Tag: direct action
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On Contesting Populism
Cultural similarities such as nationality, dress, composure, vocabulary, and music override income, employment, health, education, and physical safety as the basis for coming together. Populist movements are therefore always cross-class endeavors. On the radical left, our small-scale populism has us hemmed in with little to no presence beyond university campuses and subcultural radical scenes (punk,…
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What would a general strike in the US actually look like?
Calling for general strikes is a staple of the radical toolkit. (I’ve made questionable efforts to call two or three myself over the past half-century.) But why has the idea of such mass actions suddenly appeared on the lips of such a wide range of people? There are three principal reasons:
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How to Organize Against Authoritarian Creep(s)
Simply, we can’t do the same things as before because what we’ve done wasn’t enough. Living in these “interesting” times, it bears remembering that in crisis there is also opportunity. We find ourselves in a closing space — our inclusive civil society under attack. There is an element of claustrophobia bearing down upon those of…
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The Death of Slavery, The First Dawn of Freedom
An organized clandestine underground network to resist the slave state was not inevitable. The path of fatalism and despair, a pale specter that still haunts many would-be rebels today, was just as likely. In those days, given the seemingly low odds of success, an overwhelming feeling of helplessness doubtless consumed many hearts. Courageous people, most…
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How Students are Fighting the Arms Industry on Campus
In terms of education, we have a document that we’ve made public via our Instagram and emails we’ve sent out to interested students really detailing UMass’s connection to Raytheon — and detailing Raytheon’s connection to the IDF and the war on Palestinians. At our weekly meetings, we’ve also had things like teach-ins for interested students. We’ve also…
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The Nature of Militancy
In this article we will attempt to clear up some of this confusion by providing a working definition of the term militancy, and an answer to the related question of what it means to be a militant.
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The Ontology of Electronic Waste
We all know about the false promises of the tech industry, and yet we adopt their myths. A report on the points of contact between squatting and e-waste, on greenwashing at e-waste conferences and on the tools of an anarchist reverse engineering laboratory.
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Strikes, protests, collective action: “hustling” wasn’t always how workers fought to afford living costs
Most people today are coping with the rising cost of living individually: cost cutting, looking for a better paid job, taking on “side hustles”, and so on. But not so long ago, many workers globally and in Aotearoa New Zealand approached the same problem in far more collective ways.
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The 2012 Quebec Student General Strike
Originally published at studentstrike.net (now defunct), CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 Printable PDF pamphlet below Introduction In February 2012, students in Quebec launched an unlimited general strike to fight back against a 75% hike in university tuition fees. Contrary to the expectations of many, the strike movement lasted more than six months, morphing into one of the largest periods…
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Every Boss has a Weak Spot. Find it and Use it.
By Alexandra Bradbury, Jane Slaughter and Mark Brenner for LaborNotes This article is excerpted from the Labor Notes book Secrets of a Successful Organizer, available for $15 at labornotes.org/secrets. Steel production in the late 1800s used to require one crucial step: a 20-minute process called the “blow” that removed impurities, strengthening the metal. It was not unheard…
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