I Like My Religion The Way I Like My Labor: Organized!
Especially when they walk out together on a general strike
Religion has historically played a crucial role in justice movements, often across inter-disciplinary lines. Lately as we are witnessing the increasing boldness of Republicans attempting minority (autocratic) rule, one space of hope is the slow but steady return of organized labor. Approval of labor unions has been on the rise, a majority of Americans now support more unionization inside their own companies, but at the same time membership in unions remains at a low, and it will take sustained organizing and pressure (like the organizing happening right now at Starbucks) to accomplish changes favorable to workers.
It’s forever instructive that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated while in Memphis speaking to a group of striking sanitation workers. A local Memphis minister, James Lawson led a group of 150 (!) ministers in the organization of the Community On the Move For Equality (COME) who organized non-violent resistance to fill local jails, and high schoolers and college students were participating with sanitation workers in daily marches.
King called for a citywide work stoppage to support the workers. Speaking to a large gathering of members of the black church, the civil rights movement, and sanitation workers, he uttered some of his most famous final words, “You are demonstrating that we can stick together. You are demonstrating that we are all tied in a single garment of destiny, and that if one black person suffers, if one black person is down, we are all down.”
One thing scholars of the Civil Rights movement have pointed out is the deep influence of international inter-religious dialogue in the decades leading up to the movement. Black Christian intellectuals looked to ideas and practices abroad for inspiration. Gandhi’s influence on King is one of the most well-know examples, but you can look to other thinkers like Howard Thurman etc. for more examples..
It has been the long history of labor organizing that organized religion woven together in solidarity with organized labor has been crucial to both. I have also experienced this in local organizing: when faith communities show up to march and advocate in solidarity with labor, especially if they do so with persistence, maintaining sufficient irritation to gain the attention of corporate decision-makers, the combined energy of organized religion and organized labor is effective.
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Think about this reality; in America there are now a majority of us favorable towards unionization in our own corporate work settings, yet we are at an all time low in support of organized religion.
Although this could be ascribed to the co-optation of religion by some traditions that abuse it (and this is one reason), I think unnoticed by many is the way perhaps it is neoliberalism more generally that is to blame, and many of us who should know better are complicit.
Consider this: if you wanted to protect the power of the market itself and corporations in particular, what is one of the most effective strategies? Answer: make all your consumers hyper-individuals. Convince them spirituality is just one tool you choose or consume in order to help you survive the burdens of neoliberalism. Furthermore, convince them that religion is supposed to be apolitical, so if they do remain committed to some religious traditions, they spiritualize them and detach them from organizing.
Admittedly, organizing the religious on the Left won’t be a short-term strategy. Unlike right-wing religious, who have remained organized but have been co-opted by nationalism and other forces, those who have maintained religious commitments but are on the left have been co-opted by the hyper-individualization of Neo-liberalism. They have come to the conclusion religious community is irrelevant, or even antithetical to, organizing.
They’re wrong, but the only way to make it right will be for left-wing religious to prove it. And part of that proving will require strong disambiguation from the types of religion co-opted by nationalism and fascism, and part of that proving will require us to get together regularly and show up regularly. We need to join those on the Left who are playing the long game of unionization. Like Rhodes Scholar who went to work at Starbucks in order to organize a union where she worked (see link to Starbucks above).
If you are worried about our country right now, you should be. However, there really is a way forward. It will require real persistence on all of our part, but there is a way. King said the night before his death, “We’ve got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis. We’ve got to see it through.”
Religious on the left, the struggle asks of you better organizing. Show up at your local progressive community of faith, and show up regularly. Organize with them. Then identify those organizing in labor and other spaces who need your presence. When you show up, show up together. “Yes, we are here joining your general strike with you because we’re members of [blank] church and as people of faith we’re standing in solidarity with you.” And then since often faith communities include the executives who make decisions that either deny or give greater rights to workers, such organizing will build access between workers and decision-makers, and will do so within an undeniably strong and compelling moral framework.
I’ll repeat. If you want to effect real positive change as a progressive person of faith, do these two things:
Show up at faith community more.
Then organize, and join organized laborers, or other organizations who will benefit from your solidarity.
Persist. Keep organizing organized religion until we’re all free.
At this point, if you’ve read this far, I suspect you are skeptical. You may be thinking to yourself, “I highly doubt if I go to church I’m going to find a bunch of labor organizers to join up with. I’m not going to find what I need there.”
But do you think that’s what the Rhodes Scholar who went to work at Starbucks thought when she took the job? It’s very consumerist, our way of approaching faith community these days, mostly deciding whether to go based on what we’ll get out of it, or whether it is our choice of Sunday leisure options.
But Jaz Brisack, who went to work at Starbucks to organize her co-workers, approached things completely opposite (maybe this third mention will get you to read the article about her, which is amazing). She had something to bring, an idea, a goal, some ambition. She wanted to organize her co-workers. Imagine how transformative it would be if the average progressive person of faith walked into their church or synagogue or mosque with the goal not of getting something out of it, but bringing an organizing mindset to it.
Imagine what kind of movement would emerge out of a faith community, even a very small faith community, made up of those so organized.