Un articolo di Jacobin Magazine indaga il ruolo del sindacato nella lotta alle discriminazioni razziali negli Stati Uniti provando a spiegare come la solidarietà tra tutti i lavoratori, indipendentemente dalle rispettive origini, sia importante nel perseguimento di interessi comuni e quindi anche per combattere il razzismo.

In New Orleans in the years leading up to the Civil War, European immigrant waterfront workers lent their support to the cause of abolition. The egalitarian idealism of their antislavery commitment was entwined with a pragmatic understanding that the exploitation of unpaid labor undercut their bargaining power and drove down their own wages. Thus they opposed the “peculiar institution,” which seemed to benefit only a wealthy planter class with which they had little in common.

Immagine da Wikimedia.