"The 2005 AFL-CIO/ Change-to-Win debate was notable not simply for what was discussed, but also what was not. It focused on how to build one crucial elements of worker power: workplace organization and the collective bargaining strength that comes with it. Absent, however, was discussion of a second necessary dimension: regional power built in the community. Yet, historically in the United States, and around the world, geographic power has been necessary to increase workplace power.For example, the breakthrough battle of the 1930s—the General Motors sit-down strike—would have been lost had the infant industrial labor movement not been able to mobilize community support in the company town of Flint and establish enough political strength to elect a Michigan governor who pledged not to use the National Guard against striking workers. In a similar way, in 1941 the Ford Motor Company might have succeeded in using racial divisions to break union organizing had black-white unity not been built in the community and the workplace. In both cases, regional power reached beyond the immediate needs of turning out supportive local crowds and deactivating government repression. Strategically, placed-based organizing established a forward-looking social vision of economic justice and democracy that made workplace battles not only the parochial concerns of isolated workers, but also fundamental struggles over America's future. Can organized labor recover today without articulating a similar twenty-first century social vision? "

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