Low-Level Insurgencies: The Working-Class Mini-Revolts of the Twenty-First Century

[Joe Shlabotnik]

The start of the twenty-first century has seen a continuing decline in union membership and strikes. But it has also seen the emergence of unpredicted mini-revolts. Activists in the Battle of Seattle took over downtown Seattle, put an end to the millennium round of the World Trade Organization, and redefined the question of globalization for millions of Americans. The 2006 immigrant-rights demonstrations, the largest ever in the world with nearly five million participants, brought millions of undocumented immigrants “out of the shadows” and made immigrant rights a pivot of American politics.

In the Wisconsin Uprising, the hundreds of thousands of participants occupied the state capital for a week, closed the Madison schools, and rang the tocsin for struggles nationwide against austerity and for labor rights. Occupy Wall Street and the occupations and revolts it inspired in 600 U.S. cities brought hundreds of thousands of Americans into nonviolent direct action, stimulated simultaneous demonstrations in more than a thousand cities in eighty-two countries, and put the inequality of wealth and power front and center in American political consciousness. The struggle over public education in Chicago showed the power of a unified movement of workers and allies, made a nationwide issue of the corporate attack on the public sector, and showed a way to fight back. The strikes of retail, fast food, and other low-wage workers represented the first tentative self-expression of a huge new sector of unorganized, low-paid, contingent workers and the projection of the growing social struggle over inequality into the workplace.

The scope and impact of these mini-revolts were rarely anticipated either by participants or by observers. They emerged from the previously unrecognized thoughts and feelings of millions of people. All were colored not just by immediate grievances but by concern about the future well-being and prospects for working people in general.

Each of the mini-revolts grew beyond expectation because of the interaction and mutual inspiration of different groups of participants. The realization that very different people had parallel thoughts and feelings and were prepared to act on them collectively led to the rapid escalation of revolt.

The rest at: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/28/the-working-class-mini-revolts-of-the-twenty-first-century/

[villager]

1. Well, we need the maxi-revolt next

I wonder what it will take?

[Joe Shlabotnik]

2. We never know what the spark will be

But a pot can't slowly simmer forever without melting down entirely. I just hope that the catalyst comes from the utopian left and not the authoritarian right.

[villager]

3. That's another key question -- which side will "spark" first

Or will society's owners try to "channel" the spark with those aformentioned brownshirt types?