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.

Intersecting Movements For Housing Justice And Prison Abolition

July 27, 2022 Kamau Walton and Molly Porzig, Critical Resistance. Organize! Capitalism, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Housing, Prison abolition

Right to the City Alliance (RTTC) is a national alliance made up of over 90 member organizations on local, state, and regional levels organizing around housing and land. Our work includes renters’ rights, building alternatives such as community land trusts, and policy work like the opportunity for tenants to purchase buildings before small landlords sell them to bigger corporate landlords. RTTC connects members doing aligned work across the country to share strategies, best practices, and ways of scaling up strategies to expand impact beyond local contexts. Member organizations work on a range of social change issues, and the alliance is guided by values and principles that stand against state violence and policing. While RTTC is not explicitly focused on housing, our housing work is situated under the Homes for All campaign, where organizing for renters’ rights and community loan funds takes place.

Young Workers Are Bridging The Climate And Labor Movements

July 27, 2022 Leanna First-Arai, Truthout. Organize! Climate Justice, Labor Movements, Unions, Youth Activism

New momentum is buzzing through the North American labor movement, driven by the same age group which, across party affiliations and the urban-rural divide, has expressed majority-to-outsize support for advancing a climate policy overhaul with economic justice at its core. After ticking up slightly in 2020, the overall union membership rate in the United States fell back to where it’s been hovering the past few years, in 2021. But in spite of the stagnancy of other age groups, union membership among workers between 25 and 34 years old was on the rise, climbing from 8.8 percent in 2019 to a still-modest 9.4 percent in 2021. That bump does not account for the surge in union drives over the past eight months — including in the midst of this writing — many of which have been led by young workers.

Reviving Student Action And Strike Solidarity

July 27, 2022 Red Pepper. Organize! Education, Neoliberalism, Student Activism, United Kingdom (UK)

The decade since the abolition of the university fee cap in 2012 has felt painfully long for staff and students. Universities are no longer fertile ground for public knowledge but an exercise in marketized competition, commodification and over-inflated managerialism. Accordingly, students are increasingly framed as consumers entrapped in swelling debt, while overworked academics are forced to dedicate more time to admin than to teaching or research. It’s not that the university sector is strapped for cash. With more than 2,500 managerial staff on six-figure salaries and the average vice chancellor raking in £250,000, students know exactly where their £9,000 a year is going. Moreover, with the decline in direct government funding and the near abolition of teaching and maintenance grants, universities are becoming bigger players in the finance sector.

Terminated Chipotle Workers Accuse Company Of Union Busting

July 26, 2022 Phil Hirschkorn, WMTW. Organize! Chipotle, Maine, union busting, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Augusta, Maine - Workers who had hoped to form the first union at a Chipotle Mexican Grill believe the company closed their restaurant and terminated their jobs this week, because they were poised to form the first union among the chain’s 3,000 establishments. Chipotle closed its Augusta restaurant on Tuesday after two-thirds of its employees had pledged to form an independent union, Chipotle United, and just two-and-a-half hours before workers were scheduled to meet with the National Labor Relations Board about their union election. "They knew they would lose," Brandi McNease, who worked the Augusta restaurant for more than three years and led the union drive, said in an interview Friday. "I was just so angry. No. We had a fair fight going. We were doing things the right way, and you just took your bat and ball and went home?

Planned Parenthood Workers In Five States Unionize

July 25, 2022 Fight Back News. Organize! Abortion, Health Care, Planned Parenthood, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Minneapolis, Minnesota - On July 21, 435 Planned Parenthood workers from Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska joined the Service Employees International Union, Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa (SEIU HCMN&IA) in a resounding 90.1% yes vote. 238 workers voted to join the union, and only 26 voted not to. The Planned Parenthood workers began working with organizers at SEIU HCMN&IA in early summer of 2021. Over the next year they built an organizing committee among their coworkers with workers from all five states represented on the committee and wide representation from the 28 locations involved. In May of 2022 they felt they finally had a strong enough organizing committee to move forward and began talking to coworkers and having them sign union cards committing to join the union.

UPenn Teamsters Defeat Two-Tier

July 23, 2022 Liana Kallman and Alexandra Bradbury, Labor Notes. Organize! Higher Education, Pennsylvania, Teamsters, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - Teamsters Local 115 members at the University of Pennsylvania are celebrating a contract victory that eliminates two-tier pay for housekeepers, over the resistance of their own union officials. “In my 31 years here, this is the best contract I’ve seen,” said member Theresa Wible. “We haven’t seen raises like this since the ’80s, and I’ve never seen our union hall this packed.” The 550 campus Teamsters are mostly housekeepers, and 250 of them had been stuck on a permanent bottom tier. The five-year contract, ratified June 29, puts every Teamster at Ivy League UPenn on a progression to top pay. This year the first tier is making $25.12 an hour and the second tier is at $20.90, but by the end of the contract every housekeeper will get $28.68.

New Resource: The Tenant Power Toolkit

July 20, 2022 Tenant Power Toolkit. Organize! California, Eviction Defense, Housing, Tenant Rights

Helping each of us fight eviction and debt as individuals in the court system is crucial. But that is only the first part of what we can do together. Filing an answer to Unlawful Detainer or responding to a small claims lawsuit helps us respond to the system, but how can we change an unfair system? How can we change a system that evicts tenants who cannot file complicated legal papers within 5 days, but gives landlords online tools to evict from home? How can we change a system that allows landlords to ruin our credit over missed rent? With consent, we also want to connect users to tenant organizing across California, and eventually, connect users to others in their situation - neighbors; those who share landlords; those on rent strike. Why? Because if I am facing eviction or debt alone, my landlord has power over me.

UAW Delegates Head To Convention And Prepare For First Direct Elections

July 20, 2022 Jonah Furman, Labor Notes. Organize! Auto Workers, Democracy, UAW, United Auto Workers (UAW), Worker Rights and Jobs

Auto Workers (UAW) members made history last November, winning direct elections of national officers (“one member, one vote”) in a membership referendum. Now delegates are headed to a Constitutional Convention where candidates will be nominated for the top slots. The whole process will put to the test whether reformers can break the iron grip of the Administration Caucus, the one party that has ruled the union for 70 years. Winning direct elections was the first hurdle. The next, formidable hurdles are: Will a credible slate of challengers form? Will a majority of members vote for change? And can new leaders and constitutional changes turn things around for the UAW? The election will cover 14 positions: president, secretary-treasurer, three vice presidents (traditionally assigned to each of the Big Three automakers: General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis, formerly Chrysler), plus nine regional directors.

Privatizing Medicare

July 18, 2022 Muffy Sunde, LA Progressive. Organize! Health Care, Joe Biden, Medicare, Privatization

Capping five decades of battle by the labor movement for federal healthcare for elders, Medicare was signed into law in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson. Funded by payroll taxes under Social Security, the new program provided comprehensive, low-cost care for retirees and the disabled. Medicare was part of the largest government domestic expansion since the depression-era New Deal. Shaken by civil rights protests, labor strikes and student anti-Vietnam war demonstrations, politicians responded with some valuable reforms. Medicare joined the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, federal aid for education and housing, Head Start programs and food stamp allotments as victories of the Civil Rights era. Medicare proved wildly popular. Most of organized labor and virtually all organizations of seniors supported it. Adults no longer faced bankruptcy paying for medical care.

Breaking The Map With The Machete’s Edge: Internationalism Of The Landless

July 18, 2022 João Pedro Stedile, Resumen English. Organize! Brazil, Internationalism, Latin America, Worker Rights and Jobs

For the Landless Rural Workers Movement of Brazil (MST), the dialectic between nationalism and internationalism occurred in a peculiar way: we acknowledged receipt of the influences of internationalism, of the historical experiences of the working class and peasants of the world, just when we were just beginning to stammer out the construction of our organization. We already had experience in the struggle for land, but it took us two or three years to form ourselves as a movement, to build a program, to elaborate a doctrine, and above all to build the organizational principles that govern us to this day. By studying these principles, by taking a look at the organizations that preceded us, whether in Brazil or internationally, we realized that internationalism should not be one activity among many, but a guiding principle.

How Educators In Brookline, Massachusetts, Won An Illegal Strike

July 16, 2022 Maggie Canniff, Labor Notes. Organize! Education, Massachusetts, Strike, Teachers

Brookline, Massachusetts - Striking has been illegal for public employees in Massachusetts since 1919. But in Brookline, a small suburb of Boston, we did it anyway. Out of a membership of 1,100, more than 900 signed in on the picket lines May 16. The strike culminated with a thousand educators descending on town hall for a rally with allies from around the state. Our bargaining team negotiated into the early hours of the next morning. When the sun rose, we had won two back-to-back three-year contracts with guaranteed prep periods for all educators, a fair pay raise including important changes to longevity structures, and language aimed at attracting and retaining a more diverse workforce. In short, we won all our demands with minimal compromise. Perhaps more important, we ended a cycle of disrespect and showed that we are willing to take collective action.

Militant Trade Unionism Makes A Comeback In The UK

July 13, 2022 People's Dispatch. Organize! Unions, United Kingdom (UK), Worker Rights and Jobs

200,000 workers, trade unionists, progressive activists and more gathered at the Durham Miners’ Gala on July 9 after a two year hiatus due to COVID-19 regulations. The festival organized by Durham Miners’ Association featured speakers such as Mick Lynch from the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), Sharon Graham of Unite, Jo Grady from University and Colleges Union (UCU), Patrick Roach from teachers’ union NASUWT, and Yvette Williams from Justice4Grenfell. This year’s Gala was dedicated to all essential workers who risked their lives to keep society running during the COVID-19 pandemic. To honor those workers, Holly Johnston, a nurse and member of the GMB trade union and Rohan Kon, a postal worker and member of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) were invited to address the event.

A Roadmap For High-Trust Communities

July 12, 2022 Richard D. Bartlett, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Organize! Communities, Trust

Fabian mentioned Enspiral. So that's where I wanted to start my story, is this really high-trust community. And that word community is really overused, maybe, or is overloaded with different definitions. So, for me, my experience of the Enspiral community is what I have in mind when I talk about community, it's within that group. I found people that I can call up and say, "Hey, I need to borrow $1,000 'cause my car has exploded." And they say, "Sure." You know, that sort of like instantaneous, no questions asked, "I'm here to support you in a practical way.". I also found people who were willing to go along with my weird ideas, and collaborate, and test out until we find out, "Yes, we do have a business here. Yes, we're going to have a startup and I've got my co-founders ready to roll."

Inflation And Your Next Union Contract

July 10, 2022 Samir Sonti, Select. Organize! Finance and the Economy, Inflation, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

We can’t predict what is to come, but the evidence from the past year hasn’t been good for workers. The Consumer Price Index rose by more than 8 percent, its fastest pace in 40 years. Essential expenses like housing, food, and gas have climbed especially fast. Despite all the talk of labor shortages and a tight job market, wages have not kept pace with the cost of living. Since April 2021, inflation-adjusted hourly earnings have fallen by more than 2 percent. Any stimulus savings that people had accrued have largely dried up by now, and there is currently no plan for federal relief for working people facing the affordability crisis posed by historic inflation rates.

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