Labor Power and Strategy - by John Womack Jr (Paperback)

About the Book

"What would it take to topple Amazon? To change how health care works in America? To break up the media monopolies that have taken hold of our information and imaginations? How is it possible to organize those without hope working on the margins? In Labor Power and Strategy, legendary strategist, historian, and labor organizer John Womack, speaks directly to a new generation, providing rational, radical, experience-based perspectives that help target and run smart, strategic, effective campaigns in the working class. In this sleek, practical, pocket inspiration, Womack lays out a timely plan for identifying chokepoints and taking advantage of supply chain issues in order to seize and build labor power and solidarity. Interviewed by Peter Olney of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union -- Womacks lively, illuminating thoughts are built upon by ten young labor organizers and educators, whose responses create a rich dialogue and open a space for joyful, achievable change. With stories of triumph that will bring readers to tears this back-pocket primer is an instant classic." --Amazon.

Book Synopsis

What would it take to topple Amazon? To change how health care works in America? To break up the media monopolies that have taken hold of our information and imaginations? How is it possible to organize those without hope working on the margins? In Labor Power and Strategy, legendary strategist, historian, and labor organizer John Womack, speaks directly to a new generation, providing rational, radical, experience-based perspectives that help target and run smart, strategic, effective campaigns in the working class.

In this sleek, practical, pocket inspiration, Womack lays out a timely plan for identifying chokepoints and taking advantage of supply chain issues in order to seize and build labor power and solidarity. Interviewed by Peter Olney of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union--Womack's lively, illuminating thoughts are built upon by ten young labor organizers and educators, whose responses create a rich dialogue and open a space for joyful, achievable change. With stories of triumph that will bring readers to tears this back-pocket primer is an instant classic.

With contributions from Gene Bruskin, Carey Dall, Dan DiMaggio, Katy Fox-Hodess, Bill Fletcher Jr., Jane McAlevey, Jack Metzgar, Joel Ochoa, Melissa Shetler, and Rand Wilson.

Review Quotes

"In Our Revolution we shout, ''When we Organize, We Win," but organize who and win what? Labor Power and Strategy is a great collection of Womack and 10 organizers debating strategic workplace organizing vs associational or more general organizing at workplaces or in communities. Womack, in a long initial interview and in the conclusion, argues that without organizing workplace chokepoints, we are left with the spontaneous movements that come and go. Several of the 10 organizers essentially argue that the spontaneous can become conscious and long lasting. Grab the book and take up the debate."
--Larry Cohen, board chair Our Revolution, past president, Communications Workers of America

"In this fascinating and insightful dialogue, the distinguished historian John Womack and a set of veteran labor activists probe the most fundamental of questions: How do we organize the 21 century working-class and give it the power to transform world capitalism? Are workers with vital skills and strategic leverage the key to a labor resurgence, or should organizers wager upon a mobilization of working people whose relationship to the economy's commanding heights is more diffuse? Or can we arrive at some dialectical symbiosis? Whatever the answer, this is the kind of constructively radical conversation essential to the rebirth of working-class power in our time."
--Nelson Lichtenstein, historian and author of Capitalism Contested: The New Deal and Its Legacies

"Put this unique collection of strategic insights into the hands of the new generation of militants excited about revitalizing the US labor movement and 'working-class power' might once again become something other than an abstract slogan in this country. Couldn't be more timely."
--Max Elbaum, editor at Convergence Magazine and author of Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che

"Labor Power and Strategy is essential reading for activists
and organizers seeking to understand how in a constantly changing world
of work workers can marshal power.
--Elaine Bernard, former executive director Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School

"The
comprehensive campaigns model is essential to labor's efforts to
rebuild power. This book, focusing on workers' positional power in
production and distribution, explores a key element of such an overall
approach."
--Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of Labor Education Research
and a senior lecturer at Cornell University's School of Industrial and
Labor Relations

"Womack's focus upon the essential ingredients of
effective and strategic organizing resonates today, as elements in labor
now attempt to bestir themselves in the midst of unrelenting decline.
His view that workers must seek forward movement through their own
initiatives, independent of law, political process and formal machinery
represents an important clarion call, rooted in the practical historical
experience of more than a century. Womack's instructive views and
observation warrant careful attention."
--William B. Gould IV, author of For Labor to Build Upon: Wars, Depression and Pandemic