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Organized labor is the key to overcoming the cruelty of capital
From the genocide in Gaza to Trump’s attacks on democracy in America, organized labor can help restore the rule of law—and needs your solidarity today
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While I enjoy holidays as much as anyone, I often chafe at the reduction of crucial principles worthy of commemoration to mere excuses to celebrate. Today’s Labor Day holiday represents a quintessence of that pattern, as it has shifted in the popular consciousness from a celebration of organized labor to a simple calendar marker indicating the end of summer.
But labor is a lot more than an excuse to celebrate. It was long the crucial xxxxxx constraining the worst vagaries of capital, and had a storied history in the United States—until the Democratic Party turned its back on unions while absurdly and outrageously continuing to enjoy the sector’s support.
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Today, organized labor could offer a potential key to challenging the excesses of the Trump administration, and also ending the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Labor vs. militarism
More so than any other sector of civil society, organized labor could end the genocide in Gaza.
Beyond championing transformative expansions of labor law as a congressional candidate, I’ve written three posts on this theme. One came in the immediate wake of the genocide’s escalation in late 2023. I wrote the second and third this summer, in the wake of U.S. labor leader Chris Smalls being detained and beaten by Israeli authorities in retaliation for showing solidarity with human rights principles.
The first reviewed a series of labor leaders who have recently confronted capital and emerged victorious. They include Chris Smalls from the Amazon Labor Union, Sara Nelson from the Association of Flight Attendants, and Shawn Fain from United Auto Workers (not to be confused with Sean O’Brien from the Teamsters).
It concludes:
Few figures are better poised than the three of them to lead the labor movement to a new era of solidarity. They are uniquely poised to invite other sectors of organized labor to walk off the job until Washington sees fit to finally respect international human rights by joining the rest of the world that has repeatedly called for cease-fires in Gaza that Washington has effectively blocked.
The second post in that series observed Israel’s detention of Chris Smalls, and its discriminatory state violence responding to his leadership and demonstrations of solidarity.
The empire strikes back | ||||||
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I often give thanks, for whatever it’s work, for some prescience in the course of unfolding current events. For example, the continuing consolidation of authoritarianism in America offers that opportunity on a seemingly daily basis: I spent a decade advocating for greater restraints on executive power, while Republicans and Democrats | ||||||
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It observed how:
His work challenging Jeff Bezos made Smalls a global labor hero. Coming from someone with such well-deserved respect across the labor movement, his recognition of solidarity of Gaza—and outspoken advocacy on behalf of human rights in Palestine—seemed like a gateway through which a broader constituency (both within and beyond the U.S.) might come to care about ending the genocide in Gaza.
Alongside the corruption of Congress, the courts, and the White House, militarism also relies on the participation of labor. Should an intersectionally resurgent labor movement assertively challenge genocide—by, for instance, maintaining strikes impeding any of a series of critical industries like transportation or shipping—Washington could be forced to capitulate to popular demands.
The third article reported on grassroots mobilizations around the world supporting human rights in Gaza, and Chris’ return to the United States after his release by Israeli authorities.
Return of the Jedi | ||||||
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I’m writing today to celebrate an important victory for the grassroots movement challenging the genocide in Gaza. Amid other glimmers of hope emerging as the Israeli starvation campaign continues to horrify the world, it offers an indication of growing support for peace and human rights in a critical sector poised to force human rights on Washington, despite the corruption of the two corporate political parties and their consensus favoring genocide. | ||||||
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It reflected on “glimmers of hope emerging as the Israeli starvation campaign continues to horrify the world,” including grassroots mobilizations around the world. Along with Chris’ experience, they:
offer[] an indication of growing support for peace and human rights in a critical sector poised to force human rights on Washington, despite the corruption of the two corporate political parties and their consensus favoring genocide.
Labor is a sleeping giant, and perhaps the only force that can stop the rise of the right wing and the genocide in Gaza it has enabled.
Capital vs. labor
As the Trump administration continues to escalate its war on America, its economy, and the Constitution, organized labor has also felt the impact.
Unfortunately, despite—or perhaps precisely due to—labor’s overwhelming potential influence, it was among the first sectors hamstrung by the Trump administration.
Most observers have already grown to lament the administration’s firing of over a quarter million public sector employees. Government employees, meanwhile, have been among the most heavily unionized workforces in the country, since (until recently) unionbusting was more the province of private employers than the federal and state governments.
Among Trump’s very first acts upon returning to office in 2025 was the illegal dismissal of Gwynne Wilcox, a member of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) whose racial identity may have made her an especially easy target for the president.
The legal saga sparked by Wilcox’s dismissal remains ongoing. A U.S. district court attempted to reinstate her in early March, only to be overruled by a three-judge appellate panel later that month. They were, in turn, overruled by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sitting en banc (meaning that all the judges on the court were invited to participate, rather than just the three judges who were randomly assigned at an earlier stage in the process). Within two days, Chief Justice John Roberts stayed that decision pending an ongoing appeal to the weaponized and partisan U.S. Supreme Court that he oversees.
Most of the news coverage surrounding Wilcox’s firing, and the effort to reinstate her, has focused on the issue of whether the executive branch wields the power to dismiss members of independent agencies created by Congress. While the constitutional separation of powers is among my greatest and most longstanding concerns, I aim here to focus not on the doctrinal aspect of these cases, but the impact on the ground of Wilcox being denied the chance to complete her appointed term on the NLRB.
Whatever vestiges of labor rights that workers in the U.S. theoretically enjoy today will effectively remain in exile as long as the NLRB lacks a quorum. Put simply, there is nowhere for workers to bring complaints about violations of their collective rights by predatory employers.
Removing Wilcox from the NLRB basically represented union busting at a structural scale, impeding new unions from forming in the first place and hanging workers out to dry. At the same time, the right wing has also mounted two parallel assaults on labor: Trump has nominated union busting figures to fill Wilcox’s seat on the NLRB, while business leaders are challenging its constitutionality before our co-opted courts.
As explained by a fellow writer on this platform:
The NLRB hears and settles disputes between workers and employers, but Wilcox’s departure deprived it of a quorum, making it unable to hear cases. Effectively, employers [are] free to violate already-weak labor law at will knowing there [is] no NLRB to penalize them.
Trump has since tapped two nominees to staff the Board and return its function, but that might be worse in the long run. His first nominee is the former chief counsel to Trump’s appointed NLRB Chairman, and the other built his career at the notorious union-busting firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP.
These appointments might not even matter, as Trump’s favorite billionaires have advanced a lawsuit through the hard right 5th Circuit court arguing the NLRB is unconstitutional. The case is on its way to Republican-controlled Supreme Court, where our unelected Harry Potter impersonators might complete conservatism’s near-century-long campaign to scrap the New Deal.
I’ll leave aside for now the profound frustration raised by workers who supported Trump to their own detriment. We could, after all, discuss the president’s various enablers until the end of time.
For now, the point is that recent attacks on the right of organize have bloodied a sector that was already on its heels, hollowed out by longstanding trends in the economy including the corporate outsourcing that drove so much manufacturing abroad (and into prisons, where Americans by the millions continue to work as slaves 160 years after the Union victory in the Civil War).
Show solidarity today—and build your local network
Today, Americans are mobilizing in hundreds of communities across the country to show solidarity with labor. As reported by the Guardian:
Nearly 1,000 “worker over billionaire” protests are being planned in all 50 states starting this weekend as part of a Labor Day week of action organized by labor unions and advocacy groups in opposition to the Trump administration’s policies.
The actions include marches and rallies in cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles, a Labor Day parade in New York City, rallies in Palmer, Alaska, Freeport, Maine, and a planned protest at the state capitol in Honolulu, Hawaii.
The protests are organized by the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US, and dozens of partner organizations, including Public Citizen, Indivisible, Democracy Forward, MoveOn and Patriotic Millionaires.
‘This is about organic, grassroots organizing, and we intentionally wanted it to be outside of Washington DC, because that’s where the impacts are being felt,’ Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, said.
‘Whether it’s teachers or nurses or construction workers, they’re all determined to stand up and fight back, because they’re experiencing the cuts, they’re experiencing the change in policies, they’re experiencing the attacks of this White House on their unions, and so they’re determined to make their voices heard and mobilize to fight forward regardless of what’s happening around us, no matter the obstacles.’
I’ll be joining a gathering in my community today, and encourage you to do the same wherever you live.
Many participants in grassroots mobilizations falsely think that the expressive component of exercising free speech is the most important. That view, however, gives too much power to the media institutions that have already declared their allegiance with capital, and increasingly disregard grassroots mobilization for precisely that reason.
Ultimately, the greater value of local mobilization is the opportunity to find other neighbors who share (at least some of) your concerns. Especially in the digital age, as community grows more and more difficult to cultivate, meeting your neighbors in person to discover common cause has become an essentially revolutionary act in itself.
Beyond helping any participant feel connected and more supported, those connections within local networks can build the capacity for resilience in the face of everything from a natural disaster to a deployment of federal goon squads in your community.
As the litany of threats confronting our shared future continue to proliferate, building those local networks might be among the most effective ways we can each prepare for whatever lies in store in the days and years ahead.
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