WASHINGTON (AEP) — A new group calling itself WAR (Workers for a Revolution) issued a report today with their suggestions for how the U.S. labor movement might revitalize itself. Their report quotes the 1978 book Poor People’s Movements, where authors Richard Cloward and Frances Piven say:
“Factory workers had their greatest influence, and were able to extract their most substantial concessions from government, during the Great Depression, in the years before they were organized into unions. Their power during the depression was not rooted in organization, but in disruption.”
With this in mind, WAR’s report says that, “Given the current weak state of labor, perhaps one of the keys to re-igniting it lies in a strategy of what might be termed ‘organized disruption.’ If business needs smooth running and no disruptions, and if such smoothness in their operations gives them little to no reason to address any of our concerns, then perhaps the right way forward for us lies, at least in part, on a strategy of organizing ourselves in ways that would allow us to disrupt the normal operations of our workplaces at will.”
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney issued a scathing denunciation of the report. “That’s the biggest crock of shit I’ve ever heard in my life. Those ungrateful bastards are forgetting everything we’ve done for them. Just look at all the things we’ve won for them! We’ve won … we’ve won … dammit, we’ve won a lot!”
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said, “This is fascism, plain and simple. These workers want us to take the union off Old Glory and replace it with a swastika.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said, “These workers are evil. They hobnob with the devil. They all have 666’s tattooed on the backs of their heads. If you go into their homes, you’ll find altars where they sacrifice babies. I’ve even got video footage of one of them kicking his dog.”
Democratic president candidate and Illinois senator Barack Obama said, “Ending slavery was the right thing to do. But freeing blacks only to turn around and make slaves out of the rich isn’t progress.”
The workers tried to indicate they were not looking to make slaves out of anyone, but rather to create a society where no one was a slave of anyone else. “An honest look at the US capitalist economy would, we think, call it by its rightful name: wage slavery.”
Speaking via telephone from her home in Hampstead, England, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, “Rubbish. These workers don’t know anything at all about economics. When it comes to market-based capitalism, there is no alternative.”
The workers noted that, “We don’t have all the answers, but one idea that seems promising to us is Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel’s Participatory Economics. We particularly like Albert & Hahnel’s understanding and acknowledgement of the fact that any economy that leaves our bosses lording over us and making all the decisions themselves isn’t one that truly liberates us.”
Responding to the report, a coalition of doctors, lawyers, managers, engineers, accountants, architects, and university professors calling themselves Intellectuals for a Bright Future said, “Small minds, small ideas. No other comment is required.”
Still, the US government isn’t taking any chances. Upon release of the report, the entire US military apparatus in Iraq and Afghanistan was immediately withdrawn and returned stateside. The approximately 160,000 US soldiers and 130,000 mercenaries, or contractors, immediately attacked WAR’s Washington office — a small efficiency apartment with no air conditioning and a constantly-running toilet.
While the US military was unable to achieve its objectives in the Middle East, they did succeed in stopping the toilet.