Hello Friends and Comrades,
This round of Specials for August and September started with Nurses Forward Part 1, where we spoke with a slate of nurses running a rank-and-file campaign for the Board of Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA), calling itself Nurses Forward. We spoke with Shiori Konda-Muhammad from North Memorial, who is seeking a First VP position; Tami Andersen from North Memorial, seeking a Director position; Jill Lebrun from Fairview - Riverside, who is seeking a Treasurer position; Meghan Matteson from Fairview - Riverside, who is seeking a Director position; Melisa Koll from Children’s - Saint Paul, who is seeking a Second VP postion; Venessa Soldo-Jones, who works at Allina and is seeking a Director position; and Kelley Anaas, who is an RN at Abbott Northwestern and is the campaign/social media manager for the campaign.
Nurses Forward's candidates discussed building solidarity, supporting diversity within the union, and how workers can work to win campaigns to improve not only their workplaces, but their communities. Here are snippets from three portions of their platform from their website:
“The corporatization of healthcare hurts our communities, patients, nurses, and all healthcare workers. We all experience the effects of the profit-driven model when understaffing, mismanagement, and lack of resource allocation have left many of us to bear the responsibility of providing care. More importantly, mergers and acquisitions have left the most vulnerable communities without access to quality and affordable healthcare. In order to challenge these industry trends, we must organize our members to strengthen our ability to fight back.”
“We believe that inequality related to race, sexual orientation and gender identity is a human rights issue. We must honor our diversity and embrace our differences. We need a union where all members feel valued, respected and supported. Too often, nurses of color and those from diverse communities are singled out, targeted, and discriminated against by management. Together we can fight back against unjust actions and move forward by building a union that works for all members regardless of race, birthplace, religion, sex, gender, or identity.”
“The size and strength of our union provides us with the opportunity to create powerful coalitions that advance the cause of not just nurses, but all working people. We can move forward by taking a more proactive role in protecting our profession and building the labor movement.”
I encourage everyone to check out the slate’s website and platform, and listen to the full Nurses Forward Part 1 Special. Part 2 will come out soon.
In our second Special of this round, we spoke with Emmett Doyle about his new album Rust Belt Ballads. After covering the costs for the album, any additional money will go to the Twin Cities Solidarity Network that Doyle helped found. He says he grew up with a “political folk music tradition from Guthrie and Seeger and MacColl and the like, and with Irish Music — especially Irish Rebel Songs.” He talks about growing up in a small town outside of St. Cloud, Minnesota, and after college working in the non-profit world on food justice. Doyle then went on to be a river deck hand, and later a carpenter, where he committed himself to the labor movement and movement against police brutality.
Doyle started out with the Wooden Shoe Ramblers, but that band has since broken up to pursue other things. The 17 songs on Rust Belt Ballads, which is Doyle’s debut solo album, “reflect growing up in the Midwest in the rust belt — songs about the farm crisis and outsourcing, and union busting, and what happened to us, and kind of the decline that I grew up in — as well as the fight back happening today, as well as some of the deeper history.” The album is rooted in an Americana and Celtic sound, and Doyle plays around “a dozen or so instruments” on the tracks.
We discussed the important, and often forgotten, history of the US Civil War, including the actions of pro-Union partisans in the south, workers’ rebellions and enslaved Black People who Doyle says “essentially did the first general strike in American History” when they refused to produce for, and sabotaged, the south’s war effort, and ran away to join the Union battle lines.
The 1934 Teamsters Strike is also an important point of discussion — “when Minneapolis workers learned how to take on the bosses and win!” Doyle recommends Kele Cable’s great podcast 1934: Mill City Revolt and Farrell Dobbs’ great book Teamster Rebellion to better understand the importance of that historic strike in pushing back against the bosses’ organization, the Citizens Alliance.
In our third Special, we spoke with Kieran Knutson, President of Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 7250. Our discussion includes the recent organization of a candidate forum for those running for President of the National Union that folks in Local 7250 spearheaded (which was covered in Labor Notes.) We also discussed accusations of racial and sexual abuse against Ed Mooney, who was one of the candidates, as well as the final outcome of the CWA National President election. We end by discussing how members can keep a rank-and-file perspective and approach on issues, even when they are in a union leadership role.
“I really look at this not as a position of command, but as a position of responsibility. That members have democratically elected me to take on some responsibility for the group.” Knutson continues, “I look at it as I’ve been given responsibility more than I’ve been given leadership.” But Knutson says he isn’t the only one who has responsibility, as others on the Executive Board, Stewards and Members overall have responsibility to the whole group. Keeping the questions about connections to the rank-and-file top of mind is also important, as is listening to members when they bring you specific concerns, he says.
This is a four-Special month, and our fourth Special Interview of the month did not disappoint. For SNV Special Interview: General Strike US, I spoke with Eliza Blum, who helped form the group General Strike US. Unlike other groups that have simply set a date for a general strike and sat back and waited for workers to jump into action, this group is taking a new approach. While they are focused on maintaining decentralization, action and planning is central to the hope for success. Blum said, in America we are “so exploited” that it “just ripples out to all facets of America life.” Blum has been reaching out to contacts at labor unions but says “they are kind of skeptical.”
She says, with us witnessing the Amazon strikes, the WGA strike and others, “I believe that now is the time. I think people, and I’m not talking about institutions, unions, I’m talking about like everyday working people are fed up!” Blum says there is an incredible amount of organizing going on through online channels and said, “I believe the general strike is coming!”
The organizing by General Strike US is based on research by Chenoweth that found that 3.5% of a population is required for successful social movements. So, General Strike US has set the goal of approximately 11 million Americans signing strike cards before calling a strike. Groups in different localities are encouraged to do their own organizing for the strike, including building locally, fundraising, and placing the strike card sign-up on their website. The group has daily meetings of teams, which you can find on their website, to coordinate work.
Our regular Episode this month is about a group that is no friend of Labor — the police. Police Perspectives was uploaded on September 21, 2023. Four commenters gave their thoughts on slogans and demands around policing. Should the movements call for “community control,” “abolition,” “defunding,” or something else entirely?
Adam Turl said the goal needs to be “the complete abolition of the police,” and ended by saying, “if a cop comes from a working class background they are, by definition, a class traitor.” Tania said in her comments that police should demonstrate some form of “class solidarity” by describing her recent visit to Cuba and seeing that “the police there actually protect and serve.” While Tania said she believes we do need “some law making entity that protects women from predators,” she settled on a position that the police force needs to be “neutered of their testosterone-filled policing” by taking away their guns and technology, and having them focus on community tasks, like putting air in peoples tires. The satirical and documentary filmmaker Jennifer Neverdal, who started off started off with a strong abolitionist position after the murder of George Floyd, has settled on the opinion that we should “defund the police,” and eventually eliminate the police, but not until we have found a way for communities to organize themselves. She said no other departments operate on the idea that, when they fail, they get more money, and neither should the police. Dan Engelhart, a business agent from Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE) said that state employees are disciplined, “up to and including termination,” for far less egregious offenses than police. He agrees the goal should be abolition of the police, but he thinks society needs to develop more before we can reach that goal. In the meantime, he thinks that aspirational goals can sometimes obscure the immediate goal, which he says needs to be transparency in holding cops accountable with “discipline up to and including termination,” so we can move towards “a holistic public safety” that includes robust mental healthcare.
All of our commentors agreed we need drastic and significant changes to the status quo to reach a situation that provides safety for the community. But exactly how we can deliver safety to workers, our most vulnerable citizens, and our communities, still requires more discussion. Community leaders and activists should consider organizing meetings to discuss the important issues of safety in our communities, and consider integrating elements of this discussion into labor work, as police have no history of being a friend to labor.
Solidarity,
Nick Shillingford - Host - Socialist News and Views
PS: Check out Crime Audio Video Break on YouTube (a collaboration of Leftist News Network, Urban Cabin Studios, and Socialist News and Views.)