Sustained refusal depends on elaborate parallel infrastructures of mutual support

Evidence

The daily reality of the strike required disciplined coordination both within and outside of the union. Networks of support formed as sympathizers from around the country sent in thousands of dollars. Soup kitchens, which served thousands of strikers daily, received truckloads of produce sent in from small farmers. Women organized a Ladies Auxiliary of the ILA and handled relief applications from strikers under financial duress and assisted in the ILA kitchens. Sensing that the police were in the palm of the city and the employers, strikers set up their own waterfront police to address disturbances along the docks, complete with an emergency number that led to a longshoreman-turned-dispatcher. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 288

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The self-organized infrastructure here (kitchens, own police, relief apparatus) reads as concrete support for treating refusal as constructive world-building rather than withdrawal.
• XREF: connects to: Path dependence plus recurrent mechanisms jointly explain contention’s regularities. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 366