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.

‘I Did Not Know I Had A Voice’

December 21, 2022 Sara Herschander, Capital and Main. Organize! Congress, Domestic Workers, Worker Rights and Jobs

After nearly a decade working as a live-in nanny in New York City, Ludie Delva knew she was being underpaid, but didn’t know there was a minimum wage. And though she worked upwards of 60 hours per week, she wasn’t aware that she also qualified for overtime that might’ve helped with the bills she struggled to pay on her $500 weekly paycheck. Nor did she know about New York state’s Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, legislation that would ultimately allow Delva to reclaim over $25,000 in stolen wages from two former employers. The final amounts paled in comparison to what they owed her, but the money still allowed Delva to purchase a home for her family in Haiti, and survive a pandemic that thrust domestic workers around the country into prolonged economic uncertainty.

Are You A Public School Teacher In A State That Bans Collective Bargaining?

December 17, 2022 Olivia Wood, Left Voice. Organize! Education, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Recently, a friend of mine tweeted, “watching all these workers rise up in solidarity makes me so damn proud and excited… and sad i live in a state which forbids collective bargaining for public sector workers. the FOMO is real. if you can unionize, do it!!!” She then clarified that her state (Virginia) did amend the law so that municipal employees could unionize if given permission by the municipality, but that other state employees (including those like her, who work for public colleges and universities) still do not have a pathway forward. This made me think. I grew up in North Carolina, one of five states where public sector collective bargaining is still completely banned. Ballotpedia lists 17 other states, including Virginia, where public sector collective bargaining is “permitted” but not required (read: restricted in various ways, such as Virginia’s requirement for municipal permission), but even a map like this one obscures other union-busting legal measures.

AfroResistance At The Permanent Forum Of People Of African Descent

December 16, 2022 Afro Resistance. Organize! Human Rights, People of African Descent, United Nations

From December 5- 8, 2022, AfroResistance attended the first session of the Permanent Forum for People of African Descent, which was held at the United Nations Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. The Permanent Forum serves as "a consultative mechanism for people of African descent and other relevant stakeholders as a platform to improve the security, quality of life and livelihoods of people of African descent, as well as an advisory body to the Human Rights Council, in line with the program of activities for the implementation of the International Decade for Afro-descendants and in close coordination with the existing mechanisms." (United Nations) The forum was attended by Afro-descendant human rights activists, member states, United Nations bodies and agencies, intergovernmental and regional organizations, civil society representatives, and other sectors.

Theatre Row Workers Unanimously Demand Voluntary Recognition Of Their New Union: Theatre Shop Union

December 15, 2022 Left Voice. Organize! Labor Movement, New York (NY), New York City (NYC), Theater, Worker Rights and Jobs

New York City, New York - On Tuesday, December 13, workers at Theatre Row — a multi-venue theatre in New York City — submitted a unanimous card campaign to the board of their parent organization, Building for the Arts, demanding voluntary recognition of their new union. This union — Theatre Shop Union (TSU) — is an independent union and the first of its kind in the theatre industry. In a press release, TSU wrote: We, the workers of Theatre Row, are proud to announce our intent to organize a new, independent union: Theatre Shop Union (TSU). With one hundred percent support from workers eligible, the twenty-five members of TSU went to the Building for the Arts board on December 13th to demand voluntary recognition of our union. Regardless of the board’s decision, we are eager to meet them at the bargaining table to negotiate a contract that meets our demands.

‘I Walked Away Like A Giant’: New York Troublemakers School Draws 400

December 14, 2022 Hannah Grimmett, Labor Notes. Organize! Education, Labor Movement, New York (NY), Worker Rights and Jobs

New York City, New York - Four hundred rank-and-file organizers gathered November 19 in a New York City high school at the largest Troublemakers School yet. The day was part learning opportunity, part celebration of shared struggle. In the opening session, led by a Teamster and two educators, troublemakers roared with applause at the proclamation that a potential UPS strike next summer would cause “6 percent of GDP [gross domestic product] to stop moving” and booed the “customer service” mentality being pushed onto educators by school administrators. Then participants broke out into classrooms for workshops like New Organizing, Assertive Grievance Handling, and Race and Labor. Among the skills practiced were laying out step-by-step escalating campaigns that build capacity as you go; recognizing the qualities that make an issue ripe for organizing; and how to push co-workers to get more involved in the union, while also respecting their boundaries and complex personal and internal lives.

Unity And Resistance To Imperialism Drive West African Conference

December 11, 2022 Prasanth R., People's Dispatch. Organize! Africa, Anti-Imperialism, Ghana, Solidarity

150 people from political parties, trade unions, community-based organizations, women’s groups, and other social movements across West Africa are gathering in Winneba, Ghana from December 8-10 to chart a joint strategy for struggle at a crucial time for the region. The West African People for a New World Conference seeks to be a forum to share the demands and aspirations of the people in struggle in the region. The conference is being held at a time when there has been an upsurge of anti-imperialist sentiments across the region, as well as severe economic crises due to neoliberal policies. The bulk of the delegates hail from the 16 member states of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) but there are also participants from organizations from other parts of the continent.

We Defend A Socialist Society Where People And Planet Come First

December 9, 2022 Muhammed Shabeer, People's Dispatch. Organize! Belgium, climate crisis, Socialism, Youth Activism

Belgium - An acute cost of living crisis marked by soaring food and fuel prices has hit working class households across Europe. In Belgium, students have been standing alongside workers at the forefront of protests demanding effective measures from the government to tackle the crisis. Peoples Dispatch spoke to Sander Claessens, president of the Comac student movement in Belgium, about their involvement in the protests against the cost of living crisis, political interventions in campuses and society, and the policies of the government towards education, among other issues. Comac is affiliated to the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB/PVDA). The name Comac is an abbreviation of the goals of the movement itself: Change, Optimism, Marxism, Activism and Creativity.

The First Overdose Prevention Centers In US History Vote To Unionize

December 8, 2022 Left Voice. Organize! Addiction, Health Care, New York City (NYC), Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

New York City, New York - Workers at OnPoint NYC officially submitted their demand for voluntary union recognition on Thursday, December 8. The workers, who are demanding union recognition with the New England Joint Board of UNITE HERE, are calling their union OnPoint United. They are fighting for a wall-to-wall union, greater job security for employees, better healthcare, and a democratization of the workplace. The unionizing workers recognize every worker’s right to a union. In their union recognition letter, they write: OnPoint NYC rightfully prides itself in having a workforce which is comprised of a wide range of individuals, many of whom have diverse life experience, some of whom are previously incarcerated, and many of whom come from varied levels of educational background or training. We recognize that regardless of the workforce background, level of training, or educational status, all workers have a right to a union.

1,000 Days Of Compassion

December 7, 2022 #lnf, Anarchist Cook. Organize! California, COVID-19, Food and Agriculture, Food Not Bombs

Santa Cruz, California - The streets went silent that misty March 14, 2020 morning. I passed only two other vehicles on my way to prepare the meal at the Veteran’s Hall. News that the indoor food programs had been ordered shuttered meant our unhoused friends would have to go without food if we didn’t step up and fill the void. Eight of us Food Not Bombs volunteers gathered at LuLu Carpenters that cold Saturday to discuss our plans. I think all of us were in a state of shock at the mystery that lay ahead. A medical social worker who had just been trained in the COVID-19 safety protocols at Good Samaritans Hospital detailed what she had learned the day before. We moved our meal to the Town Clock from the Post Office so our line of guests would not be standing near the dozen or so people camping along the Water Street sidewalk.

Abahlali baseMjondolo’s Fight For Dignity And Land, 17 Years On

December 5, 2022 Tanupriya Singh, People's Dispatch. Organize! Land Rights, Poverty, South Africa, State Violence

17 years ago, the residents of 12 informal settlements in the city of Durban came together and formed Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM), or ‘shack dwellers’ in Zulu. The movement emerged at a time of widespread mobilizations against the ruling African National Congress’ failure to fulfill its promises to provide services and housing for the poor in post-apartheid South Africa. “What do we want?” AbM’s founding member and president, then 30 year-old S’bu Zikode had asked in 2005, “The basics. Water, electricity, sanitation, land, and housing.” Over the following years, AbM grew into a militant collective with more than 100,000 members, fighting for dignity and land for the urban poor in the face of deadly repression by state forces.

Challengers Win Big in UAW Elections; Presidency Headed To Run-Off

December 3, 2022 Jane Slaughter, Labor Notes. Organize! Autoworkers, Unions, Victory, Worker Rights and Jobs

What is the mood at United Auto Workers headquarters today? Day drinking? Shopping for retirement condos? Dunning staff for money to try desperately to win the run-off? Shredding documents? Reformers in the United Auto Workers are jubilant as they seem set to make a historic change in the top leadership of their union, ending 70 years of one-party top-down rule. As mail-ballot votes were counted this week, it appeared very possible that the UAW Members United slate would eventually take all seven of the seats it contested, out of 14 on the union’s executive board. This is nothing short of an earthquake in one of the country’s largest manufacturing unions. The last time anyone was elected to the executive board in opposition to the ruling Administration Caucus was 34 years ago, when Jerry Tucker of the New Directions Movement became a regional director.

China To Run United Nations Biodiversity Conference

December 1, 2022 Vanessa Hull , Consortium News. Organize! China, Environment, United Nations

As the world parses what was achieved at the U.N. climate change conference in Egypt, negotiators are convening in Montreal to set goals for curbing Earth’s other crisis: loss of living species. Starting on Dec. 7, 196 nations that have ratified the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity will hold their 15th Conference of the Parties, or COP15. The convention, which was adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, is designed to promote sustainable development by protecting biodiversity — the variety of life on Earth, from genes up to entire ecosystems. Today, experts widely agree that biodiversity is at risk. Because of human activities – especially overhunting, overfishing and altering land — species are disappearing from the planet at 50-to-100 times the historic rate. The United Nations calls this decline a “nature crisis.”

Ten Years Later, The Fight For $15 And A Union Continues

December 1, 2022 Michael Sainato, The Real News Network. Organize! Fight for 15, Labor Movement, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

On Nov. 29, 2012, over 100 fast food workers in New York City walked off the job to demand that their wages be increased to $15 an hour and to finally have a voice in their workplaces through union representation. That walkout was the beginning of a movement—a movement that articulated and emerged out of the need for human dignity and democracy in the workplace; a movement that has forcefully asserted that highly profitable industries dominated by multi-billion and multi-million dollar corporations can afford to pay their workers a living wage and allow workers to safely voice their concerns and address issues that impact them and their work. Out of those worker-led demonstrations a decade ago the Fight for $15 and a Union was born, a global campaign pushing to increase wages and improve working conditions for workers in low-wage jobs, from the fast food industry to retail.

Every Union Contract Right Now Should Be The Best Ever

November 30, 2022 Alexandra Bradbury, Labor Notes. Organize! Labor Movement, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

If your union goes into negotiations right now and doesn’t win its biggest raise ever, you’re leaving money on the table. Soaring inflation means it takes a bigger raise just to break even. And with unemployment low, labor has extra leverage to win more. Dining hall workers at Northeastern University in Boston just approved a new contract that will raise them to $30 an hour by 2026—triple the $9 they were making in 2012 before they unionized. After a rowdy mass picket, Sysco food delivery Teamsters in Massachusetts won a 39 percent raise over five years. Here in Seattle, Providence Swedish hospital workers just won their largest-ever economic package, with two-year raises of 21.5 percent or $6.50, whichever is more. (They structured it that way so the lowest-paid workers don’t get the lowest raise.) These are just a few of many examples.

How Akka’s Palestinians Fought Back Against Israel’s Mass Arrest Campaign

November 28, 2022 Vera Sajrawi, +972 Magazine. Organize! Intifada, Israel, Palestine, State Violence

“It is very hard that my son is far away and separated from me. I feel it is an injustice, and nothing is harder than for a mother to feel that her son is oppressed.” These were the words of Umm Haitham Ali, the mother of a convicted 27-year-old Palestinian citizen of Israel from Akka who has been incarcerated for a year and a half, and whose life has been overshadowed by turbulent events that unfolded in the city in May 2021. During that month, Akka (known in Hebrew as “Akko” and in English as “Acre”) like other localities, was consumed by a Palestinian uprising that spread between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and which was met with a large-scale campaign of Israeli repression. In so-called “mixed cities” like Akka — historically Palestinian centers that acquired large Jewish populations through forced expulsion and gentrification since the Nakba of 1948 — protesters took to the streets to demonstrate, while gangs and mobs vandalized property and attacked residents of other national groups.

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