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.

So You Wanna Practice Picket? Here’s How We Did It

August 25, 2023 Dane Rohl, Labor Notes. Organize! Practice Pickets, Strikes, Unions, UPS, Worker Rights and Jobs

For the first time since I started working at UPS 15 years ago, it feels like unions across the country are on the rise. UPS Teamsters mobilized for a massive contract campaign to win the best contract we’ve ever had. Now it’s the Auto Workers’ turn. Like in the Teamsters, UAW members recently elected new leadership that will stand up for you—and more importantly, actually allow members to stand up for yourselves. I’ve been following the contract fights at the Big 3 automakers. You’re fighting for a lot of the same things we fought for: ending two-tier, a fair raise, and control of your time.

UPenn Residence Advisers Will Have Union Election Despite Opposition

August 25, 2023 Abraham Gutman, The Philadelphia Inquirer. Organize! Higher Education, Philadelphia, Student Activism, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

University of Pennsylvania students who work as residence hall assistants will hold a unionization vote this fall, the National Labor Relations Board decided this week. The decision rejects Penn’s claim that students aren’t employees and don’t have the right to form a union. About 220 student workers filed paperwork with the NLRB in March to join the Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 153, which represents students in universities around the region. If the effort is successful, the union would be the first of its kind in the Philadelphia area. Students at other universities have formed unions in recent years following a 2016 NLRB ruling that allowed Columbia University graduate students to unionize.

Revitalized Union Power Helped Crush Attempts To Rig The System In Ohio

August 24, 2023 Bob Hennelly, Portside. Organize! Labor Movement, Ohio, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

It is said that history is written by the winners. But when it comes to big wins by organized labor, the corporate news media, itself fighting unionization at all costs, tends to ignore unions even when they are shaping history. Missing from much of the coverage about Ohio voters’ rejection of the Republican legislature’s attempt to raise the threshold for voter approval needed to amend the state constitution from a simple majority to 60 percent — was the central role organized labor played in mobilizing and helping to defeat the scheme. In the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade, the Republican legislature pushed through some of the nation’s most draconian restrictions on abortion.

SEIU And The Carpenters: ‘Changing To Win’ Or Changing The Wrong Way?

August 23, 2023 Steve Early, Popular Resistance. Organize! Democracy, Labor Movement, SEIU, Unions

In a recent conversation with an otherwise well-informed young labor activist, I made a passing reference to Change to Win, a national labor federation formed in 2005 by defectors from the AFL-CIO. “Change to what?” she asked. “Never heard of it.” Her response was not surprising, given the short shelf life of the organizational brand in question. Launched with much media fanfare, Change to Win initially represented 5.5 million workers, about one-fifth of the AFL’s total membership. Its founders—the Service Employees, Teamsters, Carpenters, Laborers, United Farm Workers, Food and Commercial Workers, and UNITE-HERE—saw themselves as the second coming of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO)

Indian Country’s Forever Chemical Problem

August 17, 2023 Zoya Teirstein, Native News Online. Organize! Environment, health, Indigenous Rights, PFAS, Public schools

Laurie Harper, director of education for the Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig School, a K-12 tribal school on the Leech Lake Band Indian Reservation in north-central Minnesota, never thought that a class of chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, would be an issue for her community. That’s partly because, up until a few months ago, she didn’t even know what PFAS were. “We’re in the middle of the Chippewa National Forest,” she said. “It’s definitely not something I had really clearly considered dealing with out here.” Late last year, tests conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency revealed that her school’s drinking water wells were contaminated with PFAS.

Despite Big Teamster Wins At UPS, Some Expectations Outpace Gains

August 15, 2023 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. Organize! Contract Negotiations, Strikes, Unions, UPS, Worker Rights and Jobs

Some 323,000 U.S. workers have struck so far this year. Another 340,000 were in gear to strike, until their nationwide mobilization forced the company to concede. UPS Teamsters are voting on the deal through August 22. “After 25 years of [former Teamsters President James P.] Hoffa and his givebacks, we came out ahead,” said Eugene Braswell, a delivery driver and Local 804 steward. “This is the first time in all those years that I have a national contract that I can vote yes on.” How are UPSers making sense of their gains at the table? I spoke with two dozen rank and filers. Some were relieved they didn’t have to strike.

Breakthrough At Venetian; Organized Labor’s Tenacity On The Las Vegas Strip

August 14, 2023 John L. Smith, The Nevada Independent. Organize! Labor Unions, Las Vegas, union busting, Worker Rights

For some longtime gaming industry observers, it was a jaw-dropping moment that signaled the end of an era and the beginning of a new chapter on the Las Vegas Strip. For the throngs still caught up in the frenzy of the Vegas Golden Knights’ Stanley Cup victory, especially the many thousands who converged to celebrate at the T-Mobile Arena, the news was easy to miss. With little fanfare, and less context in some parts of the local press, Culinary Local 226 and three other labor organizations this week announced an agreement with operators of The Venetian and Palazzo to organize workers at The Venetian and Palazzo.

Survivors Of Oppenheimer’s Trinity Test Are Still Fighting For Justice

August 9, 2023 Alessandra Bergamin, Waging Nonviolence. Organize! health, Japan, New Mexico, Nuclear Weapons, Oppenheimer, Radiation, Wars and Militarism

Eighteen years ago, as Tina Cordova read her local newspaper in the town of Tularosa, New Mexico, she noticed a letter to the editor that made her pause. It was written by the now late Fred Tyler, a fellow New Mexican, about his mother’s recent passing from cancer, after having suffered from several types over the course of her life. “I’m wondering,” Cordova recalled Tyler writing, “when we are going to hold our government accountable for the damage they did by detonating an atomic bomb in our backyard?” In south-central New Mexico, the world’s first atomic bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945.

Tenant Organizing In Unexpected Places

August 7, 2023 Shelterforce, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Organize! Housing, Landlords, Rent control, Tenant Rights

Spurred in part by COVID and by a growing housing affordability crisis, tenant organizing is picking up, not just in expected places like New York, but in mid-sized cities like Austin and Baltimore, and even smaller cities like Louisville, Kentucky, and Portland, Maine. Increasingly, tenant organizers are not just winning battles against landlords, but changing public policy. For instance, rent control was passed in Portland, Maine, last November. In this webinar cosponsored by NPQ and Shelterforce on July 12, moderated by Steve Dubb, NPQ economic justice senior editor, and Miriam Axel-Lute, Shelterforce’s editor in chief, four tenant activists shared their stories of direct tenant organizing and policy advocacy.

The Climate Movement Has A Recruiting And Retention Problem

August 6, 2023 Charlie Wood, Waging Nonviolence. Organize! climate crisis, Climate Justice

Last year, climate movement colleagues and I engaged in a project to map the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing the Australian climate movement. We learned many things, but one of the biggest themes we heard over and again from groups was the challenges they face in recruiting and retaining staff and volunteers with the skills, experience and capacities needed for climate justice work. In fact, this was the top organizational challenge named by groups after financial stability, which is saying something for a heavily under-resourced sector. So what’s behind this challenge with finding and keeping great people, and what might we do about it?

Cutting The Ties Between Higher Education And The Military

August 3, 2023 Nonviolence Radio Team, Waging Nonviolence. Organize! Higher Education, Militarization, Student Activism, United Kingdom (UK)

This episode of Nonviolence Radio welcomes @hellaJinsella from the UK peace organization, DeMilitarise Education, or dED. Jinsella has been actively working to raise awareness about the ties between higher education and the military. As these relationships have not generally been made public, military funding, and the accompanying environmental degradation the arms industry entails, has been able to thrive within universities without sustained challenge. DeMilitarise Education seeks to bring these connections to light. To this end, it has set up a database which tracks schools’ ties with the military and arms companies to be used as a tool to pressure the universities to break these damaging ties.

For Open Bargaining, Start Early And Build

August 3, 2023 Ellen David Friedman, Labor Notes. Organize! Democracy, Labor Unions, Negotiations, Rank and File

In many unions, ratification of a collective bargaining agreement can leave members alienated and angry. Sometimes members will be learning about the major features of a tentative deal for the first time. Little time is given to discussion—members are expected to approve what leadership recommends, and officers may get defensive at questions or complaints. In some unions, members know their opinion doesn’t matter and may not even bother to vote. But there’s another way to go, to build a powerful, participatory, energized union through the bargaining process: open bargaining.

Second Russia-Africa Summit Ends With Commitments Towards Cooperation

August 1, 2023 Tanupriya Singh, People's Dispatch. Organize! Africa, African Union, BRICS, De-dollarization, New Development Bank (NDB), Russia, Russia-Africa Summit, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

The second Russia-Africa Summit For Peace, Security, and Development concluded in the Russian city of St. Petersburg on July 28. The two-day meet was attended by official delegations from 49 African countries and included 17 heads of state. The summit yielded various agreements and a joint declaration for cooperation on issues including security, trade, energy, and climate change. “All our states confirmed their commitment to the formation of a fair and democratic multipolar world order based on the universally recognized principles of international law and the UN Charter,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a press statement after the conclusion of the summit.

Economics For Emancipation: Tame, Smash, Escape

July 27, 2023 Geo Collective, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Organize! Capitalism, Economic Democracy, New Economy, Solidarity Economy

I'm currently the education programs and research manager at the Center for Economic Democracy and we're a movement support organization based in Boston, Massachusetts. Our work focuses mostly on capacity building in the movement, with the goal of democratizing economic power. In terms of what we actually do, what that looks like is organizing and building local coalitions, experimenting and trying to create new models of economic democracy, and also connecting trends locally with national partners to strengthen the broader Solidarity Economy movement. And ultimately, what we're doing at CED is trying to build new collective governance and ownership infrastructure to really shift power to frontline residents, both locally, but also creating models that potentially could be used elsewhere, or scaled in different ways.

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