Jake Alimahomed-Wilson and Immanuel Ness

Global capitalism is always a precarious system. Relying on the steady flow of goods across the world, trans-national companies such as Wal-Mart and Amazon depend on the work of millions in docks, warehouses and logistics centers to keep goods moving. This is the global supply chain. If the chain is broken, capitalism grinds to a halt. This talk concerns the book of the same name, looking at case studies across the world to uncover a network of resistance by these workers who, despite their importance, face extreme exploitation and economic violence.

Experiencing first hand wildcat strikes, organized blockades and boycotts, the authors have explored a diverse range of organizing and other activities, from South China dockworkers to the transformation of the port of Piraeus in Greece, and from the Southern California logistics sector, to dock and logistical workers in Chile and unions in Turkey.

Join us for an evening of discussion on the potential strength our class has the ability to utilize in facing capital dominance during our period where capital has of necessity created this points that really give us the means of “choking” their power.

Jake Alimahomed-Wilson is Professor of Sociology at California State University, Long Beach. He is the author of Solidarity Forever?: Race, Gender, and Unionism in the Ports of Southern California (Lexington Books, 2016) and co-author of Getting the Goods: Ports, Labor, and the Logistics Revolution (Cornell University Press, 2008). Immanuel Ness is Professor of Political Science at City University of New York. He is author of Southern Insurgency (Pluto, 2015), Guest Workers and Resistance to U.S. Corporate Despotism (Univ. of Illinois Press, 2011), and numerous other works. He is editor of the International Encyclopaedia of Revolution and Working USA: The Journal of Labor and Society.