“Is the trade union movement a force to combat right-wing authoritarianism? That’s the question I posed in mid-October to University of Florida history professor Paul Ortiz. While the union Ortiz then led, United Faculty of Florida, has been at the vanguard of fighting Gov. Ron DeSantis’ reactionary rule, the national picture is a mixed bag.
Our present labor movement is poorly equipped to be an energized, anti-fascist force. It suffered terrible hemorrhaging in the late 1940s and early ’50s. After the purge of some of its best and brightest leaders, activists and unions, the movement lost the political will not only to engage in strategic organizing and growth, but to challenge the systems and ideologies that pit the working class against itself. Discussions about race, gender, class and U.S. foreign policy were widely treated as forbidden subjects until the 1990s.
Today, the luxury of silence and denial does not exist. The threats to constitutional democracy are not just evident, but growing. The question is, what will the movement do?”
Read the entire interview, by Bill Fletcher Jr., here at Working In These Times.
Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement 