And Star Wars is…finished? I watched the very first showing of The Rise of Skywalker in Iowa City. On the heels of my post earlier this week on Holdo and Poe Dameron in The Last Jedi, here are a few thoughts on the big ending.
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In case any readers are hermits, let me start with a reminder that The Rise of Skywalker hits theaters this week. The end of the Star Wars story, and so on. But I’m interested here in one of the plot lines of The Last Jedi. Vice Admiral Holdo and Poe Dameron went at it several times, from a minor skirmish to a mutiny. I think the conflict reveals deeper ones about gender and politics. It also shares a feature with the Killmonger character from the Black Panther film, namely it’s a Rorschach test! Whichever issues Holdo and Dameron reveal to you probably says as much about your views on gender and politics as the film itself says.
So here are some thoughts about it. Maybe it reveals my own views in some Rorschach-like manner. Or maybe not. We’ll see.
A little over a year ago, I wrote on the topic of college students and local elections. I included some data from local elections in Iowa City, specifically our city council elections in 2017 and 2018. The data provide support for the idea that college students don’t vote in local elections, and I argued the reason for this is that local elections don’t speak to their issues and material interests. In effect, they’ve got nothing at stake.
But this was just from a couple of data points. To compound the difficulties, one of the two data points was a primary for a special election. We’ve got more data now. This time from the November 2019 city council general election in Iowa City.
Let’s take a look!
So, I’m involved in a labor working group with the Iowa City DSA! We’ve just started reading Jane McAlevey‘s book No Shortcuts in a reading group as a part of our efforts. As it happens, that book was on my earlier summer reading list! Have any of you read it? Here are some quick questions that came to mind while I was reading.
3 Issues from No Shortcuts
1. Agency and Structure
As workers and community members, to what extent do we control the success of our movements and to what extent is that success directed or determined by external forces? McAlevey’s focus in No Shortcuts is very much on worker agency, and to do so she assumes we have a lot of it. Do we? And where are the limits?
One of my favorite books on activism is Poor People’s Movements by Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward. They focus on the interrelations between agency and structure. One key point they make is that popular movements succeed when they organize, as McAlevey also points out. But that’s a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. Successful movements also require the right opportunity, or structural conditions that are right for the movement to succeed.
How do we handle that latter issue? Are there things we can do to bring about the right conditions? Surely we don’t have to just wait for them. But we surely also have to look for those conditions and pay attention to whether and how they’re present.
2. The Site of Organizing
McAlevey’s lessons and cases are mostly about organizing in a workplace. Particularly a workplace with a fixed (or relatively consistent) number of staff. She talks a lot in No Shortcuts about the point of reaching the workforce and building majority support.
These are great lessons for workplace organizing, but more difficult to apply to organizing working class people across workforces or who might be temporarily out of the workforce. It raises for me the issue of which site or sites to focus on. Ought local socialist groups try to focus on particular workplaces and take advantage of the fixed numbers? Or should we try to organize more broadly and try to work around any disadvantages that come from lack of an obvious bargaining unit? Or should we do both?
3. Alinskyism
McAlevey’s none too impressed with Saul Alinsky, particularly the sort of movements he advocates for in works like Rules for Radicals. For the record, I tend to agree that Alinskyist movements have their problems. In particular, for me, it’s the lack of a commitment to a socialist direction and the clarity and guidance that comes along with such a commitment.
How do we, then, avoid the mistakes of Alinskyism, e.g., building movements around enthusiastic people rather than organic leaders, allowing organizers to lead as a shadow force, etc.?
Note
Of course, this list is hardly exhaustive. These are just a few things that came to mind as I re-read No Shortcuts. Anything else about the book you wanted to mention?
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Some conservatives use the phrase ‘real America’ to pick out some kind of mythical utopia of their liking. The concept itself is hardly new. In fact, it sits uncomfortably close to various fascist myths about ‘blood and soil’. But in this contemporary version of the myth, salt of the earth, conservative types supposedly suffer under the repression of the liberal, multicultural elite.
And, of course, with this myth of ‘Real America’ comes the pushback. Consider, for example, shows like Real America with Jorge Ramos, a show that fights back against the myth while, arguably, leaning in to the frame.
