{"id":438,"date":"2011-03-29T08:26:56","date_gmt":"2011-03-29T07:26:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/?p=438"},"modified":"2011-03-29T08:27:45","modified_gmt":"2011-03-29T07:27:45","slug":"what-does-global-solidarity-look-like-notes-for-a-panel-discussion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/what-does-global-solidarity-look-like-notes-for-a-panel-discussion\/","title":{"rendered":"What does global solidarity look like? Notes for a panel discussion"},"content":{"rendered":"
The following are my notes for a panel discussion on global solidarity at the UALE conference in New Orleans, 24 March 2011.<\/em><\/div>\n
LabourStart’s extensive experience<\/div>\n
We have been at this since 1998<\/div>\n
At first, we just linked to union campaigns<\/div>\n
By 2002, we had in place our own system – very similar to what Avaaz<\/div>\n
and others now use<\/div>\n
Since then we’ve run probably close to 100 campaigns at the request of unions<\/div>\n
These campaigns are multilingual, integrate into our news, are<\/div>\n
syndicated, and are promoted primarily through our mailing list of<\/div>\n
70,000 — which is, in turn, built through the campaigns<\/div>\n
We’ve had a number of successes – I will talk about only one of them at the end<\/div>\n
What we have learned …<\/div>\n
Key barriers\/challenges:<\/div>\n
Consciousness:<\/div>\n
This is a problem I discussed in my book on labour and the internet<\/div>\n
back in 1995. \u00a0There has been a century-long decline in trade union<\/div>\n
internationalism and we have to see things in perspective. \u00a0If we<\/div>\n
could attain the levels of internationalism achieved in the early<\/div>\n
1900s, we’d be doing very well. \u00a0The problem is particularly acute in<\/div>\n
the US — we find a very low level of participation in our global<\/div>\n
campaigns in this country, with a much higher level in, for example,<\/div>\n
Canada. \u00a0The problem is at all levels of unions.<\/div>\n
Language:<\/div>\n
This is a massive problem in doing international work. \u00a0There are<\/div>\n
5,000 spoken languages in the world today. \u00a0But even the websites of<\/div>\n
global unions and the ITUC are usually only in 3 – 5 languages.<\/div>\n
LabourStart works in nearly 25 languages, but we’re still not there<\/div>\n
yet. \u00a0This means a very low level of engagement with unions in<\/div>\n
non-English speaking countries — and only with those who speak<\/div>\n
foreign languages. \u00a0Solutions include — translation and<\/div>\n
interpretation (we use volunteers with some success); training trade<\/div>\n
unionists in foreign languages – especially teaching English; machine<\/div>\n
translation; international auxiliary languages.<\/div>\n
What works:<\/div>\n
Building alliances:<\/div>\n
We do a lot of work with GUFs as well as national unions, but also<\/div>\n
with NGOs like AI, IASWI, MSN, Clean Clothes campaign, Banana Link,<\/div>\n
etc. \u00a0This is very important to reach out and build large, robust<\/div>\n
networks of people who care about these issues.<\/div>\n
The new communications technology – but certain tools work better than others:<\/div>\n
Email remains our most powerful tool, though we were learning its<\/div>\n
limitations. \u00a0(E.g., open rates for email messages from campaigning<\/div>\n
organizations are probably considerably lower than we think.)<\/div>\n
Websites and social networks (in particular FB) are somewhat less<\/div>\n
effective tools, and the over-reliance by some on FB is a problem<\/div>\n
which we can discuss.<\/div>\n
Measuring success:<\/div>\n
Success is not measured by hits, page views, the number of messages<\/div>\n
sent or even the growth of our mailing lists, even if these can be<\/div>\n
important.<\/div>\n
Success is what happens when we achieve the goals of a campaign —<\/div>\n
such as forcing an employer to sit down and negotiate, or getting a<\/div>\n
jailed trade unionist released.<\/div>\n
Nevertheless, having said that, we are currently in the early days of<\/div>\n
using the new technology, and building a new global network of<\/div>\n
activists like LabourStart has done, can be measured in part by the<\/div>\n
growth of its mailing list, the increase in the number of protest<\/div>\n
messages sent through its ActNOW system, and so on.<\/div>\n
End with the story of Joanne Delaney and what it teaches us about<\/div>\n
building global solidarity.<\/div>\n
-end-<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following are my notes for a panel discussion on global solidarity at the UALE conference in New Orleans, 24 March 2011. LabourStart’s extensive experience We have been at this since 1998 At first, we…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":441,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions\/441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}