I thought Grace Tame’s speech at the press Club was one for the ages. Like Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech.…

I thought Grace Tame’s speech at the press Club was one for the ages. Like Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech. The only ‘but’ for me is a more general observation. As we’ve lost the ability to think and act collectively, the neoliberal white-anting of our societies,…/1 https://t.co/YqVuLfhIk4

…so that we’ve all become customers rather than citizens, the inevitable breakdown of social processes leads to anger. As it should. But we’re less good at channeling that anger into organised change, politically. /2

We get stuck at individual expressions of emotion. Anger, mostly, but also sorrow, anxiety etc. We become emotive customers. That’s part of the same neoliberal trap. The suffragettes for example a century ago organised - they formed a union. Why to this day I think the single…/3

…simplest way to change the world and to do it fast, is for people to join unions again. Unions are the organisational arm of the downtrodden. And they already exist, it just takes a membership fee, a few minutes, to energise them. Nearly every political problem of our times…/4

…is the outcome of an imbalance of power relations, between existing vested interests, and everything else. We already solved that problem, historically, we invented unions. But they’re the last place sadly many look to redress current problems. /5

Conservatives attack them relentlessly, it’s their number one priority. That tells you what we need to know, what actually makes a difference. 6/6