Square Up: Building Labor’s Power in the Second Gilded Age

Description

Since the pandemic and the killing of George Floyd, which opened new spaces for struggle, the U.S. labor movement has made impressive gains in numbers, power, and popularity. We cannot allow a second Trump presidency to derail this progress.

Instead of fighting back, we must fight forward: find ways to aggressively organize, build coalitions, and involve the rank and file. In this collection of seventeen essays, union leaders, organizers, activists, scholars, and rank-and-file workers address a central question of our time: How do we build Labor’s Power in the Second Gilded Age?

All workers need to be organized—but organized labor can’t just fight for the interests of dues-paying union members. To build power capable of challenging and beating back the fascist threat, labor needs to see its role as organizing the entire working class. We must overcome artificial divisions sown by prejudice and nationalism. We must build capacity, mobilize millions, and project a vision—a transformative vision—that can replace late stage capitalism, putting people and planet before profit. Another world is possible! Building Labor’s Power is how we get there!

Includes essays by Bill Fletcher Jr., Stewart Acuff, Cynthia Phinney, Eric Blanc, and Roberta Wood, as well as Peter Kellman, Daniel Delgado and Ellen von zur Muehlen, Erica Meade, Jeremy Hope, the Southern Workers Assembly, C.A.U.S.E., the CPUSA Labor Commission, Gene Lantz, Sam Wallman, and Jane Ann Morris. Introduction by Lorri Nandrea and Tony Pecinovsky. Foreword by journalist and photographer David Bacon.