Thomas Geoghegan is so ahead of his time. But hopefully is writing just in time for the future. Which Side Are You On – Trying to Be for Labor When It’s Flat on Its Back was published in 1991, which means it was written when liberals were basically in hiding, and the right was cheering, while applauding President George H. W. Bush.
So much good thinking and excellent writing is packed into these pages -and so much truth. He lays out clearly what most of us still don’t understand – that the destruction of the unions, very intentional in some quarters, more or less accidentally in others, has changed us into another country altogether, and explains much of our current financial, social and economic woes.
Intricate and intertwined stories of union, companies and our economic and political systems – the workers and the sometimes corrupt labor leaders; the short-sighted, short-term thinking company owners; the buy-outs and economic destruction led by folk like Mitt Romney; the sending of our factories all over the world, leaving folk whose dreams of the good life were thereby destroyed.
I really expect this and his other work to become important again, as Millenials begin to assess this new world, and welcome such a well-defined path through it.
It is hard to summarize this book without adding lots of quotes, examples and going on for 50 pages. Suffice it to say your mind will be blown, your ideas rearranged by all this clarity, this humor, often dark, this personalizing of an on-going slow moving tragedy. A must read.