Individualism or Collective effort
Compiled and edited by Carolyn Bennett
CLAWSON ON LABOR
Community organizing, unionism work together not just to address workplace issues, but also to lead community-wide struggles
Meld ‘Left’ social movements
“Labor must do more than build alliances. It must fuse with these movements such that it is no longer clear what is a labor issue and what is ‘woman’s’ issue or ‘immigrant’ issue.… Failure of assorted social movements to connect is a primary cause of weakness in the U.S. Left.”
Democratize labor movement
Even the “‘new’ labor movement” remains unfortunately “staff driven, [failing] to empower or activate the rank and file.…
“Labor advances will come only from a mass movement involving millions — not from a process directed and controlled by a handful of leaders or staff.”
Go Beyond ‘New Deal Labor System’
Workers should “talk about what they want and need [not what is ‘politically feasible’], and … move from that to thinking about what would be necessary to achieve [what they want and need].”
Labor should “rethink the basic concept of what a union is and how it operates.”
Unions should consider fundamental restructuring… Unions might “ignore the definitions in existing labor law insisting that new groups (managers, students, maids) are entitled to [separate] unions.”
KING ON LIFE
Progress
[Individuals] have not started living until [they] can rise above the narrow confines of individualistic concerns to broader concerns of all humanity.
Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle — the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people — but the appalling silence of the good people.
Ignorance
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Rarely do we find [people] who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
War
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
We have guided missiles, misguided [leaders].
One of the greatest casualties shot down in war, on the battlefield of Vietnam, [was] the Great Society.
Nonviolence
Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon that cuts without wounding, ennobles [people] who wield it. Nonviolence is a sword that heals.
It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.
Unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.
Sources and notes
MARTIN LUTHER KING, Ph.D. (b. 1929- d.1968), recipient of the Kennedy Peace Prize among other awards, was an American leader in human rights (1957-1968) assassinated by an American
QUOTES, edited for contemporary noun neutrality, source of quotes: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/martin_luther_king_jr.html
DAN CLAWSON, Ph.D., is an American professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts and author of many books and articles including The Next Upsurge: Labor and the New Social Movements. From Review of Dan Clawson’s The Next Upsurge: Labor and the New Social Movements Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 58, No. 1. Available at: http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/ilrreview/vol58/iss1/81
http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1144&context=ilrreview
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