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.

Capitol Hill Staffers Are Organizing Unions

February 10, 2022 Chris Cioffi and Jim Saksa, Portside. Organize! Capitol Hill, Congress, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Inspired by an anonymous Instagram account and disgusted by bad pay and worse bosses, congressional staffers have begun the uncertain journey toward unionizing. Organizers of the nascent Congressional Workers Union described their long-running efforts and future plans to organize one of the nation’s most idiosyncratic workplaces to CQ Roll Call on Monday. Just what their struggles will produce remains to be seen — much will depend on how members of Congress, their fellow staffers and an obscure legislative branch office respond. The CWU announced its campaign to unionize lawmaker offices and committees on Friday, but the organizers said they had been planning for more than a year. The initial talks began before Jan. 6, 2021, but the attack on the Capitol changed the tone.

Mexican GM Workers Vote In An Independent Union

February 6, 2022 Dan DiMaggio And Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. Organize! General Motors, Mexico, Unions, Victory, Worker Rights and Jobs

Auto workers at a General Motors plant in central Mexico delivered a landslide victory to an independent union in a vote held February 1-2. It's a major breakthrough for workers and labor activists seeking to break the vice grip of the employer-friendly unions that have long dominated Mexico’s labor movement.

A ‘Gen U’ Of Starbucks Baristas Is Powering A Growing Push To Unionize

February 2, 2022 Kate Rogers And Amelia Lucas, CNBC. Organize! Starbucks, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs, Youth Activism

After notching a first win late last year, two Starbucks company-owned stores have formally organized after a December vote and hearing before the National Labor Relations Board. To date, more than 30 company-owned stores from Massachusetts to Tennessee and Arizona have filed for union elections at Starbucks, according to a CNBC analysis of NLRB filings. An industry-wide labor crunch and the high-profile union push from Starbucks workers could mean more chains see their employees follow suit. “I do think, right now, this is the canary in the coal mine for the union and for the industry,” said MKM Partners analyst Brett Levy. The petitions to organize have come faster than even those involved first believed possible, according to Richard Bensinger, union organizer with Starbucks Workers United and a former organizing director of the AFL-CIO.

Another California Minimum Wage Earthquake?

February 1, 2022 Martin Bennett, Beyond Chron. Organize! California, Finance and the Economy, Minimum Wage, Worker Rights and Jobs

California is the epicenter for a nationwide grassroots movement to raise the wage floor for American workers. On January 1st, the state set $15 an hour as the floor for large employers and $14 an hour for small ones (rising to $15 for all in 2023). Meanwhile, thirty-nine California cities and counties have established higher rates, with Emeryville the highest at $17.13 an hour and most well above $15. The Fight for Fifteen movement has reshaped public opinion, pushing local and state officials around the country to approve a $15 per hour minimum wage. Eleven states and fifty-four cities and counties have $15 minimum wage floors, according to the National Employment Law Project (NELP), and four in ten workers live in states on the pathway to a $15 minimum wage.

The Life Of Clyde Bellecourt (1936–2022)

January 29, 2022 Nick Estes, Portside. Organize! Activism, American Indian Movement, Indigenous Peoples Movement, Indigenous Rights

I had short hair the first time I met Clyde Bellecourt. It was Native American Heritage Month in 2005. Native students had invited him and fellow members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) to the University of South Dakota after police plastered posters on campus depicting a poorly drawn “Native American male” who had allegedly attacked a woman. The description was vague enough to implicate just about anyone; several students and university workers were called in for questioning. The posters were vulgar because of their bluntness: they appeared to confirm the worst stereotypes of savage Indians attacking innocent women. So AIM called a press conference. They brought in the big drum.

Mexican Auto Workers To Choose New Union In Landmark Vote

January 29, 2022 Luis Feliz Leon And Dan Dimaggio, Labor Notes. Organize! General Motors, Mexico, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Workers at a massive General Motors plant in central Mexico will vote in a landmark election next week to decide which union will represent the plant’s 6,500 workers. A victory by the independent union there would be a big step toward breaking the stranglehold of the employer-friendly unions that have long dominated Mexico’s labor scene. Employees at the factory in Silao, Guanajuato, voted last August to invalidate the contract bargained by a corrupt local of the Confederation of Mexican Labor (CTM), ending the CTM’s right to represent the workers there. Four unions are now competing to represent them. Two have ties to the CTM; activists suspect a third union, about which little is known, was created to sow confusion.

Indigenous Farmworkers Hold The Key To Healing Our Burning Planet

January 27, 2022 Brooke Anderson, In These Times. Organize! climate crisis, Environment, Farmworkers, Worker Rights and Jobs

Anayeli Guzman was born into a Mixtec-speaking Indigenous community in San Miguel Chicahua in Oaxaca, Mexico. Her family raised chickens on their land, and as a child she would help plant corn, squash and radishes. They ate handmade tortillas with beans, eggs and salsa. Her grandparents taught her to care for the land and to revere the rain. Few people worked for wages. Rather, families owned small plots and grew seasonal, drought-resistant crops, exchanged produce with nearby communities and helped each other with big projects. After migrating to the United States to be with her husband, Anayeli (along with 11,000 other, mostly Indigenous, immigrant farmworkers) toils for meager wages in the $1.9 billion wine industry of Sonoma County, Calif. In the past several years, record-breaking wildfires have ravaged the area, often during harvest season.

Let Us Turn Our Anger At Biden Into Organization

January 25, 2022 Ezra Brain, Left Voice. Organize! Biden administration, Education, Joe Biden, Student Debt

We should take the examples of the Biden administration reversing course on unpopular decisions — refusing to extend the student loan moratorium, refusing to send masks, etc — as but a taste of the power we could have if we used our rage to get organized. Biden and his cronies are far more scared of our power as workers than they are of our tweets. So, what concessions have been given, have been given to stave off the birth of a social movement that could win a lot more.

Alabama Amazon Workers Are About To Rerun Their Union Election

January 24, 2022 Alex N. Press, Jacobin. Organize! Alabama, Amazon, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

It’s a moment of increased bargaining power for the US working class. Workers on the order of millions are quitting their jobs and finding new ones that will pay them better. Those with unions are more willing to fight to begin undoing prior concessions, their confidence bolstered by the realization that employers will have more trouble than usual replacing them should they strike; that these fights do not approach the level of struggle of the 1970s, much less the 1930s, do not make them insignificant. And the momentum is with reformers within unions: see recent efforts to transform the United Auto Workers and the Teamsters, two still mighty organizations even after sustained and systematic decline.

WAMM Still Saying ‘No To War’ – 40th Anniversary Celebration

January 23, 2022 Kim Defranco, Fight Back News. Organize! Anti-War, Minnesota, Wars and Militarism

Minneapolis, MN - Women Against Military Madness (WAMM) is still saying “No to war” as the group celebrates 40 years of organizing and fighting back. On January 16, 2022, people gathered on the spot where WAMM held its first demonstration in 1982. They stuck signs in the snowbanks and fences, and their chants were heard for blocks around, “Money for jobs and education, not for war and occupation!” “Coups and sanctions cost lives, we don’t believe the media lies!” Back in January 1982, more than 100 women attended the WAMM’s founding conference where they decided, “No meeting without action!” Kristin Dooley, WAMM’s director, described the first-ever march, “They braved the ungodly cold weather to walk along University Avenue near the University of Minnesota.”

Strengthening Intergenerational Work On Israel-Palestine

January 22, 2022 Andrew Gordon-Kirsch And Cherie Brown , Waging Nonviolence. Organize! Activism, Israel, Multigenerational, Palestine

As trainers, coaches and activists on Israel-Palestine issues, we have found ourselves in the middle of many heated intergenerational arguments. Disagreements can range from campaign tactics to who is most to blame for the continuing conflict. Cherie recalls a time shortly after the 2014 Israel-Gaza war, when a young Jewish woman screamed at her during a training session. “Why isn’t your generation outraged about what is being done by Israel to Palestinians? Why aren’t you with us in the streets?” she said. Cherie thought for a long time afterwards about what she asked of her. As a young adult, Cherie was in the streets to protest the Vietnam War. She has certainly fought hard for decades to end the occupation.

Newsrooms Are Unionizing Pretty Much ‘Nonstop’

January 20, 2022 Steven Greenhouse, Portside. Organize! Journalism, Monopolization, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Mike Kelly has worked at The Record for 46 years, and until Gannett acquired the New Jersey newspaper in 2016, he saw little need for a union. But that changed once Gannett arrived. Kelly, a columnist for The Record, says Gannett chopped the newsroom’s staff from 190 in 2016 to 100 today and fired many of his fellow journalists in demeaning, callous ways. “Our nationally known baseball writer was fired just eight hours after the last out of the World Series,” Kelly says. “One of our best investigative reporters — a Pulitzer finalist who was one of the first to expose Trump’s questionable deals in the New Jersey Meadowlands — was given just a few hours to clear out of the building.”

After Sale, Valley Proteins Workers Continue Fight For Workplace Justice

January 18, 2022 Lewis Kendall, Facing South. Organize! Food and Agriculture, Labor Unions, Virginia, Worker Rights and Jobs

Valley Proteins, the Virginia-based rendering company at the center of an ongoing union organizing effort and a large class action lawsuit over alleged wage theft, has been sold. On Dec. 28, sustainable food processing multinational Darling Ingredients, headquartered in Texas, announced it was acquiring the privately owned Valley Proteins in a $1.1 billion deal. But current and former Valley Proteins employees are fighting to ensure that the sale doesn't provide cover for a company they say has long fostered a toxic and abusive work environment that has led to exploitative, unsafe conditions across its plants — a point driven home by the deaths of two workers over the summer.

Image Comics Workers Have Officially Certified Their Groundbreaking Union

January 8, 2022 James Whitbrook, Gizmodo. Organize! Comics, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

After formally announcing the formation of Comic Book Workers United late last year—the first specific union to support workers within comics publishing—workers at Image Comics have voted to officially certify their union in the results of a secret ballot. The vote’s results—7-2 in favor of organizing—were announced today in a move that officially certifies CBWU, which was formed with assistance from the Communications Workers of America. The successful vote entitles CBWU to recognition from Image Comics, which would allow the union to establish a bargaining committee and begin negotiating a contract for its members.

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