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.

The Time To Prohibit Nuclear Weapons Is Now

October 8, 2021 Joyce Nelson, Rabble.ca. Organize! AUKUS, NATO, Nuclear Ban Treaty, Nuclear Weapons

Dr. Helen Caldicott, who has spent decades working for a nuclear weapons-free world, recently wrote a blunt op-ed with an unforgettable headline: “With All Its Wisdom, the Human Race Is Killing Itself.” Decrying the arms industry and the nine countries that now own nuclear weapons, Caldicott points to the one trillion dollars per year that the U.S. spends on “national defense,” and states that if we can’t learn to live in peace, we are doomed. At least 56 nations (“state parties”) have come to the same conclusion and have now signed the new UN Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which came into force in January 2021. Even though the Trudeau government claims it is committed to disarmament, it refuses to sign the treaty, citing its NATO membership (NATO opposes the treaty).

A New Deal For Eds And Meds

October 6, 2021 Ian Gavigan and Jennifer Mittelstadt, Dissent Magazine. Organize! COVID-19, Health Care, Higher Education, Worker Rights

Now, organizers who have built power at the local level are beginning to unite nationally. Earlier in the pandemic, higher education workers had to struggle for survival mostly on their own. The battles, even when successful, took place in isolation; each group of workers in each separate institution, system, or state focused on its own specific setting, even though the problems are national phenomena demanding national solutions. In recent months, organizers have shifted their attention. They recognize that to reconstruct higher education as a public good—one that converts adjunct, outsourced, part-time, and precarious jobs into full-time, well-paid, dignified, stable positions at scale; one that ends the student and institutional debt crises; and one that rebuilds in the interests of students, workers, and communities—they must fight and win at a national scale.

Massachusetts Activists Are Changing The Conversation On Israel

October 6, 2021 Michael Arria , Mondoweiss. Organize! Israel, Massachusetts, Military Aid, Palestine

Rep. Betty McCollum’s (D-MN) historic Palestinian Children & Families Act still lacks a companion bill in the Senate. At a recent event local JVP Action leader named Jill urged Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to introduce the legislation. Here’s her question: I am Jewish and, like you, I am passionate about justice for all. You probably know that the U.S. government sends about $3.8 billion a year in military funding to the Israeli government. Massachusetts sends $1.3 million a year and Massachusetts taxpayers send Israel $352,000 a day. Some of these tax dollars are used to support Israeli oppression of Palestinians. Right now there’s a bill on congress that creates the conditions for justice and freedom for all. It’s called the Palestinian Children & Families Act, H.R. 2590. It works to ensure that U.S. taxpayer funds are not used by the Israeli government to imprison Palestinian children in a military detention system, which they do at the tune of 700 kids a year. It makes sure that they money we send is not used to forcibly displace Palestinian from their homes. 1,000 families have been displaced this year.

Left Labor Project, New York City Closing Statement

October 6, 2021 Left Labor Project, Portside. Organize! Labor Movement, New York City (NYC), Socialism, Worker Rights and Jobs

Left Labor Project was formed in 2008 by activists in New York City unions, with the goal of influencing the broad labor movement to the left. It brought together folks who had been deeply involved in labor, and other social movements as well. It was socialist, but inclusive of people from different groups and tendencies on the left. It was diverse, and included members of a variety of unions. No unions had official affiliation to LLP, however. There were several features of LLP that distinguished it on the left and in the labor movement. It was mostly older activists, at a time before Occupy and the second coming of DSA as a predominantly under-40 group, but it sought to expand broadly via phone outreach and email. And it was a deliberate attempt to bring together members of socialist groups which have historically run on parallel, but not convergent paths.

On Rituals And Revolutions In The Mines Of Bolivia

October 5, 2021 Ben Dangl, ROAR Magazine. Organize! Bolivia, culture, Miners, Revolution

The small K’illi K’illi park sits at the top of one of the hillsides cradling the valley that is home to Bolivia’s administrative capital La Paz, providing a striking view of the city below. To the east lies Illimani, a towering, snow-covered mountain. Below and to the west is the tree-lined Plaza Murillo, home to the seat of government and the site of dozens of coups and countless protests. Across the valley, set on the sweeping plains of the altiplano, is El Alto, a booming home to millions of largely Aymara working-class people. The hills hold the rich past of this city in the clouds. Indigenous rebel Túpac Katari launched crucial assaults on Spanish-controlled colonial La Paz from K’illi K’illi during his army’s 1781 siege. After his brutal quartering by the Spanish, Katari’s head was put on display on this same hill to terrorize his followers.

Big Banks Are Funding Fossil Fuel Projects — Let’s Hold Them Accountable

September 27, 2021 Katie Eder And Shannon Carlson, Teen Vogue. Organize! Banks, Climate Change, Fossil Fuel, Youth Activism

The biggest banks are using your money to fund the climate crisis. We have seen this story before. In 2008, the recklessness of megabanks sank the global economic system. Now, in 2021, the youth climate movement is saying that we’ve had enough. We’re not going to let the banks bring down the entire planet too. On October 29, young people are occupying and shutting down banks across the globe to demand an end to fossil fuel financing and the beginning of a Fossil-Free Future, and we need you to join us. Over the past few years, the youth climate justice movement has mobilized historic numbers of people. Together, we’ve brought a new awareness to the climate emergency and inspired a generation of young people in the fight for climate justice. We called on world leaders to listen to science and frontline communities and to treat climate change as what it is: an existential threat to humanity.

Gig Workers Around The World Are Finally Organizing

September 26, 2021 Peter Guest, Rest Of World. Organize! Gig Workers, Global Solidarity, Worker Rights and Jobs

This past July, Singh was on a midnight run, biking a chocolate mousse cake 7 kilometers across Mumbai, when he was rammed by a drunk driver on a scooter from behind. He got off with a few scratches and sprains, but his bike was badly smashed up. The cost of fixing it — 14,000 rupees ($189) — is about what he takes home in a month working for Zomato, the Indian food and grocery delivery app. So for the last month, he’s been fixing it up a bit at a time whenever he can get the money together. Singh, in his 40s, speaks in long, flowing sentences peppered with literary references and fatalistic humor. He began riding for Zomato in 2020 after struggling to find work in India’s shrinking job market. “I googled ‘jobs I can find today,’” he told Rest of World.

Alabama Amazon Workers May Get Another Crack At A Union

September 25, 2021 Hamilton Nolan, In These Times. Organize! Alabama, Amazon, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Bessemer, AL — Here is what a 1920s city looks like in a 2020s world. Along Bessemer’s broad downtown streets sit an array of small shops that have somehow managed to survive into the age of big box retailers: the rug store, the dusty furniture store, the store that sells sewing machines. They sit alongside empty, peeling husks of all the stores that didn’t make it. On one prime downtown corner a block from the courthouse, you can peer through the window of an abandoned pharmacy to see a four-foot plant growing up through the floor. The old railroad still runs through Bessemer, but most everything else has been sucked out by modern commerce. The town is emblematic of many that have seen their small business districts destroyed, first by Walmart and its imitators, more recently by Amazon.

HelloFresh Workers Unionize To Improve Brutal Working Conditions

September 25, 2021 Lauren Kaori Gurley, Vice. Organize! HelloFresh, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Last year, HelloFresh, the popular food-kit delivery company that advertises technologically innovative and sustainable approaches to cooking, sold 278 million meals to Americans and doubled its U.S. revenue to $2.4 billion. But on HelloFresh's assembly lines, workers were unable to afford rent, suffered serious injuries, and were subjected to timers when they used the bathroom, according to workers interviewed by Motherboard. Now 1,300 HelloFresh workers—intent on improving dire circumstances—are unionizing two HelloFresh factory kitchens in Colorado and California. On Tuesday, UNITE HERE, the national hospitality and service industry union, filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board asking to authorize a vote by workers at the kitchen factory in Aurora, Colorado.

18 Countries Issue Call For Defense Of United Nations Charter

September 24, 2021 People's Dispatch. Organize! International Law, Solidarity, United Nations, Venezuela

The Group of Friends in Defense of the United Nations Charter held its first ministerial meeting at Venezuela’s UN Mission in New York City on Thursday, September 23 on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting. The 18-country group adopted a declaration which outlines a policy in favor of respecting the UN charter. The statement says, “The UN Charter and its purposes and principles remain timeless, universal, and that all are indispensable, not only to preserve and promote international peace and security, the rule of law, the economic development and social progress, but also human rights and to achieve a more peaceful, prosperous, just and equitable world.” The group’s members currently are Algeria, Angola, Belarus, Bolivia, Cambodia, China, North Korea, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, Laos, Nicaragua, Palestine, Russia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Syria.

Northwest Tribes Battle The Legacy Of Energy Colonization

September 24, 2021 Rae Rose, Last Real Indians. Organize! Dams, Energy, Environment, Indigenous Rights

One hundred years later, after the Treaty of Walla Walla was signed, tribes watched their sacred rivers and waterfalls being dammed one after another. The fishing wars had begun as the American government tried to take away treaty rights from Northwest tribes. Today, the fish are dying and no longer able to return home navigating through mass pollution, warming waters and massive dams that block their only way home to spawn. Spawning grounds have been built over. Many of the great forests have been clear-cut, destroying precious spawning grounds. Another broken treaty. Here, in the Northwest, short-termed thinking of American policymakers mutilated and deformed the beautiful Columbia Basin as they pursued the energy needs of the settler colonizers at the expense of Tribal communities and the environment by constructing dam after dam.

Canadian Amazon Warehouse Could Be First To Unionize In North America

September 19, 2021 Candice Bernd, Truthout. Organize! Amazon, Canada, Union Organizing, Worker Rights and Jobs

The struggle to unionize Amazon is shifting to Canada, where workers in Alberta could soon be the first to unionize an Amazon warehouse in North America. Workers at the “YEG1” facility in Nisku, Alberta, just outside Edmonton, filed for a union election on Monday, September 13. The election could be held in mere weeks, once the Alberta Labour Relations Board approves the application. Workers at the relatively new facility in Nisku, which employs between 600 to 800 Amazon “associates,” have described rampant favoritism and discrimination against marginalized workers of color and immigrants. Job security, the pace of work and wages are also among Nisku workers’ top concerns, according to Christopher Monette, director of public affairs at Teamsters Canada.

Cuba To Receive 8.7 Million Syringes From Its Residents Abroad

September 14, 2021 Telesur English. Organize! COVID-19, Cuba, Health Care, Solidarity

According to Humberto Pérez, coordinator of the Asociación Martiana de Cubanos Residentes en Panamá, organizer of the shipment, the donation is part of the campaign Rompamos el Bloqueo, in which organizations present in more than 28 Latin American, Caribbean and European countries participate. In a few days, the first of five containers will arrive from China with the aid collected to support the anti-COVID-19 vaccination, an effort supported by trade union organizations and young graduates of Cuban educational institutions. From the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) headquarters, Perez highlighted the speed and magnitude of the response obtained since the launching of this campaign last February, which allowed the arrival of eight of these loads to date.

Even Amid Give-Back Demands, Workers Can Still Safeguard Pensions

September 12, 2021 Steve Early, LA Progressive. Organize! Pensions, Resources, Retirement, Worker Rights and Jobs

In recent decades, a top management priority has been reducing the cost of retirement benefits. The pandemic and its economic fallout have generated a new round of employer demands for pension freezes, benefit cuts, plan conversions, and two-tier coverage. The Labor Guide to Retirement Plans (Monthly Review Press), a newly published book by Oregon union activist Jim Russell, shows why and how private and public sector workers should be mobilizing against such concessions. This book will be a critical resource for defending retirement security at the bargaining table and in the political arena. The Labor Guide is not only a highly readable account of retirement plan financing and administration, with a handy glossary of layperson explanations of sometimes confusing technical terms.

First Africa-CARICOM Summit

September 8, 2021 Kawsachun News. Organize! Africa, Caribbean, Foreign Relations

Hosted by Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta, and with the theme ‘Unity Across Continents and Oceans: Opportunities for Deepening Integration’, participating governments looked at ways to strengthen the linkages between the people of Africa and the Caribbean regions by addressing integration challenges across continents. Prime Minister Gaston Browne of Antigua and Barbuda, and Chair of CARICOM, proposed the establishment of a Forum of African and Caribbean Territories and States (FACTS) to be coordinated jointly by the Secretariats of CARICOM and the African Union (AU). He also proposed the designation of September 7th “Africa-CARICOM Day” in every year going forward, which would coincide with a repeat of the Africa-CARICOM summit “to analyze the global situation and our place within it; to discuss initiatives and programs; and to authorize joint actions.”

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