This is Jane McAlevey. She’s a a fourth generation union activist and author of a book called Raising Expectations and Raising Hell.  She was in town recently for a number of talks and had some pretty prescient things to say.

Here she is chatting to Siobhán O’Donoghue of  Migrant Rights Centre and Uplift fame. She has some mad idea about people participating in society and goes on at lenght:

“The title raising expectations is fundamental for me, and what it comes down is – in the United States and I expect this may be through in Ireland too, ordinary people wake up every day and are essentially told and messaged by society and the elite that they are meaningless and that they don’t mean very much to society. So the dominant message from elites in society to poor people, to working class people to people of colour is that you are not very meaningful.”

“You don’t deserve very much, you are not contributing very much – you just do all the work of society – but you are not very meaningful to society. The role of an organizer is to help people come to their own sense of self worth and they themselves are really capable of making great change but if great change is going to happen ordinary people have to be at the centre of the struggle.”

I dunno. Sounds like mob rule to me. Best wait and see what the papers say.

Props to Paula Geraghty for the recording.