Labor’s Role Right Now w/ Alex Caputo-Pearl

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain minor errors.

[00:00:00] Cayden Mak: What’s up everybody? Welcome to Block and Build a podcast from Convergence Magazine. I’m your host and the publisher of Convergence Cayden Mak. On this show, we are building the roadmap for the movement that’s working to block the impacts of rising authoritarianism while building the strength and resilience of the broad front that we need to win.

[00:00:26] This week on the show, I’m joined by former President of United Teachers of Los Angeles and contributor to Convergence Magazine and Jacobin, Alex Caputo Pearl. We’ll be talking about the series that we’ve been co-publishing with Jacobin on TLAs organizing efforts, including the latest installment that we published last December, in which he laid out strategies and guidelines for how organized labor can adopt a block and build framework.

[00:00:48] During the second Trump administration, we discuss what he laid out and how the movement is doing three months in. But first, these headlines. I have some choice words for Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s autism registry. First of all, it’s wild that I even need to say this, but get it out of here with this eugenics bullshit.

[00:01:06] As a person who loves autistic people and a student of history, the repugnant of this kind of thing should be very clear. Autism is not a disease. It is not something to be cured, and I don’t think a person’s worth. Is based on whether or not they pay taxes or are productive under capitalism. These are not the things that make any of us worthy of self-determination, dignity, community, or joy.

[00:01:29] Please also don’t say that RFK Junior gets it wrong because plenty of autistic people do have jobs and pay taxes. While this is true, it’s not doing what you think it’s doing. It creates cover for the separation of high support needs individuals from those who are able to do productive labor.

[00:01:45] It reinforces the divide between people who are useful to capital and the people who aren’t, and it is the people who aren’t, who are at most risk right now. Also, just like we talked last week about the ways that the existing system of mass incarceration in the US is what makes the MAGA deportation machine work.

[00:02:02] Our rotting system of support and care for disabled people is part of what makes this all politically palatable. Let’s break this down a little bit. Our overarching attitude towards disabled people in this country has often been about figuring out ways to make them frankly disappear from forced into institutionalization and incarceration to involuntary sterilization.

[00:02:24] We don’t exactly have a great track record of working with actual disabled people to meet their needs and help them pursue the things that make their lives meaningful according to their own priorities. We’ve instead built these systems that have made it difficult for them and their families to find the ongoing care that they need and access community and the means to de self-determination.

[00:02:44] There’s also some really deep history here about material conditions that I’m not going to get super deep into, but basically, the Antip psychiatry movement of the 1970s did succeed in deinstitutionalize a lot of people, but those winds also coincided with the dawn of Reagan era austerity, meaning that the social safety nets that ever existed in this country we’re then systematically undermined to the brink of collapse or saddled with ever more challenging hoops to jump through in order to prove how disabled you are.

[00:03:12] That also makes it very easy to claim that people are a burden. It’s costly for caregivers financially, but not just financially as they take on more and more of the work and cost associated with providing what we could be providing people as a society. My point here is this, there are both cultural and material reasons we’re prime to think of disabled people’s burdens rather than as people who are members of our communities do not give in to this thinking.

[00:03:39] Disabled people, regardless of their disability, are our neighbors and our loved ones. And even if you’re able bodied now. You will become disabled eventually too. That’s actually just how human bodies work over time. The eugenics impulse is one which rejects grief and vulnerability as part of the human condition, and that is why the authoritarians are so invested in it.

[00:04:02] It’s been a little hard to read the tea leaves and say exactly which factors are most responsible for Elon Musk. Apparently stepping back from his role as a special government employee and his little doggy project, many centrist or liberal leaning mainstream outlets are exciting excitedly reporting about this and saying it’s likely due to Tesla’s 70% loss in profits last quarter, and pressure from his board to get back to work.

[00:04:26] Or that the social pressure and bullying is actually getting to this man whose every public move appears to be a desperate attempt to be seen as culturally cool by the same libs he’s seeking to own. These things definitely do hurt him because he is a huge man, baby. But there are other factors at work here too.

[00:04:44] He’s technically term limited to 130 days as a special government employee, a term which is reaching its inevitable end, which does make me wonder a little bit if this is a fig leaf strategy. If the administration can say they followed one rule while breaking a bunch of others, so they might find some grace from everyone they’re screwing over in some future reckoning.

[00:05:05] Not to mention they received the added bonus of no longer having to hang out with the world’s most annoying man. Whatever the reason, it’s worth noting that while the profit losses suffered at Tesla may be primarily a result of the world’s most riskless internet troll stepping offline and being seen for who he truly is, as well as his literal and figurative chainsaw in front of all of these normies, there’ve also been widespread strategic and coordinated efforts by activists to target Tesla itself.

[00:05:35] The past few months, protests and boycotts cleverly shifted the target of protests from the individual to his shareholders’ pocketbooks. In the case of extreme oligarchic wealth that disregards state rules and laws, there may be such cases where the tiny tyrant shareholders are the only people he’s truly beholden to, and the only ones who can reign him.

[00:05:55] The Tesla boycott efforts this past few months shows that one way to take down an oligarch is to attack the source of their power, their money.

[00:06:08] Earlier this week, I spoke with former president of. United Teachers Los Angeles, as well as a contributor to Convergence and Jacobin. Alex Caputo Pearl. He’s now a rank and file member of the Union and a Labor movement fellow with the UCLA Labor Studies program. Alex has been writing this series of articles.

[00:06:24] We’ve been co-publishing with Jacobin about T’S organizing work. Throughout the Trump years, our interview explores some of that work as well as how he thinks about the labor mo. That the labor movement should apply the block and build framework during this second Trump administration. I take a list.

[00:06:41] Alright, thanks for joining me today, Alex. 

[00:06:44] Alex Caputo-Pearl: Yeah, great to be here. 

[00:06:46] Cayden Mak: Great. It’s been a minute since we published the most recent installment of your series that we’ve been publishing with Jacobin. I was wondering if you could run through very quickly for our listeners particularly the sort of thesis of the article that we published last December from you, just to like tee up our conversation here a little bit.

[00:07:06] Alex Caputo-Pearl: Sure. Yeah. And I appreciate being here and I appreciate the work of convergence always. The, the overall series, as is about United teachers, Los Angeles and what it takes to actually transform a union and build durable power. I’m no longer the president of UTLA. Cecily Meyer Cruz is the president of United Teachers Los Angeles, and has continued this transformation project.

[00:07:30] The December article launched off the place of our. 2017 demonstrations as Trump came in January of 2017, where we did work site actions across all schools in Los Angeles. It launched from that point and then looked at. What are we facing now in 2025? With Trump? And the main things that I put forward, and obviously we’re gonna want to talk more about this, is that labor.

[00:07:59] In terms of the labor movement, what we need to do is see that. Our main goal has to be to defeat this right wing, authoritarian front that we need to be part of a broad, multiracial front for democracy, and that labor’s contribution can be. I listed five things. One, there’s gotta be strikes, walkouts, and actions that labor is taking.

[00:08:28] Labor’s gotta invest much more into organizing and strategic campaigns and building structures. Third, that labor has to pick. What we call common good fights around issues that do that are, that help improve the lives of workers who are in unions, but also millions beyond them, whether they be students or others.

[00:08:51] Fourth, that unions have to take seriously this idea of political power unionism that many other people have written better things than I have on that. But this idea of. Taking super majority organizing methods and applying them into the political realm to actually build political power and then accountability on elected officials after we elect them.

[00:09:12] And then finally, fifth, that labors need to, must coordinate much more and try to get to much greater scale through coordination, whether it be state coordination, cross sectoral coordination, or national coordination. So those are the main sort of punchlines that I’m sure we’ll dive into more. 

[00:09:31] Cayden Mak: Yeah, totally.

[00:09:32] I, I wanna ask you more about the, like super majority organizing methods. ‘Cause I know that this was like a really key part of the transformation that your caucus led at UTLA. What is, what does that look like? What did that look like in UTLA and what are the lessons that you think are portable from workplace organizing into the political arena?

[00:09:55] Alex Caputo-Pearl: Yeah, I think this is a really important question and it’s a big, it’s a big realm of discussion within the labor movement now, I think appropriately so what we mean, and you’re right, the, in 2014 the Union Power Caucus ran for and won all of the citywide elected positions within United Teachers, Los Angeles, as well as the majority of the board of directors.

[00:10:15] And with that majority, we were able to move a transformation program, which was, which had some very challenging. Challenging parts to it. Transforming large organizations is always challenging, but 

[00:10:26] Cayden Mak: yeah, that’s never simple 

[00:10:28] Alex Caputo-Pearl: In terms of the super majority organizing. The way we look at that is that the goal of super majority organizing is to bring, is to engage every single worker.

[00:10:40] And to whether they whether you look at them as pro-union, ambivalent, anti-union, whatever you engage every single worker you listen to those workers, you try to build coherent. Demands that are broadly and deeply felt, and you thereby try to bring the super majority of members into the fighting core of the union.

[00:11:04] And that is only through that kind of method. An approach that we have the ability to pull off super majority strikes. In 2019, we pulled off a 99.9% out strike. In 2023, we did another solidarity strike, which took two months to build two instead of four years to build. Two, because we had built the muscles and the member structures, but, and super majority organizing is also important because it’s.

[00:11:31] It’s the only Democratic way to try to function as a union to literally try to talk to everyone, not just talk to an activist core, right? A lot of people’s reflex is to just go talk to the activists who they know already agree with them. We can’t do that. We’ve gotta be talking to everyone. The way that can apply within politics is a couple different ways.

[00:11:54] One is using mem super majority member structures. Elected leaders at every building regional steering committees that are elected using member structures to actually try to get a majority or a super majority of members knocking on doors in political campaigns, not just going on strike together.

[00:12:13] Which is great, but also knocking on doors together in political campaigns. The flip side of that is at the doors when you’re knocking on doors of community members using some of those same super majority methods of trying to identify at the doors who might be a leader in that neighborhood. So doing leader identification, doing rigorous follow up with that person that might be a leader.

[00:12:38] Trying to understand the map of the neighborhood in terms of who relates to who. All of those are super majority organizing methods, and those are some of the ways it can be applied to politics. 

[00:12:48] Cayden Mak: Nice. Yeah, that’s great. It makes a lot of sense to me in terms of we don’t just, we aren’t just trying to mobilize folks who agree with us at this point.

[00:12:57] Especially that it’s actually critical to be thinking about how we work with those. We may not, we may both not agree with a hundred percent and also potentially who are would otherwise maybe be on opposing sides depending on what the issue is. ’cause times are dire. 

[00:13:12] Alex Caputo-Pearl: Exactly. 

[00:13:14] Cayden Mak: I’m also interested to talk a little bit about the common good demands because I think that, I think that this feels like a something that I’ve seen less discussion about since Trump took office, but that I think is like. Emerging again through the sort of like federal unionist work that’s happening. But could you talk a little bit about what the common good, I think the bargaining for the common good framework makes a lot of sense, especially in public education.

[00:13:41] And in the other like public sector unions. Could you talk to us a little bit about what the common good demands look like for UTLA and. Again, how you see that as potentially portable to the fights that we’re seeing right now and that the fights that we can anticipate coming up. 

[00:13:57] Alex Caputo-Pearl: Yeah, for sure.

[00:13:58] And maybe if it’s okay with you, I’m gonna back up a little bit and frame that question a little bit. Absolutely. Because I think this is important. Just to say and some of this may seem obvious, but we’ve gotta, we’ve gotta keep on talking about it and processing it and analyzing it.

[00:14:12] So we’re obviously under enormous threat now. There is, what we’re facing is, and this relates to what common good demands are, what we’re facing is a front made up of, white Christian white Christian nationalist front that has some populist sort of currents within it. Aligned with like elite corporatists driven by tech who are basically trying to trying to slash part of the government, but use, use the other part of the government in it for its own benefit.

[00:14:44] So we’ve got an attack on democracy. We’ve got an attack on the federal government, which is not only, as you mentioned, Caden, not only. An attack on federal workers and their collective bargaining rights, but also essentially, as Bill Fletcher has said, essentially a kleptocracy like trying to get at the federal funds that are wanted by these tech oligarchs and others to use them.

[00:15:05] And also as a way to drive loyalty, right? To get rid of people who might be neutral. And have people in the federal government who are only loyal to Trump and Maga, there’s obviously an attack on the NLRB. You’ve got states that are gonna be much more aggressive about making cuts as well as trying to outlaw collective bargaining the way Utah did.

[00:15:26] You’ve got corporations that feel more emboldened than going after workers, because of this context. So that’s just, that’s some of what we’re. We’re facing. And I just wanna say, because this relates to the common good question. There are also openings, and sometimes it’s hard to think about things like that when we’re facing such enormous threats.

[00:15:45] But the, some of the openings that we see are one 17 years, essentially since 2 0 0 8. If you just marketed the 2 0 0 8 crash, 17 years of movements. And labor activity that have gotten traction, right? Whether it’s Black Lives Matter, whether it’s Occupy, whether it’s the educator the teacher union upsurge then you’ve got more popularity for unions than we’ve seen in decades, which is also an opening.

[00:16:15] We’re also gonna have reactions from broad sectors of the population. Reactions to cuts, right? People aren’t going to want to see their social services cuts, their parks cut, et cetera. And then I think the final opening to me, Caden, is that people are looking for answers to what to do in the context of clear weakness.

[00:16:38] On the part of the liberal center. And the Democratic Party obviously being the main political manifestation of the liberal center. So those are openings. So we’ve not only gotta beat back the threat, we’ve gotta, we’ve gotta plow into these openings to really build something new. So with that frame, I’ll just spend a second on, on the common good question that you asked.

[00:17:02] Really the. The potential of common good fights. And the way we did this in UTLA, we started to dip our toe into common good bargaining in 20 14, 15. And then we really went full throttle in the 2017 to 2019. Contract campaign, which ended in a strike. And now essentially common good bargaining is institutionalized as what the union does.

[00:17:28] We’ve, that, that’s been a key part of the transformation, and I think it’s really important, particularly in this context to say that common good organizing, it can happen through bargaining. In collective bargaining state states, but it can also happen in context that don’t have as strong collective bargaining rules and laws.

[00:17:49] For example, there are many teacher unions that have the opportunity to negotiate MOUs or what they call meet and confer things. Common good fights can be brought into those. There can be negotiations that happen. At the level of elected boards, city councils or school boards or whatever, that also bring the common good in.

[00:18:08] And then there’s obviously initi initiatives and referenda in the political realm that can represent that. But the whole premise of common good work is that unions are strategically positioned, particularly teachers, healthcare workers, increasingly. Tech workers, increasingly infrastructure workers, logistics workers like Amazon federal workers for sure that workers are strategically positioned to yes.

[00:18:39] Fight for themselves and should never apologize for that, should never be apologetic about fighting for yourself and connect their self-interested demands with broader things that help literally millions of people. With schools. It’s obviously. Not just obvious things like class size, but we did things like we said, that we wanted to get rid of racist searches of students that that students of color were very concerned about. We demanded that there would be an immigrant defense fund for immigrant families who attend LUSD schools. So the potential of reaching millions of folks outside the labor movement and building those alliances through common good fights is really what this is about.

[00:19:19] Cayden Mak: Yeah, I think that’s there’s some very clear like rich and perhaps like until like soil there for growing movements, especially in this time where I, I think that certainly the conversations that I see a lot are of people wondering where centers of power actually are on the left.

[00:19:39] And trying to figure out what. What are the, like who are the leaders and what are the institutions that are gonna be able to carry us in this time? That are, it’s a little unclear sometimes lately. 

[00:19:51] Alex Caputo-Pearl: Yeah. And I think just on that, I think the one of the, obviously US Labor has a.

[00:19:58] Has a history that has a lot of problems in it including its own racism and sexism and bureaucrat. All sorts of things, and. The labor movement is, provides unique opportunities for leadership in some of the ways that you just mentioned. I believe that one of the fundamental problems for people on the left and progressives is that we generally are not society facing and generally are not building bases.

[00:20:26] We and that has to change if we want to actually influence a majority and super majority of people. And so labor. Has an existing base, often connected to other bases. With teachers, it’s obviously connected to students and parents, but connected to consumers, conec, connected to, all of that.

[00:20:47] So that’s a key strategic positioning for the for the left I mean for unions, but also unions are an institution that. By definition bring people together across differences. The only thing they have in common is their employer. Yes. So that’s a very generative space to do political work.

[00:21:06] Unions fight for things that people care about. People care about how much money they make, they should, yes. They care about their working conditions. Unions are often multiracial just by definition because of the workers involved. Unions have an independent funding source, right? Yep. Unions are often the only ev Even with all of the problems with democratic functioning within US labor unions are often the only real experience that working class people might have with something that could be democratic.

[00:21:36] Then you’ve got the potential for scale within labor. You’ve got. Some legal and political advantages, collective bargaining, which labor has that? Community organizations don’t Connections to politicians just because of, knowing that unions are around.

[00:21:52] So all of these things. And the last thing I would say on that is labor is positioned strategically because. There’s been several studies and I refer to one of them in the December article that show that when people are involved in fights that create common cause. A fight against an employer, a fight against a billionaire, a fight for working conditions, that they are much more likely to build bridges across racial gaps, across gender gaps.

[00:22:23] Become more understanding of L-G-B-T-Q and trans issues if people are working together in common Cause. There are studies that show. That, that folks actually evolve and develop and move in a progressive direction on that. So I think for those reasons, unions are very strategic.

[00:22:42] Cayden Mak: Yeah. No, that, that makes good sense. And it’s it’s one of those, I feel like it’s, that study is one of those studies that you’re like. I’m glad somebody did it. And I think that for those of us who have done work in, my experience organizing graduate workers, in particular graduate student workers is like a lot of people’s perspectives on immigrants in particular were transformed in that process.

[00:23:06] That I think a lot of us who’ve been in worked in organizing campaigns and worked for unions or been officers in unions, we’ve seen that firsthand. So it’s of course you need a study to, to show other people who don’t have that firsthand experience that works. But yeah, that makes good sense to me.

[00:23:20] One of the things that, obviously the last, the you, we published this in December and I’m cur it feels like it’s been. It feels like it’s been a year since December. Like I, I feel like I’ve aged very rapidly over the past four months. But now that we’ve seen these first few months of the second Trump administration, which is so like tonally and in a lot of ways materially different than 2017 was, what do you th how do what was, what’s the sort of like grade you would give labor in the sort of like block and build fight back that you’re describing here? Like where have there been like bright spots for you? Where have there been places where you’re like I wish we were doing more in this area.

[00:24:07] Is there stuff that stands out to you over the past? Yeah. Yeah. Four months of. 

[00:24:13] Alex Caputo-Pearl: Yeah, I’m not sure I’ll land on a, an on an exact grade here but I, it’s a little 

[00:24:18] Cayden Mak: hard to give us precise grade, 

[00:24:19] Alex Caputo-Pearl: but I can definitely respond to your question. And I think that the frame for the question, of course, is.

[00:24:26] I mentioned 2 0 8 when the economy crashed and things that have happened since then. And I think a lot of us, and then Convergence has published a ton of great stuff on this about, we are seeing the sand shifting under Neoliberalism’s feet since 2 0 0 8, right? There are new. New ways that the economy is going to be organized.

[00:24:47] There’s new logics of the way, culture that affects individuals are gonna be are gonna be shaped. And so really it’s about what’s coming next for the world. Now that 50 years of neoliberalism is shifting. And so I think the absolute key fundamental piece for labor is making sure that the right wing, authoritarian front does not.

[00:25:12] In this moment of instability, does not consolidate power to then rule for 50 years, 75 years, whatever. And so with that in mind a few things have happened. A lot has happened since December one. Obviously the federal workers work has been. It has been impressive in many ways. And the work of fun and the folks that are really, doing the Federal Unionist network is very good.

[00:25:39] I think there’s a lot of potential for common good work there around just the expanse of what the federal government addresses. And there’s some good organizing there, I think. So that’s the bright side. I think the other side of that is that the existing. Unions and labor movement that represent federal workers and the broader federations have to invest much more in that struggle.

[00:26:01] It is an AB and so it’s such a strategic struggle. It’s such a necessary struggle for that affects. Tens and hundreds of millions of people who are not just workers, but are affected by the federal government, there’s gotta be much more investment in an actual strategic campaign. So there’s bright spots, but I think the labor in the sort of labor institution is not doing enough there.

[00:26:26] I think. I think another bright spot is. The Chicago Teachers Union has been very helpful in bringing a broader network across sectors together to talk about how we use May days, May 1st over the next years to consolidate. More and more connection, more and more cohesion ideologically more and more cohesion power-wise.

[00:26:51] And so that’s involved a lot of K through 12 locals. It’s involved a lot of higher ed locals and it’s involved, obviously the UAW with the UAWs call, from May 1st, 2028, which is great. But it’s getting to some more sectors as well. So I think that’s a bright spot.

[00:27:07] But again. That is being driven certainly on the K 12 side and the higher ed side. It’s being driven by locals, which is fine for things to be driven by locals. They’re the closest to the ground, I come out of being a local president, so we’re the closest to the ground and the state and national unions have to be responsive and invest more in these kinds of efforts.

[00:27:31] So again, that’s a bright spot and. A place where a lot more needs to happen in terms of the state and national unions investing more in that. I would say another bright spot, and again this is a little bit towards K 12, is there’s a lot of unions and United teachers, Los Angeles has done a very good job of this under Cecily’s leadership unions actually creating very concrete plans.

[00:27:57] For what to do when ice shows up or when an lgbtq plus or trans student or family is attacked. I think there’s been some very good bright spots there around real concrete plants of how you exert power in a moment of emergency like that. But again, I think that needs to be scaled up and broadened across sectors.

[00:28:19] So that’s a couple of thoughts. I have a couple more thoughts on that, but I’ll stop there for a second. 

[00:28:24] Cayden Mak: Yeah, no. I think one of the things that stands out to me as a trend across these things that you’re describing is the ability of. Locals and organizations and people who are closer to the ground, being able to move more nimbly than the larger networks of people nationally, which is makes sense.

[00:28:45] In so far as like larger structures are harder to move. I’m curious what you think the is there, are there signs that like national, like state and national, like union formations are starting to move in this direction and is this something that listeners who might not even be like union members, is there a role for like unorganized workers to play here?

[00:29:10] Alex Caputo-Pearl: Yeah, I think another just thing to mention is I think there is a lot of. Potential. I think there’s a lot of good work happening in higher ed right now, particularly with the attack on universities. Which again is so ripe for common good type of approaches where higher ed workers are defending themselves and fighting for institutions that really matter.

[00:29:33] For hundreds and hundreds of millions of people, whether it be through research, whether it be through students, whatever. I just wanted to mention that as well. I think, on your question, I think the I do not. I think Mo, there are some cases where state unions are, I think, moving with the times and moving appropriately.

[00:29:53] I think generally speaking you’re right that local unions are more nimble and need to be more responsive in some ways because every day they’re dealing with people on the ground. I really think that our state and national unions need to move much faster and much more decisively.

[00:30:10] Stephen Lerner wrote an article, which I’m sure you saw I think a few weeks ago about, caution. Is going to be the end of the US labor movement if we just continue. To always hedge bets and be cautious. And I think that our national unions are so used to operating with caution that it’s hard to get out of, even in this ki this moment of immense threat.

[00:30:34] Now you what national unions could do. Is bring together, if we’re saying that locals are more nimble and more on the ground and experiencing the threats and dire attacks of Trump, on the ground every day. What National Unions could and should do is bring together the locals that are experiencing this and trying to respond and actually bring them together into a series of conversations that develops an actual strategic plan that invest in key locals in strategic areas and strategic geographies to move a program forward.

[00:31:13] That is consistent with the article that I wrote in December. Yeah. So there it’s not like national unions couldn’t do that, that’s their job to, to bring locals together into that kind of thing. 

[00:31:23] Cayden Mak: And it also occurs to me that the earlier article that you wrote in this series talks specifically about the way in which.

[00:31:30] When your caucus took leadership at UTLA, were able to leverage resources from the NEA, from the a FT to invest in organizing. And that is that is something that can be done and is a good model perhaps for like ways to scale the work that’s happening at local organizations as well.

[00:31:52] Alex Caputo-Pearl: That’s right. It’s a great it’s a really great example of state and national unions coming in and really. D doing some of what the most valuable work they can do is, when we came into office in 2014, UTLA was not only getting beaten up by the privatizes and losing political battles badly, and hadn’t had a raise in seven years and a contract in three years.

[00:32:15] Not only that, we were also about to go off a financial cliff and to NEA and AFT’s credit. And CF T and CTAs credit, they understood that a dysfunctional UTLA in one of the largest media markets in the world is not gonna help anyone across the country. And so we made an agreement where they would invest temporarily.

[00:32:37] In an organizing infrastructure that we built locally and that they supported financially, they gave us control over how we built it. And temporarily funded that until we could get to a place a year later to actually do a dues increase vote across our membership, which, and members ended up voting 80% ended up voting to increase their own dues by 30%.

[00:33:01] So it was a massive. A massive thumbs up to the approach that we were taking from the membership of 33,000 at the time. But you’re right, that wouldn’t have happened without the initial investment of a FT and NEA and that’s the kind of thing that can happen. Now I just want to quickly mention like a couple of other things that I think are bright spots to build on.

[00:33:23] Totally. I think that some of the large gatherings that National Union leaders have gone to that have been convened by the Working Families Party and some of the folks around Working Families Party. I think that’s been very good. And there’s a way to move on that and deepen that relationship between national unions and the Working Families Party and some of the other national organizations around, I’m.

[00:33:48] I’m a big believer in like we organize in the material conditions that we’re in. We don’t organize in the conditions that we wish we were in. And so to me that means that of course we need to make tactical alliances and work with the Democratic Party. But I’m also very clear that. The Democratic Party is not the vehicle that we need to build a new society.

[00:34:08] So investing in things like the Working Families Party and other political formations like the Carolina Federation and North Carolina other places. This is something that has been good over the last couple of months that you’ve seen those folks together with National Union leaderships.

[00:34:23] So I wanted to say that. And then I think the, I think the Standing for Democracy project is really important that Bill Fletcher and others are involved in because it’s specifically about how do we educate and train folks in the labor movement to fight fascism and authoritarianism, which is not something that many generations of people have experience with.

[00:34:45] And so that project I think is really very important as well. 

[00:34:50] Cayden Mak: No that’s also really helpful thinking about and I think that some of those formations that you named too, like working Families Party, like Carolina Federation, like other like state level organizations that are doing real, like doing serious work to contest for governing power in the states.

[00:35:05] It’s like those are also examples of the places where on unionized workers can find themselves and find themselves interfacing with. Organized labor in a very serious way, which is also cool. 

[00:35:17] Alex Caputo-Pearl: Absolutely. Absolutely. 

[00:35:20] Cayden Mak: Are there some things that you hope that we start paying more attention to in these coming months?

[00:35:26] As I think, the sort of, in some ways the initial like shock period does feel like it’s wearing off. Like I’m seeing more people asking strategic questions about where we go from here. What, from your experience do you think we should all be thinking about as we move into this kind of like next couple months period where I actually think a lot of important groundwork is going to be laid for the next several years.

[00:35:51] Alex Caputo-Pearl: Yeah, I think the some of that echoes back to the five things that I started with and the December article was about, I’ll highlight a couple of things. I do think that and a number of people have been writing about this, I do think we need to get more and more grounding in what actual disruptive actions can we take?

[00:36:16] Steven did a great job in his piece of talking about. The the history that labor and community and civil rights movements have of actually doing strategic disruption, whether it was in the thirties, the sixties, whatever. And so looking at how do we impact capital, how do we impact.

[00:36:37] The tech overlords, what choke points do we look for? In terms of actual economic disruption, how do we muck up logistics for capital? I think a lot more discussion needs to go into that. And it’s not gonna, it’s not gonna happen overnight. People are gonna have to act with urgency that the coming of fascism, demands, but also understand it’s gonna take a little bit of time.

[00:37:02] So that’s one place that I think is gonna really be, provide some good space for conversation. Another one is, I mentioned this a little bit and I know that you’ve been involved in this in a great way. This idea of coordination. So May 1st, 2028 has been put out.

[00:37:20] Stephanie Lu wrote a great article that y’all published about it. The UAW obviously making that call. And Sean Feign and I. Much more discussion needs to happen about, yes, May 1st, 2028 continues to make sense, but it’s gotta make sense in our current context, which means right resistance in 25, 26, and 27, and then throw a proactive punch in 28.

[00:37:48] And it’s gotta, it’s gotta come together coherently like that. And so the what the Chicago Teachers Union and others have been doing to convene folks on this, I think is very important. There’s a lot we can learn from what they did in Minneapolis in 2024, where they actually had cross sectoral actions and strikes.

[00:38:05] So I think that’s another place we’ve really gotta dig in. The last thing I would mention like on this round, Caden, to your question, is. We’ve gotta, we’ve gotta get better about training. We’ve gotta, we’ve gotta get better about. Yes, these are moments when there’s gonna be some spontaneous actions, some planned actions, et cetera.

[00:38:31] And how does all that happen where people are in an ecosystem where they’re actually getting trained, getting skilled up, being respected for who they are, but also being respected for what they may not know and be trained in. And I’m. You know that I’ve been very involved in the uc, Berkeley Labor Center and Organizing for Power international trainings, which I think are the type of thing that we need to do around.

[00:38:59] Recruiting thousands more. There’s been tens of thousands of rank and file workers who have gone through those trainings that Jane Leavy started. How do we get even more workers into those kind of trainings and scale up? Institutions that are providing those trainings and adjust the trainings to meet the moment, right?

[00:39:20] Where the scenarios that we have people work with in the training are about what they’re actually facing. And then connect those trainings, which the skills to win is obviously an organizing power on organizing, but connect them to. Not just the power and participation in negotiations, trainings, which are the second leg, but also a third leg, which is under development, which I’m very excited about, that people like Anthony Thigpen and others are working on, which is about training folks in.

[00:39:49] Power analysis, how to include hundreds and hundreds of rank and file workers in a process where you analyze power and then you go out and use the skills from skills to win and the negotiating tactics from power and participation and negotiations to win. So that’s a long way of saying that.

[00:40:08] I think another thing we gotta dig deep on is. Trainings that hold mass numbers of people and that take them through a series of things where they’re learning by doing and learning by being in these sorts of trainings. 

[00:40:21] Cayden Mak: Yeah. That’s super rich. One of the things that we’ve been talking about a lot internally here at Convergence is like, what is our specific role also in building you like a unif?

[00:40:32] The unity that we need in the broad front and a unity that we can stand on. Like unity that we can really use as the building block of moving into this next period. And I think it’s, it is hard. It’s sometimes hard for me as somebody who is in some ways, like a very niche media maker to be thinking about operating at this scale.

[00:40:54] But I think it, like the thing that you’re describing that is like learning through doing and learning through, like applying ideas. Makes a hell of a lot of sense. And it feels super important right now 

[00:41:07] Alex Caputo-Pearl: for sure. And I think one of the things we’ve learned through and the NEA has been very good about working with the uc, Berkeley Labor Center to have, we’ve probably had about maybe a hundred maybe a hundred, 120 local teachers unions across the country go through.

[00:41:23] Skills to win and power and participation negotiations. The NEA has been good about funding that. And the one of the things that’s, that gets to your earlier point is that we see folks from all sorts of contexts using the skills. So in North Carolina. The first meet and confer policy, in decades.

[00:41:46] And the banning of collective bargaining, of course, came out of racist Jim Crow. And now teachers for the first time in decades have won the first meet and confer policy using skills that are super majority organizing skills leader identification skills, semantics of organizing conversation skills that they got to.

[00:42:06] Some of them might have known it before, but they certainly got to practice it a hell of a lot deeper in these broad uc, Berkeley training. So I think this training piece is a big thing. How do we create spaces like the things I’m talking about, which all happen online where you’re not just training 30 people, you’re actually training tens of thousands of people.

[00:42:27] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Yeah. That’s super exciting stuff. I love to hear it. Is there, as we wrap up here, is there anything else that we didn’t cover that you think our listeners would be interested to know about the things that you’re seeing moving in labor right now? 

[00:42:42] Alex Caputo-Pearl: I think you’re I think your questions have I think you did a good job of getting to the stuff that we needed to get to.

[00:42:50] I think the, I think you did a good job of getting to what we, there’s a lot more to talk about, but there, I think you did a good job of getting to what we need to get to For sure. 

[00:42:57] Cayden Mak: Fantastic. Alex, it is a delight to talk to you. I really appreciate the deep and just like careful insights that you bring to this work and the work of generalizing those learnings for more folks in our movement.

[00:43:14] Alex Caputo-Pearl: Yeah. I I appreciate being here and appreciate your work at Convergence and obviously thank you for your continued support around this series that I’m writing about UTLA, but also just the really essential broader movement work that Convergence is doing. Thank you.

[00:43:33] Cayden Mak: All. Thanks again to Alex for joining us this week. You can check out Alex’s publications with us here at Convergence, and we’ll definitely link to all those stories in the show notes. This show is published by Convergence, a magazine for radical insights. I’m Caden Mock, and our producer is Josh Stro.

[00:43:48] Kimmy David designed our cover art. If you’ve got something to say, please drop me a line. You can send me an email that will consider running on an upcoming episode at mailbag, at convergence mac.com. And finally, if you’d like Strat at Convergence, bring our movements together to strategize, struggle, and win in this crucial historical moment.

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