“We Are In This For the Long Fight”: How Workers and Unions are Reclaiming the Labor Movement

On February 8, a room of almost 60 union members and organizers representing 17 different unions gathered during a classic Minnesota snow emergency for a half-day long “democracy defense” training.

Led by St. Paul Federation of Educators (SPFE) Local 28, attendees worked in groups to identify authoritarian strategies and narratives, and how to disrupt them. The training did not focus on any one specific policy or action, but instead was a space for broad, discursive discussions on the many ways those in power can divide us. Workers used examples from their lived experiences and labor and social movement history. They were also trained on how to have conversations with coworkers and community members about issues affecting working- class communities.

“I came here because I care about my students, and they are afraid,” said Alli Kildahl, sixth grade social studies teacher at Battle Creek Middle School and member of SPFE. 

It is a frightening time for many communities being targeted by the far-right authoritarian movements that have been on the rise across the globe. Organized labor has the knowledge and experience when it comes to handling bad bosses, and many workers are responding with alarm as the bosses currently at the helm of the U.S. government dismantle and defang the agencies tasked with enforcing workers’ rights and protections. As of this moment, it’s uncertain whether or not the Trump administration will abide by or challenge the authority of court orders pushing back against the slew of executive orders.

This uncertainty and the anxiety that it produces can be acknowledged, labor leaders say. According to SPFE political organizer Lynne Bolton, unions have been failing to communicate with their rank-and-file members. “Many union members don’t connect their political life with their union life,” she says. “We need to help folks get to a place where they can change their own minds.”

At the gathering, workers talked about how this means taking and making opportunities to be curious about the beliefs of fellow union members, coworkers, and neighbors, and preventing burnout by practicing self- and community care.

“We are in this for the long fight,” says Bolton, who organized workers during last year’s election cycle, driving them back and forth from Wisconsin to do deep canvassing.

“Fascism isn’t born at the ballot box, and it won’t be defeated at the ballot box,” said an SPFE union organizer during the training. They also quoted Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton: “You don’t fight racism with racism, you fight racism with solidarity.”

Topics that attendees discussed included how diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) comes up in the workplace, the history of enslavement, and the effects of environmental degradation and collapse. The scapegoating of immigrants and marginalized communities was also discussed at length.

Javnika Shah is also an SPFE member and has been an educator for 21 years. She teaches math at Hazel Park Academy. “It was a hopeful experience,” Shah said after the training. “Being part of community, and supporting my students more than anything else.” 

Public teachers have long been leaders in the labor movement. The St. Paul teachers’ strike of 1946 was the first organized teachers’ strike in the U.S. It is no surprise that they have been preparing to meet the current moment of rising authoritarianism threatening not just public schools, but the overall social fabric.

Jill van Koolwijk works at Hamline Elementary as an English Language Learners (ELL) teacher. She came to the U.S. from Germany over 30 years ago to go to school and became a German language teacher. She said that her grandparents on her father’s side were active in the Nazi Party, and although her grandparents on her mother’s side were opposed to the Nazis, her grandfather worked as an architect designing movie theaters where the party could distribute propaganda. “I grew up being denazified,” she says. “We learned don’t ever let it happen again, and don’t ever look the other way.”

She is part of the Immigrant Defense Committee that SPFE members organized to protect students and their families. “I believe in solidarity,” she says. “If we all work together and stand up together against bad policy, I don’t know how successful it’s going to be, but we have to try, right? We just have to try.”

Amie Stager is the Associate Editor for Workday Magazine.