big business, the differences between industrial, general, and craft (cough, business) unionism, and how we ended up with an anemic unionized sector of the workforce today-- a lot of things began to make more sense to me.
My longstanding frustrations with Actors' Equity and other artists' unions, as well as the challenges I face in my bill-paying industry of transcription-- which mirrors so much gig work for millions today-- began to take on a totally new character. My relationship to and understanding of labor, organizing, and power have all fundamentally shifted since I went down that rabbit hole and finally found my place. And seeing the story of Stardust Family United, a new union of performer-servers here in NYC, gave me faith there was hope yet for the dream of building One Big Union.
On January 13th, I was accepted into the IWW as a Fellow Worker. Technically my work falls within the broad industrial union categories of Dept. 580, Information Service Workers (for the transcription) and Dept. 630, Performing Arts (for the theater, etc). Whether and how I'll be able to organize within those industries is going to be a long story I look forward to being able to tell someday. For now, I'm going to focus on reforming Transcribblers as a worker co-op and restoring its former glory-- but this time with Fellow Workers instead of outsourced contractors or employees. I'll never be a boss again.
Hunts Point Strike
Just a week later, literally the day my IWW Red Card arrived, I had an opportunity to make good on my reaffirmed commitment to the labor movement. The week of the inauguration I was still reeling from 1/6 and determined to help ensure the movement persisted under Biden's watch; I was already seeing so many people check out and memory-hole the Trump era that hadn't actually gone away. So when I caught wind of the Teamsters striking up at Hunts Point Produce Market, it took my focus as the most important story around. Hunts Point is the largest single food distribution hub of its kind in the world, and a fascinating case study as logistics pressure point, infrastructure vulnerability, and site of class struggle.
On the Monday, the police had violently escalated against the strikers, bringing solidarity from across the country. Local NYC-DSA in the Bronx were quick to establish a presence, providing food and other necessities around the clock to strikers, and as the whole chapter began to get involved, a fresh supply of bodies on the picket line from around the city.
I had my ear to the ground on January 20th, Inauguration Day and was considering a handful of protest actions to attend, including a solidarity noise demo outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn to let the inmates, many of them there unjustly and without proper heat or healthcare, know they hadn't been forgotten. But when I saw AOC mention to the strikers on Twitter that she'd "see them there soon," I knew Hunts Point was probably the place to be.
Above: Only part of the reason I chose to go to Hunts Point. My protest pal that night had an audio sensitivity so I'd have been on my own at the MDC noise demo.
When we arrived we parked down the wide industrial road at the end of a line of cars. As we approached the entrance to the terminal, which had become a protest encampment and picket line preventing trucks from entering, I realized a bunch of these parked cars were occupied. On either side of the street, about half a dozen unmarked and undercover police variously noticed us or noticeably didn't as we made our way down the long median.
The scene was celebratory but a bit tense, with a handful of union folks standing sentry at the market entrance under the watchful eyes of police. Most of the crowd was within the gated encampment clustered around several open fires. I dropped off boxes of snacks at the food table and joined the crowds around AOC, and then some union leaders who all led rousing speeches, even acknowledging the support of the nascent organized left.
I didn't see or find out why we scrambled to stop the first truck-- to me, it was just another scab trying to get into the market. But the call went up, the gates opened and we all flooded out for a standoff against an encroaching, blaring semi and a phalanx of police just itching to escalate. Amidst the action some Teamster managed to pop the semi's giant hood in defiance and our proud union chants turned to whoops of laughter and triumph. At least, that's what I recall of one standoff-- truly gathering the nuances of the parley happening at all levels was well beyond me.
But just as important as standing strong was standing down. I felt some tension in the rank-and-file, especially the younger Teamsters that seemed to want to face off against the police and every single truck for the sake of it. But strike organizers and union leadership were crystal clear-- those standoffs are part of a bigger strategy of negotiations happening that very moment in parallel to best meet their demands. The police, they said, were not the target of the protest, and the strike was a marathon full of risks, as the arrests and beatings earlier in the week demonstrated. The shows of force were important, but strategic.
That's not to say it was all top-down discipline. After hours and days of cars and trucks honking in solidarity as they drove past, with one food co-op delivery truck even doing laps just to honk in support, hearing a scab truck that was let through to market honk at the encampment in apparent mockery, or some kind of faux-solidarity, seemed to incense the rank-and-file. Sure enough a mass of workers moved in to stop the next truck, and you could see the tired-looking leaders pick their battles on both sides and let it happen, before reining it in and calling for a speech to reiterate the point on strategy.
It was an important lesson for me to take part in, and I did my best as a guest in the space and a complete novice to labor organizing to put aside my ideological differences (the police work for the bosses, it's all connected!) and follow the guidance of the strike leaders. This was a lesson that was clearly missed by writers for the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), who were apparently repeatedly ejected for agitating among the rank-and-file. WSWS is the mouthpiece for the Socialist Equality Party, one of many Trotskyist offshoots that organizes internationally along strict party lines.
Ideologically, I'm actually sympathetic to the WSWS/SEP's structural critiques of unions like the Teamsters and the kinds of negotiations and contracts in this fight. But their fringe practices include providing zero meaningful support to or organizing of the working class that I can see, running doomed presidential races, and frequently publishing inflammatory apologia for people like Harvey Weinstein and unhinged, inaccurate polemics about DSA.
So showing up at the 11th hour, at the strike, unknown to these workers, to tell them to abandon all they know about the union for a radical vision of rank-and-file strike committees is a proven failed strategy. For some reason I think a nerd who writes for the World Socialist Web Site isn't going to go through the effort of, say, properly salting the Teamsters to manifest real rank-and-file committees. If that was the bread & butter of these parties I might be more sanguine to Trots, but unless it's all underground I just don't see it happening very much.
Besides, there was clearly a miscommunication-- I heard someone say they thought WSWS told them to abandon the strike. And despite the WSWS article decrying Teamster leaders as bullies and agents of disinformation--which may even be true to some extent!-- the accounts I heard were from, as I'd call them, fellow workers. Just goes to show, no matter how sound your analysis, how righteous your idealism, if you're not actually organizing among the workers and building relationships on an ongoing basis you're just a website. (one word)
The rest of the night before I left was just good vibes. At one point the New England Teamster truck showed up, to much celebration. Warming up by the fire, listening to strikers drift between in-jokes, shop talk, and serious business, lingering as the music swelled and people danced tipsily. We decided to leave just in time, as it turned out my car had died. I tried not to dwell on the police over-presence and the timing of the two separate mechanical failures (alternator & transmission combo!) as I rushed to catch the very last train home from the Bronx. (It was actually two last trains and a 30-minute wait for a bus.)
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Teacher's Pet Bonus Points & Punches For Asking About Homework: I can be annoying on Facebook these days, constantly posting politically and calling folks to action. Sadly, I've quietly lost a bunch of FB friends this way. The drop-off has leveled out and I can't tell who it might've been, so I'm guessing those were random weirdos I met one time & never really got to know.
One thread that lost me a few "friends" had been very carefully written so as not to alienate people, but rather offer friendly, interesting political education on a topic genuinely important not only to my worldview and politics, but actually my safety in the streets even under a Biden admin, considering his rhetoric around "anarchists and arsonists."
The day after the 1/6 riot I merely opened with the ask, "Stop saying 'anarchy' to describe 'chaos'," and offered a variety of resources to cure people of the carefully inculcated allergy to, and misuse of, the word "anarchy." As I said, "throughout history people in power have poisoned the word to criminalize the organized objection to the hierarchies / kyriarchy they depend on." This included Teen Vogue's more-competent-than-"respectable"-outlets write-up, links to the Indigenous Anarchist Federation as well as my comrades facing persecution & genocide in Tigray, Ethiopia, and much more.
I shouldn't be surprised that fact- & history-based political education is offensive and annoying to some folks, but here we are. They haven't seen what I've seen, and I cannot make them look. But I'm still fighting for everybody!
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Phew. Well, I'd Intended to have this complete in early February, but that clearly didn't happen. This was... actually a really tough one to revisit for a lot of reasons that are probably evident and I'm glad it's done. For now, let's just say that I intend to get caught up by the end of May and I have some exciting new things planned you'll hear about soon enough! And for heaven's sake if you actually read all of this lol my god thank you.