In 2023, DSA chapters nationwide carried out a campaign called “Strike Ready” to build connections with UPS Teamsters and prepare to support them on the picket lines. When the expected strike didn’t happen it was easy to declare victory, but the campaign had never really been tested. It demonstrated that it was possible to organize in preparation of a strike in parallel to the union itself, but what this would lead to was still unknown.
The contract negotiations between Boeing and IAM were closely watched for years in our chapter and others. The 33,000 IAM members at Boeing constitute one of the largest bargaining units in Washington state, and Boeing is the state’s third-largest private employer. Our plan developed in the final months of negotiations: get people interested, build a list of interested people, and keep them informed. Strike support at the picket lines was the main objective: bring people out to join the machinists on the line, talk to them about their fight, let them know that it’s shared across unions and across the working class. Unlike other organizations, we wouldn’t bring literature or recruit on the lines, but we would show up.
At 12am on Friday the 13th in September, the strike began after votes to reject the tentative agreement and to strike passed by overwhelming margins. Seattle and SnoCo DSA members were on the line in Everett at midnight, in a huge crowd that was just one of the Everett plant’s many picket locations. We drew on our planning to bring a large number of SDSA members to the picket line in Renton the next day, spreading out across 2-3 different picket locations when we outnumbered the actual strikers at one.
What became evident very quickly after the beginning of the strike was that attendance at the picket lines was different here than in past strikes we’d worked to support. UAW 4121 members might have 3 main picket locations, Unite Here 8 struck at a few Homegrown locations or hotels at a time. IAM picketed at over a dozen locations in each city (Seattle, Everett, Renton, and Auburn), with each site so far away from the next that you often couldn’t see them. Machinist shift organization to keep up 24/7 coverage meant that there were usually only a few people at each site. While it was impressive to show up in large numbers, we’d usually only encounter a small handful of IAM members each time.
The scale of the strike also made other forms of support somewhat daunting. Many picket lines have an abundance of donuts and snacks, and IAM is no exception. Anyone who’s been to one of the halls has seen the evolution of a combination snack depot and food pantry over the weeks of the strike, on a scale that’s simply beyond DSA’s ability to make a dent in. The scale of the strike support payments going out to the strikers is a good example of the scale: each week, strike support payments total more than DSA’s national annual budget!
So much of our lives are structured around monetary transactions, more-so every year as the neoliberal snare squeezes tighter. Breaking out of this intellectual trap means thinking of value separate from money, and identifying concerns in the same way that an organizer would in the workplace. Once you see the areas of need, you can start brainstorming how to address them in ways besides throwing money at the problem.
For example, we saw at Unite Here 8 pickets over Labor Day weekend that the supplies from the union would sometimes leave out one or two important items. It could vary every time, but there were a lot of little crises on the line as signs broke, materials blew away, wagons hauling supplies back to a car overflowed, etc etc. In response, we put together a kit of gear that we could bring to pickets to solve a lot of these issues on the spot: staple gun, various tapes, bungee cords, scissors, first aid kit, and more. It’s rare that a picket site hinges on any of these issues, but repairing a stack of broken signs or producing a roll of duct tape at a crucial moment helps keep momentum up (and makes us look like we know what we’re doing!).
Another issue came from those same snacks and donuts mentioned earlier. Although the pickets were supplied with actual food besides the snacks, first from sandwich shops and later from the hall kitchens, they were still largely focused on practical and immediate energy. PB&J or egg salad sandwiches and all the chips you can eat are fine, but they don’t feel like a meal.
We tend to think of ourselves as individuals, only able to contribute as individuals; a whole society thinking like the peasants in Marx’s proverbial sack of potatoes. The connections between individuals, the community and solidarity which we can build, lets us act far beyond our individual means. On the individual level, this looks like luck: one of our members was lucky enough to know some farmers, and lucky enough to be in the room when they were wondering where to donate extra produce after the farmer’s market season ended. Our member proposed donating this to an IAM hall kitchen, and after some back and forth, a plan was hatched: we’d pick up a load of fresh produce from the farmers each week, and deliver it to the hall, where kitchen volunteers would use it to prepare heartier, healthier food for picketers. While this plan worked great, it’s not necessarily something that could be replicated in the future, but the key is this: take opportunity when it is presented to you, and make opportunity where it doesn’t exist yet. Unions are popular, and even people who might never accept an invitation out to the picket lines or to a DSA meeting still like to feel that they helped. By looking for a need and identifying how we could address it through personal relationships and community, we were able to make this program of food delivery happen.
Strike support has another value beyond the line itself, and it’s one that can feel a little impolitic to mention. It’s nice to win! It’s nice to be part of something that wins! By getting involved with a strike, by showing up and doing what we can, by contributing according to the strike’s need and to our abilities in the best way that we can, we can share in the victory when the strike resolves. Reaching out and drawing upon our own communities can not only let us do more, it can also spread this feeling around to those who might be a little less politicized in their day-to-day lives. As Walter Crane’s The Workers’ Maypole (1894) declares: the cause of labor is the hope of the world. What’s better than sharing a little hope?
Featured Image from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Workers%27_May_Pole.jpg
