Revolt on Goose Island: The Chicago Factory Takeover and What It Says About the Economic Crisis

About this book

Revised and updated with a new afterword by the author There is much talk about audacity these days but true chutzpah is when the workers take over the factory and take on the bank. Kari Lydersens invaluable account of the Republic sit-down strike is an instruction manual for worker dignity. Mike Davis author of Budas Wagon and City of Quartz December 5 2008: It wasnt supposed to work like this. Days after getting a $45 billion bailout from the U.S. government Bank of America shut down a line of credit that kept Chicagos Republic Windows & Doors factory operating. The bosses who knew what was coming had been sneaking machinery out in the middle of the night. They closed the factory and sent the workers home. Then something surprising happened: Republics workers occupied the factory and refused to leave. Kari Lydersen an award-winning reporter tells the story of the factory takeover elegantly transforming the workers story into a parable of labor activism for the twenty-first century one that concludes with a surprising and little-reported victory.