Lies: A Journal of Materialist Feminism - Libcom

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would it take and how much more would we need to withstand before a Tunisia moment happened? Those days of running around like a chicken with its head cut off, sharing a culture of solidarity so that each of us could go on our break, each of us taking up extra tasks sometimes so someone else who had a long day could rest their legs, those moments of mutual aid and solidarity paid off. When the struggle is at a low point, militants can only count on their reputation. This is hard because reputations are such subjective things — someone might like you while another might not. In a workplace where gossip is rife, and where stress on the job creates many opportunities for misunderstandings and tension among coworkers, it’s hard to have an altogether clean reputation. That said, reputation, credibility, and influence are always rooted in some fundamental issues: How do you behave on the shop floor? Were you able to put aside personal drama to help out another coworker? Are you the type to talk smack? Are you the type that sucks up to the boss, or are you the type that tries to handle things outside, to talk things out with your coworkers? Do you bear grudges? Do you think about other people when you do your work? Do you take out your stress on your coworkers and on the residents? Building relationship bonds that can withstand the attacks by our money-grubbing, unscrupulous managers, means that in our everyday lives we have to strive to be better people, deserving of respect from one another, accountable to one another. This requires daily emotional and mental resilience and discipline. To me, this is in part what Karl Marx meant when he said that in the process of class struggle, the working class will transform itself. We can only truly succeed if we are also transformed into better human beings who are good to one another. This transformation has stakes in the context of class struggle. You can’t fake it because people see through fronts all the time. We have a word for it at my job: “nagareinia” in Amharic. It means empty talk. The few organizers, including myself, earned the name, “chigri fetari,” or troublemaker. I am sure some people said it sarcastically, but 94 JOMO
others said it in a respectful and endearing way, a term for those of us who resist. I remember vividly how the workplace became polarized. I had friends, and I also had haters. The bosses cracked down on me by following me on my job, inspecting every thing I did, selectively enforcing every small rule at the workplace, writing me up for taking my break five minutes early or for coming back a few minutes late. I later learned that my nurses and supervisors were heavily pressured by top management to find reasons to fire me. It was an extremely stressful time. “Why won’t they just fire me?” I asked myself a few times. But I was too proud to quit. Knowing that I was being especially targeted, Jess, Maimuna, Saskia, and others helped me pick up the slack and warned me when the bosses were coming. They would strategize with me about how best to resist and at times acted as my witness during management’s interrogations. They were not in a place to put their job on the line or engage in direct action with me, but they offered what they could through advice and strategizing around the NLRB. I did not take this solidarity for granted. They too were targeted simply for being associated with me, yet they chose to stick around. If it hadn’t been for them, I would have been fired. In the meantime, Sabrina, the Human Resources director, made a point of showing us how favoritism worked. To Benny, a relatively timid Ethiopian coworker, Sabrina offered help with the immigration process to bring over his entire family. This was unprecedented. She made sure we all knew about it by giving him the paperwork in the dining room where we all gathered. To Joanna, the Filipina coworker who had snitched and offered our names to management, Sabrina offered a pay increase and flexible hours. The price of organizing was high. In fact, it was exorbitant, both mentally and emotionally. There were changes. We now had mandated break times to which we were assigned. Before, there was an uneven distribution of staffing ratios, where one of us would have nine residents to care for while another would have twelve. Now all CARING: A LABOR OF STOLEN TIME 95
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LIES JOURNAL liesjournal.info liesj
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TABLE OF CONTENTS LIES COLLECTIVE 9
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LIES COLLECTIVE EDITORIAL NOTE They
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our oppression. Rather we turn our
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NOT-SEX AND SOCIAL RELATIONS
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eclaimed your natural pleasure. The
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point in a relationship which is co
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of being and self definition, as in
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Whereas earlier radical feminism ad
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Perhaps more subtly, this politic r
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eyond this register of suppression
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to discover it, to liberate it, to
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liberationist, proposing instead of
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production that brought it into bei
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the structural position of silence
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ut only as an object for an active
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such excess is meted out sparingly
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itself. Loneliness, which is really
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me or ask them to stop or yell at t
Page 43 and 44: CLÉMENCE X. CLEMENTINE AND ASSOCIA
Page 45 and 46: systematically excluded women from
Page 47 and 48: of mitigating her alienation and in
Page 49 and 50: the couple, not its destruction. Ca
Page 51 and 52: plants and animals. Get into space.
Page 53 and 54: M. SANDOVSKY LETTERS TO L: PARANOIA
Page 55 and 56: Dear L, I’m learning to hold my t
Page 57 and 58: Our anger is experienced by others
Page 59 and 60: The beatings do not work, the accou
Page 61 and 62: SOGUMI SALT WEDGE (EXCERPTS) (UNTIT
Page 63: (UNTITLED) — did it for revenge
Page 67 and 68: JOMO CARING: A LABOR OF STOLEN TIME
Page 69 and 70: after the purported grandeur and tu
Page 71 and 72: airy room is not for us, the immigr
Page 73 and 74: and I bonded over many episodes of
Page 75 and 76: upper management. According to Sabr
Page 77 and 78: Back in the dining room later that
Page 79 and 80: Before this, break times were somet
Page 81 and 82: The never-ending series of question
Page 83 and 84: including experiences that we may n
Page 85 and 86: only a reflection of the way the el
Page 87 and 88: We blame the bosses. Once, twice, a
Page 89 and 90: others not so. They saw this as a u
Page 91: I refused to sign. I wrote explaini
Page 95 and 96: I wasn’t fired but our gains were
Page 97 and 98: None of this is easy, and all the m
Page 99: NOTES ON STRUGGLE
Page 102 and 103: I spent no more than 15 hours in a
Page 104 and 105: I met 3 women who were still in hig
Page 106 and 107: I was 1 of at least 2 women who had
Page 109 and 110: W.&.T.C.H. ON THE RECENT #OCCUPATIO
Page 111 and 112: 16% of Blacks that are “officiall
Page 113 and 114: the injuries of unemployment and un
Page 115 and 116: Whatever this occupation is, it is
Page 117 and 118: And it’s not only about police br
Page 119 and 120: Why was this phrase deliberately ex
Page 121 and 122: actions. Drawing a moral line betwe
Page 123 and 124: BARUCHA CALAMITY PELLER WOMEN IN UP
Page 125 and 126: fought back the police, ultimately
Page 127 and 128: was spawned, despite the fact that
Page 129 and 130: Women’s labor in the globalized d
Page 131 and 132: “personal” became a site for re
Page 133 and 134: not as actions strictly within the
Page 135 and 136: that had been taken over by women.
Page 137 and 138: sector be women, because many had v
Page 139 and 140: SEXUAL VIOLENCE AS STATE REPRESSION
Page 141 and 142: other social or political implicati
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JACKIE WANG AGAINST INNOCENCE RACE,
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the patterns that structure politic
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our strategies reinforce a framewor
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Black convicts, initially a part of
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The spatial politics of safety orga
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The engineering and management of u
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were quick to purge and re-articula
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decidedly white, for it asserts tha
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defend the police after an “occup
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cion of articulated/explicit politi
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them peace of mind amidst the state
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ingly, less likely to seek counseli
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not fit into a non-violent model of
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that can be displaced for the sake
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uniformity. “No more mothers, wiv
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FROM TEA LIGHTS TO TORCHES: DELINQU
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On the night of June 5th in Minneap
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Dean Schmitz was not the first and
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Jurors in the US were polled as to
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them all in favor of a better world
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MAGDA LLWHISK DON’T TRY TO DIG YO
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knives or kisses to the throat? wol
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such a project is a “single syste
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“Gender - Class - Dynamic” and
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are intense pressures on population
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TC writes: The sexed character of a
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for gender in capital. In so doing,
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women’s oppression. The problem w
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nist theory of capitalist social re
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We live in this world, but exist ou
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through racialization, and that rac
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I. FRAMING WHAT’S AT STAKE We are
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This is not to mention the consiste
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III. QUESTIONS How do we assess exi
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... “ALL THE WORK WE DO AS WOMEN
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class and the entire capitalist sys
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an isolated, unique form of exploit
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A stronger analysis would also inte
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money. We women are expected to be
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towns, women who work in big cities
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are to “give it” for free for o
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e able to choose where and how we w
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with men altogether, or as straight
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SUZAN COOKE “WE REFERRED TO IT AS
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Well this was just sort of standard
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They had also been picking up women
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and the very stereotypical ghettoiz
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We referred to it as coming out. Th
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REVIEWSEW
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discrimination and hate-bias have b
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the extension of these struggles. S
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