“We need a union because of the respect that we need and the unity that we need and because of the good salary that we need,” said  David Ozuna, who speaks little English and used a translator to communicate with the media.

So far, 32 employees have signed union cards with the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, District 11. They are primarily sandblasters and hydroblasters, though they perform a variety of chores for Goodison, which does work primarily for the federal government. Sandblasters remove paint from boat hulls. The paint is often highly toxic and sandblasting itself can cause permanent skin and/or eye injuries. It’s very difficult and dangerous work that takes a toll on a body. Starting wages for these workers is between $10 and $12 an hour.

“They don’t give us the safety and the protection that we need to do our job,” said Osuna.

More than 30 workers, in addition to an equal or greater number of union organizers and progressive activists, held court on the Quonset-area road leading to Goodison starting at 6:30 this morning. They chanted, gave motivational speeches and, using a megaphone, implored company officials – who watched the action from afar – to negotiate with the workers.

“The company is going to try to divide you,” said union organizer Sam Marvin. “They are going to try to divide the strength you are showing today. The important thing is you have to be strong today, you’ll have to be stronger tomorrow and you’ll have to be stronger the next day. But you’re going to win this campaign and we’re going to be there with you.”

Another organizer said, “There are two ways the company is going to fight: with fear and with lies. You are going to win with solidarity and the truth.”

One woman who said she came on behalf of her church said, “What you are doing is hard, it is a struggle, but it is of God.”

State Representative Aaron Regunberg, who came from Providence to stand with the workers, said, “I am proud to join you all this morning. I am proud of all the workers who are standing up today to say you deserve better. You know they are not going to give you what you deserve, you have to win it. This is what the labor movement is all about. Keep fighting until you have what you deserve.” He told the employees that there are many in the General Assembly who support their struggle.

So far, 32 Goodison employees have signed union cards, said Jobs With Justice organizer Mike Araujo. There are 55 total employees at Goodison and about 40 have expressed interest in forming a union, he said. The employees and Jobs With Justice have been asking management to voluntarily recognize their union and they plan to file for an election this week, Araujo said. After they file for the election, they have two weeks to hold a vote. If a majority of employees vote for a union, Goodison then has one year to negotiate a contract with the union.

According to the company’s website: “J. Goodison Company was founded in 1999 and incorporated in 2001. It is a veteran-owned small business that has grown from its humble beginnings as a father and son operation to an organization that supports 30 full time employees and an additional 25-50 skilled labor and trade subcontractors. The Company’s list of clients includes but is not limited to government clients such as the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Navy, NOAA, and the U.S. Parks Department. Similarly, the commercial clients list includes Senesco Marine, Boston Towing & Transportation, and Electric Boat to name a few. J. Goodison Company holds a GSA Contract and 9 Multi-Year IDIQ (Indefinitely Delivery Indefinitely Quantity) contracts with the U.S. Coast Guard.”

“Now that they own us there is no effort to invest in us,” said Journal reporter John Hill, who is the president of the Providence Newspaper Guild, said of Gatehouse Media, a media conglomerate that bought the ProJo two years ago and still has not agreed to a new contract with newsroom and other employees.

More than 100 people marched outside the Journal building during today, Hill said. “It was at lunch hour,” he said, “so people didn’t have to leave work. We’re not trying to disrupt anything. Nobody abandoned their desks.”

It was the latest in an increasingly public labor rift between the people who produce Rhode Island’s paper of record and the corporation that owns it. “Everything that goes on the website of value is made and put there by our people, and we get squat for that,” Hill said.

ProJo reporters and other staffers have been working without a contract since Gatehouse bought the business from Belo in 2014. Because it was an asset sale, Gatehouse “was able to void pretty much all the contracts, not just the union ones.”

They’ve been in on-going negotiations, but Hill says management is unwilling to bend. “These guys have a track record of being willing to outsource work,” he said.

The demonstration was the latest example of workers in Rhode Island standing up to an increasingly skewed economy that is squeezing more and more middle class people.

These Verizon employees told me one of their demands is for more high-speed FIOS to be installed in Rhode Island. This would increase work for employees and service for customers. Verizon reported more than $5 billion in profits last year.

• Photos from the Verizon strike in Providence
• Verizon goes on strike
• Three part series on Verizon labor strife:
• • The Verizon, union stand-off and the future of labor
  • The Verizon, union standoff and the future of customer service
  • The Verizon, union standoff and the future of privacy

After Sanders swept six of the last seven contests, by a margins averaging about 75 percent, the contest moves into Wisconsin where progressivism and the unionism face a historic ideological challenge. Will Wisconsin vote for the principles of political revolution they were founded on or will they default to neoliberal pragmatism?

Laborers or labor unions

A little discussed fact is that it is the unions and their members have been the major contributors to Bernie Sanders campaign. Most notably are the Machinist Union, Teamsters Union, National Education Association, United Auto Workers, United Food and Commercial Workers, Communication Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, not to mention the US Postal Service and the Laborers Union.

However, there is a schism. Unions like the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME),  which was central in the fight with Governor Walker on the right to organize, endorsed the reformist darling of the Democratic Party establishment Hillary Clinton. Since Sanders seems more popular with the membership than the leadership, it is not clear how this will translate into votes. The AFL-CIO, the largest national union, has declined to endorse either candidate.

Which labor movement will show up? The one who fights for workers rights or the one who believes they already have a seat at the table that it could lose?

Independent voters

Wisconsin has an open primary and at this point it looks like the blue collar workers will largely support Sanders and not be tempted to cross over to Trump like they did in Ohio.  Though Trump has also has taken an anti-NAFTA position, it is Bernie Sanders who has clearly articulated a pro-worker vision from the $15 minimum wage to a pledge to rewrite all of the so-called free-trade agreements. It is Sanders appeal with independents that his campaign bases there claim that he is the stronger candidate in the general election and they may break his way on Tuesday.

Wisconsin’s progressive roots

And then there is the question of ideology. There’s been much discussion in this campaign about progressivism. After Bernie Sanders laid out a clear progressive, social democrat platform, Hillary Clinton claimed that she was “a progressive who can get things done.”  This was particularly startling since Hillary, a household name, has been practicing triangulation and transactional politics which was started by her husband Bill Clinton through her career. Clintonism, which has dominated the Democrats ideology for decades, claimed that by moving the discussion to the middle, the Democrats could get the Republicans to compromise. What happened, which is what many on the left predicted, is that this tactic pulled the whole party to the right.

Wisconsin should know what the term means. The Progressive Movement was founded there by Bob La Follette, who is known as “Fighting Bob.” At the age of 64, the former governor and staunch supporter of Socialist Eugene V Debs, ran for president largely on an anti-corruption platform, demanded investigations into the war profiteering and corrupt monopolies, and that the big banks be broken up. His platform called for taking over the railroads and private utilities, calling for child labor laws, the right to organize and increasing civil liberties ending racism.

He campaigned for the presidency on a pledge to “break the combined power of the private monopoly system over the political and economic life of the American people” and denouncing, in the heyday of the Ku Klux Klan’s resurgence, “any discrimination between races, classes, and creeds.”

This laid the groundwork for the Progressive Party of Wisconsin which influenced Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, and was carried on by his son establishing the progressive platform as core values in progressive politics for decades.

Bernie for Wisconsin

What is on the line Tuesday is whether Wisconsin stays true to its progressive roots, or if after years of being clobbered by the Koch brothers, it takes on the mantle of neoliberal centrism. Its progressive roots still live on, at least, at the an annual event called the Fighting Bob Fest where, in October 2014, Bernie Sanders spoke on his familiar topic- Democracy or Oligarchy. You can read the full speech here – or watch the video.

After eviscerating the Koch brothers and the racist right wing fringe, pillars of power in the Republican Party, Sanders lays out the Progressive Platform that he is currently campaigning on – demanding campaign finance reform, breaking up the banks, single-payer health care and strengthening the safety net with a passionate plea for social, environmental and economic justice.

He said we are in the midst of the greatest crisis since the Civil War.

And this is not an easy fight. They have huge resources. They have think tanks. They have media. You name it, they’ve got it.

But there is one thing they don’t have. While they have unlimited sums of money, what we have is the people.

And if we can overcome some of our differences, we can focus on the broad issues facing America: jobs, health care, education, the environment, the needs of children. And on these issues, believe it or not, we are a united nation.

So let us reach out to our brothers and our sisters, fellow workers, fellow family members, and let us create a movement that tells Washington: We are not asking you, we are telling you.

Change will take place in America not through some backroom negotiations.

Change takes place in America when millions of people demand it.

Wisconsin decides Tuesday if it wants systemic change or the status quo primacy of the 1 percent and Wall Street. The same question faces Rhode Islanders on April 26th.

• SEX WORKERS OF RHODE ISLAND, UNITE!
• BELLA ROBINSON SPEAKS AT SCSU
• AN INTERVIEW WITH SEX WORKER ACTIVIST TARA BURNS

The event was developed in 2003 following the conviction of Gary Ridgway, a serial killer who admitted to targeting sex workers over multiple years due to the stigma against their profession. In fact he was well-known by the sex worker community but those who could have identified him were afraid to come forward because they feared they might be arrested. “Criminalization and stigma has created the perfect playground for bad cops and predators to continue to rob, rape and murder sex workers with impunity. That needs to stop and we’re holding this vigil to show that sex workers deserve to not only live and work with dignity and in safe conditions but that we need equal protection under the law”, said Robinson

Parties interested in the event can visit the FaceBook page here. As part of our continued coverage of sex worker liberation efforts, we present here part two of an interview with Robinson recorded earlier this summer. As an introductory note, the loophole she refers to at the opening of the discussion refers to when Rhode Island re-criminalized indoor prostitution.

Sex workers interested in joining in the unionizing efforts can contact Madeira Darling at yourprincessmadeira@gmail.com and Bella Robinson at bella@coyoteri.org. Sex worker readers interested in contributing their voices to this continuing project are invited to contact our publication. Conscientious of the challenges facing laborers, we will offer a variety of options to protect contributors. Interested parties can contact Andrew.James.Stewart.Rhode.Island@gmail.com.

We are approaching winter. I hope to suggest some books that activists can study amongst themselves so to better grasp how to radicalize their movements. Included on the list are suggestions by Antoinette Gomes of the Rhode Island College Unity Center, Ray Rickman of Rhode Island Black Heritage and Stages of Freedom, Jim Vincent of the NAACP, and Imam Farid Ansari of the Muslim American Dawah Center of Rhode Island, who has a background as a member of the Nation of Islam. Although these individuals have contributed to this list, the politics of volumes I suggest should not be construed as their own nor should my comments connected to my suggestions be conflated with their views. I would also be remiss if I did not add that, even though I consider myself a white ally, the reality is that any person of color has a better understanding of these issues in their little finger than I might in all my years of research. This is not intended as anything other than polite suggestion.

• Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen (Suggested by Antoinette Gomes)
• Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine (Suggested by Antoinette Gomes)
• In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process: The Colonial Period (Race and the American Legal Process, Volume I)/Shades of Freedom: Racial Politics and Presumptions of the American Legal Process (Race and the American Legal Process, Volume II) by A. Leon Higginbotham (Suggested by Farid Ansari)
• The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (Suggested by Jim Vincent)
• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coate (Suggested by Ray Rickman)- A meditation on race in America.
• March: Book One by John Lewis (Suggested by Ray Rickman)- Congressman Lewis writes about his childhood and the beginning of his work in the Civil Rights Movement.
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X As Told to Alex Haley– This book remains a vital manual for understanding the inherent value of any member of a minority group. Despite the problems in the text caused by Haley’s intentional distortion of Malcolm X’s politics, it is a critical volume.
• A Lie of Reinvention: Correcting Manning Marable’s Malcolm X edited by Jared Ball and Todd Steven Burroughs- When Marable’s biography of the slain leader was published posthumously, the Left in America was stunned by its lunacy. Obsessed with tabloid sexuality issues and trying to say that Malcolm X prefigured the neoliberal Obama administration, it was roundly condemned by everyone who knew the truth. Several rebuttal volumes were published but I would argue this is perhaps the finest. There is a corresponding collection of media files featuring discussions with various Left African American scholars at Prof. Ball’s website.
• The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon– Fanon was lying on his deathbed and dictated the material to his wife as it was written. The book analyzes the decolonization and how oppressed peoples can reorganize their societies. The first chapter, titled On Violence, was a stunning riposte to pacifists.
• Black Skin White Masks by Frantz Fanon– Here the author writes a classic psycho-analytic dissection of racism and how it affects the victims.
• The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois– The book that argued ‘the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line’, something all the more relevant today. Du Bois spared no punches when he fired across the bow of Booker T. Washington and dared people of color to dream of something greater than the lives of vocational workers dictated by the Tuskegee Institute.
• John Brown by W.E.B. Du Bois– John Brown, the abolitionist martyr, was not the first to say Black Lives Matter, but when ‘he captured Harper’s Ferry, with his nineteen men so few/And frightened Old Virginnia till she trembled thru and thru’, the entirety of the United States was rocked so hard it caused a Civil War. I have previously written CounterPunch where I argue this is an essential volume for all white activists to read.
• Race and Racism: An Introduction by Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban- A fantastic volume that explains the intricacies and contradictions of race written by a longtime member of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society who taught classes on this topic at Rhode Island College.
• Orientalism by Edward Said– A classic dissection of the notion of ‘The Orient’ as an imperialist construct.
• The America in the King Years Trilogy by Taylor Branch- Branch’s epic biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. has some flaws, especially considering his too-close-for-comfort relationship to President Bill Clinton, yet this is essential reading, especially the first volume, Parting the Waters.
• Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion edited by Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank- This volume is a Left-progressive response to the Obama administration. It includes essays from radical African writers to poor white southerners who have been equally marginalized by the neoliberal policies of this president.
• Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Freire– This volume that argues for a re-definition of how teachers teach and students learn. Our charter school champions in the state and city governments could learn a thing or two from Freire.
• What Gandhi Says: About Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage by Norman Finkelstein- Finkelstein is originally a Marxist and advocate for the Palestinians. Yet he turned to Gandhi to develop a manual for the people he loves so dearly and ended up giving us all a gift, dedicating the book to members of Occupy Wall Street. He has no delusions about the Mahatma and is very open about this but also has some stunning insights to share.
• Communists in Harlem During the Depression by Mark Naison- A fantastic case study of liberation politics and a cautionary tale. The Communist Party had some truly brilliant moments, such as their campaign for the Scottsboro Boys, and some truly problematic ones.
• A Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey– When you go to another country, you find political parties that have wildly different economic programs. Yet both the American Democratic and Republican Parties rely on identity and social issue politics to win votes. Why? The reason is that both parties subscribe to a brand of economics called neoliberalism, which dictates mass-privatization of public utilities, eradication of the social safety net, and austerity policies. Harvey presents a very readable and vital history of how America got to where we are today economically.
• Here I Stand by Paul Robeson- One-half memoir, one-half manifesto, this testament of the unabashed champion of his people, who faced censure from the McCarthyist mob in the 1950s, is a brilliant short collection of writings.
• Anarchism: From Theory to Practice by Daniel Guérin– A classic pamphlet that explains the basics of libertarian socialism and the history of a communist movement that values liberty in a fashion far more honest than the old Leninist tradition did.
• On Liberty by John Stuart Mill– Whenever one talks about rights and liberty, they consciously or unconsciously are invoking the ideas laid out by Mill.
• A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn– The author was open in his later years he made some mistakes and tried to impose a doctrinaire vision of class on the history of America that had some blind spots, including a gap regarding LGBTQQI people. Yet the book is so beautiful in some parts I still find myself misting up, especially when I read this passage:
  There is no way of measuring the effect of that southern movement on the sensibilities of a whole generation of young black people, or of tracing the process by which some of them became activists and leaders. In Lee County, Georgia, after the events of 1961-1962, a black teenager named James Crawford joined SNCC and began taking black people to the county courthouse to vote. One day, bringing a woman there, he was approached by the deputy registrar. Another SNCC worker took notes on the conversation:
  REGISTRAR: What do you want?
  CRAWFORD: I brought this lady down to register.
  REGISTRAR: (after giving the woman a card to fill out and sending her outside in the hall) Why did you bring this lady down here?
  CRAWFORD: Because she wants to be a first class citizen like y’all.
  REGISTRAR: Who are you to bring people down to register?
  CRAWFORD: It’s my job.
  REGISTRAR: Suppose you get two bullets in your head right now?
  CRAWFORD: I got to die anyhow.
  REGISTRAR: If I don’t do it, I can get somebody else to do it. (No reply)
  REGISTRAR: Are you scared?
  CRAWFORD: No.
  REGISTRAR: Suppose somebody came in that door and shoot you in the back of the head right now. What would you do?
  CRAWFORD: I couldn’t do nothing. If they shoot me in the back of the head there are people coming from all over the world.
  REGISTRAR: What people?
  CRAWFORD: The people I work for.

This list of books is not perfect and I do not pretend to that. I would be a fool not to note that there are almost no titles that deal with feminist issues and almost no women authors. I would in fact love to see Elisha Aldrich or another woman put together that list. But I hope that, armed with a curriculum that will keep these young people busy until spring, the winter will not kill the activist spirit as it did in the case of Occupy Providence. In the era of the charter school and cops who body-slam young women to the schoolhouse floor as if it were wrestle-mania, critical thinking in minority youths is a public enemy and democracy is the real terrorist threat. My hope and the hope of many is they will embrace their potential and create a big-tent movement that embraces labor unions, progressive religious bodies, women’s groups, LGBTQQI liberators, and a radical press to start a peaceful rebellion and win a bloodless class war.

Recently, Bella Robinson and I had the opportunity to meet at an undisclosed location with sex worker and activist Tara Burns. She has previously written on sex worker issues for AlterNet, VICE, and The New Inquiry, among other publications, and is author of the book Whore Diaries: My First Two Weeks As An Escort. She now is currently a registered lobbyist in Alaska and is working to improve sex worker rights with Community United for Safety and Protection as a board member of that organization.

Q: How do you think politicians need to talk about issues about sex workers?
A: I think they should talk to sex workers.

On Left wing thinking about sex work:
Prostitution is really radical within capitalism in that it’s a way that working class people can basically go and redistribute the wealth of the 1%.

On Pawtucket Mayor Don Grebien’s recent statements intending to close massage parlors:
A lot of times, massage parlors are places where women have a lot more agency over what services they’ll choose to provide and how much they’ll charge for their services.

During the interview, Burns and I touched on a variety of topics that are wholly unique due to the fact she has been both a sex worker and academic who studied these issues in graduate school. “I got into graduate school and I started to think how policy was interacting with experience and I started to read research that said maybe those bad experiences I had [with anti-sex worker laws] were more common… I realized it’s really systemic and I thought ‘well, if I’m going to do anything with my life, I’m going to change this’.” This perspective gives a key set of insights on the topic that are extremely valuable when discussing the issues at hand. As a result, we go across the spectrum, discussing everything from Marxist theories about sex work to how she entered the industry and police harassment. This conversation is split over two tracks and can be accessed here.

• SEX WORKERS OF RHODE ISLAND, UNITE!
• BELLA ROBINSON SPEAKS AT SCSU

Sex workers interested in joining in the unionizing efforts can contact Madeira Darling at yourprincessmadeira@gmail.com and Bella Robinson at bella@coyoteri.org. Sex worker readers interested in contributing their voices to this continuing project are invited to contact our publication. Conscientious of the challenges facing laborers, we will offer a variety of options to protect contributors. Interested parties can contact Andrew.James.Stewart.Rhode.Island@gmail.com.

On Tuesday, November 10, 2015, Rhode Island sex worker activist and labor organizer Bella Robinson was hosted by Dr. Alan Brown at Southern Connecticut State University for a lecture titled Sex Work and Human Rights, part of the University’s Social Justice Week. Presented in the Adanti Student Center Theater, Robinson explained to her student audience the basic challenges she faces as a sex worker and advocate.

Dr. Brown, a Rhode Island native, is a member of the University’s sociology department and has studied sex worker issues in his professional work, along with topics pertaining to LGBTQQI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, queer, questioning, intersex) studies and criminology.

Readers can also visit the website Police, Prostitution, and Politics to learn in-depth facts regarding the sex worker community.

Sex workers interested in joining in the unionizing efforts can contact Madeira Darling at yourprincessmadeira@gmail.com and Bella Robinson at bella@coyoteri.org. Sex worker readers interested in contributing their voices to this continuing project are invited to contact our publication. Conscientious of the challenges facing laborers, we will offer a variety of options to protect contributors. Interested parties can contact Andrew.James.Stewart.Rhode.Island@gmail.com.

It is called the oldest line of work in the world and yet it is consistently denied legitimacy. But here in Rhode Island, where prostitution was legal from 1980 until 2009, some local sex workers are re-asserting their agency by organizing a labor union.

“You see women get raped, you see women get murdered,” said Madeira Darling, an organizer, whose name has been changed in this story to protect her identity. “Criminalization itself is violence. It means women can’t seek protection either from the law or from one another. Occasionally you will get guys who think they are in love with you stalking you. And police will often blame sex workers for violence even if they aren’t in criminalized industries.”

Madeira began work as an exotic dancer at age 19 in New York before becoming a dominatrix and relocating to Rhode Island, labor she continues to perform here. She and several of her colleagues are working towards something radically inclusive: the creation of a statewide sex worker labor union.

Interested in creating a truly industrial union, the group is open to allowing all sex workers join her in the effort, reaching out to strippers, escorts, camera/phone workers, porn stars, strip club bouncers, bar workers, masseurs/masseuses, actors, directors, and crew in adult films, and any other laborer in the industry, including the internet workers. As of this point she has contacted four other workers, but hopes that publicizing this effort my grow the ranks.

The sex industry is rather large in Rhode Island. There are eight exotic dance clubs in the state as well as 20 adult bookstores. On October 25 at approximately 6 PM, there were a total of 195 individual service advertisements available on the Rhode Island BackPage.com, a venue used by independent sex workers, as opposed to 573 at the same time on the Boston BackPage. Estimating statistics at this point is difficult due to both the plasticity and criminalization of industry. However, as the economy has failed to recover substantially in the past few years, sex work has been a major growth sector.

There are a variety of labor violations the group plans to address. For example, Rhode Island clubs have so-called “stage fees” that amount to little more than paying to work. Instead of being considered employees, dancers are designated as independent contractors, yet the clubs push on them rules that can only be enforced on employees, such as dictating schedules and costumes or collecting tips.

“To my knowledge all clubs charge stage fees to dancers and the workers are not considered employees,” says one worker. As independent contractors on the books, dancers, who can experience debilitating injuries on the job, are not able to collect worker’s compensation.

“I still make my living in the sex industry, which funds my work as a full-time activist,” said Bella Robinson, an independent escort. She is currently gathering data on New England sex workers, “but nobody has the numbers of how many sex workers are in any city or state, because nobody has served our community,” she said. “There is no way to accurately gain stats on an underground market, just as there is no way to know how many people sell drugs.”

In addition to being part of the unionization effort, she also recently started a Rhode Island chapter of COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics). The group seeks to decriminalize as opposed to legalize sex work, which would entail a slew of regulations and mandates. In an interview, Bella describes her own personal history as a sex worker, how and why she became an advocate, and her own confrontations with the anti-sex work movement.

Sex workers interested in joining in the unionizing efforts can contact Madeira Darling at yourprincessmadeira@gmail.com. “We believe in community-based research and we have created a research evaluation tool,” Robinson said. “I hope to learn more…once I interview some erotic dancers.”

In an email to members, the IBEW said:

“The Business Managers informed us that the company has started the process toward a unilateral imposition of their contract terms,” said the IBEW T6 Mobilization Committee, in an email to all Verizon union employees in New England. “Those terms include the elimination of job security.  The company has begun making “last and final” proposals and the situation is urgent.”

As I have written in a previous series of articles, this is a tremendously important struggle that will impact the labor union movement in the private sector as severely as the coming Friedrichs Supreme Court case will affect the public sector. If Verizon is able to impose their will and defeat the union, this would have a ripple effect on the entire job market, threatening the basic coordinates of unionized middle class jobs.

• Verizon workers rally for a fair contract
• The Verizon, union standoff and the future of labor
• The Verizon, union standoff and the future of customer service and copper
• The Verizon, union standoff and the future of privacy

This is going to be a hard and long battle, but the stakes are too high to sit this one out. Simultaneously, the UAW has just recently averted a strike with Fiat Chrysler. United Steel Workers are currently facing a lock-out with Allegheny Technologies Incorporated in New Bedford and other plants across the country. Mayor Elorza continues play a cruel game with the firefighters union while rolling out his corporate charter school agenda to bust the teachers union. United Nurses and Allied Professionals have been engaged in continuing negotiations over a contract with Lifespan Hospital Network.

These are not isolated incidents or random occurrences. Both the Democratic and Republican Party are collaborators in the neoliberal ideological apparatus that intends to destroy the union movement, the middle class, and ultimately the hard-earned gains for the social safety net made during the New Deal and Baby Boom periods. It is impossible to deny that there are still some strong pro-worker figures in the political landscape that reject this ideology, but they are few and far between. With a career-minded politician like Gina Raimondo in power and hungry still for ascension to higher prospects in Washington DC, it is clear that a pillar of American democracy is under attack.

Visit the Stand Up To Verizon website by clicking here.

The CWA can be reached at 401-275-0760.

The IBEW can be reached at 401-946-9900.