Unions: Queer Them or Let Them Die

I just read on an anarchist newswire a reportback from the Class Struggle Anarchist Conference.

From the report-back:
Organizers from the Northeastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists (NEFAC), Workers Solidarity Alliance, Industrial Workers of the World, Solidarity & Defense, Capital Terminus Collective, Amanecer, Class Action Alliance, Michigan-Minnesota Group, Anti-Racist Action, the (now defunct) Love and Rage Anarchist Federation, and even a former member of the Mujeres Libres of the Spanish CNT attended. We discussed organizing experiences in the community, workplace, and various social movements with a focus on the role of race and gender within the movement.

This sounds like it was probably an incredible event with great organizations represented. Outside of Love and Rage, which the writer mentions is defunct, the other anarcho-communist organizations sound so caught up in the burdensome jargon of white, male labor organizing that I wonder where the possibility lies.

Don't get me wrong. I can get as teary-eyed as the next Wob when I hear a searing rendition of Solidarity Forever. Sab the cat makes me chuckle too. That being said, there is something unbearably tiresome, white, patriarchal, and heterocentric about the rhetoric of the labor movement. Perhaps this is why, according to The Center for Economic and Policy Research, only 12.1% of the U.S. workforce belongs to a union.

Of those 12%, dare I speculate most are reform minded and content with the Capitalist system? In that case, there are likely more LGBTQ people in the United States than there are revolutionary minded trade-unionists.

Perhaps the time for queering the union movement is now. Since queerish icons like Prince, Michael Jackson and Madonna took over the popular imaginary in the 80s, the fact of the matter is If its not queer, its not here, so get over it.



So perhaps the time has come for Sab and Felix the cat to start doin'-it, for Solidarity Forever to be sung from the bubbling tubs of bathhouses, for queer organizers like Emma Goldman and Baynard Ruskin to be celebrated far and wide for the queerness, and for the trade union movement to stop acting so gosh-darned butch.

If trade-union anarchists want to play Joe Worker, they should save it for play parties. Oversized, white, straight male workers are anachronisms. The oppressed work force is radically diverse in gender, race, and documentation status. As the icons of immigrant labor have been swept under the rug for the domination of white men in the labor movement, Joe Worker's image must be swept away if Class Struggle is to mean anything more than a postmodern nod of the head to the late 19th early 20th century.