Counter-recruitment and the labor movement
From the good folks at Upside Down World comes this article about the US military's preparations for intervention in Bolivia, should indigenous socialist Evo Morales win the presidential election next month. The article is mostly speculative, but given our government's history in Latin America, it would be surprising if the suspicions it reports were not true. In fact, I suspect the imperialist machinery would already be a little more on top of the situation in Latin America, were it not so bogged down in Iraq.
By fate or providence, I came across this article as I happened to be watching, out of the corner of my eye, an Army television commercial aimed at parents who might be nervous about letting their children enlist. The commercial urges weak-kneed parents to listen to their brave children and support their decisions to make something of themselves by turning themselves into cannon fodder.
The juxtaposition of leftist internet news and fascist television commercial gave me an idea about a couple of problems that had been nagging me for a while.
First, how can the American labor movement, which has a whole lot of organizing to do before it can be a real force in global politics, nevertheless be in solidarity with Latin American social movements and leftist governments that are threatened by our military? At this point in time, the American left simply doesn't have the power to stop our military from running roughshod over the rest of the world. All the marches in the world did not stop Bush from invading Iraq, could not stop the CIA from attempting a coup in Venezuela, won't stand in the way of military action in Bolivia, haven't closed the School of the Americas, etc, etc. Of course, this doesn't mean we shouldn't be in the streets, it just means that our first priority at this stage has to be building our base.
Second, how can the labor movement engage in political education without diverting too much of its precious energy from winning the short-term organizing fights it desperately needs to win, just to survive? This is a complicated question. It has to do with the balancing act every organizer performs every day: how to push workers' consciousness forward without getting so far out ahead of them that you lose touch. A union organizing campaign is nothing if not a crash course in the virtues of solidarity, but not all union members are ready for words like "socialism" and "revolution." The last thing you need in the middle of a bitter contract fight is to give the boss a wedge with which to divide the workers from each other or from the union leadership.
The first rule of organizing is to connect the union with concrete issues in the workers' workplaces and personal lives. Right now, besides low wages, unaffordable healthcare, disrespect at work, expensive gasoline, and skyrocketing housing prices, one of the major issues in many working class people's lives is the fact that their children are dodging bullets in Iraq. And therein lies an opportunity. While any good union has plenty of urgent items on the agenda for its monthly shop steward or membership meetings (such as leadership training and discussion of ongoing contract fights or organizing drives), time could be set aside for anti-war union leaders to give presentations and facilitate discussions on the following points:
1. The military takes advantage of working-class kids' lack of economic and educational opportunity to lure them into enlisting. It depends on these recruits to replace its casualties. Hence, the military's relationship with working-class kids is not unlike the boss's relationship with the workers: both try to take advantage of desperation. Having trouble paying for your kids' education because your boss isn't paying you what you deserve? As if that weren't bad enough, the army might come along and send them to Fallouja.
2. The Bush administration says it's fighting for freedom in Iraq, but it's working to undermine unions and deny workers' rights in Iraq and elsewhere. (Depending on the national origin of the union membership, leaders may be able to connect this point to workers' experience in their home countries. For example, the service sector in California is full of immigrants from El Salvador.)
3. There are ways to protect your kids from the military recruiters who hover around their schools like vultures.
In other words, unions can teach an internationalist and anti-imperialist lesson by focusing on concrete issues that will resonate with their members. This lesson can be taught in a way that is deeply respectful of the workers whose children are already in the military (or who have already died in Iraq), and which does not imply that belief in a certain ideology is a prerequisite for participation in union activities. At the same time, unions can contribute to the growing counter-recruitment movement, thereby making it more difficult for the military to maintain simultaneous offensives in Iraq, Latin America, and who knows where else. Little by little, maybe we can starve the imperialist beast.
Thanks to the hard work of US Labor Against the War, many local unions have already passed resolutions against the war in Iraq. The next step is for these locals to take this message to the members, and keep those kids out of Iraq (and Bolivia, and Venezuela, etc, etc).
posted by submarino @ 11:55 PM
11 comments
11 Comments:
"could not stop the CIA from attempting a coup in Venezuela"
especially when we're helping them.
I can't speak knowledgeably about solidarity mvmts, but I have a little bit of first and second-hand experience w/ political education.
First, it seems like the current work with housekeepers in UNITEHERE is a very important model. It is a popular education program reaching hundreds of housekeepers across the country, which both strengthens organizing and deepens an understanding of root causes. It is specifically focused around health and safety and is meant to foster organizing around those workplace issues. And it tries to get housekeepers to reflect on what the root causes of those issues are (capitalism, exploitation, racism).
Also, there is a group of workers' centers in SF Bay Area that did political ed with their member leaders. It was basically a Marxist analysis of capitalism and imperialism, drawing heavily from POWER's book Towards Land, Work, and Power. Educators found that their members were able to draw on their experience to reinforce the main points of the political ed. That's because the workers are primarily immigrants from the Third World, where they have experience of IMF neoliberal structural-adjustment programs and such. They know that capitalism doesn't work for them. Things are much different w/ U.S. born workers, who don't have that experience and who are of course fed pro-capitalist, anti-socialist stuff from the beginning.
(Incidentally, when my comrades tried to run roughly the same political ed at their elite university w/ fellow progressive students, the students were not nearly as engaged with the material. Except for the ones w/ working-class backgrounds.)
Specifically in terms of building radical mvmt, it seems like you might want to have both things going at the same time -- broad popular ed that hooks into organizing, as well as some more radical stuff to develop your core leaders (with the hope that the core expands over time, of course).
Finally, on the anti-war stuff, I think the message that you lay out is pretty good. I would just think that it would be very important to have vets involved in the presentation, particularly b/c of the tensions you talk about -- workers that have gone through or are in the military now.
And finally, plug for some counter-recruitment stuff (which I know a little bit about).
www.war-times.org -- has two flyers for counter-recruitment.
www.projectyano.org -- a very good org that has been doing c-r for about 20 years.
www.militaryfreeschools.org -- CAMS is based out of the teachers' union in LA (evidence of labor/anti-war work). They have developed a sophisticated program to demilitarize the school system called the "adopt-a-school program." Incidentally there are some tensions over the JROTC program w/in the union b/c JROTC instructors are union members.
--MC
(sorry this post is long but I enjoy the subject matter)
Well said, and it goes without saying that a lot of good people (still not nearly enough) are involved in the kind of work you mentioned in the last two paragraphs of your post from Nov. 17.
I'm all for passing resolutions wherever we are: campuses, workplaces, other publications and many other organizations. I think they're a great tool, but they have to be seen as a means to getting people involved in acting against the war, and by extension the political class in general, since virtually all of them serve and accomodate themselves to the imperialist system (no, the "progressives" in the Democratic Party are NOT talking about withdrawal, and even if they claim to favor it in some nebuolous form, it won't matter because they'll all roll over for Hillary in '08). We have to admit that we've long since reached the point where resolutions are powerless in and of themselves. You're right: not even millions of people in the streets before the war starts, as significant as that is for showing the world that the people in the belly of the beast themselves are bitterly divided over the desirability of this latest imperialist bloodbath (no I don't think I'm being too harsh), would convince the warmakers the error of their ways. These motherfuckers are not going to "change course" without a serious fight, and this time it needs to go farther than it went in the 60s, and at the same time be smarter.
Resolutions yes, but the people pushing for them need to tell the workers that if they care enough to approve one of these resolutions, no one will know about it and it won't have any practical effect unless they take to the streets regularly and begin to see themselves as leaders in a movement that can save millions of lives here and abroad, not just a movement for better working conditions in the first world. I think it's doable. Not all workers will become anti-imperialist organizers and many of them will have doubts and disagreements, but there's no other way to do it than to get these things on the table and have confidence in your ability to link people (and issues) together for the cause. The trade unionists in Iraq deserve nothing less than this.
Ofcourse I'd love to see an anti-imperialist labor movement. Whichever form that would take, it would certainly mark a fundamental shift in how unions interact with the Amerikan political landscape and foreign policy, for those of us with some sense of history, and it goes without saying that that type of development is still years down the line, even with rank and file workers and radicals dedicating themselves full-time to building anti-imperialist caucuses within their workplaces, whether represented by AFL, Change to Win, or an unaffiliated union.
At the same time I recognize that the leadership of the unions currently is less interested in building a massive, cross-border movement that can bring down imperialism, and currently more focused on a piecemeal, electoral approach (maybe with some street rallies here and there and the threat of strikes) to resist the decline in (American) workers' living standards. Ofcourse it's always up for debate whether the current strategy of the national labor unions is even in the short term interests of US workers, particularly the most vulnerable ones, never mind their long-term interests, but that's a separate topic.
So let me reiterate: counter-recruitment is going on within the labor movement, amd both the labor movement and the counter-recruitment stuff is relatively small but extremely important and has a lot of potential to shake up some serious shit. But as groups like US Labor Against the War have shown us, I'm guessing that the main thrust for these initiatives will come from outside the official union leadership. The workers have to demand it, plain and simple, otherwise it won't happen. Hence I'm not holding my breath that most union presidents (even those that are willing to organize the organized) share your vision of "building our base as a prelude to starving the imperialist beast." Many locals have endorsed left-led anti-war demos, but this doesn't in itself tell you whether the leadership is on board with the kind of movement that can physically obstruct US imperialism, and is prioritizing building that movement over maintaining friendly relations with public officials. Whereas one could say that it's difficult to do that without jeapordizing what we're trying to struggle for as far as health care, immigrant rights, etc., I would answer that time is not on our side, and that the strategy for both bread and butter issues and labor/anti-war unity needs to flow from a more solidly radical or oppositional perspective, together with greater membership involvement in all union policy decisions, in order for both to go forward. Nonetheless let's get better at organizing so that we can be in a better position to get the ball rolling when we the opportunities come up (assuming I'm right about the limits of the current leadership, that is).
A couple more points on the resolutions passed by various locals against the war: does anyone else find anything lacking, or is it just me being unfairly dismissive? Again, I dig anti-war resolutions, but not all of those listed on the linked site are even anti-war. Some of them have "we support the troops" first and foremost. Most of them don't seem to demand immediate withdrawal. It's a stretch to interpret this language as a threat in today's context, but maybe I should just lighten up?
The one passed by LA teachers on the occupation and labor rights was better (unsurprisingly...that union is looked at by a number of conservatives as notoriously leftist). It actually put the situation of ordinary Iraqis up front and centered on how this war has devastated a country of 20 million people. Good place to start, eh?!
Also, you say "All the marches in the world did not stop Bush from invading Iraq, could not stop the CIA from attempting a coup in Venezuela, won't stand in the way of military action in Bolivia, haven't closed the School of the Americas, etc, etc. Of course, this doesn't mean we shouldn't be in the streets, it just means that our first priority at this stage has to be building our base."
The argument seems to mean that a higher percentage of US workers in unions will somehow translate into the basis for a more militant and effective movement to force the imperialists into changing their foreign policy. I've been to Denmark, they're hailed by social democrats here as a model for a progressive economy with livable wages for all, etc. etc. Something like 90 percent of the workforce is organized, and clearly this has significantly lessened inequality between the rich and poor within Danish borders (although neoliberialism has been rendering this "golden age" of social democracy less and less possible for the past 30 years, and discrimination and fascist scapegoating against immigrant workers is still rampant). Yet the Danish government joined Bush in his move to recolonize Iraq, regardless of the fact that most of the public believed they should at least have waited for the UN first.
With regards to this coutry, few would argue that the movement against the Vietnam War in the $tates didn't have an effect on the policy and future strategy of the imperialists and their opinion-makers. Henry Kissinger himself admitted in his memoir that the existence of a numerically small but politically radical movement in the late 60s was decisive in preventing the U.S. from achieving its diplomatic goals at the time (I paraphrase).
Just as the Marc Coopers and Todd Gitlins of American academia need to let go of the emotional fantasy that the protests against the Democratic National Convention in Chicago elected Richard Nixon, it must be admitted that labor was not a major force against US aggression during the last major war this country was involved in, regardless of boasting greater numbers of organized workers. Independent organizations like SDS, the Black Panther Party and SNCC were leading the way down the internationalist road, and many of them had sprung up spontaneously among youth and oppressed nationality workers. These and dozens upon dozens of anti-war soldiers' organizations eventually became what I would characterize as the driving force of this movement. Even though their politics were way to the left of most Americans and the times differed in important ways, most Americans became anti-war after the Tet Offensive and Dems and GOP couldn't ignore the fact that the war wasn't going to be won, after 2 to 3 million Vietnamese were killed and the economic livelihood of Vietnam was incapacitated indefinitely.
Events like the mutinies of soldiers who resisted orders and physically attacked their superior officers clearly posed serious challenges for the war machine. The fact that unions back then were even less in decline than they are today doesn't seem to stick out as a factor in Kissinger's analysis of how the military industrial complex got its ass kicked for a brief moment in history.
And let's not forget the fact that ghetto-based riots were blowing up in literally hundreds of cities, creating an extra crisis of legitimacy for the government and making it increasingly difficult for the normal functioning of things to proceed on the homefront.
The point I'm attempting to make is that unions and counter-recruitment are both good things, but I wouldn't draw the one-to-one conclusion that more workers in unions means a bigger anti-war movement. I think these movements will indirectly continue to influence each other (I hope in increasingly practical ways) as we continue to face the same root challenges. History will not repeat itself, but if the labor movement can get to the point where it can play a role in making the country ungovernable, then I think by then it will have to have an effect to the tune of "starving the imperialist beast." The question is how do we get there, what would we do next, does the current grouping of union leaders share that goal, and how can progressives and anti-imperialists work to change things if they don't?
-A. Nony Mouse
p.s. in the spirit of counter-recruitment and anti-establishment local music check out this upcoming concert if you have time, I know the organizer:
Coalition Against Militarism in our Schools & Axis of Justice present
Reflection, Resistance and Response
in Solidarity with Youth
Art, Music, Expression, Activism and Opting Out Celebration
Friday, December 16, 2005
4:00pm-10:00pm
Space Art Gallery in Highland Park
106 South Avenue 58, Los Angeles, CA 90042
323-257-7969
Supporting our rising youth and allies
as we continue to demilitarize our schools and society.
*We are accepting art submissions for our Wall of Expression & Resistance*
Questions? Contact ashley@militaryfreeschools.org 626-799-9118
No one can accuse Wilhelm of being insensible to other "noninstitutional" issues. It was Wilhelm more than any other leader who turned the AFL-CIO away from its long-standing apprehensions about immigrant workers and toward its current stance as the nation's chief advocate for immigrant rights. But if unions grow weaker, he fears that there will be no force to advocate for these larger issues. "I don't believe that a strong labor movement by itself guarantees a more progressive America," he argues, "but I do believe that you can't have a more progressive America if you don't have a strong labor movement."
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I had another post I wanted to share but it got completely lost again which really gets me peeved. More on this later I guess. Sorry.
A. Nony Mouse
Fuck it, I'll just re-write it even though it's late and it won't be as good. Let's keep the discussion going.
A quick Google search for "John Wilhelm" gives a clue as to why I said that the effectiveness of the current labor leaders' overall policy for the short term and long term interests of U.S. workers (as well as a progressive America, assuming "America" has the right to exist and should continue exsting) will remain up for debate among unionists and radicals. Granted, this was made in 2001, but check it out:
"We've reformed welfare, we've worked hard at Welfare To Work, and those are all good things."
The obvious question is good things for whom. And who is Wilhelm speaking for when he says "we"? I thought he'd be speaking from the collective standpoint of his union, but did HERE back cutting tens of millions of dollars out of welfare? From what it says here, whoever that "we" is even "fought hard" to do so. It strikes me that an organization committed to empowering the country's most vulnerable would have "fought hard" against Clinton's giveaways to big business and the right.
I think this quote is really gonna end up keeping me tossing and turning all night. One more time:
"We've reformed welfare, we've worked hard at Welfare To Work, and those are all good things."
Certainly, workers who now have less income as a reward for spending less time with their families to go work at a job that goes nowhere have "worked hard" at welfare to work. I feel so much better now that my tax dollars aren't being wasted on couch potatoes. Best of all is I'm being told this by a labor leader who apparently shares a speech writer with Newt Gingrich.
In all seriousness I fail to understand why this man would cede so much moral ground to the very forces who wish to destroy what's left of the gains workers bled for in the 30s, no matter how much of a pragmatic radical one can say Wilhelm is. This would be like Martin Luther King, Jr. making a stump speech for states' rights in the Alabama capital in an effort to build a base for the Montgomery bus boycott. Obviously no base whatsoever would have come out of such an approach.
"The record shows that in markets where the hospitality industry has a high union density, labor and management often work together to produce good jobs. Our industry can be the model that it should be. And I believe that labor/management cooperation is crucial to that success."
If cooperation with management means industries and workplaces with little unrest where both sides "stick to the formal rules", then management and politicians would agree, but would workers? What signals is he sending and what do they mean in practice?
No one is contesting that union hotel workers live better than non-union, and perhaps even give better customer service. Let's look at another industry with a high union density and employee compensation rates that once upon a time were equal to if not more generous than those received by a hotel worker in Las Vegas or New York: airlines. Workers there have recently seen their living standards severely slashed, with the worst surely yet to come. Is the approach of "labor-management cooperation" appropriate under these circumstances? Ofcourse not, it means and has meant death for the workers, but I thought Wilhelm was supposed to represent a more aggressive alternative than the AFL-CIO he broke from. I'm not seeing how Wilhelm's line in practice would be able to withstand what's happened to airline workers when service workers come up next on the corporate chopping block. And I'm no ecnomist but I seriously doubt that the current benefit levels of union hotel workers are safe just because such jobs supposedly can't be outsourced. Watch this system replace most of them with computers if service workers get too expensive. And they'd do it too, because the people who run this economy fundamentally don't give a shit about hotel or airline workers, and the less people are trained as viewing these folks as partners the better.
I have a great deal of hope for radical change based in the working class, I just doubt it'll see the light of day if it's grounded in this sort of outlook.
A. Nony Mouse
Thanks for the comment, Mouse. First of all, I agree with you that "the less people are trained as viewing these folks as partners the better." Also, you're right to "doubt that the current benefit levels of union hotel workers are safe just because such jobs supposedly can't be outsourced." This benefit level is unsafe as long as there is a low level of unionization in the hotel industry, which there is (currently about 10%). And it's ultimately unsafe as long as workers in other industries or other countries are unorganized. In other words, as long as capitalists are free to play one group of workers against another.
I also agree with you about the mess the airline industry is in. This is a good example of why high union density, while necessary, is insufficient. If the union leadership doesn't have a plan to pick a fight and win it (to challenge the corporations and to do the organizing necessary to back up the challenge) then the union won't be able to resist the companies' demands for concessions. And it's harder to conceive of and execute such a plan if the unionized workers are divided by employer and by craft into several different unions, as is the case in the airlines.
And that's where Wilhelm has distinguished himself. He leads a union that has an aggressive plan to organize the unorganized and raise standards in the hotel industry on a national scale. This plan is premised on the idea that workers in union hotels will not settle for short-term "cooperation" with their employers, but will take militant action to assure that their non-union brothers and sisters also have the right to organize. This plan is still in progress, but it's worth noting that in the first battles of the war (the 2004 contract fights) the union resisted the calls for health-benefit concessions that the industry wanted, and which many other unions have been unable to resist.
This is the context in which Wilhelm's (or Stern's) rhetoric about labor-management cooperation should be taken. It's the "carrot" half of a "carrot and stick" approach to the employer, and every union uses such an approach, unless they're simply on the defensive, in which case they have neither a carrot nor a stick, because the carrot only works if there's a legitimate strike threat, which doesn't just come out of nowhere, it takes a lot of organizing.
Essentially, "cooperation" means not striking or otherwise disrupting business in exchange for certain demands. Cooperation is the same thing as signing a contract, and it lasts only as long as the contract lasts. After that, you raise the bar, and you make further cooperation contingent on further "cooperation" on the part of the employer.
And Wilhelm is not concerned only with the hotel industry, or the foodservice industry, even though these industries have millions of unorganized workers who constitute a large bulk of the working poor. He also helped create a new federation that plans to implement similar plans in other unorganized, low-income industries.
He also, by the way, has led the labor movement's turn away from facilitating the division of workers based on national origin, by reversing the anti-immigrant policy of the AFL-CIO (prior to the split) and having UNITE-HERE lead the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride.
Granted, these are only steps along the way, but they are very important steps.
I still think strong support for "reforming welfare" (no, NOT so-called corporate welfare)and thereby burying yet more of the legacy and programs of the 1930s labor movement was a more important step than the aforementioned. Allow me this "tactical disagreement."
-Mouse
Mouse, I admire your anti-capitalist zeal, but I fear that for some reason you are intent on alienating those who are not yet as radical as you are (or who have "tactical disagreements" as you put it) by taking your anger out on them rather than on your common enemies. Why on earth would you want to do that? What purpose does that serve for the movement?
First of all, I'm trying to figure out where you find "strong support" for welfare reform in an offhand comment Wilhelm made to some labor department beaurocrats, especially since the comment was in the context of pointing out some of the negative consequences of our government's anti-worker policies:
"We've reformed welfare, we've worked hard at Welfare To Work, and those are all good things. But income inequality is growing, even though more members of the average family are at work. More single parents are at work. More people have multiple jobs, necessary to make ends meet. People are working longer hours, and as a consequence, as the secretary reminded us this morning, parents are spending 22 hours a week less with their children than in the previous generation. And, of course, therefore they're spending less time working with their children's schools, as well. And so inevitably, and not surprisingly, we're experiencing the social problems that flow from these conditions and the family issues that flow from these conditions. And to compound those problems, our employment based system of health care coverage is melting away.
We must find a way to make sure that service sector jobs - not just a handful of them, but all of them - are good jobs."
To me, in context, his comments on welfare reform sound like a good example of "damning with faint praise," or a diplomatically backhanded jab at the labor department's priorities.
Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter what Wilhelm says to the labor department (and I wouldn't have said it myself), it matters what he does. The recent history of the union he leads shows that he is not "burying yet more of the legacy and programs of the 1930s labor movement," but rather working hard to revive it. Do you really think a stupid comment about welfare reform is "a more important step" than a massive effort to organize the unorganized and a historic change in the American labor movement's attitude toward immigrant workers?
Alas, this series of comments has gotten way off the original topic, which was a brainstorm about how the labor movement could contribute in a more concrete way to the anti-war movement. Your worry about whether the impetus for such a program would come from the "official" leadership of the movement is kind of beside the point. There is a need for all kinds of people to take all kinds of leadership in this movement, "officially" or otherwise. For what it's worth, many "official" union leaders have in fact, contributed to USLAW, either by serving on the steering committee (including a UNITE-HERE VP and several SEIU officials), affiliating their locals with USLAW (too many to list), or passing anti-war resolutions on the local or national level (again, too many to list). SEIU even gave USLAW $25,000 (about a third of its budget).
That said, let me respond to a few of your specific concerns.
1. Your recognition that "the leadership of the unions currently is less interested in building a massive, cross-border movement that can bring down imperialism, and currently more focused on a piecemeal, electoral approach" is too true in too many unions, but you fail to acknowledge that this choice (between a "massive, cross-border movement" and a "piecemeal, electoral approach") was, in fact, one of the major divisions between the Change to Win unions and those who stuck with the AFL-CIO.
2. You misrepresent my point by saying "The argument seems to mean that a higher percentage of US workers in unions will somehow translate into the basis for a more militant and effective movement to force the imperialists into changing their foreign policy." That's why I posted the quote from Wilhelm in the first place. To reiterate, his point (and mine) is that a strong labor movement is necessary but not sufficient for a more progressive America. That's the point that your google search missed.
3. You point out that "organizations like SDS, the Black Panther Party and SNCC were leading the way down the internationalist road" during Vietnam, not the labor movement. The real problem is not that the labor movement didn't lead the way, it's that it refused to go along, thanks in large part to a piece of shit named George Meany. So the SDS et al helped stop the Vietnam War, but not soon enough, and they certainly didn't bring down American imperialism or capitalism once and for all. So what's the next logical step for an SDS veteran like John Wilhelm? How about broaden your influence by rising to a position of influence in the American labor movement and remaking that movement into a powerful force?
4. Finally, I think you are, as you said, "unfairly dismissive," and, yes, you should "just lighten up." This is no mere "tactical disagreement," it goes much deeper than that.
Hey dude, this is a great post. I was thinking exactly some of the same things.
One of the main reasons why I'm altingsay is that I think that the labor movement is our greatest hope for creating an effective anti-imperialist movement.
I know that US labor at its peak density decades ago was very complicit with US corporate imperialism, but I also think that union organizing is the most effective form of political organizing and a big first step for radicalizing people. Also, as you mention, many of the immigrant workers are all too familiar with the US bombs, "Free Trade, and IMF/World Bank debt scams that have devastated their homelands. That's why they're working here in the first place. This has a lot of potential.
I'm going to strongly suggest to the others that we push for such a political education program as our campaign proceeds. I have a feeling the higher ups may oppose it for "diverting too much of its precious energy from winning the short-term organizing fights." Nevertheless, I think this is hugely important.
-fellow submarino
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