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ust We Do?
Straight talk about the Next americaN revolutioN
Democratizing wealth and building a community-sustaining economy rom the ground up
Gar Alperovitz
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CHAPTER SIX
An Initial Way to Think About System Change
L
et me begin by telling you a tale my father once told me about his first day at college—and then a real-life story about history, and prehistory, and changing the system (maybe).My father was an engineer. He entered the University of Wisconsin at age sixteen in 1924, and he loved to recall his first professor of engineering—a gruff, mustachioed, white-haired, detail-demanding Germanic hard-liner (at least so he stands in my childhood memory).The very first day, across the entire front of the 1924 classroom (this, of course, was pre-PowerPoint), our professor had unscrolled a huge picture of a giant loco-motive—the kind we no longer know about or see, the kind with dozens of wheels, smoke pouring out the smokestack, and massive power bursting forth on all sides.The task for the entering freshman class? “We will redesign this entire locomotive!”How to proceed? “We begin today with one bolt.” Yes, I’m suggesting we start by breaking down the system problem—both in general, and in connection with the “how do we get from here to there” ques-tion. We will, of course, have to assemble the bolts in due course, but I find it helps to start with very concrete realities. Accordingly, on to that story I mentioned at the outset about history and prehistory (and maybe changing the system).Many years ago—in 1977—a very large steel mill was closed down on one very unhappy September day in the city of Youngstown, Ohio. Five thousand workers lost their jobs, their livelihoods, and their futures when Youngstown Sheet and Tube went down.Five thousand on one day was a very big deal, nationally, in 1977. It made the front page of newspapers and was the top story on the evening news—the
29AN INITIAL WAY TO THINK ABOUT SYSTEM CHANGE
reason being: This had not happened very often in the United States of America up to that point. (Now, tragically, it is hardly news, since it happens all the time. That is another feature of the systemic crisis.)The steelworkers back in 1977 called it Black Monday, and I remember all too well how, as the reality sank in, we heard reports of men who could no longer support their families going out into the garage and putting a pistol to their heads.That was not the only response, however.One young steelworker named Gerald Dickey somehow got to thinking that there was no reason the steelworkers themselves couldn’t run this facility, and he began to urge and organize and push and shove to get some interest in his outrageous idea.Just to give you an idea of what
outrageous
meant in Youngstown: Dickey was taken aside by one of the town’s leading businessmen and advised in a very fatherly manner, “If you’re interested in steel mills, let me suggest a couple stocks you might buy . . .” But of course Dickey and others had a some- what different idea, and they (along with many others) began to get serious.First, they got a number of their activist friends who worked at the mill together. Second, they found that a group of Youngstown religious lead-ers were also upset because if the huge mill went down, a good part of the economy and livelihood of the community would go down. Third, the steelworkers and a new ecumenical coalition headed by a Catholic and an Episcopal bishop began to demand that the mill be put back to work under some form of worker or worker–community ownership. Fourth, they found a sympathetic ear in one Washington bureaucrat (an assistant secretary of housing and urban affairs named Bob Embry)—and suddenly they had enough money to finance a really professional plan for how to put the old mill back into operation with the latest modern technology.(I was called in to help oversee the development of the plan, and to help advise on other matters. All this now seems like only yesterday. Especially because, as we shall see, lots more folks are doing this kind of thing now.)Long story short: The young steelworkers and the ecumenical coalition were very sophisticated about what they were taking on. They knew their only chance against the big steel companies (all of which were less than enthusiastic about the idea of workers owning mills, to say the least!) was to build a popular political base around the state and, to the extent feasible, around the nation. This meant capitalizing on the bold tale of workers taking on the big guys, and drawing in the press, and also mobilizing the national religious community.