STRIKE
The book, Strike is mainly about the mass strikes in the history of the Americans. The introduction of the book illustrates the theme, working class individuals have a long history of organizing their strength and asserting their influence in a society that is condemning them to be powerless. The greater percentage of the book gives accounts of the strikes in 1877, 1886, the early 1890s, 1919, the 1930s and early 40s, and 1946. The book concludes with a brief story of how the mass strikes brought about the germs of a novel society in Russia in the year 1917, Italy in the year 1920 as well as Spain in the year 1936. It demonstrates how individuals can establish a society in which all share roles for the welfare of all when they put the self-organized power into action without restriction. The book is about mass strikes since they are the encounters that most faultlessly outlines the level of a majority of self-activity. However, underlying this emphasis is an outstanding theme running through the whole book, the only detailed solution to weakness is the self-initiative of an independent individual. I think the novelist wrote the book to illustrate the greatest value of strike. He elucidates about the changes in strategies inside the AFL-CIO during the 90s that assisted in redeveloping a broad-minded and emergent labor movement, linking societies and significant issues such as pro-immigration, women civil liberties and equity individuals of all races into union organizing. There have been fruitful movements fighting for the rights of the immigrants, such as the Janitor movement in Century city and in another places, and also employee’s centers in New York City that were established by the immigrant employees.
The part of the book that I liked the most is where the author talks about how the strikes were ignited and then pushed through the continent because its multicultural character consisting of the African Americans, Native Americans and immigrants highly took part in the overall strike that generated the “St. Louis Community. For instance, in chapter one, the author stated that “Colliers and other diverse crowd, composed of the whites and blacks, stopped a train that was safeguarded by 50 U.S. soldiers after it got out of Martinsburg (Brecher 50). In the second Chapter , it is stated that, the key greatest feeling personified in the cavaliers of the labor was the notion of unity amongst all employees, whether one is black or white, skilled or unskilled, man or a woman (Brecher 28). In the fourth chapter, the strike of the textile composed of employees who were majorly young women immigrants who were Russians, Italians, Poles, Lithuanians, Greeks, Ukrainians, Syrians, Franco-Belgians, Finns, and Germans(Brecher 115). To illustrate the unity further, in the fifth chapter, the weapon of the Jobless Councils’ outlined as the democratic power of figures, to eliminate through profile-raising and pressure discrimination between Negroes and white persons, or against the foreign people (Brecher 145). I think those are the parts that best explained his ideas. Brecher was a member of the United States council communist group Root & Branch by the time he was writing Strike!, thus all through the book the subject of class unity is apparent. He limited himself to the accounts of mass strikes for the reason that, they are the most significant ways that employees have in exercising their power.
The parts of the book that I disliked is where each strike appears similar to all other strikes, and labor account is limited to an account of the continuous risings over similar issues. To a certain level, Strike, as portrayed in the book, suffers from this some form of misrepresentation. Since the author writes over two hundred pages of detail, a greater percentage of it appearing repetitive, the book tends to be kind of monotonous at some point, and then it is saved mainly by its dynamic sense of drive. It is true that the author attempted to give some varying contextual, specifically from the 1930s onwards, but he did it just as an aside. The author provides very minimal investigation of the objectives and motivation of the strikers, and instead, they appear to be like robots that are pushed into action with consistent consistency by the persistent course of history. I least liked the parts where each of the strikes, arises courtesy of the spirit of working class. The author does not outline what the objectives of the strikes. In 1894, for instance, the author writes that “we are presented with the spectacle of Eugene Victor Debs, perhaps the greatest example of a courageous, radical, and incorruptible trade union official in American history, trying to end the strike in order to prevent it from becoming an insurrection” (p. 95). Was revolt in the air, was it possible, and if so, was it practicable, or was the strike exhausted and conclusively overpowered by the Federal solders? Strike hardly gets into this sort queries, and to the level that it does not, it does to accomplish its drive to assess the capability of common folks to shape their purpose. With the conflict in command, it can just hint at some of the prospects.
Work Cited
Brecher, Jeremy. Strike!Boston, MA: South End Press, 1997. Print.