Imaginative Militancy and the Transnational Poetry Dialogue Free

This essay examines how small-scale projects grounded in imaginative militancy and transformatory global forms of solidarity can move workers from low levels of solidarity toward more radical levels. It focuses on a series of creative writing workshops facilitated by the author which brought workers at Ford plants in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Port Elizabeth and Pretoria, South Africa, into productive transnational “poetry dialogues.” It contends that while the dialogues raised workers' identity as workers to an international scale, their effects were limited due to a single industry focus and a reactive rather than productive stance. The essay concludes by arguing that small-scale projects grounded in imaginative militancy can serve an important role in contemporary labor education.