ARC UP operates on the sovereign lands of the Wurundjeri and Bunurong peoples of the Kulin Nation. Our respects to their elders, First Nations today, and generations to come. Sovereignty has never been ceded in so-called Australia.
What should people do to change their world, when the established channels don’t work? Many of us have learnt that we can’t vote our way to a better world because political parties represent the will of the capitalists that fund their campaigns. Charity work is insufficient because it is a mere band-aid placed over unaddressed economic and social problems. It seems even protest movements aren’t threatening enough to the system to result in substantive change.
When we look at many of the movements that did manage to change the world, we find that they involved a critical mass of workers stopping work and costing capitalists money until their demands were met. The 8 hour work day, healthcare, minimum wage. Even the weekend was won by workers within unions engaging in strike action. Apartheid regimes have been toppled by workers refusing to supply them. Due to their effectiveness over the last century, many unions have since been bought, de-fanged or repressed by the very capitalists they were set up to fight.
As contemporary unions abandoned broader social issues for issues of pay and conditions in the workplace, those whose problems don’t begin and end at work were cut off from workers power. First Nations people that once called upon the workers movement to protect sacred land and prevent colonial developments now watch as unions boast contracts to build new police stations and prisons that will no doubt be brought to bear on already over-policed and over-criminalised Indigenous communities. For migrant workers, oppressive visa laws are the biggest determinant of workplace abuses, and as long as unions don’t fight them, migrant workers will continue to face major barriers to building power that puts them leagues behind other workers. Specific focus is required to bridge this gap, so that a workers movement that lifts all people might be built.
In 2021, ARC UP set out with this aim. We created an organisation committed to maintaining a racialised working class membership that is committed to building workers power within racialised communities to address racialised social issues. Unions tend to reflect the political will and militancy within them, good and bad, and if our people aren’t involved in them as a coordinated force, with a clear program and demands, then our social and economic problems won’t be meaningfully addressed. Since workers power is indispensable to all who seek meaningful change, our commitment has to be to build the kind of workers movement that brings everyone up with it.
If you want to get involved, read our positions and get in touch via the join page.
Solidarity,
ARC UP.
