Young, Kevin
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Assistant Professor
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Young
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Kevin
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Arts and Humanities
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Latin American History
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Latin American History
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Publication Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: How Corporate Power Shaped the Affordable Care Act(2014-01-01) Young, Kevin; Schwartz, MichaelPublication How “Partnership” Weakens Solidarity: Colombian GM Workers and the Limits of UAW Internationalism(2014-01-01) Young, Kevin; Sierra Becerra, DianaThis article examines the ongoing U.S. solidarity campaign with the Association of Injured Workers and Ex-Workers of General Motors Colmotores (ASOTRECOL), workers fired from the GM plant in Bogotá, Colombia, after suffering injuries on the assembly line. After reviewing some of the factors that facilitated the mobilization of community and rank-and-file activists, we discuss the refusal of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union leadership to support the campaign. While the UAW has sometimes engaged in solidarity campaigns with foreign workers, it has not supported ASOTRECOL. We argue that the primary reason is that doing so might jeopardize what UAW leaders consider to be their positive relationship with General Motors. U.S. activists’ expectation that the UAW would support the cause strongly influenced their strategic orientation early on, further hindering the chances of success. We suggest that solidarity activists should take unions’ bargaining relationships into account when devising strategy.Publication The Good, the Bad, and the Benevolent Interventionist: U.S. Press and Intellectual Distortions of the Latin American Left(2013-01-01) Young, KevinU.S. journalists and commentators have helped popularize the image of two distinct Latin American lefts: a “bad” left that is politically authoritarian and economically erratic and a “good” left that is democratic and committed to free-market economics. This binary image oversimplifies the Latin American left in three ways: by overstating the contrast between the two alleged camps, by ignoring complex realities within each camp, and by exaggerating the failings of the so-called bad-left governments. The distinction makes sense, however, as a strategy for countering the rise of independent left-leaning governments in Latin America. Binary characterizations of subordinate peoples reflect a common discursive response to popular resistance on the part of imperial interests and one with many precedents in the history of U.S.–Latin American relations. Widespread U.S. media adherence to the good-left/bad-left thesis is explicable given this context and given the historic and continuing dependence of the press on state and corporate interests.Publication Can Prefigurative Politics Prevail? The Implications for Movement Strategy in John Holloway’s Crack Capitalism.(2012-01-01) Young, Kevin; Schwartz, MichaelThe desire to overcome the alienated labor of capitalism manifests itself in the daily actions of people everywhere. John Holloway argues that social movements must build upon this liberatory impulse, challenging not only the rate of exploitation but also workers' loss of control over the process of production and allocation (and, by implication, the loss of control in other arenas of life). Revolutionary change, in turn, will result from these movements creating thousands of 'cracks' in the capitalist system by asserting alternative ways of living. Holloway's argument for prefigurative movements is ambiguous on several points, however: the role of political orgnaizations, the role of alternative institutions, and the appropriate approach of social movements to the state. We propose some friendly amendments, placing great emphasis on the need for strong political organizations and counter-institutions, but also for selective engagement with dominant institutions. A revolutionary strategy must combine the construction of prefigurative counter-institutions with struggles for reform of existing structures.Yet the dangers of oligarchization and hierarchy within movements are very real, and thus there is a need for structures that are ruthlessly democratic and ideologies that are explicitly intersectional in their approach to fighting different forms of oppression.Publication Restoring Discipline in the Ranks: The United States and the Restructuring of the Bolivian Mining Industry, 1960—1970(2011-01-01) Young, KevinThe Triangular Plan of the 1960s was a key moment in the rightward shift of the Bolivian Revolution (1952-1964). Billed by the United States, West Germany, and the Inter-American Development Bank as a generous loan program to "rehabilitate" the Bolivian tin mines, the plan also gave its architects a change to discipline Bolivian workers, further privatize the Bolivian economy, and test the usefulness of conditional economic aid in containing revolutionary nationalism. From an analysis of the triangular Plan it is possible to draw three major conclusions about postwar W.S. policy with regard to Latin America: (1) independent nationalism and popular militancy, rather than Soviet-style Communism, were the primary fears of policy makers; (2) the response to the Bolivian Revolution was not, as some have implied, indicative of benign intentions in the face of revolutionary nationalism; and (3) Bolivia often served as a "test case" or laboratory for policy measures.