We Are All Leaders

Before police and vigilante men opened fire on the wobblies aboard the steamship Verona in Everett, the Sheriff yelled "Who is your leader?" and from the deck of the ship came a resounding chorus, "We are all leaders!" To which a 10 minute barrage of gunfire was unleashed killing several wobblies and police who were shot in the back by their own guns. That was less than 100 years ago on the docks of Everett, WA. The wobblies had boarded a steamship leaving Seattle to go stand on the picket line with some shingle workers involved in a bitter strike.

Workers possess all the power in the world when they organize. In those moments of true revolution and resistance magic happens. Ordinary folks rise to the occasion and solidarity develops naturally, born out of collective struggle. When the smoke has cleared the workers recognize their own strength and claim dignity and power for themselves. There is a weird thing that keeps happening though with very few exceptions. Workers keep organizing themselves vertically and power is given over to a few within the ranks; the magic is lost. The revolution gives way to the prevailing societal structure and status quo returns, if just a little bit better than before.

The Labor movement does not need a new kind of leadership. It needs a new kind of rank and filer. It needs ordinary workers who take initiative, who lead on and off the job without official title or office. Regular folks who engage their communities, other workers and help build a culture of activism, solidarity, empowerment and political consciousness everywhere they go. Unions did not solely rise out of a desire for wages, benefits and working conditions. They were a direct challenge to the employing capitalist class. Now we live in an era where they just represent collaboration between the capitalists and the union workforce over the duration of a contract, and the average worker can't see beyond Friday when they go to pick up their paycheck.

The working class is the most powerful force on earth, but simply existing within capitalism is not enough. The true fire of American workers has been lying dormant, burning under ground since WW2. We gotta dig it up before the democrats, the union bureaucrats, the AFL-CIO business unionists and the bosses snuff it out. If not us, then who? If not now, then when?