I’m as upset as the next Bernie Bro (I’ve embraced the term) about Bernie’s endorsement of Joe. I vacillate between trusting his judgement and thinking he made a tragic mistake, ignoring the will of his most committed supporters. But I’m ready to move on. The electoral arena is only one front of our struggle. The more important front is at the point of production and in our working class communities. We need to take away three lessons from our Bernie experience: organize, organize, organize.

SOLIDARITY FOREVER is a book about working class organizing that is almost finished. Do you have a story? About rank-and-file organizing in the unions? Organizing the unorganized? Working-class community organizing? Organizing in working-class schools? Please comment on this post with your contact information if you do have such a story. Ken Epstein  https://www.oaklandxings.com and I are editing an anthology of such stories. So far we have stories from Walter Riley (Boots dad) about organizing in the auto and steel industry, from a Black Panther Party community organizer, from a leader of last year’s West Virginia teachers strike, from a leader of the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, from hospital workers, from parent organizers in the schools.

But we need more. We’d like stories from Fight for 15. Amazon/Whole foods. From Uber drivers. From tenant organizing. Etc.

We want breezy stories that will appeal to young people. There’s no question that whoever wins the presidency in 2020, organizing the working class is the only way forward for people who want and need a just society which values people more than profit. It’s hard but exciting work. We hope our book will help people figure out how to do it.

If you have such a story let us know in FB comments or Message, in the comment section of https://henryhitz.com/dont-mourn-organize-2/ or on our Facebook page for the book Solidarity Forever. We can interview you if you are unable to write it.

BTW the picture is of the 250,000 workers who rallied against Reagan’ firing of the Air Traffic Controllers in 1981, a watershed moment for the labor movement. It wasn’t enough.