During my teenage years, I imagined that after college I’d spend several years or possibly a decade living abroad, most likely in Latin America. I pictured myself doing peacebuilding or development work. My family and community were involved with the Central America Solidarity Movement, I thought that would be my vocational path.
Then, 21 years ago this month, I fell in love with the person I would marry. His calling was with organized labor as an attorney working for unions.
I decided to stay stateside and pursue my vocation here, through journalism and pastoral ministry. My years of more-intensive hospital chaplaincy were a cross-cultural experience as powerful as living abroad would have been. I encountered people struggling to survive amid some of the most desperate poverty that exists in the United States. I saw its wide-ranging effects. As one example, I accompanied parents enduring pregnancy and infant loss, and learned that the infant mortality rate was much higher than other parts of the United States, which is already above that other other wealthy nations. Poverty is one primary cause, and a growing body of research points to racist mistreatment as another.
I also worked alongside both unionized and non-unionized workers—and saw the difference that collective bargaining makes. In 2012 I had a front-row seat for the historic Chicago Teachers Union strike, and was an ally on the picket lines with teachers at a neighborhood school in 2019. CTU is an exemplar of democratic decision-making. Together, members have pushed back against austerity measures that redistribute wealth to the richest away from funding for public goods and workers’ wages.
Jane McAlevey’s writing helped me to see the bigger picture of what I was observing through my and my husband’s work. I was deeply saddened to read recently that McAlevey has terminal cancer. I hoped I might have the chance to meet her in person someday and tell her how much I admire her. Since that looks unlikely, I wanted to share this appreciation while she’s still alive.
I reviewed McAlevey’s 2020 book A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy. I wrote:
Solidarity is essential for democracy, Jane McAlevey argues, and labor unions are one of the best tools we have to build it. . . . Organizing and strikes still work.
Successful union campaigns are proof that even stark differences can be overcome when people see what they can achieve together in a way that benefits everyone, McAlevey’s writing and organizing show. McAlevey’s approach as an organizer advocates fighting for all of the issues affecting workers in a given campaign, such as affordable housing, immigrant rights, and more-reliable public transportation.
McAlevey wrote as someone who believed in the power of the labor movement at a time when it seemed like everyone else was just trying to hang on to the last few shreds of its gains, or worse still, preserve them only for a select few. McAlevey didn’t lose faith in organizing and strikes, and not only to increase wages or improve workplace conditions but to build solidarity.
Solidarity and mutual aid are terms that have been used widely in the past four years, making their meanings less exact. But at the center of all of these efforts is the belief that our interest is bound up with that of others: our coworkers, our neighbors, and beyond.
Two profiles in the New Yorker detail the strengths of McAlevey’s work, and how her speaking and her book No Shortcuts inspired teachers in West Virginia and Los Angeles in planning their strikes in the 2010s:
Organizing is not an art of telling people what to do, McAlevey explains, but of listening for what they cannot abide. “Anger is there before you are,” the opening page of “No Shortcuts” declares. “Channel it, don’t defuse it.”
Excellent writing by Eleni Schirmer connects McAlevey’s insights and recent history with the past hundred years of the labor movement. Schirmer highlights why it remains relevant:
Most of all, organizing prepares people to leverage our most devastating weapon: the ability to withhold our participation in a system that denies us our power. When we collectively refuse to work or pay rent or endorse candidates who deny our basic needs, we disturb the logic that the system must run at all costs, even our own lives.
One way I’ve taken part in those efforts in the past two years is through canvassing with a local independent political organization, allied with a union. We’re currently fighting for Bring Chicago Home, to generate dedicated funding for affordable housing. (If you are a voter in Chicago, vote yes on March 19!) In this organizing moment, we owe gratitude to Jane McAlevey for shaping for our vision and strategy.
Book update
Earlier this month, I joined the book club of a small church that chose my book as its most recent selection. We had a lively discussion over Zoom. They told me they usually peter out but went long this time and didn’t exhaust the questions or observations they had. If your church or book group would like to read What You Sow Is a Bare Seed, please let me know. I may be able to help with a discount for multiple copies of the book. And depending on your location, I’d be delighted to join you in person or by video conference call.
Reading and listening
Among several resources on grief that a colleague recommended to me, I most appreciated Lose, Love, Live: The Spiritual Gifts of Loss and Change, by Dan Moseley. It named as natural unexpected emotions that some of us struggle with in grief, such as guilt and anger. I deeply appreciated the exercises in the discovery journal—and I generally have an aversion to questions for reflection.
I haven’t seen Dan Levy’s new film Good Grief yet, but I want to after hearing him on the We Can Do Hard Things podcast. The conversation touched on many of the same themes as Moseley’s book. Grief is complicated, Amanda Doyle says, and often we’re mourning so much more than what the loss appears to be on the surface, or “the one the world is telling you happened to you?” I could also especially relate to how Glennon Doyle describes being a person who tries to fix things and figure them out by writing. But grief can give us the emotional clarity of a kindergartner and the only words we can form are “I’m so sad.”
Both Moseley’s book and the podcast emphasize the power of friendship, of how healing comes alongside companions who will stick with you in messy grief. For those of you who have been those friends and companions for me, whether in one long conversation or with regularly checking in and meeting up, thank you.
To return to the first thread, here’s the Resistance Revival Chorus with Rhiannon Giddens singing “All You Fascists Bound To Lose” by Woody Guthrie. “We’re getting organized!”