nobody talks about how the united states postal service is only unionized bc rank and file workers organized the largest wildcat strike in american history and brought the nixon administration to its knees

started in nyc post offices, leadership fails to call them back to work, nixon declares nat’l emergency, condemns them which brings hundreds of thousands more out, US tries to use national guard to do mail, stock exchange fails, 8 days later workers win collective bargaining

this is what i mean when i say ‘progressives/social dems have it backwards’ wrt political change: the legislation that won workers rights only made de jure what the working class in motion had already won de facto. this is the hidden history of socialism in america and elsewhere

anyways, don’t let large scoldy left twitter accounts tell you you’re LARPy for believing in workers power outside the ballot box, they don’t even know their own history and there’s is a path to irrelevance, powerlessness and despair

https://twitter.com/as_a_worker/status/1253776907809755137?s=21 https://twitter.com/as_a_worker/status/1253776907809755137

for more on this, check out a shameless plug for a labor history series i do with matt christman