After keeping a low profile and meeting new people at the summer institute—many of whom recognized us at the biennial convention—we felt much more comfortable, and were able to speak in greater depth with some key people.

On the first day of the convention, we had the pleasure of shaking hands with United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain. We were unaware that he would be addressing the convention until we arrived and saw it on the agenda, and then assumed he would deliver the address via webcam. But then we spotted him in person at a nearby table ahead of us. So at the recess just before his address, we approached him, shook his hand, and thanked him for using his national platform to be a consistent messenger on the importance of working class internationalism. We kept things brief and didn’t mention that we had just published an article which spoke positively about UAW, but we found him to be very easy to talk to. He told us that his journey in the trades actually began with IBEW, which we had not previously been aware of, since our knowledge of him was limited to his work since becoming president of UAW.

Graham Platner also made a brief appearance on the first day of the convention, not to campaign, but simply to attend. We once again chose not to introduce ourselves, but did once again come within inches of him. The hallways of the venue were quite narrow, so we had to cut between Platner and someone he was talking to in order to get to the hotel elevator. Our only words to Platner were a brief “excuse me, coming through.” It was interesting for us because we had published two critiques of Platner since the last time we shared space with him, the second of which got us criticized by name by the co-chair of Maine DSA— who sat next to us on the first day of the convention—a few days after the convention.

The most exciting moment for us came on the second day of the convention during a full group discussion about artificial intelligence. We’ve been meaning to write something about a.i. for months now, but continue to be sidetracked by more pressing matters. But we cannot help but see the parallels between the introduction of a.i. and the past introduction of technology such as the computer and steam engine. It was exciting, therefore, to see a room full of union leaders discussing the significance of the a.i. revolution and how the working class should orient itself to this revolution. Simultaneously, the conversation was slightly underwhelming in the way that many Marxists might expect from a group discussion about a.i. consisting of American trade unionists.

We normally prefer not to draw attention to ourselves, especially since we were eager to hear from some of our comrades in the room, but after several people had addressed the room, we concluded that we needed to voice our perspective. Luckily for us, the facilitators decided to pass the microphone to a couple additional people. When it was our turn, we said the following:

“I just wanted to make a couple brief remarks about what I’m not hearing in this conversation right now. For those of us in the electrical trade, artificial intelligence isn’t just a labor issue, it’s a solidarity issue. The massive data-centers running the software for a.i. employ many electrical workers in their construction, and the energy demands of these data centers is spurring the construction of new power plants to meet those demands, and this also employs many electrical workers. We need the work. We haven’t had a new job-call in our [IBEW] local for a long time. But when we build this infrastructure for a.i., we’re building technology that’s being used as a weapon against the working class to displace workers and suppress wages. It’s a shame because I think that everyone [in the room] that’s had a chance to speak so far can actually think of ways in which a.i. could actually be a helpful tool which makes their job easier, but it isn’t being used in that way because working people are not in control of how this technology is being implemented.”

While nobody in the room really expressed any luddite sentiments, we felt compelled to dissuade anyone from even thinking anything of the sort. We wanted to stress the point that the technology is not the problem and draw attention to how technology becomes weaponized in class struggle. Simultaneously, we did not want to be overbearing in our exposition of the problem. We are reminded time and time again that a good argument isn’t enough by itself to change people’s minds, and that we must find ways to make people arrive at our conclusions themselves. We’ve repeatedly witnessed vulgar socialists clumsily try to shoehorn demands for socialism into group discussion and did not want to create such an episode at such a critical moment. So instead of beating people over the head with a marxist analysis of technology, we did our best to smuggle the solution to the problem (seizure of the means of production by the working class through its collective mass action) into our statement of the problem (the bourgeoisie weaponizing the increasing sophistication of the means of production against the working class). We know we got through to at least a couple people because we were complimented for our contribution to the discussion after it concluded.

We were also wearing a keffiye on the second day of the convention, which led to us being approached by a member of the Maine A. Philip Randolph Institute about potentially doing some labor-related Palestine solidarity work in the future. This is a great excitement to us, as our disillusionment with and exit from the Maine Coalition for Palestine resulted from our frustration with that organization’s inability to articulate that Israeli apartheid is a labor issue, and we did not have the ability to do labor organizing for Palestine ourselves as long as we were showing up to the Coalition’s meetings and events.

We enter the final months of 2025 feeling like we have established ourselves as a valuable peripheral member of the labor movement in Maine. We intend to continue moving methodically in all of our activities, but we are excited to move onto even bigger and better things as we continue to bring our perspective to the labor movement in Maine.

Bluebird I,

November, 2025

Our group decided that some kind of public action was warranted after receiving news that the town would be clearing the encampment on July 8th.

The short history of the encampment is as follows:

Last August, the encampment formed on land next to Mechanic’s Park in Biddeford. The land was unoccupied and was not being used, but was private property. Around December, a local organization called The White Butterfly With a Cause began assisting the people living in the encampment, offering food and supplies, getting a shower for the encampment, among many other vital services.

White Butterfly With a Cause tried unsuccessfully to contact the owner of the property where the encampment was located, but never heard back, and was eventually told that the owner had passed away. White Butterfly notified the town that they could not clear the encampment as the town did not own the property, but this changed on May 29 when the town purchased the land. Biddeford City Council voted on the following Tuesday to set July 8 as the date on which the encampment was to be cleared. Eventually, the town posted trespassing signs around the land the encampment was on.

According to a representative from White Butterfly With a Cause, an additional 6 months would have been sufficient for them to find temporary shelter for the people in the encampment, but the town of Biddeford was unwilling to wait.

White Butterfly said they spoke repeatedly with Biddeford Mayor, Martin Grohman, but aside from a single $100 donation to White Butterfly, he never followed through on his word that he would assist the encampment.

The tragedy of the situation is compounded by the fact that on the opposite side of the intersection from Mechanic’s Park there exists a large vacant building that was once part of an old mill complex. The building, which shows clear signs of neglect such as broken windows, is large enough to house many times the number of people who were at the Mechanic’s Park encampment, but instead it sits collecting dust. With the ability to issue or revoke property deeds and the power of eminent domain, the city of Biddeford could very easily convert this building into a homeless shelter or free housing, but it instead chooses to have the police break up an encampment of people who have nowhere to go.

We invited the Mayor of Biddeford to our rally, where we also gave supplies to the encampment, so that he could see the suffering of the people living in his town; so he could see the faces of the people he is trying to sweep under the rug, but he declined to respond to our overtures or show his face.

With all the events summarized, it seems reasonable to conclude that the town of Biddeford never had any intention of helping the people living in this encampment. The clearest example of this is in the way the town was willing to purchase property solely so that its occupants could be more easily expelled. Perhaps the town was simply embarrassed that private individuals were providing what the State has the resources to do, but not the willpower. If that be the case, they should indeed not only be embarrassed, but ashamed.

At every level of government in this country, we have not a government of the people, by the people, or for the people, but instead have a government loyal to the rich, to big property, to the Bourgeoisie, and the experience of the Mechanic’s Park encampment, and the experience of the activists who tried to help them, speaks to that fact.

In most respects, the July 5th action was a failure. The reader of this may wonder: what point is there in writing about it and sending it to FightBack then? For the simple reason that revolutions are not made overnight. Rallies and marches are fun and make for a nice spectacle, but they ultimately do very little for many people. However correct our messaging may be at these large events, the fact still remains that the American public has been tricked by many a false populist, and this has led to a widespread apathy among the American public (for more information on this, I encourage people to read my article Towards a Marxist Stance on Electoralism). It is not enough to be revolutionary in word only, as figures like Kautsky and Plekhanov were. We must also be revolutionary in action. Material conditions obviously impose hard limits on how revolutionary our deeds can be, but this is no excuse for inaction. We win people to our cause by making a material difference in their lives. Some of the activists who showed up on July 5th were already acquainted with each other, but others were not. Cultivating and growing these connections strengthen our ties to our communities; it helps us build a class formation which will be capable of living up to our revolutionary aspirations.

Was the July 5th action a failure? Insofar as we failed in our objective of delaying the sweep, yes. But every successful revolution is built on countless failures. And the way we learn from our failures is by confronting them. Even if the efforts of myself and my fellow activists were in vain today, I do not regret doing them. However small it might have been, we still made a difference. And documenting the experience of July 5th will allow it to serve as a teaching moment not only for myself and those in my network, but those outside my network who are also trying to do good work.

Bluebird

July 2024