American Worker
@americanwork47
Join the search for The American Worker. Kevin Van Meter: author, labor educator, union organizer, PhD. Books at @akpress.org & @commonnotions.bsky.social. Inquiry via @workinquirywork.bsky.social & workersinquiry.work. Writings at readingstruggles.info.
New book days are the best days, especially when its the new @akpress.org title Anarchist Panther: The Selected Writings of Ashanti O. Alston. Check out our People Do Come Home event with Ashanti this Sunday 7/26 at 2PM ET: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhcf...
My comrade and collaborator Robert Ovetz and I are diligently working on a new project for the Class Compositions Series. Can't wait to share the details with y'all! #RefuseWork #ReadHarryCleaver
So pleased to be included in the Summer 2026 issue of New Politics Magazine with an article titled 'Class-Struggle of Our Own: An Interview with @dgorganize.bsky.social.' To read this and other fine articles, subscribe here: newpol.org/subscribe/
"We began, therefore, by learning to seek out in the daily life of the workers in the factory the expression of their instinctive striving toward their liberation and the liberation of all humanity."
Are you planning on watching People Do Come Home with comrades? Cause solidarity is better together. Comrades are organizing screenings at their grange halls and union halls, bookshops and infoshops. If you’re organizing a public event, get in touch and we’ll promote it too!
"The worker has to work. There is no alternative but to produce in order to provide even the bare necessities of life. The greater part of [their] waking hours are spent in the factory. It is here that [they], as a worker, must think and act." Writing about Romano!
So amazed by and proud of @smkay.bsky.social with their new book chapter in ‘Feminist Making, Doing, and Sensing: Experiments in Philosophy’ out in Duke Uni Press. Check out the collection here: www.dukeupress.edu/feminist-mak...
Appreciation post! After a week in Chicago with events at #LaborNotes2026 and Pilsen Community Books—I “feel the warmth of the workers’ and proletarian community.”
“We are not ‘terrorists,’ just as our fathers were not ‘deserters’ or our grandfathers ‘bandits.’ We are a stubborn people—who want, and who continue to want, from generation to generation, a radical transformation of society and a thoroughgoing political revolution.”
“By transforming capitalism into socialism the proletariat creates the possibility of abolishing national oppression; the possibility becomes reality "only"—"only"!—with the establishment of full democracy in all spheres…”
Guerrillas of Desire in the field at @pilsencommbooks.bsky.social and excited for our event tomorrow night here with our forthcoming @commonnotions.bsky.social Cleaver reader!
Listening: "All about the gangs of Fenians No animosity, eight hundred years We watch The Wind That Shakes the Barley History time that's my type of party" Reading: The Next One Is for You: A True Story of Guns, Country, and the IRA’s Secret American Army
Going to be in Chicago for Labor Notes? Don't miss out on our Harry Cleaver reader release event at Pilsen Books then this party with our comrades at @long-haul-mag.bsky.social and @notesfrombelow.bsky.social!
Reading Struggles update: sections on CLR, Raya, Grace, and Marty all drafted. Next up Jimmy, Phil (Paul Romano), Selma, and George.
"It will take only the slightest spark to set off the tremendous explosion that will unite the small groups of workers buried in a thousand factories and mines, that will transform the million actions directed at one end into one action achieving that end." — Marty Glaberman
“the new society appears within the old. A society in which the workers, every one of them, takes [their] part in planning production, in carrying out the plan, in developing [themselves] by helping [their] fellow [human beings], in helping society by developing [themself]." —Marty Glaberman (1952)
"The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of [human beings], the language of real life." Marx on the mind after seeing @bootsriley.bsky.social's mind-blowing #ILoveBoosters. Go see it!
New book days are the best days, especially when its the new issue of @long-haul-mag.bsky.social. Excited to read an early piece by Noel Ignatiev and the editoral addressing it, among other fine articles.
"They say it is love. We say it is unwaged work." New book days are the best days, especially when its the new Wages for Housework anthology out on @btlbooks.com and available in the US via @akpress.org. #wagesdue #wagesforhousework
"Refuse work. Revolt against capitalism. Read Harry Cleaver. In that order. Repeat" See you soon #Chicago!
"In Rehearsing the Future, the first full-length work on the thoughts and theories of the Boggses, Mike Doan eloquently answers and extends these questions into our own moment and for the next American revolution."—Kevin Van Meter, author of Guerrillas of Desire"
"Education is no longer fulfilling the role historically assigned to it by the state. Increasingly, schools and universities fail to supply the capitalist economy with labour-power that meets its technical and ideological requirements."
CLASS COMPOSITIONS IN A TIME OF FASCISM with @charmainechua.bsky.social, Kieran Knutson, Silvia Federici, Peter Linebaugh, @americanwork47.bsky.social (mod). As part of @redmayseattle, cosponsored by @commonnotions.bsky.social. Join us on Sunday, May 17 at 11:00am PDT redmayseattle.org/2026-schedule
In the voices of the self-emancipated slaves of San Domingo, which becomes Toussaint’s own declaration: “The rich are only defeated when running for their lives.”
Two events in Chicago this June for Points of Departure. June 12th @ 7:00PM at Pilsen Community Books with editors @OvetzRobert and @americanwork47.bsky.social in conversation with @jtofthebay.bsky.social. June 12th-14th @labornotes Conference—Meet the Authors event with Steve Early. See you there!
Mail call! Its a good day when the promo poster and casette tape of strike songs from Strike While the Needle is Hot by Josh MacPhee of @Justseeds and Kennedy Block arrive. Out on @CommonNotions: www.commonnotions.org/strike-while...
Another day, another pamphlet! Today its “Two Steel Contracts” by the Gary, Indiana Writers’ Workshop and Staughton Lynd, part of what he called “guerilla history.” Take a read of this pamphlet and two other fine ones by Staughton via the New England Free Press archive: www.nefp.online/working-class
Another day, another pamphlet. Today it is the 1988 German edition of “Zerowork: Politische Materialien zum nordamerikanischen und internationalen Klassenkampf aus den USA von 1975 und 1977.” Does anyone know if the "Forward" has been translated before I reach out to a comrade to do so?