From: Jeannette Gabriel (jgabriel55@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Nov 27 2001 - 07:31:09 EST
Hi Charlie,
There are serious problems with the idea of going off to a different part of
the country to a community where you don't know anyone and they don't know
you and becoming an "organizer". You become an organizer because youare
doing local work in your community and workplace and people know you and
respect you. The Union Summer model is based on bringing in outside
professional organizers rather than developing the base of local organizers
who already exist and have local support. Many have speculated that the
AFL-CIO does this so because they don't want to support a local leadership
that has a strong local base of support that won't be pushed around during
the organizing campaign. This model also completely cuts off the organizing
drive from the community support that already exists through personal
connections between the workers and their community groups and makes it a
task of the outside organizer to develop community support. Of course this
is a tremendously difficult task if you have just moved into the community.
There are several other problems with the Union Summer organizing model.
You leave the community just as quickly as you arrived. So the workers in
the organizing drive are committed to changing their workplaces but you
aren't committed to anything. They might lose their jobs - the AFL-CIO
figures this is as part of every organizing campaign and is NOT committed to
fighting for all the local workers to be reinstated - but you won't lose
anything. So the relationship between you and the workers is never one of
equality - it's like you are playing a game with their lives.
I don't make these comments lightly, I think becoming a traveling organizer
means grappling with some real moral and political issues about your
relationship with the workers you are "organizing" and in this model
"enlightening". My comments are based on long discussions with many
dedicated Union Summer and other AFL-CIO organizers who all fully
acknowledged these problems but could never offer any solutions and a
two-year stint in a labor studies masters program at Rutgers.
Solidarity,
Jeannette Gabriel
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