Domestic Left #1: May Day
Welcome to the first proper issue of Domestic Left. I'm committed to sending these out on the first of the month because I know that if I don't keep that kind of discipline, I'll never end up sending anything. But, due to work and other things, this first issue will be a bit lighter than I had hoped, more curation than creation.
It wasn't especially my intention to launch this newsletter on International Workers' Day, but I suppose it is appropriate, given my line of work and political views. Perhaps I should have chosen a more militant and hopeful (or festive and spring-ish) photo for a May Day issue, but I really love this photo and I also love the cognitive double-take that ensues when I learn something about the context of a photo (or painting, or piece of music) that isn't fully contained in the strictly aesthetic experience of my first encounter with it.
I took this at a Pittsburgh DSA fundraiser for abortion funds last December, which was held at the newly refurbished Workingmen's Beneficial Union. So hopefully it can serve as a good reminder that on May Day we should celebrate all of the institutions that working people have created (not just unions or political parties), and that the working-class struggle is not limited to the workplace.
Speaking of the full breadth of working-class experience, I was preparing the May Day post for the UE Facebook Page, and out of curiosity clicked the link that my predecessor Al Hart included in his 2007 article on the holiday.
The link leads to an article written by historian Peter Linebaugh for the Midnight Notes Collective, “The Incomplete, True, Authentic and Wonderful History of MAY DAY.” (As a side note, I think the archaic HTML of the Midnight Notes website is perfect for this piece, which was undoubtedly mimeographed with typos in its original form.)
No one writes history like Peter Linebaugh. I first remember encountering his writing style in Albion's Fatal Tree, a collection of five longish essays on crime and society in England during the early days of capitalism. He's lyrical and operatic, moving confidently and swiftly between sweeping gestures towards theory and exquisitely chosen particulars. It's not always to my taste (and this 1986 essay has a certain amount of noble-savagery that I find a bit off-putting), but it is perfect for capturing the utopianism, the dedication to true and collective liberty, that has animated so many rebels through the centuries.
My friend Anne Boyer had a piece of “personal history” published in the New Yorker a few weeks ago. I don't really have anything to say about the essay itself beyond it is fantastic, go read it — but I will share a tangential thought.
She opens the essay by describing her “plans for a place for public weeping, hoping to install in major cities a temple where anyone who needed it could get together to cry in good company and with the proper equipment.” I've recently witnessed (though thankfully not been the target of), well, more mean-spirited internal politicking than I really care for, in a couple of organizations. It's hard not to conclude that much of what we call “toxic behavior” comes from a place of deep, deep hurt — and perhaps if we had places for public weeping, that might go a good distance towards improving the emotional health of our civic life.
I wrote two pieces for the UE NEWS recently which might be of interest to readers of this newsletter. On Earth Day, I published an overview of the Green New Deal aimed at, well, an audience of union members. Given the resurgence of “jobs vs. environment” rhetoric in some of the more regressive parts of the labor movement recently, I hope this can be of help.
Back in March, I also wrote an article about my old local's latest contract. UE Local 896, also known as “COGS” (for “Campaign to Organize Graduate Students”), represents 2,000 teaching and research assistants at the University of Iowa. I was on the organizing committee that established Local 896 twenty-some-odd years ago, and held a couple of offices in the local before dropping out of grad school. Our primary organizing issue was healthcare, and we actually delivered — in our first contract, we convinced the university to move us off the go-to-the-undergraduate-health-clinic “insurance” and create UI GradCare, an actual adult health care plan for actual adults.
Two years ago, Republicans in Iowa eviscerated the public-sector collective-bargaining law. Since the only mandatory subject of bargaining is now wages (with a long list of subjects, including healthcare, that are prohibited), there wasn't much to write about the contract itself. Instead, I used the UE NEWS article to explore the various ways that the local union is adapting to a highly restricted legal environment and has, so far, been successful in preserving their signature accomplishment, UI GradCare. I also, perhaps overly subtly, make the case that public universities in a democracy should be more directly accountable to those they serve.
I promised a Spotify playlist in every issue, so here's a good one for May Day: John Brown Flies the Red Flag.