Organize!

Whether we are engaging in acts of resistance or creating new, alternative institutions, we need to create sustainable, democratic organizations that empower their members while also protecting against disruption. This section provides articles about effective organizing, creating democratic decision-making structures, building coalitions with other groups, and more. Visit the Resources Page for tools to assist your organizing efforts.

Organizing One Of The Largest Black Led Unions In The United States

May 28, 2024 Keith Kelleher, The Forge. Organize! Black Working Class, History, Labor Movement, The South, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

McMaid workers, led by Irma Sherman, Doris Gould, Juanita Hill, and Mary Williamson, transformed labor organizing by successfully unionizing homecare workers in Chicago in 1984, setting the groundwork for the largest union in the Midwest, and catalyzing the organizing of a field predominately staffed by working-class Black and brown women. In Part One, the McMaid homecare workers, with their union, United Labor Unions Local 880, a small, independent union founded by ACORN, the national community organization, overcame an intense anti-union campaign by management to win a solid union election victory in January, 1984. But even more obstacles lay ahead in their fight for Justice.

UAW Admits Digital Heavy, Organizing Committee Light Approach Failed Them

May 27, 2024 Mike Elk, Payday Report. Organize! Alabama, Mercedes-Benz, The South, union busting, Unions, United Auto Workers (UAW), Worker Rights and Jobs

Rather than using traditional organizing committee structures, the UAW relied heavily on digital meetings, a light staff approach from the international union, and getting workers to sign union cards via QR codes. Given the positive media coverage of the UAW in the “Stand Up Strike,” many UAW leaders were confident they could win using this approach. After filing with 70%, the UAW believed they would maintain their margin and win at similar margins to the 73% victory of UAW workers in Chattanooga. However, the UAW lost 44%-56% in Alabama amid charges that the company used backroom manipulation tactics against workers.

Unity Through Resistance: 3,000 Pro-Palestine Activists Converge In Detroit

May 25, 2024 People's Dispatch. Organize! Detroit, Gaza, Genocide, Michigan, Palestine, Palestine Solidarity

With 3,000 people and hundreds of pro-Palestine organizations converging in a metropolitan area with the largest concentration of Arab Americans, amidst the largest movement for Palestine in US history, the People’s Conference for Palestine feels nothing short of historic. “Eternal glory to our martyrs, speedy recovery to our wounded, and freedom for our steadfast prisoners,” Mohammed Nabulsi, leader in the Palestinian Youth Movement in Houston, Texas, opened the conference with these explicitly revolutionary invocations on the first day on Friday, May 24. “In the last eight months, we, the Palestinian people, have demonstrated to the entire world, that the only way we can author our own history, and transform our present reality, is the path of unity through resistance.”

How Workers Are Revolutionizing The South

May 25, 2024 David McCall, ZNetwork. Organize! Labor Movement, The South, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Donneta Williams, president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1025 and a longtime optical fiber maker at the Corning plant in Wilmington, North Carolina, knows how important it is for workers intent on forming a union to speak directly with peers who walk in the same shoes. So Williams agreed to send three of her colleagues to Corning’s Tarboro facility, about 145 miles away, when workers at that site approached the union with questions about organizing. Local 1025 members shared firsthand accounts of how the union boosted their wages, gave them a voice, and kept them safe on the job. And in May 2024, the workers at Tarboro filed for an election to join the USW.

Essential Voices For The Turn Away From Car Dependency

May 24, 2024 Bart Hawkins Kreps, Resilience. Organize! Car-Free Community, Disability Rights, Transportation, Urban Design

In forward-thinking municipalities across North America, elected officials and staff members can learn important lessons by taking on the Week Without Driving Challenge. As Anna Letitia Zivarts describes it, “participants have to try to get around for a week without driving. They can take transit, walk, roll, bike, or ask or pay for rides as they try to keep to their regular schedules ….” In most municipalities, the challenge leads to a difficult but eye-opening week. That’s because in most areas getting around without driving is inconvenient, dangerous, very time-consuming, or next to impossible. As Zivarts writes, Even for participants who might already bike, walk or take transit for some of their weekly trips, we’ve heard that the experience has helped them comprehend the difference between taking the easy trips and taking all trips without driving.

How Reformers Doubled Vermont AFL-CIO Membership

May 23, 2024 Gordon Simmons, Labor Notes. Organize! AFL-CIO, Book Review, Labor Movement, Unions, Vermont, Worker Rights and Jobs

Transforming an existing union into a more democratic and member-run organization has often proven to be a daunting—though possible—task. The pressing need to revitalize organized labor in the U.S., however, depends on such movements. Beginning in 2017, a slate of reform-minded union activists won leadership offices in the Vermont state federation of labor, reinvigorating that organization. Within just a few years, the federation’s membership doubled. Insurgent Labor: The Vermont AFL-CIO, 2017-2023 is two-term president David Van Deusen’s participant-retelling of the emergence of the UNITED reform group.

Weaving A Feminist Movement

May 22, 2024 Panthea Lee, In These Times. Organize! Art, India, Patriarchy, Women's Activism

Artist Indu Antony was enjoying conversation over chai at a women’s center in Bengaluru, India, when an angry man walked in. He tore a piece of art off the wall, took a lighter from his pocket, and set it on fire. Antony’s companions recognized the man as a local official in a right-wing political party; they scampered away. “This is a center that is attacking men,” the official fumed. It was three in the afternoon, and Antony smelled a day’s worth of drink on his breath. “You cannot burn our stories,” Antony shot back. The man’s eyes flared; he was not used to being challenged. The two went back and forth, debating the community center she had founded: Is something created for women inherently against men?

Strengthening Our Movement In Times Of Crisis

May 20, 2024 Palestinian Youth Movement, People's Dispatch. Organize! Conference, Israel, Palestine, Palestine Solidarity

Two hundred days into the Zionist war of aggression on Gaza, the Palestinian struggle is in the midst of a critical conjuncture. For months, organizations in North America have been strengthening and leading a mass movement to advance the cause of Palestinian national liberation from within the imperial core. The popular and revolutionary character of the movement has been borne out by the millions marching in the streets, direct actions across all major cities, new and newly-energized sector-based organizing and campaigns, victories across ideological and media struggle, and most recently, student encampments demanding divestment in the universities and colleges.

Won’t You Please Come To Chicago?

May 20, 2024 Ann Garrison, Black Agenda Report. Organize! Chicago, Democrats, DNC, Illinois, Mass Action

Students are protesting Biden and Netanyahu’s war on Gaza all over the City of Chicago while city, state, and Democratic Party officials worry about what it portends for the Democratic National Convention (DNC) scheduled for August 19 to August 23. Comparisons to Chicago 1968 are common, and the city’s police will be supported by Secret Service, FBI, Homeland Security, and neighboring police departments. Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling is frequently interviewed about preparations, and he says, “We’re the Chicago Police. We’re ready.” Politico warned that Mayor Brandon Johnson “unabashedly sympathizes with the protesters,” while the World Socialist Website accused him of deploying SWAT teams against peaceful, anti-genocide protestors at the Chicago Art Institute.

US Undergrads Are Getting A Crash Course In Labor Organizing

May 20, 2024 James Anderson, Truthout. Organize! Higher Education, Student organizing, Student Workers, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

When Grinnell College wanted to begin compensating community advisors (CA), who work to provide students living in residence halls with programming and support for personal and academic issues, on an hourly basis, undergraduates at the private liberal arts school in Iowa took collective action. They went on strike at the end of the spring semester in 2023. Hannah Sweet, a third-year student at the school who works as a CA, opposed the change because it would have amounted to a substantial pay cut given the 24/7 nature of the job. “One of the main things we did was we performed ‘structure tests’ leading up to the strike date,” said Sweet, who’s now co-president of the Union of Grinnell Student Dining Workers (UGSDW), which now represents all undergrad labor on campus.

Reformers Win Rerun Election In Rail Machinists

May 18, 2024 Joe DeManuelle-Hall, Labor Notes. Organize! Democracy, Elections, Labor Movement, Railroads, Unions, Worker Rights

Reformers in the Machinists rail union have ousted incumbents in a Department of Labor-supervised election. According to the results posted on the union’s website, challenger Reece Murtagh won the presidential election in District 19 of the IAM, 820 to 748, while his slate-mate Marty Rosato won 787 to 774 for secretary-treasurer. Both Murtagh and Rosato are full-time railroad workers. Murtagh is a roadway mechanic for CSX and the president of his local lodge in Richmond, Virginia; Rosato works at CSX in Selkirk, New York. They will take office June 3. Murtagh received the news while he was finishing up his shift at work. In his shop, his co-workers celebrated victory by playing the “Rocky” theme from their phones.

What It’s Like Voting Union Inside Alabama Mercedes Plant?

May 16, 2024 Jane Slaughter, Labor Notes. Organize! Alabama, Mercedes-Benz, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

In the election on whether to join the United Auto Workers, being held over five days this week at the Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama, the union negotiated rules to try to minimize management influence. The vote is taking place inside the plant. Workers are allowed to vote on company time, at designated intervals. A golf cart carrying a union observer, a company observer, and a National Labor Relations Board agent tours the 5,200-worker plant. The agent announces through a bullhorn, and by holding up a card, that workers in a certain area are now excused to go vote, if they choose to.

NATO Spreads Nuclear Weapons, Energy, And Risk

May 15, 2024 David Swanson, World Beyond War. Organize! NATO, Nuclear War, Nuclear Weapons, Wars and Militarism

Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty declares that NATO members will assist another member if attacked by “taking action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force.” But the UN Charter does not say anywhere that warmaking is authorized for whoever jumps in on the appropriate side. The North Atlantic Treaty’s authors may have been aware that they were on dubious legal ground because they went on twice to claim otherwise, first adding the words “Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.”

The Principle Of Landless Solidarity And The Recent Rains In Brazil

May 15, 2024 Brasil De Fato, People's Dispatch. Organize! Brazil, climate crisis, Cuba, Extreme weather, Landless Workers, Mutual Aid, Solidarity

The Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) this past week launched the Landless Solidarity Campaign in Rio Grande do Sul to help the more than 1.3 million people affected by the heavy rains and floods in the state. More than 90,000 Brazilian reais have already been raised for the campaign. In addition to cash donations, the Movement has also converted the Galpão Elza Soares and the Casa dos Movimentos Carlito Maia, both in São Paulo’s Campos Elíseos neighborhood, into collection points for clothes, hygiene products, medicines, and non-perishable food. “Our beloved people of Rio Grande suffered from the heavy rain that occurred last weekend, which destroyed our settlement areas, our cooperatives, our crops and, above all, the people’s dream of producing healthy food, which we were just making a reality.

Workers At A Maryland Apple Store Authorize Strike

May 13, 2024 Anthony Ha, TechCrunch. Organize! Apple, Maryland, Strikes, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

It’s been a busy weekend for union organizing efforts at U.S. Apple stores, with the union at one store voting to authorize a strike, while workers at another store voted against forming a union. Back in 2022, workers in Towson, Maryland, became the first formally recognized union at an Apple retail store. That union, which is part of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, voted Saturday to authorize a strike. The date of this potential strike has yet to be determined. “This vote today is the first step in demonstrating our solidarity and sends a clear message to Apple,” said the IAM CORE Negotiating Committee in a statement.

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