The Irish launch of Jane McAlevey’s “No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age” took place in Dublin last night.
The community, electoral, and labour organiser’s new book deals with the question of why progressives in the US keep losing and what is to be done.
McAlevey spoke to the Dublin crowd about the distinction between advocacy, mobilising and organising.
Arguing that in the last 20 years the US trade union movement has taken the top-down “advocacy” and “mobilising” approaches, McAlevey explained that the “organising” strategy not only treats workers like intelligent humans but is more effective in actually winning.
She said: “Understand and value the intelligence of ordinary people and enable them, don’t constrain them. Workers can and are doing amazing things.”
The event was sponsored by the Communication Workers’ Union, Unite the Union and Mandate Trade Union.
