Analyzing the Crisis with Elise Bryant
The Daily Bread caught up with Elise Bryant, the President of the Coalition of Labor Union Women, about our current trajectory—where are we as a labor movement, and where do we go from here?
“I think that there are more people in the general public who are more appreciative of the general work of unions than in many years,” she said. “Union members as a whole are also engaged and energized. Now it’s time for the labor movement to also look within, and work on providing programs that help people understand what's happening politically and economically. A big component of that could be town hall meetings where unions and community come together.”
Bryant added that the labor movement must address racism’s major role in creating the current crisis. “We need also to look at the underlying racism that is intrinsic to this fascist oligarchy that is happening in our country right now. The 1 percent has used race for generations to divide the working class. It’s a political construct, it’s not a biological or sociological construct: it was meant to divide. For us to successfully take on the 1 percent, we need to unlearn racism.”
Bryant also brought up the proposal by the UAW for a general strike on May Day 2028. “I think that it’s worth having real conversations around the general strike for May Day 2028,” Bryant said.
She continued: “It is where the power is truly in our hands. We’re the only force that can tell capital how to spend money. They know that, that’s why they want to get rid of unions. The thought has come to me, of potentially doing it in the way that the UAW did it with the Stand Up Strike, with rolling strikes, maybe not one day where everybody goes out in a row, but in a series of shutdowns. That means our leaders have to step up to the plate. The conversation about how we foster leadership needs to be both in the AFL-CIO as well as at the grassroots, or more so in the grassroots. That’s where real change comes from, thinking back historically. As it’s said in ‘Solidarity Forever’ — ‘in our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold.’”
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