Who Is Organizing the Unemployed?

Does anyone know if there is any organizing going on among the unemployed anywhere? I admittedly don't see all the news, but I haven't heard of anything. My hunch is that the Tea Party is grabbing most of them. Time for us progressives to wake up and start offering an alternative to Tancredo and Palin!

A couple of options off the top of my head:

(1) Check out your local Jobs with Justice chapter. If it seems like they have it on the ball, join up and encourage them to start organizing among the unemployed, if they aren't already.

(2) Check out your local MoveOn chapter. The MoveOn health care rally I attended a couple weeks ago was impressive in terms of its demographic diversity. I was out of town for the local organizing meeting this past weekend, but I've heard good things about it so far.

Any other ideas?

Tags: Unemployment

About the Author(s)

C. K. Hartman

  • late to comment on this thread

    but historically, don’t unemployed people vote at a much lower rate than employed people? I think it would be challenging to organize unemployed people for political action.

  • You're probably right

    but I do wonder if there is some untapped potential among newly unemployed folks who are looking for answers.

    If the economy gets bad enough for long enough, then the unemployed could become up for grabs politically, and I think history tells us that they would be susceptible to right-wing populist appeals. I will try to do some research on this.

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