 Okay, I'm nervous about this video because it's the first one that I've made that I actually feel like it could really make a difference, maybe. Um, and so I feel it's really important and that makes me, I mean, I'm excited, but I'm also nervous because I don't want to fuck this up. It's also the first video that I haven't written a script for, so, you know, it's not going to have, like, entertainment and jokes that you're used to in my other videos. I just re-applied my lipstick. This is unscripted, but hopefully I can make it good through editing. I just really felt like this one shouldn't have a script that I should just talk from the heart and just fucking let it out there. So, here it goes. So, recently the hashtag general strike has been trending on Twitter. There's been a lot of buzz about the general strike. You see it trending on Twitter, you see people posting that all over different social media. I have two sort of things going on in my head at once about this, and one is really positive and the other is like... Here's what I think is great about it. People are recognizing the power of the general strike and strikes in general and the power of the working class to make social, economic and political change. Even revolutionary change. And the fact that people are talking about it shows that people are recognizing this, and that's amazing. Most people haven't had the privilege of encountering the information necessary in order to realize what a powerful... How powerful we really are. How can we realize that? In our day-to-day lives, we're so powerless all the time as individuals are so powerless. But the truth is that we're incredibly powerful without workers fucking getting up every day and going to work and working our time, giving our lives, our time, our sweat. If we fucking stop that, everything fucking grinds about. Society does not function and the profits of the capitalists, the owners, they don't fucking get paid. And I'm glad these conversations are happening. And I feel so good about that, but yeah, there's this other... It's not negative, but it's more like fear and frustration and like... Oh God, like this anticipation of disappointment and just knowing that we're not prepared. We're not doing what needs to be done to actually make this happen. We do have a lot of power, but we only have power if we're organized. And that's a hard thing to do. It takes a lot of slow, patient work. And we need to fucking be doing that work and most people are not doing that work. I want to be hopeful. I want to be hopeful for this. I really, you know, and it's possible. You never know that this is a crazy historic moment. If we want a general strike and we want to become powerful enough to really change society, what should we be doing? One, organize within your workplace and two, learn and study the best practices of how to do that, the best practices of organizing. When I say organize your workplace, I don't mean to sign everyone up for a union, like a car signing campaign. That can be helpful. That can be something you do, but a unionized workplace is not necessarily an organized workplace. And vice versa. This is a kind of important thing that I want to get across. Many people might think, oh, I'm in a union, so I'm good. I'm already organized. Or they're like, oh, we tried to have a union in my workplace and it didn't work out, so I guess we can't get organized in my workplace. Don't fucking worry about any of that shit. Also, don't think just because you're in a union that you're organized. You probably ain't is the truth. I mean, you're better off than most workers who are in a union, but even if you don't have a union, you can still be organized and you can still be powerful. I started cleaning up my room last year and it completely changed my life. And I'll explain what I mean by organizing. It's not just organizing your room. It's not some Jordan Peterson shit. Clean your room. Organize your room. Hey, maybe Jordan Peterson is actually really doing some dog whistle for working class struggle. Maybe when he says clean and organize your room, he actually means organize the working class. Holy shit. Is Jordan Peterson fucking dog whistling for fucking class struggle? That would be dope. Maybe I should become a Jordan Peterson fan. I don't know. If you're going to organize your room, then you're going to have to confront the devils in your house. That's often a terrifying thing. The purpose of organization is for unical workers to come together to fight for change at work. So that's the purpose of organization is taking action together. And the organization is what enables you to take action and also plan those actions. Come together to talk about what to do. How should we do it? What are our problems? What are possible solutions? What are the tasks that need to be done to implement these solutions? What kind of actions can we be taking? How to persevere if those actions don't work out and keep escalating those actions till eventually you do create the change that you're going for. So that's what it means to be organized, being able to act together as a unified group. And organizing is anything you do in order to become organized. And that involves a lot of different activities that I won't get into right now. Once you're organized, you can start taking action together to fight for change. And that's not necessarily a strike. A strike, it's a difficult thing to strike. A strike is very powerful, but it also makes you very vulnerable because your money's not coming in either. So there's a lot of actually other really powerful actions you can do with your coworkers that can stop the flow of profits to the boss or at least slow them down. And it's a lot less risky than a strike. There's a lot you can keep even keep your money coming in and also prevent scabs, you know, people from the boss coming in bringing in new people to do your job. So there's a lot of different actions you can do. It's not just a strike. And in the video description, I'm going to put a link to the Libcom Workplace Organizing Guide. This organizing guide will explain many different types of actions that you and your coworkers can take to get your demands. A strike is just one among many. I remember, you know, when I first got into like activism and stuff when I was younger and caring about all the fucking social injustice and shittiness that people suffered and being like, what can I do to change it? I went to all these protests. There's no threat to a protest necessarily that will make the people in power any more likely to listen to us or to do the things that we're asking them to do. But through workers getting organized and being able to either go on strike or to find other ways to cut off the profits from capitalists, from the owners, from the bosses, that's power and they now have to fucking listen to us. Protests can be ignored. A big ass strike cannot be ignored. I mean, yeah, protests that they take over the street, they disrupt the flow of a city. That can be powerful too. That does cause disruption, that does hurt profits. If the protests are unruly enough and big enough, then it does actually, you know, how it can have a similar effect as strikes and so on. But it's really not our most powerful tool by any means. What was the last time that you went to a protest? Or you've heard about people going to protests and their demands were met? They got what they were asking for. Extremely fucking rare. With strikes, it's another story. Now, of course, there are a ton of strikes where the workers did not get what they were asking for, but the chances of winning are so much higher. Look at all the protests that happened, all the goddamn time. Day after day, weekend after weekend, and it's very, very rare that they get their demands. Whereas if you take an equal size number of strikes, a sizable chunk of those will get their demands. The success rate is so much higher. So much higher. When workers go on strike, this is an incredibly powerful tool. If in history we hadn't had massive worker strikes, then we wouldn't have the eight-hour day, you'd still be working 10, 12, 14 hours with no overtime pay. We wouldn't have the weekend or holiday pay or maternity leave or sick pay. We wouldn't have any of these things unless we had fought for them by organizing and striking. And even now, a lot of workers don't have these rates. And those who do, capitalism is trying to constantly strip these things away from workers, which is why it's so important to continue to organize because this is how we have power. If our rulers can afford to ignore us, and we're not making it cost them something to ignore our demands, chances are, in most cases, they will fucking ignore us. But if workers are organized, we can make it very costly to ignore us. Very costly. When workers go on strike, the company loses money, so the owners become desperate and much more willing to give in to the demands those workers have. This scales up to the societal level. If enough workers in a city or country go on strike, this brings the economy to a grinding halt, and now it's the government that becomes desperate and much more willing to give in to the demands of those workers. And those demands can go beyond wages and work conditions. They can be demands about anything like addressing climate change or police violence. Usually, capitalists in the government have more power than the working class, but organizing shifts that balance of power. A lot of people are upset because Bernie Sanders didn't get the Democratic nomination. I'm not going to tell you how to feel about that, but at the end of the day, let's not worry too much about that shit. Let's worry about building our own power so strong that whoever's in government, whatever party's in government, they have to listen to us and meet our demands. Then it doesn't matter who's in power, who's in government, they will have to listen to us. Because if we are strong enough as the working class, and we're organized well enough, and we fight well enough, whoever's in government will have to listen to our demands, will have to give in to our demands. Hey, either make our lives better, we're a crafted thing happening, bitch. So let's not obsess about who has the power of government. Let's build our own power and not depend on the benevolence of our rulers. Anyways, normally you're used to seeing me with these ears on in my videos. I'm not going to wear them this time because I keep getting comments saying that it makes me seem less credible when I'm wearing ears. Imagine that. But you know, whatever, if you say it makes me less credible, then fuck, I'm going to take them off then. Fine, be that way. Because I want people to take me seriously for this video. Um, please. Now I want to talk about how workplace organizing is not just about improving things now. It's not just about getting better conditions for workers in capitalism. It's about our long-term goals of overthrowing capitalism. Because the only way to overthrow capitalism, the only way is for workers to rise up and take control of the means of production. And that takes a lot of organizing. And to build up to that level of sort of revolutionary organizing really just starts with workplace organizing in each individual workplace. Revolution requires that we have skills we currently don't have. Skills like how to run a workplace is equals, how to run society is equals. We don't have these skills because in capitalism we're divided into those who give orders and those who follow orders. Revolution requires that we have habits we currently don't have. Habits like fighting back in the class struggle, not being passive, taking direct action rather than seeking help from a politician or lawyer or union rep or some other external authority. These skills and habits can only be learned through lived experience and workplace organizing gives us that experience. When workers organize, we get in the habit of joining together to fight together and take direct action together and we practice the skill of making decisions together as equals. Revolution also requires that we form federations of councils to self-manage the huge amount of activity that we must do to transform society. This advanced complex level of organization is something that we can't just build in the sky. We first have to build the foundation and that foundation comes from organizing in each individual workplace. So it's definitely one of the most effective things that you can be doing both in the immediate sense in terms of improving workers' conditions now but also in the long term vision sense of like changing the whole world, changing the whole system. And there are things in a revolution that need to happen besides just workers rising up and taking control of the means of production and rearranging the relations of the economy. That's the heart of revolution, but there's other things that need to happen too but without the workers transforming the economy, it's not going to happen. No one else can do that. There's a lot of people out there who are just... They hate what's going on in the world. They hate to see all this unnecessary suffering and they're just like, but what can I do about it? I want to do something, but I don't know what to do. I've gone to so many protests and nothing's changing. Now workplace organizing is not a quick, fixed solution. Becoming powerful enough to create major change will take years. Becoming powerful enough to create a revolution may take a lifetime or generations but there's no getting around the fact that workplace organizing is essential to become powerful enough to create that change. So if you want to create that change, this is it. This is how you do it. Organize. At this point in my life I'm not organizing. I'm not doing the thing that I made this video to say is extremely important to do. And that's... I realize it's pretty fucked up. And it actually made me think that I shouldn't make this video. But I was like, shit man, no, I need to get this message out there even if I look like a big ass fucking hypocrite. I wanted to be honest with you. I didn't want to front like I'm doing something I'm not. If you want to lose some respect for me for that, I'm not going to tell you not to. But I hope that whatever respect you lose for me does not tarnish this message that I'm trying to put out there about the importance of organizing. It's fucked up. And I'm sorry that I can't fucking get it into the wall. Why? I do want to organize in the future. I do. And it's definitely a goal and devote a large part of my life to that. So even though I'm not organizing, I am close to and connected to other people who are organizing. And I feel extremely privileged and fortunate to have that presence in my life, to have these people in my life. Both because I really admire them and I know how what they're doing is so important. And also because... I guess it's just good for me to have people in my life who I see just doing this really concrete in real life work that's different from this YouTube shit, you know? So that I don't... I don't know, I don't fucking get my head in the clouds and I don't ever want to forget that how important organizing is. I don't want to devalue what I do with YouTube. I think that putting out YouTube videos like this and like others that I and other people create that this is valuable, this is very valuable. But you know, let's be real, if there aren't people, a lot more people actually on the ground in real life doing the work it takes to actually organize and to take action in the real world. If that's not happening, if that's not what the majority of people are doing, then all this YouTube shit is just fucking talk. It's useless. It won't change anything. I sound like an asshole telling you, you know, do as I say not as I do, but I'm sorry. So how do you organize your workplace? Well, let me tell you that I'm not going to fucking tell you that. I'm not going to tell you that in this video because it would be way too fucking long. But they have links in the video description to various resources and you can actually learn the skills and strategies needed to do this. For each resource on the list, I've written a little description of what it's about and why it's important. And another thing I've done for your convenience, because I'm so considerate, is divide everything up into logical sections. First and foremost, we have the beginner section. If you want to learn how to organize, this is the section for you. There are other resources and other sections that are very helpful and important. Well, let's be real, not everyone has time for the whole list. So if all you have time for is the first section, don't worry, you're good, and you're ready to get out there and organize. We'll do it live. We'll do it live! Fuck it! Do it live! So, firstly, I want to emphasize in learning about this is that in-person training is a great way to learn about organizing. I know of two organizations that offer this training, the IWW and Solidarity Federation. So the reason live training is so important is that you actually get to practice the skills of organizing by doing role plays. So like someone else will pretend they're your coworker and then you practice having one-on-one meetings with them, which is important to practice because these one-on-one meetings are like a big part of organizing or someone will pretend to be your boss and you and a group of people will role play confronting them. Getting that practice is really helpful. So if you can, look up your local IWW branch that's Industrial Workers of the World and see if they do an organizer one-on-one training. In the video description, I put a link to a webpage where you can hopefully find an IWW branch in your city and if you're in the UK, I put the contact info for Solidarity Federation. Usually the way they do it is they would have people come together in person to do these trainings but we can't do that right now due to coronavirus. But how about doing it over Zoom? It's a lot better to really do it in person but you know fucking desperate times call for desperate measures and I know it's not accessible to everyone unfortunately not everyone has the internet but it's again it's better than nothing. The lucky black cat, what if my local IWW branch says they won't do the organizer training over Zoom? If they don't offer it, fucking pressure them to offer it fucking link them to the timestamp in this video where I say to fucking do it and then fucking say fucking do it, god damn it because this bitch said so. I'm gonna put my ears on for this shit. I'm a credible person with ears and I'm telling you to fucking do this. Just do it! Do it! Do it! Just do it! Okay, ears off. That's enough credibility for one day. Okay, so there's a quote I want to read you from a really really really good book by Richard Wright. It's a memoir. Richard Wright was born I think in 1908 and he died in 1960. He was awesome. He lived through some really horrible traumatizing shit in the Jim Crow South. He escaped to the north to Chicago. He ended up eventually becoming a member of the Communist Party. If you were just a normal working class person in the US in the 1930s you didn't really know all the fucked up shit that was going on in the USSR. You just knew the ideals of communism and the ideals are really good. The ideals can be implemented in a way that is not a dictatorship, that is not authoritarian. He had actually been very cynical about the communists for a long time. He was like, ugh, whatever. He just didn't buy it. He thought it was all kind of bullshit. There's a passage in here where he finally starts to see things differently. He starts reading some of their magazines and literature and he's very inspired by what he reads and it moves him to actually join the Communist Party. Out of the magazines I read came a passionate call for the experiences of the disinherited and there were none of the lame listings of the missionary in it. It did not say, be like us and we will like you, maybe. It said, if you possess enough courage to speak out what you are, you will find that you are not alone. Why did I want to read that? Because I think it really embodies this dichotomy between what so often happens on the left and what happens when you're organizing at work. Be like us and we will like you, maybe. So I feel like whether you're a leftist or whatever you call yourself but so much of the work that you end up doing is about trying to change people to be more like us, to be more like you, to be more like the way you think. That's very insulting to people. Even if we don't mean it that way but people can't often help but get their backs up at it and feel condescended to or insulted. I don't want to say that this type of confrontation has no value. Because sometimes there's people with bigoted views out there or just fucked up ideas that perpetuate suffering, toxic ways of thinking, toxic ways of behaving. All this shit needs to be confronted. Even when these confrontations are justified and there's many cases where they are it still just makes the left a really hard place to be. A place that does not feel comfortable to be. A place that can be scary and unwelcoming. That's when it is justified. And sometimes I've seen it happen to others where I really felt like they were getting called out or shit on in cases where it was not justified. But on the other hand, if you possess enough courage to speak out what you are you will find that you are not alone. This really sums up so much of what organizing is about. If you possess enough courage to speak out about your experiences, the hardships that you have you'll find that your individual problems are other people's problems, your co-workers' problems that you all have these problems together and that you're not alone and that we're going to band together and support each other not just in enduring the shit we have to put up with but in figuring out how to change it. It's about solidarity. It's not about criticizing anyone or making anyone feel bad. It's about saying how can we support each other? How can we encourage each other? How can we be powerful together and take action together to make our lives better? It's about our common interests, our shared interests, our shared well-being and working together to help each other. And that's beautiful. That's really beautiful and that creates such a different environment, such a welcoming, positive environment. The main thing that we're doing should be building solidarity, building working-class solidarity across racial lines, across gender lines, you know, all the different identity groups, divisions that there are. The more we can build solidarity as the working class and I'm not saying it'll make those divisions and the bigotry magically disappear, but the more we can see that our interests all line up and we're on the same side, I think it's definitely going to help us to overcome those divisions. We're all better off if we can work together and make things better for each other. Hello! Let's wrap this up by reviewing some key points. If we want to become powerful enough to improve our lives, workplace organizing is essential. This is true for improving our lives within capitalism and even more true if we want to end capitalism. Two, if the left focuses on organizing in workplaces or in neighborhoods or anything that builds solidarity, the left will attract a lot more people. Three, if you want to learn how to organize, there are many free resources and I've listed some in the video description. And last but most importantly, we now know the truth about Jordan Peterson. Importantly be sure to organize the working class. You can be part of changing the world and that's beautiful and powerful and you might think that your life doesn't matter, it doesn't mean anything that you're just this one insignificant little person in this great big world, but you have something to give and that is incredibly important.