Agitprop, Part 8b
Woolworths Sit-In, Greensboro
North Carolina, 13 Feb 1960
Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain,
Dave Richmond, and Ezzell Blair Jr.
Sit-downs, Sit-ins and Occupations
In a sit-down
strike, the workers physically occupy the plant, keeping management and
others out.
The most famous sit-down
strike was the Flint, Michigan, car-workers’ strike, which lasted from 30 December 1936
for 40 days and which put the United Auto Workers’ Union on the map. Not long
afterwards, the US government passed a law taking protection away from sit-down
strikes, meaning that the bosses could fire people for taking part in one.
Two decades
later, in the anti-racist Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s, the sit-in became
a tactic for desegregating facilities such as “lunch counters” in the USA. The
above picture shows one that took place in 1960.
These tactics are in turn
related to the idea of “Occupation” whereby the people take over some place and
thereby deny it to the owners, or claimed owners.
Land invasions are a kind of
occupation. Sometimes they are successful, but not always.
Another kind of occupation
has been the “Occupy” movement, which did not manage to hold on to anything
that it occupied.
Conclusion is that this
tactic, in one form or another, may be successful, but is not always going to
be.
·
The above is to
introduce an original reading-text: Strikes, Work to
rules, Sit Downs and Occupations.
