A master class in organizing

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Politics, News, News Commentary, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.5 • 11.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 March 2020

⏱️ 120 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Bernie Sanders campaign is an organizing tour-de-force relative to the Joe Biden campaign; yet the latter has won primary after primary — with even higher turnouts than 2016. So does organizing even work? And, if so, what went wrong? Jane McAlevey has organized hundreds of thousands of workers on the frontlines of America’s labor movement. She is also a Senior Policy Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Labor Center and the author of three books on organizing, including, most recently, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy. McAlevey doesn’t pull her punches. She thinks the left builds political power all wrong. She thinks people are constantly mistaking “mobilizing” for “organizing,” and that social media has taught a generation of young activists the worst possible lessons. She thinks organized labor’s push for “card check” was a mistake, but that there really is a viable path back to a strong labor movement. And since McAlevey is, above all, a teacher and an organizer, she offers what amounts to a master class in organizing — one relevant not just to building political power, but to building anything. To McAlevey, organizing, at its core, is about something very simple, and very close to the heart of this show: how do you talk to people who may not agree with you such that you can truly hear them, and they can truly hear you? This conversation ran long, but it ran long because it was damn good. References: No Shortcuts by Jane McAlevey Raising Expectations and Raising Hell by Jane McAlevey Book recommendations: Democracy May Not Exist But We'll Miss it When its Gone by Astra Taylor I've Got the Light of Freedom Charles M. Payne On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder New to the show? Want to check out Ezra's favorite episodes? Check out the Ezra Klein Show beginner's guide (http://bit.ly/EKSbeginhere) Want to contact the show? Reach out at ezrakleinshow@vox.com Credits: Engineer - Cynthia Gil Producer/Editor - Jeff Geld Researcher - Roge Karma Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	When you drive a Chevy electric vehicle, you're getting more than a way to get from point A to point B.
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0:17.0	Chevy is making EVs for everyone, everywhere. Go to chevrelay.com slash electric to learn more.
0:25.0	First, sweet tarts dare to combine sweet and tart. But they didn't stop there.
0:33.0	Now they've combined soft and bouncy to bring you new sweet tarts, gummies fruity splits.
0:39.0	A uniquely delicious dual-sided gummy with one side that's sweet and the other side that's tart.
0:46.0	But entirely smooth and squishy. A powerfully perfect combo.
0:52.0	Sweet tarts dare to combine.
0:57.0	Helping a human being come to their own conclusion without ever giving them your opinion is the difference in organizing and mobilizing.
1:05.0	Hello and welcome to the SR Clenshow on the box media podcast network.
1:20.0	Something we've been exploring on the show recently is one, of course, the election, but two, what does it mean to practice politics?
1:27.0	What do you do to actually win power and how does that differ from some of the things that feel like doing politics,
1:33.0	but maybe are not or maybe are not actually effective at a conversation recently with a ton of hersha, which I recommend listening about political hobbyism.
1:40.0	There's a lot of good theory in that. I don't think it was so sharp on practice.
1:44.0	And that's one of the criticisms I got from some of you and I think I was correct.
1:48.0	And so I wanted to have Jane McLevy on the show, which is scheduled before, but really I think helps paired with that one.
1:54.0	She is an organizer, an author and a scholar. She is done more labor union campaigns than I or probably even she can count organize hundreds of thousands of workers.
2:04.0	She's an incredible thinker and practitioner of how do you actually organize people?
2:09.0	What does it mean to do that kind of persuasive day to day moment to moment service oriented politics?
2:15.0	She's a senior policy fellow at the University of California at Berkeley and she's a new book out called a collective bargain unions organizing and the fight for democracy and this conversation.
2:25.0	It's a bit long.
	...

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