The Co-ops Not Cages Workers Assembly sends support to the Brave Space Alliance Workers Union in this moment where we have heard of repression upon our class siblings. There can be no true solidarity and peace without equality in power which can find resolution only in the ultimate removal of hierarchies and the conversion of all relationships into horizontal, cooperative ones.
We are compelled to remind workers in struggle that government institutions designed to regulate conflict between hierarchies and workers, such as the National Labor Relations Board, are traps designed to destroy workers’ struggles even for the smallest gains or attempts for relief. An example of a successful alternative workers union model in Chicago we can point to is the solidarity unionist Amazonians United Chicagoland.
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We are in a period where many of us can transition from a situation of constantly wasting our energies fighting with an employer who does not practice anti-carceral equality to a situation where we are equals, a condition of a liberated world.
We offer encouragement for BSA workers to self-develop their work into a worker cooperative or a worker self-directed nonprofit, which could mean creating something new as former PASO nonprofit workers are attempting, according to this article.
With the development of the ecosystem through which opencollective.com is a connective point and tool, it’s easier now than ever for non-profit workers to ditch bosses and employers and create their own collectively-run effort where they can get paid to do the work our communities need. And equality in management and resource control, which includes ditching abusive relationships, is an important aspect of the work that we need to do to provide positive role modelship to our communities plagued by hierarchies, divided into classes of those who command and those who obey, those who administer resources and those who beg for resources.
We offer what little time we have toward intentional collaboration for day-to-day survival in the interest of the big revolution we must make in Chicagoland.
Yours for the revolution,
Co-ops Not Cages Workers Assembly
April 5th 2022