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"People all over the world, and particularly ordinary working people in factories, mines, fields, and offices are rebelling every day in ways of their own invention."

—C.L.R. James, Grace Lee Boggs, and Cornelius Castoriadis, 

Facing Reality

Kevin Van Meter

Reading Struggles is the website of author, labor educator, and union organizer Kevin Van Meter. Kevin writes about contemporary labor issues, labor history, and neighboring social issues.  As an educator, he provides training so that union members and workers can create democratic workplaces and communities. 

BOOKS

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American Worker:

International History, Reception, and Responses

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Reading Struggles: Working-Class Self-Activity from Detroit to Turin & Back Again

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Guerrillas of Desire: Notes on Everyday Resistance & Organizing to Make a Revolution Possible

Books

More Books & Other Writing

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Uses of a Whirlwind: Movement, Movements, & Contemporary Radical Currents in the US

(with Team Colors)

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Real World Labor,

4th Edition (with Ben Beckett, Kari Lydersen, Robert Ovetz, and the Dollars & Sense Collective)

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General Interest Articles, Book Chapters, Interviews & Blog Posts

In The Press

Reviews

Kevin Van Meter’s eloquent and provocative book Guerillas of Desire gave me a whole new way to think about organizing.

This eye-opening book...makes us see the problem of 'organizing' in a new and much more useful way... We are already organized, Van Meter argues, we are already in revolt, and we always have been. The job of the organizer is to ask questions, to listen, and to cross-pollinate the wisdom of both open revolt and everyday resistance in communities everywhere. 

Beautifully written, Guerrillas of Desire shows the power of the refusal of work of those
capitalism has subjugated…

ALEXANDRA BRADBURY,

editor at LABOR NOTES

ERIC LAURSEN, independent journalist and AK PRESS 
author.

SILVIA FEDERICI, 

author of CALIBAN AND THE WITCH

Bio

BIO

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Kevin Van Meter is an author, labor educator, and union organizer. He is author of Guerrillas of Desire, co-editor of Real World Labor and Uses of

a Whirlwind, writes

regularly on

contemporary labor issues, and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Labor and Society.  

Kevin holds a PhD in Geography, Environment and Society with a focus on labor history, working-class studies, and spatial theory. He studies the impact labor unions and workers’ organizations have on the changing regimes of work within the United States and examines the ways in which working-class and poor people self-organize within regimes of work, produce new forms of life at and outside of work, and construct narratives about their working lives. 

Upcoming Events

  • Nov 08, 2025, 10:00 AM – 11:50 AM GMT
    Workers’ Inquiry in the United States: Immigrant Service Workers, Cafe Workers, Care and Nonprofit Workers in the United States are on the move—refusing current regimes of work, fighting bosses and organizing unions, speaking about their working lives and demanding workplace democracy. Part of HM!
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  • Mon, Nov 10
    MayDay Rooms London
    Nov 10, 2025, 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM GMT
    Beginning with the 1947 publication of The American Worker pamphlet a new form of “proletarian literature”—first-person narratives of work and workers’ inquiries—emerged from the automotive factories and corners of Marxian movements in the United States. At MayDay Rooms in London!
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  • Nov 13, 2025, 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM GMT
    Workers are on the move—fighting bosses and organizing unions, demanding control over housing, speaking about their working lives, and demanding workplace and real democracy. One of the tools to understand and amply these struggles is workers’ inquiry.
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  • Nov 19, 2025, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM GMT
    Workers’ inquiry—for “the class to whom the future belongs!” Recently immigrant workers, agricultural, cafe and grocery, digital platform, arts and culture, and education workers, and others in Ireland, Germany, England, and the United States have shared their struggles through workers’ inquiries.
    Share
  • Thu, Nov 20
    University College Dublin Health Science
    Nov 20, 2025, 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM GMT
    When Trinidadian Marxist author of The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, CLR James was asked to reflect on his own political development he reportedly said that “he didn’t really understand what it meant to be revolutionary until he went to Ireland.” Join us!
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  • Nov 22, 2025, 11:00 AM – 3:00 PM GMT
    Workers’ inquiry—for “the class to whom the future belongs!” Recently immigrant workers, agricultural, cafe and grocery, digital platform, arts and culture, and education workers, and others in Ireland, Germany, England, and the United States have shared their struggles through workers’ inquiries.
    Share
  • Sun, Dec 07
    Howard Zinn Book Fair San Francisco
    Dec 07, 2025, 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM PST
    Café, nonprofit, and public and private sector workers across the United States are on the move—refusing current regimes of work, fighting bosses and organizing unions, speaking about their working lives and demanding workplace democracy.
    Share
  • Dec 09, 2025, 6:00 PM PST – Dec 10, 2025, 8:00 PM PST
    Café, nonprofit, and public and private sector workers across the United States are on the move—refusing current regimes of work, fighting bosses and organizing unions, speaking about their working lives and demanding workplace democracy.
    Share
Events

CONTACT

For interview, speaking, and workshop requests, contact Kevin directly using the email below.   

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