Traditional nonprofits with neoliberal organizational cultures have been paralyzed due to internal strife arising from Woke culture. Across the sector, from reproductive rights orgs to the ACLU, forward momentum has ground to a halt. The Woke bomb has exploded. A June Intercept article covers the phenomenon in depth. Here's a quote:
"So much energy has been devoted to the internal strife and internal bullshit that it’s had a real impact on the ability for groups to deliver,” said one organization leader who departed his position. ... My last nine months, I was spending 90 to 95 percent of my time on internal strife. Whereas [before] that would have been 25-30 percent tops."
This seems like a big problem. The mainstream nonprofit sector is supposed to benefit society, not flail around on the floor, engaged in all-consuming infighting. Here's another quote to illustrate what exactly is going on:
"The initial event prompts a response from staff, which is met by management with a memo or a town hall; in either case, the meeting or the organizationwide message often produces its own cause for new offense, a self-reproducing cycle that sucks in more and more people within the organization, who have either been offended, accused of giving offense, or both, along with their colleagues who are required to pick a side."
According to the Washington Post, "sectors like nursing homes, local schools, railroads" are all suffering from severe worker shortages. Many industries are far from their pre-pandemic employment levels. Labor clashes are common. A recent one almost shut down the railroads.
According to a friend who lives in a third ring suburb, once you get out of the city, businesses everywhere are shuttered for lack of workers. These are the businesses that don't pay their employees enough. I'm not sympathetic to their plight. I think the worker shortages reflect a changing economic reality.
In the nonprofit world, no one's doing anything anymore except fighting with each other. In the business world, people are no longer accepting insufficient compensation for their time. These aren't minor things. They're indications that total system is changing.
In the Washington Post piece referenced above, an economist attributes our runaway inflation to upward pressure on wages as a result of workers becoming more demanding. The facts tell another story, that inflation is the product of epidemic price gouging, but it is telling that WaPo printed this economist's nonsensical argument. Blaming workers for the inflation they're victims of is control regime propaganda at its finest.
At the core of the labor market changes now underway is a new emphasis on human rights in the workplace. The Woke armies in the nonprofit world may be instigating endless pointless conflicts with their coworkers, but their tantrums don't come from nowhere. They come from a genuine desire for people to all be treated fairly. It's unfortunate that this desire is being articulated in ways that sabotage any hope of progress. I wonder how much of this sabotage is deliberate.
In for-profit workplaces, people are demanding pretty basic things, like living wages and sick leave. They're demanding things that everybody deserves. I don't characterize their demands as the demands of 'labor' as a cohort. I characterize them as working class attempts to convince the managerial class to observe human rights in the workplace.
Our total system is in the process of being reconfigured for technological reasons. This is apparent everywhere, and no one really knows what it means. The control regime thinks it means more control over the faceless masses who make our economy work. The Woke think it means that their feelings should be able to dictate what others say and do. The unions seem just to be reacting from a place of self-preservation.
The stakes are high and no one can agree on anything. System disruptions seem inevitable in this economy we all depend on. Mainstream media distorts these realities into partisan issues, preventing many otherwise sensible people from understanding what's really happening here. And what's really happening is that people have collectively reached their breaking point.
The control regime overstepped with its disastrous pandemic response. The economy is consequently having a seizure, and average people are unwilling to pay the price for that, no matter what their managers expect. This is an undesirable situation, but it does contain a profound opportunity. Now, unlike just a few years ago, we're in a position to demand that our human rights be taken into account in the new economy that's emerging. What that might look like is an open question; one worth considering.
(Feature image from Pixabay.)
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