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Revised and updated, with a new afterword by the author

There is much talk about audacity these days, but true chutzpah is when the workers take over the factory and take on the bank. Kari Lydersens invaluable account of the Republic sit-down strike is an instruction manual for worker dignity.

Mike Davis, author of and

December 5, 2008: It wasnt supposed to work like this. Days after getting a $45 billion bailout from the U.S. government, Bank of America shut down a line of credit that kept Chicagos Republic Windows & Doors factory operating. The bosses, who knew what was coming, had been sneaking machinery out in the middle of the night. They closed the factory and sent the workers home.

Then something surprising happened: Republics workers occupied the factory and refused to leave.

Kari Lydersen, an award-winning reporter, tells the story of the factory takeover, elegantly transforming the workers story into a parable of labor activism for the twenty-first century, one that concludes with a surprising and little-reported victory.