It Has to be You

Brian Howard

“Tell them what to do. It HAS to be you Kino. Tell them what to do.”, Cassian Andor, Season 1, Episode 10

Throughout Season One of Andor, the protagonist Cassian Andor develops from a womanizing thief just looking out for himself, to a radicalized, aspiring revolutionary. Cassian’s transformation becomes apparent in prison on Narkina 5, as he employs a methodology that is strikingly similar to that used by labor organizers going back to at least the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). The CIO was a federation of Communist-led industrial unions that began organizing en masse in the 1930s, like the famous sit-down strikes in Flint in 1936 which formed the United Auto Workers. As a long-time union organizer myself, I identified with the way Cassian didn’t try to be a leader himself, but sought out, recruited, and developed the right person to be that leader.

“They can’t imagine it … that someone like me would ever get inside their house, walk their floors…”, Cassian Andor, Season 1, Episode 1

When we first meet Cassian Andor he is not any kind of revolutionary or organizer. He has no interest in working on anything bigger than himself, except for finding his long-lost sister. We learn more about his backstory when we watch Maarva essentially kidnap him from his home planet, which has been decimated by extraction, becoming his adoptive mother but separating him from his community for what she believes is his own good. This decision is indeed questioned by the show, adding layers of moral complexity to what would traditionally be “good guys.” Trauma is foundational to Cassian’s development, and his response is to live by his own wits and become a master thief. He has no interest in fighting for a cause.

Cassian is confident, somewhat cocky even, though deeply wounded and angry. When Luthen Rael recruits his help to rob an Imperial depot, he does so for money.  It’s a job to him—he thinks real freedom means making enough money to be debt-free and indulge in sensual desires. But the real shift happens in Episode 7, the moment he is arrested for simply being at the wrong place at the wrong time.74 His sham “trial,” followed by being whisked away to some other planet with a prison in the ocean, completely melts away any bravado he might have possessed. As he is put on the factory floor and shown the manual labor he must perform under constant threat of torture, he starts to see that his individual self-reliance cannot serve him here. Diego Luna’s compelling body language shows us Cassian’s palpable terror and complete collapse of ego.

Cassian's exposure to the concept of fighting for something bigger than himself from Maarva, Luthen, and Nemik (a “true believer” in the heist crew who wrote a manifesto) was not enough–the first-hand experience of incarceration forced him to grasp that any previous sense of power was illusory. In the prison, on the factory floor, he finally realized that he and all his fellow prisoners needed each other. THEN the radical concepts he had been exposed to jelled for him. Andor knew he couldn’t do it himself, he needed to recruit people. And he really needed to recruit someone who could lead everyone else. He needed a real leader.

“Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there.”75

A fiercely independent working class individual becoming radicalized from direct experience was the major story arc of proletarian literature popular in the 1930s. Tom Joad’s character in The Grapes of Wrath is a well-known example (although the purists of proletarian literature would quibble that because Steinbeck was not himself working class, The Grapes of Wrath doesn’t count). At first, Tom Joad is only concerned with practical matters as they impact him and his family, but he is radicalized after he sees his friend Jim Casy murdered for organizing a strike of fruit-pickers. The novel ends with Tom hitting the road to be an organizer. "I'll be ever'where—wherever you look,” he tells his mom in a tear-filled monologue at the end.

Many proletarian novels of the period, like The Disinherited by Jack Conroy,76 had a protagonist with a similar character arc—the stoic man out for himself trying to rise above his depressing conditions only to find that solidarity and collective resistance are the only ways to find actual liberation—with gritty, detailed descriptions of labor and poverty. The depth of understanding and clarity these characters develop comes from “the streets” as we might say these days, not from theory. And though many of them may be introduced to theory at some point–as Andor was when he met Nemik–it’s only through direct experience that such theory becomes useful to them.

This aligns with what Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci called the “organic intellectual.”77 Writing from the bowels of prison himself, Gramsci discussed the importance of organic intellectuals to the working class. As opposed to traditional intellectuals who gain recognition via established institutions (usually the academy) and thus usually align with the dominant class, organic intellectuals emerge from within their own class or social group. They become intellectuals because of their ability to process and articulate the needs and desires of their peers, but in a way that challenges them to aspire for more and take action. This happens “organically” because such individuals are rarely chosen and are often reluctant (at first) to take on the responsibility.

A closely related concept, called “organic leaders,” emerged in the organizing methodology of the CIO in the United States in the 1930s. "The CIO believed in 'industrial unionism:' organizing all workers in the same industry regardless of trade or perceived status. This contrasted with the American Federation of Labor (AFL), which favored organizing unions craft-specifically and which the CIO had formed under and broken away from."

For CIO organizers, it was important to organize from the bottom up within a workplace. They understood that no matter their background, an organizer is always an outsider, and the key to organizing is empowering the workers to form their own worker-led organization. They knew that in any workplace there are pre-existing networks and cliques of people, and within those networks and cliques there are those who others naturally look to as leaders. Organizers try to recruit those leaders first, because they spur their peers into action.

As a union organizer who was trained in this same CIO tradition, I can attest that this methodology works. In every workplace, every department, every shift, there are those who are just natural leaders. Jane McAlevey describes the CIO-style organizing methodology in detail in her book, No Shortcuts.78 Regarding the organic leader, she wrote, “To connect to rank and file dynamics in the workplace, union organizers use a mechanism called organic leader identification, in which they analyze the workers’ pre-existing social groups. This is done among the workers in conversation with them, not apart from them.” I try to meet with as many people who will talk to me, and go down the list asking questions about each person they work with, like, “How long have they worked there? If people have a question or issue do they tend to go to this person for help? Who tends to get birthday cards and pass them around?” or “When someone is sick, who starts a gofundme?” 

We don’t ask, “Who’s the leader?” because most folks default to telling us who they think we want to meet—the person who’s the loudest or the most combative with management. In my experience, those tend to not be actual organic leaders. Also, organic leaders rarely if ever self-identify. To quote McAlevey again, “Kristen Warner, a contemporary organizer in the CIO tradition, notes, ‘[Organic leaders are] almost never the workers who most want to talk with us. More often not, [they’re] the workers who don’t want to talk to us and remain in the background. They have a sense of their value and won’t easily step forward, not unless, and until there’s a credible reason. That’s part of the character that makes them organic leaders.’”79 This is true in my experience as well. Organic leaders tend to have full lives, and are usually not the ones who are the most opinionated and outspoken at work.

As a personal anecdote, about 12 years ago I was meeting with a group of about 9 or so workers in a coffee shop after their shift. I had met some of them before this and already had a pretty good sense of who their organic leader was, and she was there too. She did the least amount of talking in the group. We went through a typical union organizing conversation: connecting with their issues, telling them how having a union can make a difference, describing the plan to win a union, and getting their commitment. To get this commitment, I asked, “Do you support forming a union with your co-workers?” As soon as I asked this, I witnessed literally every head at the table turn in her direction. As soon as she said, “Yes” then the rest of the table followed suit. Throughout the organizing campaign, in which the employer spread a lot of disinformation and fear, that department stayed together and strong because she never wavered.

It’s necessary to identify, recruit, and develop these organic leaders because organizers can’t just waltz into a workplace and start recruiting people. And even if we could, it wouldn’t be a best practice because we are outsiders. We want to create a union that stands on its own, run by the workers themselves. 

Once we have identified a potential leader, we try to recruit them. We usually do this by getting a one-on-one meeting with them, finding out what particular issues they have, educating them about the union, agitating them to want to make things better, and putting them into action. Organizers then develop leaders by continually challenging them to take on bigger roles, having tighter conversations, and encouraging them to have input in decision-making. But more crucially, when the campaign heats up and the employer goes on the attack–spreading often-effective misinformation and fear–people need to have built a level of deep trust with each other in ways an organizer just can’t. A majority of workers may say they support a union at the start of a campaign, but that doesn’t mean they will hold out when their managers pull them into meetings and try to browbeat them into not supporting the union. That’s when you see the difference between having a robust committee of organic leaders doing the work versus an organizer trying to hold it together themself from outside.

When the employer ratchets up their campaign in the workplace, it isn’t just fear of losing their jobs that makes things hard for people—it’s the TENSION. Employers are good at making work very, very tense for people and keeping their cortisol levels high. As with fascism on a societal level, when people are anxious and afraid they are less likely to think straight and start believing things that aren’t rational. If you don’t have organic leaders in place to help keep people focused on the goal, you will lose them. If workers are about to embark on a scary collective action, you need those leaders to make sure folks follow through.

“How many guards are on each level?” – Cassian Andor, Season 1, Episode 9

Organizing a mass action has similar building blocks whether it’s forming a union or a prison uprising. It starts with leadership. On Narkina 5, Cassian demonstrates this methodology in how he identified, recruited, and developed a leader.

He clearly knows someone has to lead, and he knows it’s not him because he just got there. Fellow prisoner Ruescott Melshi (the character who accompanied him post-breakout and appears in Rogue One) might seem like an obvious choice for someone with lesser organizing instincts. His consciousness is already raised—he’s always speaking up about what’s really going on, what the Empire is up to, the situation they are all really in. But, crucially, people don’t take him too seriously.

This is an error some union organizers make. Either because they don’t know better, or are looking to take shortcuts, they will identify and recruit the people who already support a union and speak out about management. It’s an easy mistake to make because the Melshis of the world will always be willing to meet with you, take your phone calls, and talk to their co-workers. It may work for a while, but if you recruit the wrong person to lead they can damage or destroy your campaign, because when things get scary or difficult, their co-workers will not follow them. The actual leaders are often not initially on board. It takes work to move them. Another thing about organic leaders in the workplace is that management often understands who they are, and will also recruit them. It’s not uncommon to find them in roles like lead or charge, or even middle management. So it’s not unusual to find organic leaders in those roles.

Thus Cassian finds Kino Loy, barking orders, driving the prisoners to meet production quotas, yelling at people (especially Melshi) to get in line and stick with the program. He is unlikely to like this hell they are in, but he believes in the system enough to think that if he just does his time, he will be free soon. He just has to work hard and hold his unit together. He may be somewhat of an asshole, but people respect him. They listen to him. Cassian realizes this—he has identified the leader.

Thus begins the recruitment, and Cassian is unrelenting. “How many guards are on each level?” he asks repeatedly, honing in on what he knows Kino knows. He knows that if he can get Kino to break with the answer, he can wedge further.

One night when they are in their cells, Cassian works on him. He asks him if he’s ever thought about escaping, how many shifts he has left, how many guards are on each level. Kino continually tells him to be quiet, to which Cassian says, “You think they care what we say? Nobody’s listening. Nobody. How many guards are on each level? Nobody’s listening. NOBODY’S LISTENING!”

Recruiting the leader doesn’t always happen quickly, but we can’t give up. They are essential to the success of what we are trying to accomplish. For union organizers, it is irresponsible to move a campaign forward without them, and it seems that Cassian knows they can’t escape without Kino. Organizers keep working at it and may have to wait for the right moment, like a co-worker getting fired for unfair reasons, or a change in benefits or scheduling. We have a saying: “The boss is the best organizer.” If we keep working at it and have patience there is sure to be an opportunity to agitate.

And that moment arrives with the disturbing news that something terrible happened on another level. They don’t know what yet, but it’s clear that things are not what they seem. This is very disturbing to Kino in particular, as his whole world-view depends on his hard work paying off. Here Andy Serkis gives us one of his greatest performances, in which he now has his only source of hope crumbling before him, but he has to maintain the posture of someone in control. The terror in his eyes is unforgettable. When Melshi makes a half-joke about what may have happened, saying “They set them all free,” (half a joke because for them death seems like the only way out), Kino completely loses his temper with him, revealing his inner terror. But Cassian reigns him in: “The less they think we know, the better.” As opposed to when he first came to Narkina 5, now Cassian is in control, and Kino is deflated.

When fellow prisoner Ulaf—an elderly man with supposedly very few shifts remaining—dies, Kino and Cassian learn the truth from the doctor: the Empire killed an entire level of prisoners because they figured out that they were never getting free. The sentences were lies. 

As they walk away Cassain asks again, “How many guards on each level?”

Kino finally answers, “Never more than twelve.” 

Cassian had successfully recruited him.  

“We have a plan. I’d rather die trying to take them down than die giving them what they want. We won’t have a better chance. It has to be tomorrow.” – Cassian Andor, Season 1, Episode 10 .

After an organizer identifies and recruits a leader, the next step is development, an ongoing process. In a union organizing campaign, this would be giving them a small assignment like talk to three of your co-workers and move them to support the union. Next might be to come to a meeting, then speak at the meeting, then run the meeting, etc. In many ways this can be the hardest part—it’s one thing to support a cause, it’s another to take action toward it. And just because they are a leader doesn’t make them any less afraid. In fact the fear may be greater because they feel the weight of responsibility. The new leader must be challenged and agitated. If a leader starts to waver, I will say something like, “You told me you support the union because you and your co-workers are so disrespected, how is that going to happen if you don’t step up? Your co-workers depend on you.” These are tough conversations, but we do workers a huge disservice by not having them.

The core principle behind that development is urgency. Employers have so much power, so many ways to undermine collective resistance, and the moment that people are fed up and ready you can’t wait. Once the employer gets word of something they will do everything they can to crush it. So you always have to push leaders to act NOW.

After Cassian moved Kino to support an uprising, he still had to push him into action with urgency. Immediately after their conversation with the doctor, Cassian presses upon Kino the need for it to happen immediately. Tomorrow.

The next day they succeed in overpowering the guards and breaking out of their unit. Once they reach the main control center and take over, Cassian moves Kino to make an announcement over the intercom to the entire prison. Kino hesitates. Cassian says, “It has to be you.” This was key; Cassian was certainly more than capable of giving a rousing speech to the inmates, but it’s not about him, it’s about the success of the plan. And the best chance of success is for it to come from an established, organic leader: Kino Loy. He starts to talk, and Cassian says, “Is that all you’ve got?!” He’s pushing him to do it better, give it his whole heart.

Kino then delivers his “One Way Out” speech, which concludes with a call for collective action and mutual aid:  “Right now, the building is ours. You need to run, climb, kill! You need to help each other. You see someone who’s confused, someone who is lost, you get them moving and you keep them moving until we put this place behind us. There are 5,000 of us. If we can fight half as hard as we’ve been working, we will be home in no time. One way out! One way out! One way out!”

Once they reach the opening they have to jump into the ocean and swim to shore. In a moment that makes my eyes water just thinking about it, Cassian looks back at Kino just standing there, and Kino says, “I can’t swim.” He knows he may die there, but he’s already free. No matter what happens now to him and all the other escapees, they are all free now, just by taking the action, acting with urgency, and winning. 

Through this experience Cassian now has become an organic intellectual. And a leader. We see that leadership in Episode 12 when he helps folks escape from Ferrix and gives them a plan for where to go and what to do.

Obviously we already knew before the show began that Cassian becomes a rebel leader, but it's important that the show fleshes out exactly how real leaders develop. Just as with proletarian novels and Antonio Gramsci, we need alternative views of leadership to that provided by our liberal bourgeois social order.

Based on news reporting, punditry, movies and television, it’s easy for people to come to other conclusions about what makes a leader. Many think that someone who gives the best speech at a rally, writes a provocative letter to the editor, or has the best “ideas” in the proverbial town square becomes a leader. It’s made to seem like it’s a meritocracy, where only the best can lead. But in real life, especially within the working class, leadership works much differently–even writing a manifesto isn’t sufficient! This holds people back from feeling that they have the agency to act, because folks are waiting for the next Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, or Fidel Castro to lead them, but we already have the leaders we need among us. To build our better world we have to challenge those around us, and ourselves, with urgency.

74. Though Cassian doesn’t seem to be explicitly racialized in the show, the moment of his arrest, in its nonsensical arbitrariness, does make us think about how it feels to be Black and Brown when confronted by police in our world.
75. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (London: Penguin classics, 2014 [1939]).
76. Jack Conroy, The Disinherited (London: Wishart and Company, 1934).
77. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (New York, International Publishers, 1971).
78. Jane McAlevey, No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power In The New Gilded Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
79. McAlevey, No Shortcuts.