"If this darkness came from light, then light can come from darkness"

The title of this post is taken from a Mason Jennings song called "Drinking as Religion," a simple but beautiful song about a post-breakup bout of depression and self-sabotage. It's been in my head for a few weeks, but its meaning deepened for me after I read a couple of recent articles about the state of the labor movement. Broadly speaking, the articles tell us nothing we didn't already know, but both fill in some important details, and they are chilling and poignant reminders of how far our movement has fallen. Both also hold out hope for renewal, and they relate, indirectly but significantly, to the recent breakup of the AFL-CIO. The bottom line: the Change to Win program must succeed.

The most widely read of the two, a four-part series in the LA Times, astoundingly fails even to mention the growers' responsibility for the miserable plight of California's farm workers, but it's nevertheless an important wake-up call for the union and it supporters. It's a reminder of what happens to any union that takes its focus away from organizing, even a union associated in the popular imagination more with "social-movement unionism" than with George Meany-style, Cold War-era business unionism.

Farmworkers Reap Little as Union Strays From Its Roots, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

The other article, from the Monthly Review, takes as its jumping-off point Bush's victory over Kerry in Ohio. But it's about much more than swing-state electoral politics, it's a deep and compelling analysis of the state of the movement.

What Was the Matter with Ohio?: Unions and Evangelicals in the Rust Belt