Jonathan Tasini reports from the floor of the AFL convention held this July. In Tasini’s view that historic meeting xxxxxx. Our winter issue will include responses to Tasini’s assessment.

While the dust has yet to settle and the future shape of the national labor movement remains unclear, the prolonged withering away of labor unions as we have known them is more than alarming. It is occasion for thinking the unthinkable: that something other than conventional trade unionism must supplant or supplement what we have up to now taken for granted. Does the nature of both the 21st century domestic economy and the international one to which it is now intricately tethered marginalize the normal workplace-based forms of collective bargaining? Simon Black and Dorian Warren would not go so far as to argue that. But they raise for our consideration the phenomenon of community-based unionization. Black examines community unionism in general, argues that under certain circumstances it is a more efficacious way of mobilizing today’s working class, and suggests how community unions and workplace unions might collaborate. Warren describes the way community organization has been critical in the campaign to confront Wal-Mart in Chicago. The Chicago story is an object lesson in the way community mobilization and political alliance building hold out the hope of taking on this immensely powerful corporation from the outside rather than relying on organizing from within. A more customary but no less critical story is unfolding in Florida, where SEIU is trying to organize condominium workers. Bruce Nissen describes that campaign, a pioneering attempt to penetrate the economy of the Sunbelt, including its efforts to enlist community support, and explores its implications for unionizing Florida and the South.

Churches and other religious institutions are part of the community, and carry increasing moral and even political authority, including in many working-class urban, suburban, and exurban locales. Much, although by no means all of that authority has gravitated to the right, and with rather devastating political consequences. Peter Laarman and Alexia Salvatierra explore the nature of faith-based politics and how those spiritual resources might be marshaled instead on behalf of the movements for social justice, including the labor movement. Tanya Erzen describes the way right-wing evangelicals in Ohio and elsewhere mobilized their congregants for the 2004 presidential election. Part of the secret of their success, Erzen observes, has to do with the way these churches have become substitute mini-welfare states, ministering to the material needs of their members, while the conservatives they support for public office whittle away at what remains of the public safety net. If the labor movement is to be reborn, it does seem essential that in one way or another it speak to those intangible as well as material desires and anxieties of the born-again, many of whom come from the ranks of working-class Americans.

Many commentators have noted the incongruous alliance between the corporate elite and, especially, although not exclusively, white working-class people—an odd mating which defines the conservative populism of the Republican Party. What makes this chemistry work even though in practical terms there have been precious few payoffs for ordinary folk and bundles of goodies for big business and the rich? Part of the answer is sure to lie in the realm of foreign policy. People who’ve lived through a prolonged period of economic and cultural dislocation, who feel dispossessed and disrespected, may find compensation in a bellicose chauvinism. It is not war so much as the reaffirmation—whether at home or abroad—of a nationalism heavily inflected with historic patriarchal, religious, and racial instincts, that keeps them bonded to an elite that means them no good. For the labor movement this means that becoming part of the antiwar movement is as much a matter of domestic policy as it is one about the country’s foreign affairs. In this issue Michael Zweig provides an account of the very significant growth of antiwar activity within the labor movement, and analyzes where that sentiment has taken root and why. Iraq is hardly the only global hot-spot posing serious questions for labor. A debate between Lee Sustar and Stan Gacek over the nature of the AFL’s activities in Venezuela before and after the attempted coup against Hugo Chávez helps sharpen our thinking about what role organized labor ought to be playing abroad, especially in regions like Latin America, where opposition to U.S. power and policy has taken on robust form.

The conservative assault on the New Deal may have crossed a bridge too far in its attempt to privatize social security. As we go to press the issue remains unresolved. Part of what’s at stake is the desire of leading financial institutions to profit from such a transformation. Joel Solomon explains what Wall Street may have in mind. Chile privatized its retirement system some years ago, and Ruth Needleman reports on how that country’s pensioners have fared. No matter who wins the debate here in the United States, union pension and benefit funds (especially health care funds) will remain in deep financial trouble. Christian Weller analyzes the origins of that crisis and examines possible legislative remedies.

Two new features introduced in the last issue of New Labor Forum continue here. In this installment of Working-Class Voices of Contemporary America, Amber Hollibaugh writes about her life as a lesbian of working-class background. She recounts how her experiences at and away from work were deeply marked by the phobic reactions to her erotic desires by her family as well as her fellow workers and employers. Kim Phillips-Fein’s column, Caught in the Web, alerts our readers to valuable nuggets of information and analysis available on the internet about matters ranging from the Federal Reserve Board to the international garment industry, written by experts but designed for the lay reader.

Boxing and football have long been arenas in which working-class men found pathways to upward mobility, indulged their fantasy lives, and were systematically exploited. Our contributing editor Kitty Krupat reviews Million Dollar Baby to see what it tells us and fails to tell us about these matters. She explores how all this gets treated from the standpoint of a woman boxer, and dissects the film’s underlying assumptions about race, class, sexuality, and gender. Women and children are also the subject of a review of two important documentaries. Malini Cadambi dissects the Oscar-winning Born Into Brothels, noting its visual power but finding it politically wanting when compared to the more didactic but more penetrating examination of child labor in Stolen Childhoods. Also included in our Books and the Arts section is a review by Peter Goldberger of The Right Nation, an attempt by two British authors to account for the remarkable success of conservative politics in America, and a review by Marilyn Harris of Susan Gorden’s Nursing Against the Odds, a thought-provoking look at the attempt to unionize this vital sector of the health care industry. We conclude as we always do with a selection of poetry, this time a sampling of poetry from abroad about working-class life, assembled by our guest editor Padraig O’Donoghue.

Finally, New Labor Forum takes this opportunity to express our great sadness at the sudden passing of Miguel Contreras, the indefatigable leader of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, which by any measure has been one of the most dynamic sectors of the labor movement for at least the last decade, winning major political as well as organizing victories.

Editors’ Note: The current issue of New Politics contains a provocative article by Steve Steinberg on the troubled relationship between the new immigrants and the African American community. Various responses, along with a reply from Steve Steinberg, will follow in the journal’s subsequent issue. New Labor Forum will publish this same article along with a different set of responses (and Steinberg’s reply) in our January 2006 issue. We invite our readers to follow the debate in both journals.