It Could Happen Here - Amazonians United and Solidarity Unionism

Episode Date: March 17, 2022

Mia talks with Ted, an organizer with Amazonians United about solidarity unionism, direct action in the workplace, and organizing outside the legal frameworks of conventional unionization.   Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart and putting them back together again. And today we're doing one of our, I guess, increasingly less rare, but still sort of uncommon, putting things back together again episodes.

And with me today is Ted Minn from Amazonians United to talk about different kinds of union workers organizing and the work that y'all have been doing. So, Ted, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. So, all right. One of the things that I wanted to talk about right off the bat is that Amazonians United is running a very, very different kind of organization than a lot of the union efforts that we've talked about on the show. And a lot of the sort of like, I guess, classical or sort of business union model stuff that, you know, we've, you know, then what you see in the press and then also that we've been covering. So I wanted to start off by asking you about solidarity unionism and how it sort of differs

from other kinds of union organizations and campaigns. Sure. I think it's pretty simple, actually. I think solidarity unionism is workers who believe in ourselves. And by that, I mean it's workers recognizing that we don't need someone to save us. Because we are the ones doing the work, we know how to run our workplaces. the work we know how to run our workplaces we know how to do it best and we also deserve uh the the the wealth that we produce and so um solidarity unionism to me is

uh building organization with each other where the fabric of our organization is our relationship and our solidarity as co-workers engaging in struggle against um bosses managers owners um everyone that's that's telling us what to do while uh taking the lion's share of the wealth that we create. And it's by uniting, coming together around issues that we care about, taking direct action in the workplace, building our confidence and our strength and our consciousness and our organization, that to me is solidarity unionism. It is distinctly different

from business unionism, which is the dominant form, mainstream unionism, legalistic unionism, whatever you want to call it. that model that has been failing for several decades actually is predicated on a deep distrust of workers, the disbelief that workers can organize ourselves, run our own workplaces, represent ourselves, defend ourselves and each other. And in business union, I mean, you know, you, you, you see the ads when they're posting for union staff job, come lead these workers, come, come join this union and lead. You're not even a worker in the workplace.

How are you going to lead someone in there? Like, you know, you're, you're a lawyer, you're a, you know, you have a different professional expertise. You're not moving the packages with us from inside with, from within the, uh, the warehouse. And so, um, yeah, I think that's, that's the main difference to me of the model. Do you, are you a worker? Do you believe in workers? Do you trust and have faith that workers, we ourselves, can build our own organization, lead ourselves, and win? Or do you think workers need to be led, need to be represented, need to be told what to do, need to pay you to go and save them? And yeah, I believe in workers, so I'm a solidarity unionist.

Yeah, and I think we were talking a bit before the show about this, and I think there's a lot of aspects about this that are, I think, very powerful in sectors of the economy that haven't been unionized or unions ever treated from or people who were never sort of organized to begin with. And I think that's something that there's this problem that happens with a lot of unions where you get this sort of bureaucratic

structure that builds up. And the bureaucratic structure that builds up, like, doesn't necessarily have the same interests as the people in the union. And that's a real problem. And you get these entrenched, like, you know, you can get these entrenched caucuses, you control unions, and you get this sort of proliferation of these people. And I think this was part of why a lot of the sort of the anti-union techniques that you saw in the sort of anti-union purges in the 80s I mean you've been seeing them for a while but why they started working in the 80s was that

when someone starts ranting about union bureaucrats there actually was a divide there there was a sort of I guess like there was a sort of a kind of fundamental class difference, which I think has a lot. I mean, it also has a lot to do with, you know, when you get into your sort of like more revolutionary context that has to do with why a lot of unions when, you know, France is infamous for this, right?

Like France has had these giant like communist trade unions. And every time a revolution started, the trade union just like sits there and does nothing. And yeah, and you have to sort of ask yourself like, okay, so why is this happening? And I think, yeah, like solidarity unionism, it has a lot of answers to this sort of, I guess you could call it like there's a sort of like

right-wing critique of unions that has to do with like, well, okay, so we don't want workers to organize. We don't want them to have collective power at all. But then there's also, you know, but the reason that it works in a lot of cases because it's able to tap into a sort of like in into these structural problems that a lot of unions have and i think so my understanding of of how y'all's organizing has been going and correct me if i'm wrong that i've been interested in is that like unlike a lot of other campaigns that you've seen i mean even specifically with amazon but like a lot of other the the sort of the campaigns that are getting a lot of press like you're not active like your goal isn't to just get like recognition as a collective bargaining unit right that's

another key part of our key difference between solidarity unionism, business unionism. In business unionism, what defines you as a union is whether you are legally recognized by the state, by the NLRB, by the appointed government body. Yeah. by the appointed government body. Yeah. That is the point at which the folks in these organizations, like, are we a union or are we not? Okay, let's do an election. Let's follow all these rules that, by the way,

were designed to demobilize us a century ago. But let's follow these rules. Let's try to fight in the courts uh to be recognized as a union and then once we're a union then we can fight for a legal contract that has benefited a lot of people in different ways i'm not you know what i mean like but that approach is different than solidarity unism where it's like we know our power is in the workplace, on the shop floor, where our power is based on our unity in numbers as coworkers. We see this when we walk out and within a month they give us a raise. How long would it have taken to get a raise if we went for an LRB election?

Yeah, it could be years. How many years? I mean, what organization are we even building in that way and so um our instead of seeking legal recognition and waging our uh uh struggle against bosses in the courts we are choosing to wage, engage in struggle in the shop floor where we are the experts, where we have the power, where we have the organization, where we are doing the work, where that is our home turf. We have more power there. It makes more sense to build power where we have power, not in the institutions that were specifically designed

to disempower us and give large employers the upper hand. All the different ways that they can manipulate how the votes happen, what is considered part of the voting unit, the contract negotiation process. I mean, all of these legal hurdles, I mean, for the vast majority of workers, you'll need lawyers to be even understand how to engage in that world. That's not our world. It was not built for us to be in. It was built to control us. And so it just doesn't make logical sense to try to wage our struggle in that arena.

We should be in waging it in the places that we work. And so that, yeah, that's, I think another core principle, solidarity, unism, like build power where we have it. And that's the shop floor. Yeah. And I think, think i mean that's something that i've seen like in like when i was in college there there was a big grad student union uh organization campaign and it kind of they had this huge problem which was that okay well they were trying to do they were trying to get a national labor relations board like vote under trump but they couldn't do it because if you know because because the national labor relations board was controlled by just like the even even by national labor relations board

standards like like just unbelievably anti-union like viscerally anti-worker forces it was like well if we try to get a vote like there's a chance they could just you know like literally destroy the right like destroy the organizing rights of all grad students in the country and yeah and you get you get they did that with the nissan election or something like that yeah yeah and definitely delayed it yeah and it's and it's you know yeah i think this this is a trap that like a lot of people even even people who are really highly organized like get stuck in where, you know, and then like eventually the grad students just like essentially started doing walkouts because that was, you know,

that, that was the thing they could do when they started doing their own strikes, even though they weren't like legally recognized, because that was the thing that you could do to, you know, actually fight in a terrain that wasn't just inherently rigged against you. fight in a terrain that wasn't just inherently rigged against you. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, okay, so you've decided to take a fight in the workplace, like on the shop floor where you're at your strongest. What does that actually look like in terms of actions, in terms of organization?

you're at your strongest, what does that actually look like in terms of actions, in terms of organization? Yeah. Honestly, I think it's simpler and more rudimentary than

one might think or that you might read about in an academic article or something, analyzing. I think it comes down to building community, comes down to building culture, and the principles of the community and culture that you build together with your coworkers is one where we value ourselves and each other.

We respect ourselves and each other. And that means that we fight for what is fair in the workplace. That means that we maintain integrity. Anytime a boss disrespects one of us, we need to confront it. boss disrespects one of us, we need to confront it. We need to address it, if not immediately, soon after in numbers. It means if we're getting overworked and underpaid, then we need to strategize and figure out how do we compel the employer to stop overworking and underpaying us? How do we hit them in a place that they are forced to respect? And as it goes in the world we are today, it's always the numbers, it's always the money, it's always the profit.

So what that means on a day-to-day, I mean, amazon warehouses are a very isolating place um amazon has basically uh gigafied warehouse work you know it's like the uber for warehouse where you can pick up shifts you can you know extra shifts you can take uh furlough days you know we call them vtos um many warehouses like you're you'll work a 10 12 hour shift and you're for that entire time you're near one or two people max because we're spaced out and it's loud and there's machinery and you're packing boxes and and so um on top of that you know the everyday dehumanizing it's also um you're pushed to work faster and faster. Um, it's difficult to have, you know, deep human interaction when you're busting your ass, moving, you know,

30 to 45 pound packages as quickly as you can. Um, and so the, the, the day-to-day of building and fighting in the workplace, building community means, uh example, every week we have a potluck during lunch, bring coworkers together, new coworkers that someone could start last week. This is something that we hear a lot. Part of the challenge, the turnover is so high. How can you possibly organize? Turnover is so high. That is a specific weapon that bosses use against us. High turnover means what? It means we frequently have new coworkers, harder to build relationship

and organization. It means that the job feels more precarious. So people are always afraid that we'll lose our job. We could get fired. They could change staffing numbers. They could close warehouses. As a tool, higher turnover. They just churn through workers. Okay, who's willing to do the most work for the lowest pay and sacrifice the most of their body? it if you can then you stay in here okay let's find the workers in society that are most able to you know produce the most so on and so forth and so uh basic things you know having every day uh sometimes it's just like talking with your co-workers is something that is that they try to keep you from doing in the workplace and And by engaging conversation, you're already resisting that isolation, already resisting boxes trying to just control everything, keep everyone divided.

So, you know, weekly pot lunches, having meetings inside or outside of the workplace, coming together, what are the issues that we care about? How do we bring, how do we build more unity around these issues that we know many people care about? Is it doing a petition? People sign on together. Are we delivering the petition in a group? If the management doesn't respond or doesn't give us a reasonable response, how do we escalate? Do we need to walk out? Do we need to take other action?

Anytime we see a manager disrespecting a coworker, um, how do we post up next to them, pull out a notepad, start taking notes, ask questions. Um, we're a witness, you know, how do we defend each other in all of these basic ways? How are we addressing, um, and being honest with ourselves and each other of, uh, just the depth of disrespect when they're waiting for us outside of the bathrooms to write us up for time off tasks, when they're telling us to work faster, when we're already on a 10-hour shift, we're on hour 10 of the 10-hour shift, they send a bunch of people home and are forcing us to finish all the work for a small number of people. Do we continue putting up with it or do we immediately

walk out or do we talk with their coworkers about what we want to do? Just being mindful of being honest about what, how we are being treated, what is fair, what is not, and taking the necessary action to demand the fairness, the respect that each of us deserve i think like that's what the workplace struggle looks like um i don't yeah and i think it comes down to building that community um with each other and then building the culture of not putting up with bullshit defending each other looking out for each other um there's a them there's an us um make sure you know what side you're on um and you know i think that's the that's the foundation of it yeah i think the the aspect especially of culture building is really interesting to me because i think that's something that's not really talked about

much with with with organizing efforts in both. I mean, cause you know, a lot of like a lot of what gets discussed with, you know, especially in academic circles when, when, when you're, when you're just, you know, when, when, when you have people writing about union organizing and when, even when sort of like other union organizers are writing about unions is that, yeah, you don't hear much about the cultural aspects and you don't hear much about

just resisting the the actual like psychological degradation that you get and that strikes me i think also as as yeah as you've been saying something that's that's very important to not discuss enough as i mean both as just something that is a goal in itself, like not having this sort of, you know, not having the just sort of horrible, demeaning and abusive sort of tyranny of the bosses, just like existing as this kind of like normal force. But then also like, yeah, that starts to be something that that is really

important for anyone who's who's thinking about organizing is you know getting people getting people to organize around just like how or getting getting people to organize around just this the sort of like the psychological degradation like i i think is really important because otherwise you know you you get you can get you can just get these cultures where like i mean i remember i had a job where i was in like we had a union but like it didn't i mean so i was i was a temp worker so i wasn't in the union but like they had a union and it just sort of didn't do anything and no one like and this is a real source of sort of right-wing resentment because the union just didn't do anything and no one like yeah and this is a real source of sort of right-wing resentment because the union just didn't do anything and then you know everyone's

getting treated terribly like by by the bosses and by sort of upper management and no one but it never even like it never really like just on a cultural level never occurred to them to sort of like use the union for that because that's not really what the union was there for it was just the sort of like it was just this thing that existed and occasionally when contracts came up, it would appear. I guess on that note, one of the things I was also wondering is for people who are interested in their own workplaces and starting doing this kind of organizing and starting to

just fight back against their bosses in ways that don't in their own workplaces in starting doing this kind of organizing and starting to sort of i mean just fight back against their bosses in ways that don't you know either because they don't want to or because they literally can't which i think is is true of a lot of people like who want to organize outside of the business union model how how do you how did you all start organizing like this and what what sort of immediate lessons do you think people should should take away and should sort of bring in bring into their own organizing in the workplace yeah um i think at the base of it is that um i guess I mentioned something like this earlier, but that we can organize ourselves. We can, you know, if you're talking, if you have two co-workers that you're friends with,

and you say like, hey, let's meet up and talk about what's going on at work, you're starting to organize you know um and i think part of part of the damage part of the harm that business unionism has done and also just i don't know hierarchical organizing, Kalinsky and organizing. I think they're all part of a sort of connected school of thought where it's like organizing and, you know, building a union is something that like you need to be like professionals to or you know you they're experts at it um they're experts and then if you're not an expert then you need to consult an expert to figure out how to do it um and i think that's bullshit i think it's uh if you're a worker then uh you can be a union organizer if you're a worker and you talk with you know another worker about what's going on in your workplace, you're already starting to organize. Like I said earlier, if you're calling a meeting, and workers do this all the time, confronting management about disrespect.

I think it's much more frequently on an individual basis, but it's a matter of connecting your issue with a couple other coworkers and then figure out, okay, well, um, what, what's our next step? Well, we need more numbers. How do we, you know, how do we build more numbers? Uh, if each of us can invite one more person, that's six people. If, uh, you know, if the six of us can are starting a petition, we could probably get, you know, signatures of 50 or 60, you know, like it's step by step and saying, if we want to build organization, we can do it from the bottom up. We can start it and we can figure this out. I mean, every even within the same company, even within the same company in the same city there, you know, I work at a delivery station in Gage Park. Other delivery stations in the city of Chicago have a completely different culture, the neighborhood that it's in, the workers that are the bosses. And so even in the same company, the same type of workplace in the same city, it's going to be a different story for how that workplace is going to get united, that kind of just begins the process of putting together the basics.

All right. We need to start building up some numbers. We need to start having, you know, addressing some issues that people care about. And there's always, I mean, there's always the, you know, overworked and underpaid, and that's going to exist everywhere. You can always go after those issues, but frequently they're smaller ones. Like our first issue was a water petition uh or or or at was access to water um and this is how we started as an organization um basically they were taking away

bottled water they said we were leaving around too much garbage they're saying bottled water is only there for the summer and now that's not the summer that whatever they're trying to save a few dollars a day on bottled water to make us you know work without it um and we said that's fucked up we're doing warehouse work like this is hard manual labor and it's hot in here we need that bottle water it's you know not just the uh broken unfiltered fountain across the warehouse that you can't even get to while you're working um and so uh just a few of us that were talking at break it's like okay well there's six of us here well we're kind of you know this is the this is the break room at work they're like managers walking around their cameras in here like let's meet outside uh and figure this out um so you know we we met at a at a crispy cream down on like 93rd um and uh we just basically said like well how are we going to

get this water we've been asking management uh you know they've given us the same reasons we need to do something bigger that that they can't ignore um how about how about a petition? And so we just drafted it. The six of us, we drafted it. We went around, we got 150 signatures, I think from our coworkers or just like basic demands. We need bottled water stocked every day. They need to be, you know, filters need to be clean. We need to get, be able to, uh, take a break to get this water. Um, and we delivered, uh, uh, the, the, the 150 signatures to management. I think it was within 30 or 40 minutes. They drove to a grocery store, bought, you know,

went to the nearest Pete's, bought every case of bottle while they have brought it and passed it out to everyone. We're like, oh, okay. Like that was, you know, people were like, that's what's, hey, we got to do a petition for this thing. We got to do, you know what, this thing, we should probably. It was that, I don't want to say easy because it's definitely not easy, but the steps, the step-by-step of like how do you begin,

how do you get something started, how do you start building some unity, these are steps that we have taken. These are, you know, what we think is can be applicable with everyone's own kind of personal tweaks based on, you know, your own workplace to start getting something going for more coworkers to start realizing, oh, yeah, like we should be in more control of what's happening around here because we're the ones that are doing all the work. We're the ones that are suffering the most from it. I mean, our bodies getting ground down from doing it. And so, yeah, I think that, I think I loop back to a previous question too,

but like how we started, how you engage in the struggle and just like what that looks like or, or building, building something up from nothing to something like that. So that's what we, you know what to something. That's what we did. You know what I mean? That's what we did. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire

and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.

Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows. as part of my Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, from what I've seen, y'all have been extremely effective at getting management to recognize, essentially getting them to like

accede to your demands because like this this this kind of organizing like solidarity union what i'm trying to say is solidarity unionism works like it's not like like and you know and yeah it's a thing i think one of one of the things you're talking about is like yeah it's like when like when you win even on something fairly small right and you you can show people that this works and that like you know if if you actually come together on something you can force management to do stuff like i think that also become becomes an important sort of like i don't know if catalyst is the right word but it becomes it becomes an engine that like feeds itself definitely i mean especially for a big company like amazon like i think the most common perspective at least at the start is like this is such a big company like what could

we possibly do they have a thousand warehouses like what you know they could choose to close one and open another one you know they do this they could suddenly you know and with two weeks notice like change the schedule from an evening time to an overnight time which is what they did to us basically um what can we possibly do and so you know but i think it's like the moment it's like there's a kind of cliff or a uh what do you call like the watershed a point like the moment you kind of take that first collective action and then get what you want um it's like oh wait it's not as like within this space like we can actually make our lives a lot better yeah pretty quickly if we just come together and do it ourselves and recognize

the power that we have um and i think it's like that's one of the reasons why it works so well is because it is different from the mainstream approach which um bosses and these companies understand very well and can easily maneuver around such as oh if we do if if one of our managers does something wrong, what will happen next is one of our lawyers will receive a grievance from one of their representative lawyers and this business union. We'll have this many months to respond and then we can do this and then we'll do this paperwork and have this legal back and forth and then maybe we'll address this issue six to 12 months down the line. No disruption, you know, nothing to worry about.

Let the bosses run amok and we'll get a six to 12 month headstart to, you know, maybe get a slap on the wrist and a fix wherever you need to or pay a small fine. As opposed to, that's business in units. Like as opposed to solidarity in units where it's like, they just disrespected us in a way that like, we're not trying to put up with like, we are hurting.

We can't even finish this shift without hurting ourselves more. We're just going to group up and walk out right now. They're going to figure out, they're going to have to figure out how to get the rest of these packages out without us. And when we come back tomorrow, we'll see, we'll see if they want to keep treating us the same way. And so it's like, to me, you know, we've had basic, basic management confrontations where either immediately, you know, they were understaffing, and we grouped up, rolled into the office, just like with seven of us, not even like the whole shift. Seven out of 50 people rolled in the office and said, you have too few people on the lines here.

You need an extra person. We've been asking. You have it. We folded our arms. Within five minutes, they sent an extra person over there. They're working the rest of the shift. And in the business union approach, like I don't even know, like how. Like, you file an understaffing grievance. Like, what are the details? How does that happen? Does a union representative have to be contacted and then negotiate in some way?

Fuck that. Like, let's just address this right now and fix it. I don't want to wait for some outside activity. Let's just improve our working conditions right now by confronting and addressing it. I think it just you know that's something that um the bosses are less it's less predictable for them it's less in their control it's less in their wheelhouse um and i think that's a key reason why it works better yeah and i think one of the things the thing this reminds me of is it reminds me of the kind of stuff that unions used to do when they were strong like it reminds

me of like yeah you're you're like cio like sit down strike right it's like well okay if the manager does something we didn't we don't like someone blows a whistle everyone sits down and like it's like it's that that kind of not just sort of like waiting to go to legal channels but just just like immediately taking action is like, it's something that is like, it's something that worked and it's, you know, like that, that's, that's the kind of stuff that like built the, built the original like labor movement. And it's really interesting to me that like, cause I think there's a lot of like, I think a lot of people look back at that era sort of like nostalgically and go like, well, okay, if unions were stronger,

we could do this. But like, that's not really true. You can actually just like, like you can do the same things that like, you know, you're like 1930 CIO was doing like, and, and, and if, you know, and you don't, you don't need the kind of institutional backing that, that those people had. If, if like, if, if you're organized enough in, in your, in your specific location, I think that's a really interesting, I don't know. I'm curious if you agree with me. It seems like a sort of interesting lesson about what happened to the labor movement where the more you get into this sort of like, okay, well, the union is now two lawyers sitting down with each other. What you're doing basically

is like this is the this is this is explicitly what the national labor relations act was right like it was an attempt to get labor labor and capital sit down at the table and stop fighting so that they could like you know it's basically so the production could go on and like sometimes sometimes that that you know sometimes i favor the union right sometimes you'd have the president be like like the actual like the u.s president will be like, okay, you come, you like steel company, you have to like give workers what they're asking for because our steel production shut down. Right. But like, you know, the, the, the, the problem with that is that it's based on like, it's based on at all costs, trying to sort of preserve, like it's based on all costs, like trying to preserve the labor piece. And, you know, I mean, i mean there's reasons for that too like yeah like i'm not gonna like like obviously there's there's

anytime you take a direct action there's a risk and yeah like i'm not gonna like you know i'm not gonna be like like it's hard to be really mad at people who don't want to go on strike because they don't like because the the you know how am i going to feed my family well etc etc but like you know bring like have having that kind of militancy in in the workplace just you know without without any kind of formal recognition i think is an extremely powerful tactic and is i mean literally how the original labor movement like got built it's difficult though and it can be scary yeah you know and it's like i think you you posed kind of the question or or kind of questioning the idea like where did how did the labor movement get to where it's at if the origins were more conscious in the ways that you've been describing?

I think that, I mean, it's definitely, you know, the risk is always there. You're always confronting the power. I mean, in the workplace, when it comes down to it, obviously, the power dynamics shift. And it's more complex than bosses have more power than workers, unless workers organize and workers have more power than bosses. That is true. And also, for example, on the day to day, you know, the boss can fire anyone and then you're, you know, however you end up dealing with it. You know, you could be out anywhere between two or 20 paychecks until something is resolved legally or even through direct action. There's obviously very directly oppressive power dynamic there. And I think that to speak truth to power, to directly confront it,

of course it's frightening. I mean, I would be lying if, you know, like I'm, I'm, I'm, you know, talking on this, on this podcast about doing this and yeah, we're doing this. You're like, you know, I'm not going to pretend that like when we were, even when we were in a 40 person mass, you know, confronting management, addressing everyone together, it's still like, you know, there's, there's, there's still this power dynamic here and we're, we're, we're punching up. Like it's a a punch but like we're punching up to someone that's like a bigger heavier um uh adversary and so it's like they could swing back too like you kind of got to be ready to and

so um i think that what i'm describing on a kind of like face-to-face interpersonal, that moment in the workplace, I think on a broader scale also exists where it's like waging an extended, you know, organizing struggle to be fighting this fight millions of times in many different ways and then continually trying to bring people together you know people move on because everything that's happening in life they got evicted from their place so they had to move to a different place far away okay suddenly they had to leave the job and they were someone that was you know contributing a lot to the organizing something happened someone has a family member uh you know that they need to spend a little bit more time with. Everything that's happening, everything that's making, you know, reducing our time as working people to take care of ourselves and each other, like all of this, we're fighting against all of this. And there

are definitely ups and downs. There are definitely times where it was like, dang, like we're, you know, and it seems like at times, uh, uh, all of the struggles in life, like it's like, you take like two steps forward and then two steps backwards and get to, and so, you know, there's definitely a difficult reality permitting everything, know all of the the the organizing wins the the events that we're talking about um we need to be fully honest about that and also recognize that there's still like nothing more there's like nothing more beautiful powerful there's no there's nothing that feels better than the that that moment when you, when the power dynamic was like this and you pulled something off and it's like, Oh, like you, you just did what we wanted, you know,

and more. And then now like, you're being real careful with us. Like we, we change things here. Like our lives are better concretely. we, we change things here. Like our lives are better concretely. Um, and we made it happen. And, um, you know, I think those are like celebrating the wins and like taking joy, not always thinking so far, okay, we've got more to go. Yeah. There always, there's always more that, um, we can and have to be building and let's make sure that we're taking the time to recognize and celebrate each of the steps that we are advancing so that you know we we don't get lost in you know assuming in the cycle of like seeking uh permanent infinite growth and organizing and being constantly stressed out about it

rather than like taking those breathers taking those moments okay like let's take this in stride let's do this sustainable let's not burn out um you know i think that's all part of figuring out how to how to how to make it happen yeah and i think that's that's important i think that's an important thing to understand with any kind of organizing, which is that if there's never a moment in which you're reflecting on or just celebrating the goals that you've actually accomplished, you're just going to be endlessly bashing your head against the wall. And this is sort of be endlessly bashing your head against the wall and you know then this is this is like yeah i mean this is this is sort of a burnout machine this is a a way that you know it's something that also just sort of feeds despair which is that yeah like you know like yeah okay your your victory is a small victory but it it is a real one and that's that's something that even in the face of sort of like the cyclopean horror of like just the world that we're living

in like no your your small victories do lead up to bigger ones and yeah and you know and getting people to lose sight of that is a like it's a major way the system is held together by just sort of like manufacturing hopelessness even when when there, there, there are reasons for hope and there are reasons to sort of look at what you've done and go, Hey, we, we won this thing. Definitely.

Yeah. And I think that's a, I guess, unexpectedly cheery for the show. I know to end on, do you have anything else? Yeah. Um, I mean, I think we touched on a lot.

I guess I have a usual pitch or some version of it. But I think maybe something to bring together different elements that we touched on and bring in some of the cheery hopefulness and also put out some encouragement too. I think now is a time where there's a whole lot of uncertainty and I'm, you know, definitely in a global week to week or year toyear scale, but also on an individual level. I think a lot of individuals right now, likely those that are listening, that end up listening to this, or those that are seeing what's happening around the world, are like, what is my role in all of this?

What am I trying to do? this? What am I trying to do? And different people are joining different organizations and trying to figure out how they should be living their lives, what principles they should be living out, how they should be applying themselves to, for example, combat and dismantle capitalism and prison industrial complex and uh reverse climate destruction and and fight fascism and you know everything all of the existential threats that we face like what you know what is my role and i think um if if you at all have the capacity and curiosity to engage in some of this deep work yourself for building community relationships, culture among, you know, just with workers, building your own organization, building your own acts of resistance, building your own forms of, of, of, you know,

own forms of reclaiming your time and minds and bodies and build something beautiful that can be part of a broader movement that, that, you know, lifts up working people that kind of gets back what we are building and what we, what we deserve. You know, lifts up working people that kind of gets back what we are building and what we, what we deserve. Um, you know, think about, think about the logistics industry, think about warehouse work, um, think about joining in. Um, and, uh, you know, it's, uh, it's hard work. It's hard manual labor. It's hard mental and emotional work. But I think this is the future of what the winning, fighting, successful labor movement will need. And I think many people engaging in building more genuine, more worker-focused, worker-centered, worker-run, solidarity unions of our own, democratic, horizontal, bottom-up.

I think building this way and connecting with each other, I think this is the way forward. I think this is the examples that we need. We need more people engaging in this work. We need more of that attention, energy, and focus. How do we build the real stuff that's going to be the powerful organizational influence to transform society and, and, and avert these forms of extinction and continued extraction, exploitation, oppression of all of us. Join us, join,

join the struggle, get, get some of these jobs, talk to your coworkers, build something. It's that it's really that simple. And yeah, that's my, that's my that simple. And yeah, that's my

everyday pitch. So if people want to find Amazonians United specifically, where can they find y'all? So in Chicago, so Amazonians United Chicagoland

is our name. We have a Facebook page we have a Twitter those are probably where we're most active and where you can follow and get into contact with us tweet at us, message us on Facebook

if you're really so inclined you can email us at auchicagoland at gmail.com. But otherwise, yeah, just look up, follow our social media. You'll see what we post occasionally about what's going on. And feel free to reach out, get into contact, ask any questions you might have.

And let's connect connect let's build community that's at AUChicagoLand on Twitter by the way yeah sweet Ted thank you so much for joining me yeah thanks for having me

yeah it was really great if you want to find us you can find us at, you can find us at HaveItHerePod on Twitter, Instagram, and Koolzone Media in the same places. Yeah, go organize with your coworkers. Go do cool things. Go make the world a better place.

Yes, yes, yes, for sure. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. Step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America.

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