Happy Birthday to Us!
Happy Birthday Recomp! We turned 5! We’ve been working hard to look good for our birthday, so we’re launching a new site that looks all caught up with the times! There’s still a lot of work to be done but we couldn’t wait to share and celebrate with all of you, our readers, contributors, and our own fellow editors. Below you’ll find a piece written by John O’Reilly, and Monica Kostas that looks back on the past 5 years, and looks forward to another great 5 years for Recomposition. Check it out! Read More
Garage Collective Reviews Lines of Work
Lines of Work Today we share a review of Lines of Work, a collection of stories on organizing and life on the job, put together by fellow Recomposition editor Scott Nappalos, and which you can find here. This review is by Garage Collective and it first appeared on their blog. An introduction to Lines of Work by Scott Nappalos is also provided below. Lines of Work: Stories of Jobs and Resistance By Scott Nikolas Nappalos, ed. (Alberta, Canada: Black Cat Press, 2013) Review by Jared Davidson, first published in LHP Bulletin 64. Lines of Work is a fascinating, at times bleak and emotive volume of stories about work and its effect on our lives. How fitting then, that my review copy was waiting for me after my usual 20-minute trip home from work had stretched to four hours, thanks to the flooding in Wellington of 14 May 2015. Work (with a little help from the weather) had kept me away from my loved ones even more than it already does on a day-to-day basis. That period after clocking out was clearly not my own time, but that of capital. Read More
May 1st 630pm EST Lines of Work Book Launch Live in Miami!
The South Florida IWW and Recomposition present a live online launch of the new book Lines of Work on 630pm EST May 1st. Two authors will present the book at a Miami bookstore, Books & Books, with readings from the text and discussion. For those outside South Florida, you can tune in by checking the Live stream address the day of the event. The text brings together stories of work and workers from the US, Canada, and the Uk reflecting on their experiences grappling with what they do to earn a living, and struggling for something better. “Half our waking hours are spent on the job, consuming the lion’s share of our time. Our years are woven with stories of work told around the dinner table, breakroom, and bars. Yet these stories are rarely put into print, investigated, or seen as they should be; as part of workers’ activity to understand and change their lot under capitalism. LINES OF WORK offers a rare look at life and social relationships viewed from the cubicle, cash register, hospital, factory, and job site. Drawn from the writings of Recomposition, an online project of worker radicals, the text brings together organizers from a handful of countries sharing their experiences with the trouble of working and fighting back. Rather than professional writers or activists, the authors are workers reflecting on their experiences, aspirations, and how to improve our situation. Through storytelling, they draw out the lessons of workplace woes, offering new paths and perspectives for social change and a new world.” Read More
Joe Burn’s Review of Lines of Work
Joe Burns, author of the influential book Reviving the Strike put up a review of our new book Lines of Work on his blog. We want to direct to the discussion to the Reviving the Strike blog where he posted it. His comments are flattering and we aspire towards and contribute to the sort of revival he advocates. “Although written in terms of stories and experiences, the book’s approach offers a different approach to union revival, one deeply rooted in the workplace and rooted in the daily experience of workers.” This Saturday we remind our readers near Miami, Florida that there will be a Lines of Work worker story workshop. Read More
Review of Lines of Work
Our friends at Unity and Struggle reviewed our new book Lines of Work. We want to direct to the discussion on their site linked above. The review makes us proud of our work and thankful for all the great people who engage with this project, contribute, read, and make Recomposition what it is. At the same time there’s some seeds for us to think about as we keep moving forward with organizing, writing, creating, and reflecting. The friendly critical thoughts at the end are worth thinking about and could help improve all of our work “a more robust theory of the moment is needed in order to inform these struggles and prepare them for the next level. And not just for the theoretically inclined of the volume, who work tirelessly to this effect — for every would-be workplace organizer. This means a vision of what society is and what it needs be, beyond bosses and workers, justice and injustice, freedom and unfreedom, coupled with an analysis of the conditions under which we can reasonably st… Read More
Lines of Work Event: 5pm April 5th Miami, Florida
Events around the release of our new book,Lines of Work by Black Cat Press, are coming together. 5pm April 5th the South Florida General Membership Branch of the IWW will be hosting a Lines of Work event at Sweat Records, 5505 NE 2nd Ave, Miami, FL 33137. In coordination with Lines of Work launches, this event will be exploring workers stories and their lessons with readings of pieces worker narratives and collective discussions. The official Miami book launch will happen on May 1st, with details to follow. Contacts us if you’re interested in hosting a book launch or event with workers stories in your town. “Half our waking hours are spent on the job, consuming the lion’s share of our time. Our years are woven with stories of work told around the dinner table, breakroom, and bars. Yet these stories are rarely put into print, investigated, or seen as they should be; as part of workers’ activity to understand and change their lot under capitalism. LINES OF WORK offers a rare look at lif… Read More
Lines of Work Book Launch Tour Starts Tomorrow Sunday 1/26
Our new book,Lines of Work, has been released by Black Cat Press. To celebrate the launch of the text, we’re having our first event in Minneapolis tomorrow 3pm Sunday 1/26 at Boneshaker Books located at 2002 23rd Ave. S., Minneapolis, Minnesota 55404. Three authors will be speaking about the text, our project, and reading from their contributions. Tour dates are to be announced in other cities with tentative events planned in Miami and Toronto confirmed shortly. Stay tuned for more information. Below we’ve included the back cover description of the text. Read More
Attractive hardcopy!
Our friends at Thoughtcrime Ink made a pamphlet of three pieces of ours. It’s called “From the Ashes.” You can order it here: http://thoughtcrimeink.com/books/detail/from_the_ashes They also put the “direct unionism” discussion paper into paper form and have published the Solidarity Federation book Fighting For Ourselves, both of which we also recommend: http://thoughtcrimeink.com/books/detail/fighting_for_ourselves http://thoughtcrimeink.com/books/detail/direct_unionism We know this stuff is available free online, but if you want good looking paper versions, or you want to give copies to people, order them there. Your money will go to supporting a cool project. They sell other good stuff too, which you’ll find if you poke around their website. Read More
Printable PDFs of posts
Some of you asked about getting printable PDFs of posts at Recomp. You can now get one for any post by clicking the gray “print” button in the lower left corner of the post. Read More
Anti-SOPA blackout
Following the lead of our comrades at libcom, Recomposition will be participating in the blackout against SOPA. We are not as tech-savvy as libcom and so will be using the plugin that our blog hosting service has provided. We welcome discussion on these matters. For more information, see http://sopastrike.com/ Read More
Update on translation of Waves of Struggle
As mentioned in the last post, we recently found a translation of Phinneas’s Waves of Struggle article. With some help we’ve gotten more info about this. Farideh S. did the translation, thanks very much Farideh! Farideh also wrote a good introduction to the piece. That introduction in English is pasted below. The people who posted the article describe themselves as “anti-wage-labour activists,” they also maintain this web site in English – www.againstwage.com. Check it out. Thanks again comrades, and great to meet you. Farideh’s interoduction to the translation of Waves of Struggle: CUPW writes, “Canada post is planning to invest two and a half billion dollars in the modernization of postal delivery”. The union believes that these investments will have a negative effect on the workers. These changes will decrease safety for mail carriers by forcing them to carry more letters. Less time will be spent on sorting mail and a larger burden will be put on workers involved in mail delivery… Read More
More social media
Twitter wasn’t enough. Recomposition is now on facebook. Read More
Recomposition is now on twitter.
Recomposition is now on twitter. Read More
Workers Power Columns
Readers of Recomposition might like a column called Workers Power in the Industrial Worker newspaper. The columns are archived online here. We’ve reprinted some of the columns on this blog and we plan to reprint some more. Read More