Having the Hard Conversations

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While in Montreal for the aforementioned national organizing conference, I agreed to do a radio interview with a Canadian researcher and blogger, Michael Rozworski. He blogs at Political Eh-conomy. Michael published the podcast of our interview, and, was then asked to transcribe it into an article for the magazine Jacobin, who then ran it as an interview in early October. Alternet also reblogged the interview in mid-October. Jacobin took the title from my closing comment in the interview,

“Organizing is about having hard conversations. It is fundamentally about having hard conversations with people and not running away from hard issues. You can’t win a union campaign in the US environment if you don’t do that.”

Despite the popularity and appeal of social media, hard conversations actually happen face-toface. And, it is much easier than one thinks to have thousands of face-to-face conversations in a short period of time. The interview is the first time I mention that I have a next book coming, which I do (stay tuned). The next book expands my argument about deep organizing versus shallow mobilizing, the same topic Michael took up with me in the interview after hearing my speech at the national organizing conference of Canada’s biggest private sector union, Unifor (see above and the tab Consulting for a few related pictures from the Unifor conference).

To read it the full story, click here.

To hear the original podcast, click here.