The Real Rulers are the Toiling Millions
To Secure “Liberty and Justice for All,” Our Dictatorial Workplaces Must Be Confronted with Democratic Unionism and Gandhian Nonviolent Action
Mahatma Gandhi is greeted by a crowd of female textile workers during a visit to Darwen, Lancashire. Date 26 September 1931
By Erik Olson Fernández
NEED TO DEMOCRATIZE OUR WORKPLACES
"Genius Grant" recipient Elizabeth Anderson has summarized the state of U.S. workplaces with her article title: “How bosses are (literally) like dictators: Americans think they live in a democracy. But their workplaces are small tyrannies.” These workplace dictatorships are defined by the arbitrary and unaccountable power of a tiny fraction of the population, employers, over almost all others, employees. The lack of legal power is most clearly seen in the fact that nearly all employees work under the “at-will” legal standard, where they can be fired and lose their livelihoods for any or no reason.
The essential democratic principles and practices of due process, just cause, and, thus, free speech are reserved for only those very few who have a union. Sadly, U.S. union membership in 2024 was only 9.9%, which is amazingly less than the 11% in 1917. The situation is even worse in the private sector where it is 5.9%. The public sector has 32.2% but this fact explains why the billionaire-backed Trump administration is attacking public sector workers. Musk and other billionaire tyrants that control both major political parties have already decimated private sector union membership and shaped labor law in their favor. The public sector is essentially all that is left to attack. Why not try pitting private sector workers against public employees, especially when the number of workers participating in major work stoppages (i.e. strikes) is low?
Given that these unjust and undemocratic working conditions today mimic the low union membership of the Great Depression, is it any wonder why faith in democracy has clearly declined? Most workers, who spend most of their waking hours at work, rarely experience democracy. The local workplace is simply a reflection of the lack of democracy and great economic inequality in the larger society.
Is it an accident that the world’s happiest people live in Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Sweden, according to the World Happiness Report 2025, despite the cold, dark climate? Could it be that their workplaces are much more democratic and their economic situations more equal? Consider their unionization rates alone: Finland (58.8%), Denmark (67%), Iceland (91.4%), and Sweden (65.2%). Unless we transform our local workplaces, we are doomed in our efforts to create democracy, justice and peace in the larger society. But how should this transformation take place?
LEARNING FROM HISTORY, GANDHI & THOSE WHO STUDIED HIM
Working people committed to creating democracy and justice would do well if they studied history, Gandhi, and those who studied and learned from him. A key lesson from Gandhi is that we must give people positive ways to express their righteous anger. If we do not give people a constructive nonviolent path forward in critical spaces like the workplace, things could turn very ugly and violent quickly. And, unfortunately, despite significant financial resources, most union leaders are still not providing good leadership, organizing more workers, and certainly not practicing nonviolence. In 1947, Gandhi reminded the world that “The real rulers are the toiling millions.” One of Gandhi’s greatest insights is that rulers, including monarchies and employers, cannot rule if “We, the People,” do not obey their unjust rules. In 1919, while the U.S. was experiencing a national strike wave, Gandhi called for fasting, prayer, and suspension of work on April 6th across all India. The resulting economic action shook the British empire and became the first big step toward Indian independence. As pointed out by Michael Nagler, “more than fifty countries would shake off the yoke of colonialism, at least in large part influenced by the success of his struggle in India.”
In the United States, a young, Dutch immigrant minister by the name of Abraham Johannes (A.J.) Muste became a Gandhian-like leader in the 1919 Lawrence, MA Textile Workers’ Strike, which took place from February 3rd to May 23rd, overlapping Gandhi’s April 6th general strike. Muste’s nonviolent leadership in the 1919 Lawrence Textile Workers’ Strike led the mostly-women workers to a successful end by reducing the 54-hour work week to 48 hours as well as winning a 15% wage increase.
Workers and especially women in 1919 did not have many legal rights. There was no right to strike nor to officially have unions and women could not vote. Women and many workers of all backgrounds were learning about democracy and voting through their unions long before they had the legal right to do so in the U.S. Like today, essentially the entire governmental apparatus (presidency, legislature, courts, police, etc.) was against them as the wealthy controlled everything including the politicians. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which is a federal law that grants most private sector employees the right to join unions was not passed until 1935. Is it a coincidence that the NLRA was passed after another strike wave in 1934, including general strikes in Minneapolis, San Francisco and Toledo, where a crucial strike that included A.J. Muste’s leadership, took place? After this strike wave, passage of the NLRA, and key union victories in key industries, U.S. union membership soared rapidly from 10.8% in 1935 to the high-mark of 33.4% in 1945. Most public sector workers did not obtain the right to form unions until after another illegal strike wave in the 1960s and 1970s. A catalyzing strike of this era was when Dr. King was invited to Memphis by A.J. Muste’s mentee Rev. James Lawson to help unionize public sanitation workers in 1968.
Three years before the Lawrence textile strike, in 1916, the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) was founded and A.J. Muste became an active member of the key interfaith peace and justice organization. Muste later became FOR’s Executive Secretary in 1940 and mentored important FOR staff members that would play critical roles in the 1950s and 1960s Freedom Movement including Bayard Rustin, James Farmer, and Lawson. After the Montgomery Bus Boycott, FOR created the “Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story” comic book that was used to educate others on nonviolence throughout the late 1950s and 1960s. Muste also helped found the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) that conducted the 1947 and 1961 Freedom Rides and pioneered the sit-in tactic based on the sit-down strikes of the 1930s. When the sit-down tactic was implemented in the 1930s, it was called a “Gandhi strike” in the press as Gandhi had also led miners and textile workers in effective nonviolent strikes in the early 1900s. When Muste died in 1967, newspapers throughout the world referred to him as the “American Gandhi.”
ARCHITECT OF THE NONVIOLENT CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT’S WORK TO TRANSFORM THE U.S. WORKPLACE
The 1960s movement was an outgrowth of the early 1900s labor and peace movements and this is seen in the direct connection between Lawson and A.J. Muste. In the documentary film A.J. Muste: Radical for Peace, Lawson talks about meeting Muste for the first time in 1947 as a freshmen in college and being introduced to Gandhi through Muste’s speech. Lawson later traveled to India to learn more about Gandhi. In 1958, Muste gave Lawson a job based in Nashville, TN with FOR after Dr. King asked Lawson to immediately move south. Lawson’s work then became essential to everything in the movement. John Lewis, Lawson’s student in Nashville, called him “the architect of the non-violent civil rights movement.” Diane Nash was a college student when she began attending Lawson’s Nashville workshops on nonviolence. She called the classes “life-changing” and said, “His passing constitutes a very great loss…He bears, I think, more responsibility than any other single person for the civil rights movement of Blacks being nonviolent in this country.”
In 1974, Rev. Lawson moved to Los Angeles where he served as pastor at Holman United Methodist Church and later began working with unions and teaching nonviolence. Kent Wong, the long-time UCLA Labor Center director has described how Lawson transformed the labor movement in Los Angeles by grounding it “in the philosophy of nonviolence.” Ultimately, Lawson’s transformative work in the Los Angeles labor movement led to the 2021 renaming of UCLA Labor Center’s building to the UCLA James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center. In that same year, Lawson left us a clue in an article as to how to move forward today by saying:
“There’s a democratization process going on from my teaching nonviolence to labor unions. I’ve been arrested more times with working people, striking over labor causes, in Los Angeles, than arrested for civil rights issues in the South. I’m convinced also that our organizing needs to be around the local church and the local unions. If we can get a strong movement built around those two entities, we can turn our nation upside down.”
In another article after Lawson’s passing in 2024, his fundamental message for the next generation is shared:
“the U.S. must experience a series of nonviolent campaigns that will make what we did in the 20th century look tiny and small and calm in comparison…they must be deeply connected with… the deep strategies and philosophies and behaviors of nonviolence that came out of the ‘60s.”
Imagine every workplace in the nation, including yours, being infused with nonviolence and democratic unionism! Imagine these strategic local labor campaigns connected and coordinated as a movement all across the nation? After studying this little-known history of Gandhi, A.J. Muste, Rev. Lawson, and the labor movement, I believe Rev. Lawson was urging all of us today to:
Focus on our local workplace that is easily within our reach and control; and
Focus on transforming ourselves through nonviolence as no social change can take place without personal transformation.
WAYS TO CARRY OUT THIS TRANSFORMATION
Organize a democratic union in your workplace if the workers do not have a union.
Reform your undemocratic union if it is not democratic and focused on collective action.
Study and use Gandhian nonviolence to organize a union in your workplace and to transform your undemocratic union into a democratic union.
Be strategic and coordinate your local workplace struggles with others across the nation to create a nationwide/global struggle.
Nurture your courage, love and strength through regular practice and development of your spirit as you will need it in the difficult but beautiful struggle to transform our workplaces and the larger society.
