What emerges from the scandal—three leading Democrats and a top labor bureaucrat caught in the act of racialized scheming regarding LA's redistricting process—is a picture of a trade union leadership that is out of touch with the most basic of trade-union values: to represent the interests of all workers based on the fact that we are workers. Union leaders should not be playing racial political games.

Many have commented as well on The Bear’s commitment to reproducing details of restaurant life as if recounting an esoteric lore; the terminology, the habits, the various BOH personality tropes, sipping water out of plastic quart containers, etc.

However we must situate the phenomenon of the Bear in its proper context.

For the working class, the transition from inflation to recession – in the worst-case scenario, to both (“stagflation”) – will be the transition from one form of misery to another. The most conscious among us must draw upon the life experience of the broad mass of workers to promote the development of unions that proceed from the class interests of workers. Such organizations are our only means of defense against lowered real wages, increased indebtedness, mass layoffs, and every other tactic in the fighting handbook of the bourgeoisie.