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Organize!

organize-iconWhether 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.

Organizers Battled To Block A Police Training Academy

May 27, 2021 Pascal Sabino, Block Club Chicago. , ,
The organizing toolkit released Monday is an archive of the No Cop Academy campaign from 2017 to 2019, protesting a $95 million police training facility in West Garfield Park. The materials document the tactics activists used to build a powerful coalition demanding that City Hall invest in schools, mental health clinics and social services rather than pouring more money into Chicago Police.

Youth Launch ‘Stronger Campaign’ For UN Biodiversity Day

May 25, 2021 Alison Kentish, Inter Press Service News Agency. , , ,
International Day for Biological Diversity is observed on May 22 under the theme ‘we’re part of the solution.’ A network of youth groups is informing policymakers that young people are tired of the same old rhetoric and platitudes.

Tribune Publishing Shareholders Let Everyone Down

May 23, 2021 Jon Schleuss, The Newsguild. , , ,
Thousands of NewsGuild-CWA members, myself included, were upset by Tribune Publishing’s announcement today that shareholders approved the company’s takeover by Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund known as “the destroyer of newspapers.” There were several hours of confusion after Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of 24% of Tribune shares, announced that he had abstained from voting. A marked “Abstain” vote, according to the proxy proposal, would serve as a rejection of Alden’s attempted takeover. However, several reports indicated Dr. Soon-Shiong submitted a blank proxy card, allowing his shares to count as favoring the takeover. I’ve reached out to Tribune Publishing and people close to Dr. Soon-Shiong for clarification. Tribune replied linking to a report by the Chicago Tribune as providing the best clarification.

A Day Of Action: Educators Pledge To Teach The Truth, June 12

May 21, 2021 Zinned Project. , , ,
Lawmakers in at least 15 states are attempting to pass legislation that would require teachers to lie to students about the role of racism, sexism, heterosexism, and oppression throughout U.S. history.

Activists Push For Charges To Be Dropped Against Demonstrators For Black Lives

May 18, 2021 Ella Fassler, Truthout. ,
At a press conference last month, members of the coalition stood in front of Travis County District Court in Austin with banners highlighting her case and calling for the dropping of charges against defendants criminalized during the uprisings across the country. The coalition formally presented a petition with over 2,000 signatures demanding that Travis County District Attorney José Garza drop the charges against people who protested for Black lives in Austin last year.

American And Palestinian Unionists Build International Solidarity

May 15, 2021 Jeff Schuhrke, In These Times. , ,
Abdel-Al — who lives in occupied East Jerusalem — is visiting Chicago this week at the invitation of the United Electrical Workers (UE), the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, and Jewish Voice for Peace to enlist the support of the U.S. labor movement in the Palestinian liberation struggle. He addressed standing-room-only audiences of rank-and-file unionists at last weekend’s Labor Notes conference and again on Tuesday night at the local UE Hall. A machine repair technician by trade, Abdel-Al has been a union activist for three decades. He tells In These Times that throughout their history, Palestinian trade unions have always waged a ​“two-part” battle. ​“We represent workers in the class struggle for socioeconomic rights, but also in the national, political struggle for freedom and independence,” he says...

The ‘Zapatista Invasion’ Has Begun!

May 13, 2021 Jérôme Baschet, ROAR Magazine. , , ,
It was a genuine surprise when the Zapatistas published their communiqué “A Mountain on the High Seas” on October 5, 2020, announcing a tour of the EZLN (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional) across five continents, starting with Europe. Even though the Zapatistas have not shied away from organizing initiatives in Chiapas and across Mexico — the March of the Color of the Earth just 20 years ago is a case in point — it is basically the first time since 1994 that they are leaving the borders of their homeland behind. Then, on January 1 of this year, they published a Declaration for Life, co-signed with hundreds of individuals, collectives and organizations, outlining the objective of this voyage: making a contribution to the effort for anti-capitalist struggles — which are inseparable from the struggles for life — to converge in full consciousness of their differences and unhampered by homogenizing or hegemonizing forces.

Squad And Company Must Unite As A Bloc To Downsize Biden’s Military Budget

May 6, 2021 Medea Benjamin and Marcy Winograd, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Imagine this scenario:  A month before the vote on the federal budget, progressives in Congress declared, “We’ve studied President Biden’s proposed $753 billion military budget, an increase of $13 billion from Trump’s already inflated budget, and we can’t, in good conscience, support this.” Now that would be a show stopper, particularly if they added, “So we have decided to stand united, arm in arm, as a block of NO votes on any federal budget resolution that fails to reduce military spending by 10-30 percent. We stand united against a federal budget resolution that includes upwards of $30 billion for new nuclear weapons slated to ultimately cost nearly $2 trillion. We stand united in demanding the $50 billion earmarked to maintain all 800 overseas bases, including the new one under construction in Henoko, Okinawa, be reduced by a third because it’s time we scaled back on plans for global domination.”

‘Golden Rule’ Peace Boat Sets Sail From Hawaii

May 2, 2021 Golden Rule, Popular Resistance. , , ,
After 21 months in the Hawaiian Islands, the historic anti-nuclear sailboat Golden Rule will depart from Honolulu, Hawai’i for the West Coast of the U.S.   The Golden Rule first sailed from California to Hawai’i 63 years ago, in 1958, on her way to interfere with U.S. atmospheric nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, the site of 67 U.S. nuclear bomb blasts from 1952 to 1958.  Under orders from the Atomic Energy Commission, U.S. Coast Guard stopped the boat from leaving Honolulu. The arrest and jailing of the captain and 1958 crew garnered international media attention and increased opposition to nuclear testing and nuclear weapons.  Atmospheric nuclear testing was stopped by the U.S., the UK and the Soviet Union in 1963 with the signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty. 

Making International Workers’ Day A Day Of Action Against Imperialism

April 30, 2021 the Black Alliance for Peace, Popular Resistance. , , ,
War, repression, and imperialism characterize the objective plight of billions of humans still gripped by the vicious colonial-capitalist world system. May 1 is the day laboring classes claim for themselves as International Workers' Day to reaffirm the struggle against the dehumanization and degradation of the global capitalist order kept in place by state violence and war. May 1 also is the deadline the United States agreed to last year to pull out of Afghanistan to end the suffering of that nation of workers and peasants. It also is the day the workers and poor of Haiti have chosen to revolt against the puppet government imposed on them by the Biden-Harris administration, a duo that has proven in its first 100 days its commitment to Black life does not extend beyond domestic public-relations stunts.

The Variable Relationships Between Worker Centers And Unions

April 29, 2021 Steven Greenhouse, The American Prospect. , , ,
Like many immigrant workers, Pascual Tapia, a late-night janitor at a Target store in Minneapolis, was a victim of wage theft. He often worked 56 hours a week, but he was hardly ever paid time and a half for overtime. And like many immigrant workers in the Twin Cities, he turned to a highly regarded worker center for help: CTUL, the Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha (the Center of United Workers in Struggle). Tapia was delighted when CTUL won over $1,000 in back pay for him as part of the more than $1 million in settlements it won from cleaning contractors for Target and other big-box stores. But Tapia, CTUL, and many other Twin Cities janitors agreed that winning back pay wasn’t enough: The janitors wanted to end systemic wage theft, and beyond that, they wanted to somehow become union members.

Staten Island Amazon Workers Begin Union Drive

April 26, 2021 Candice Bernd, Truthout. , , ,
In some ways, Amazon workers’ more than yearlong struggle for adequate COVID-19 protections and against corporate retaliation at the company’s Staten Island facility in New York City helped pave the way for this month’s unionization attempt at the Bessemer, Alabama, warehouse. Now, as the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU) seeks a second election through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), filing official objections Friday charging Amazon with engaging in illegal interference to defeat the union, Staten Island “JFK8” warehouse workers with The Congress of Essential Workers (TCOEW) tell Truthout they aren’t deterred by the outcome. Rather, their on-the-ground experiences in Alabama, where the unionization effort gained national attention but ultimately failed...

Worker Centers: Where Causes Cohere, And Forge Power

April 22, 2021 Sarah Jaffe, The American Prospect. , , ,
In October 2020, on what Amazon calls “Prime Day,” Fadumo Mohamed and her co-workers at an Amazon fulfillment center outside Minneapolis stood in the whipping wind alongside a handmade banner that read “Amazon: Hear Our Voice.” As the wind howled, Mohamed, bundled in hijab, a face mask, a long black skirt, and track jacket, approached a microphone and shouted to be heard over the storm, “We are human, we are not robots! We have to speak up! We have a voice! We are risking our health!” In February, Mohamed’s two-and-a-half-year-old son took sick, and she had to take him to the hospital for emergency surgery. She’s a single mother, an immigrant with no family in the area—so caring for her son was all on her.

Building Workplace Power In The Communities

April 21, 2021 Matthew Cunningham-Cook, The American Prospect. , ,
As organized labor grapples with the consequences of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union’s landslide defeat at the Amazon mega-warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, one potential direction for the labor movement lies in the types of power- and base-building activities of Black worker centers. That African American workers need to amass the power to better their conditions is beyond dispute. The American working class is in serious trouble, and Black workers most particularly. The median net wealth of Black families is just $24,100 (lower than any other racial group in America today), while that of white families stands at $188,200. Ongoing institutional and systemic racial discrimination against Black workers persists in housing, health care, education, and employment.

There Is No Substitute For The Rank And File

April 18, 2021 Tatiana Cozzarelli, Left Voice. , , ,
The Bessemer Amazon unionization effort was full of potential. It held the promise of a union bringing together the Black Lives Matter movement and a struggle for labor rights in order to take on one of the biggest, most odious corporations in the country. Maybe a Southern state would set off a movement again, like West Virginia and Oklahoma kicked off the teachers’ spring.  Alongside Left Voice comrades, I decided to go to Bessemer, Alabama the week before voting ended. As I prepared to go, I had a weird feeling. I kept looking at interviews and I saw just two Amazon workers, over and over and over. They were great spokespeople, no doubt. But where were the other 5,698 workers? 
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