An Interview with Joe Burns, author of Reviving the Strike at Lawrence, Mass. Bread and Roses Centennial, April 28th, 2012

by Camilo Viveiros
Original interview: Activism2Organizing.org

Introduction

Many in the Occupy movement have called for a general strike on May 1st but most Occupy activists aren’t involved in labor organizations or organized in their workplaces. While General Assemblies may be somewhat effective institutions at reaching the agreement of assorted activists around future direct actions, workplace stoppages require the large scale participation of workers in decision-making structures. The interview below gives some organizing advice for those who have called the general strike. I hope that this interview will inspire Occupy activists to consider the difficult work ahead that is needed to build democracy in the workplace. We are the 99%!

Common Struggle - Boston Spring events

-Monday, April 16: Platypus Forum - Reform, Resistance, or Revolution?
6:30 pm
Encuentro 5, 33 Harrison Ave, Chinatown, Boston, MA

Common Struggle member Gayge to speak at a panel hosted by Platypus. Speakers:
Jeff Booth (Socialist Alternative)
Gayge (Common Struggle Libertarian Communist Federation)
Joe Ramsey (Kasama Project)
Laura Lee Schmidt (Platypus)
J. Phil Thompson (MIT)

This event concerns the forms of anticapitalist politics available today: reform or resistance or revolution or a combination of the three.

Don Jennings passed away March 8, 2012, in Richmond, Kentucky. He is best known to many of us by his pen name, Randy "Prole Cat" Lowens. In lieu of flowers the Family request contributions to any public library in Don’s memory.

Don was a former Workers Solidarity Alliance member, a founding member of Atlanta's Capital Terminus Collective and a supporter of Common Struggle Libertarian Communist Federation.

From our mutual friend and comrade Shafik: "Very sad to hear the news of our comrade Don Jennings recent death. Don was a steadfast fighter for justice, a prolific writer, a founding member of Atlanta's Capital Terminus Collective, a student of life, adventurer, philosopher, loyal friend and companion to many and a true mensch. May his memory remain to encourage us in our struggles to create a better, more beautiful world. RIP dear comrade."

North Eastern Anarchist #15 2011 published his interview with bell hooks: "How Do You Practice Intersectionalism?"

For anarkismo.net he wrote this manifesto for his homeland: "An Anarchist Communist Strategy for Rural, Southern Appalachia" about opposing Mountain Top Removal coal mining.

He also wrote:

• "Postmodernism in Literature and Politics: Experimental Fiction and Post-Left Anarchy"
• "Noble Gestures and Effective Boycotts: Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and the Struggles Ahead"
• "The Bogeyman Under Bush's Bed: Islamic Extremists or Organized Workers?"
• "The Mortgage Crisis in the USA"
• "The Periodic Crises of Market Economies"
• "Connecting the Privatized Dots: a review of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine"

As "prole cat" he wrote: "Anarchism and Confederate Flag Culture" "Hurricane Katrina, and the Good Churchgoers of the U.S. South" "Ruminating On the Likelihood of Conscription in the USA" "Making the World Safe for Fascism: Free Speech and the Worship of Civil Liberties" "Towards More Effective Political Organizations" "The Million Workers March in Washington DC, October 17, 2004" "FLOC and the Mt Olive Campaign: an Anarchist Perspective" "What does it mean to be an anarchist communist?" "Honkie America Redux: The Plight of the Latino Immigrant"

His sto­ries have been fea­tured in "Wrong Tree Review", "A-Minor", "Dew on the Kudzu" and else­where. More of Randy's writing can also be found at http://todaysdeepsouth.blogspot.com/search?q=Randy+Lowens and http://oaknpine.blogspot.com/2011/02/randy-lowens-greatest-hits-compilation.html

Randy was reared in the north Georgia hills where he worked as welder, machinist and air conditioning repairman. Enraged by the abuses of employers, he began writing for leftist journals. He resided in eastern Kentucky, home schooled his daughter, cooked gourmet meals and composed fiction informed by all these experiences.

Randy received the Tacenda Literary Award for the Best Short Story of 2007, illuminating social injustice. His writing has been featured in JMWW (literary fiction); Fifth Estate (a counter cultural/anarchist journal); Clockwise Cat, Wanderings and Blue Collar Review (poetry); Cherry Bleeds (transgressive fiction); Thieves Jargon (drug lit); Pemmican (working class fiction); Unlikely Stories 2.0 (an insider's look at The Left); Dogmatica (Small Town Taboos Flagrantly Flouted); Word Riot and elsewhere. Most recently excerpts from a novel-in-progress appeared on Fried Chicken and Coffee and Dew on the Kudzu.