Day 2: Online, on the line

A gusty day 2, but without the rain, saw visitors arriving at the picket line from the wind’s four quarters – local MPs, postal workers, UNITE and writers from Boston (Boston, USA, that is).

Zarah Sultana, recently elected MP for Coventry South, spoke of the need to continue standing up for workers’ rights in the current challenging environment.

Annette Ash from Warwick Estates and UNITE lent cross-union support, while representatives of the Communications Workers Union expressed solidarity from the midst of their own ongoing struggle with Royal Mail – which, like UCU’s, involves not just pay but the overall direction of the company, failure to uphold national agreements and the culture of the workplace.

And picketers gathered by the purple tent to hear Boston-based Nicole Aschoff, writer for Jacobin magazine and author of forthcoming book The Smartphone Society, lead a bracing teachout on changes in the political environment enabled by smartphone use. Carrying both promise and peril, social media extend and complicate the scope of political organizing, but at the same time – the audience seemed to agree – can’t substitute for the live presence of bodies on the line.

Here’s to Week 2 of our action, then – see you all then!