Critique Is Easy. What’s Your Plan for Power?
The way to help Zohran Mamdani overcome establishment and billionaire opposition to his agenda has to involve organizing bigger and deeper, rather than simply criticizing him harder.
119 Article(s) by: Eric Blanc
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Eric Blanc is an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. He blogs at the Substack Labor Politics and is the author of We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big.
Democrats Caved in the Shutdown Fight. Unions Let Them.
The government shutdown was a test showing where progressive forces are strong and where they’re weak. The results are in after last night’s Democratic capitulation to the GOP: most top union leaders are failing to meet the moment.
Zohran Mamdani’s Victory Points the Way Forward
A democratic socialist wasn’t supposed to be able to win a major office like New York City mayor over the objections of billionaires. Yet Zohran Mamdani and the movement behind him built a campaign far stronger than the oligarchs and their unlimited money.
After No Kings, It’s Time to Escalate
After the massive No Kings protests, we need bigger, more disruptive nonviolent campaigns that can go viral and peel away Donald Trump’s pillars of support.
Ultraleftism Can’t Free Palestine
Two years into Israel’s genocide, the US movement in solidarity with Palestinians is far weaker than it should be. To cut off American arms to Israel, we need to build a powerful movement oriented to ordinary Americans beyond activist circles.
Zohran Mamdani Can Help Rebuild New York’s Labor Movement
As New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani will have a range of options to encourage large numbers of workers to unionize — essential both for improving working-class living standards in an unaffordable city and building an organized force to win his agenda.
Zohran Mamdani’s Historic Win: 16 Takeaways
Leftists and progressives throughout the country have much to learn from how democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani pulled off an unprecedented upset last night.
Zohran Mamdani Has Won Over Key Segments of Organized Labor
In an era when unions routinely endorse candidates beholden to the bosses, Zohran Mamdani’s inroads with organized labor are a significant step forward.
Too Rich to Fight?
American labor’s finances have never been stronger. And yet its horizons have never been narrower.
Bet on Worker-to-Worker Organizing
There are no guarantees that any approaches, new or old, to reversing the labor movement’s decline will succeed. But Eric Blanc makes a case for why we should wager on worker-to-worker unionism.
Unions, Not Just Factories, Will Make America Great
Factory jobs are not inherently good jobs. Even if Donald Trump’s trade policies bring factories back to the United States, workers need unions to make those jobs well-paying and safe — and Trump has been the most anti-union president in years.
Stopping Donald Trump’s Anti-Union Offensive
Labor will only survive the Trumpification of America through confrontation.
Bernie Sanders and AOC’s Rallies Can Become a Mass Movement
The “Fighting Oligarchy Tour” rallies headlined by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez can become something much bigger — if Bernie and AOC direct their rally attendees into sustained organizing efforts against Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
Federal Workers Can Defeat Elon Musk’s Coup. Here’s How.
Elon Musk would like you to think he is invincible right now. But the world’s richest man is actually extremely vulnerable to public pressure at the moment — public pressure that federal workers and their unions can take advantage of.
How Philly Whole Foods Workers Beat Jeff Bezos
In the face of what they say was a vicious anti-union campaign, and at a time of anti-worker right-wing advance nationally, Philadelphia Whole Foods workers successfully voted to form a union. We spoke to one of the workers about how they did it.
Donald Trump’s Anti-Union Offensive and How We Stop It
Donald Trump is rolling out a blitz of attacks on workers in hopes of paralyzing organized labor’s energy to fight back. But unions can only survive this onslaught by fighting, not by burying their heads in the sand.
Five Books on the Democrats and Labor
We asked scholar Eric Blanc to recommend reading on the party’s contentious relationship to the trade union movement.
Labor’s Resurgence Can Continue Despite Trump
Donald Trump will do his best to undermine unions. But the labor movement still has momentum on its side and numerous opportunities to seize. Trump’s presidency has to be a time for labor action, not despair.
Don’t Despair: Trump Isn’t Invincible
Donald Trump’s reelection is awful, but wallowing in misery only benefits his far-right agenda — and risks squandering the many opportunities we actually have to stop the worst of his plans.
Biden’s Labor Board Is Boosting Bottom-Up Union Organizing
To the surprise of many labor activists and leftists, Joe Biden’s National Labor Relations Board has boosted bottom-up unionism since 2020 — a fact that has key strategic implications for union revitalization efforts.