Editorial Statement: Rank & Fowl aims to be a news wire (exclusively digital to start) for inter-labor communication from one shop floor to another and beyond. To these ends, Rank & Fowl encourages submissions dealing directly with labor efforts emerging across shop floors whether that be organizing labor that exceeds the workplaces recognized by the National Labor Relations Board or organizing what the National Labor Relations Board has normalized as discrete, craft-based bargaining units; whether sharing particularities of one collective bargaining agreement or discussing the limits of the collective bargaining procedure itself; Rank & Fowl is more concerned with what change we can bring about ourselves rather than what, and how well, we can beg for change from elected officials and/or those in alleged positions of power. There are enough avenues for labor to petition, plead, lobby, bargain, etc.—Rank & Fowl need not be another one! There are limited avenues for the co-ordination of labor to the ends of labor’s emancipation—Rank & Fowl wishes to be one such avenue. Please bear this in mind when submitting!
Rank & Fowl aims to publish new material bi-monthly on the 1st of all odd months throughout the year (January, March, May, …). To this end, submissions are due by 23:59 P.S.T. on the 1st of each even month throughout the year (December the prior year, February, April, June, …). (If you have any confusion, please check the specific dates below.) The editorial team at Rank & Fowl dreams of a day that labor is heard entirely at-length, but, at present, Rank & Fowl requests pieces anywhere between 500-2,000 words to keep review and editing feasible and timely for a labor-run operation.
Although the editorial team and the founders of Rank & Fowl are currently one-and-the-same, a small group. The editorial team does not plan to stay this way for long. Once we’ve worked out the growing pains, we will begin taking applications for editorial board members with a background in publications (digital or print, but specifically with experience in labor—whatever field, sector, etc. that may be). With the goal of having material pertaining to specific industry, but also to do with labor more broadly, Rank & Fowl will require a team in the background able to sift through and arrange this material in a way that makes it useful to any-and all who find their way here.
In closing, the editorial team wishes to acknowledge the difficulty of the task we’ve set before us, and yet, at the same time, we wish to acknowledge our steadfast commitment to this work. As the Tanzanian Marxist historian Bonaventure Swai once wrote:
“Mental labour, like manual labour, is by no means an easy process. But the fact that it has been used largely to defend the system [of imperialist capitalism] does not mean that the oppressed classes should live without it. They, like their oppressors, need their own organic intellectuals” (Journal of African Marxists / Journales marxistes africains, Issue 2, August 1982, pg. 48).