Excerpts from the RC journal WORKING FOR A LIVING
You Must Lead Leaders
Harvey: It's very plain from my experience leading this project that if a working-class person takes leadership, everybody else will follow. When I get together with sixty owning-class people, they argue a little bit, but then they say to me, "Tell us what to do." So you be a clear model. If you will move and do the things that you know how to do, people will follow. The middle class is trying to get their heads clear to do the right thing, but they've been made to be much more confused than you have. Owning-class people are good people underneath their patterns, but their patterns keep them tormenting and hating themselves. They don't know how to move, they don't know where to go, because it feels to them like death if they don't\ do what their parents told them.
We are not that confused. ...
Comments by Harvey Jackins to a Working Class Caucus in Europe in 1990
Working for a Living, No. 7
"I Like who I am."
Well, I keep saying that I was born with blue diapers--blue-collar since I was little. When I started RC, it was supposed to be for one fundamentals class. I was getting a divorce, and Alison Ehara-Brown was my marriage counselor. She said, "Well, it looks like you need someplace to talk." My wife was going to a therapist, and she had people to talk to, and I didn't. Alison said, "Hey, there's a teacher starting a class up in your area," and it turns out that it was Mary Ruth Gross. I took a fundamentals class, and she did so well, here I am two-and-a-half years later. I've been growing a whole bunch. It gets scary, but I'm open for everything nowadays.
I've always liked working with my hands. It's a choice you know, what you choose to do in your life. ...
Roberto Gross
Working for a Living, No. 7
My First Year As An Apprentice Carpenter
Working in the trades has given me occasion to think about the unaware assumption that exists, in my RC Community anyway, that every "right minded" person will have "left" politics. Most people's political beliefs are not well thought out and coherent, and often tend to conservatism. How can we reach people where they are and enlist them in change and re-emergence, without pointing at them a patronising attitude that we are right and they are wrong? We may be right. There is an upward trend that is palpably different from a downward trend. But we need to be able to build friendships and use the re-evaluation process in order to resolve disagreements.
Working With Men
The working-class culture I am immersed in every day is largely a men's culture. Although harsh in many ways, there are things I love about it. It is such a relief to have everything out in the open.
Madeleine Scott, Working for a Living, No. 7
National Group Reports
South Africa
Very few real changes have taken place for the South African working class since the election of the new government. However, there has been a shift towards a greater spirit of national reconciliation. South Africa has one of the biggest income gaps in the world between the poorest and the richest. Unemployment is increasing and at present it is standing between eleven and fourteen percent. This is the most serious challenge facing the South African economy. ...
Israel
When Jews began going back to live in Israel, one of their major goals was to go back to the land and be workers. There was a strong workers' movement then. In 1927, they organized the workers' organization. This was much more than a labour union because it fulfilled functions that government usually fulfills. It supplied a health insurance plan, and it was a cultural and social centre for the workers. It took upon itself the job of producing jobs, building factories, especially in smaller settlements and in outlying districts of the country. ...
Greece
The working class in Greece is a fairly new development. It is young because industrialization really began in the twentieth century. The working class in Greece is greatly influenced by internal political events and by international pressures because of its particular situation in the Balkans. After 1950, Greece was pressured to become a modern country. The agricultural sphere was greatly reduced. Three-quarters of the population working in agriculture moved into the cities and experienced all the problems we have living in great urban centres. All these years, the working people in Greece have had to carry this great load of modernization and development.
Article also includes summaries from Croatia, Romania, Hungary, Austria, Denmark, The Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Japan, France, England, Scotland, and Wales, Germany, and the USA.
(From the 1996 Velence, Hungary Workshop)
Working for a Living, No. 7