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.

Workers Insist The $15 Minimum Wage Fight Isn’t Over

March 15, 2021 Joe Maniscalco, DC Report. Organize! Congress, Democrats, Joe Biden, Minimum Wage

Women comprise the overwhelming majority of frontline workers who risk their lives and the lives of their families during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. But the Democrats who they helped retake the White House and the Senate don’t seem so interested in rewarding that support. The proposal to set a $15 an hour minimum wage by 2025 in President Joe Biden’s signature $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan could have helped lift some 74 million poor and low-income women out of poverty, according to the Poor People’s Campaign. But eight Senate Democrats opposed the measure. Team Biden also declined to challenge arcane and non-binding parliamentary procedures, supposedly prohibiting a $15 minimum wage in the coronavirus relief package.

Julian Assange’s Father Takes Fight To Free His Son To Canberra

March 14, 2021 Hannah Sparks, The Riot Act. Organize! Australia, Extradition, Julian Assange, Press Freedom

John Shipton, the father of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is currently in custody in London pending a High Court appeal, will protest outside Parliament House with supporters from 8:00 am on Monday, 15 March. Mr Shipton is also due to speak at the Australian National University on Sunday night with former Deputy Chief Minister and lawyer Bernard Collaery. Mr Collaery is on trial for allegedly unlawfully sharing protected information about an Australian spy operation that bugged allies in the Timor-Leste Government in 2004 when Australia was negotiating for oil and gas resources in the Timor Sea. The whistleblower, David McBride, will also speak on Sunday night. Mr Shipton is calling on the Australian Government to bring Mr Assange, 49, back to Australia.

The Southern Tenant Union Playbook

March 13, 2021 Sam Russek, Scalawag Magazine. Organize! Evictions, Housing, Recession, Tenants

Despite an eviction moratorium that was intended to keep people housed during the pandemic, landlords filed more than 95,000 evictions in just eight major cities across the South last year. With the passing of the most recent stimulus bill, Senate Democrats approved more than $45 billion in rental and mortgage assistance, but it won't be enough to stave off what housing advocates call the "tsunami of evictions" still to come. But the fight to keep people housed didn't begin when the country shut down, and it won't end when people can safely dine in restaurants. The solution to the current crisis requires novel tactics just as much as it builds on old ones, tenants' unions and advocacy groups say—particularly in the South.

Support Keeps Building For #BAmazon Union Drive

March 8, 2021 Martha Grevatt, Workers.org. Organize! Alabama, Amazon, Labor Union, Worker Rights

Some three dozen organizations loaned their names to a letter urging President Joe Biden to come out on the side of the Amazon workers fighting for a union. Biden had angered unionists and progressives for publicly taking a “neutral” stance on the representation election taking place now through March 29. Signers included UNITE HERE and Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA) unions, Maine AFL-CIO, the National Employment Law Project and the Working Families Party. Feeling the pressure, on Feb. 28 Biden came out against Amazon’s union busting, affirming the right of every worker to choose union representation. Solidarity has been growing since the Feb. 20 National Day of Solidarity. Renowned actor and activist Danny Glover stood outside the Bessemer facility Feb. 22, holding a sign that read “Remember Mail Your Yes Ballot.”

Revolutionary Workers Mount Election Campaign In Chile

March 8, 2021 Left Voice. Organize! Chile, Constitution, Elections, Left Politics

On April 11, Chile will elect a convention to write a new constitution, which will replace the constitution of 1980, written by the far-right dictator Augusto Pinochet. Left Voice spoke with two candidates running to join the Constitutional Convention, Joseffe Cáceres and Daniel Vargas, both from the Revolutionary Workers’ Party (PTR). Joseffe Cáceres is a leader of the union of cleaning workers at the Metropolitan University of Educational Sciences near Santiago. She is a member of the national leadership of the PTR and a spokesperson of the women’s group Pan y Rosas (Bread and Roses). She is a candidate in one of the districts on the periphery of Santiago made up of slums. She is 33 years old and a mother. She joined the PTR when she was a young hip-hop activist. Daniel Vargas is a lawyer who, during Chile’s October 2019 rebellion, became well known for defending people who had been arrested.

Jackson Water Crisis: Collective Effort Is Critical To Community Sustainability

March 7, 2021 Anoa Changa, News One. Organize! Mississippi, Mutual Aid, Systemic Racism, Water

While the Mississippi city of Jackson works to fully restore water, various community organizations have been filling in the gaps with relief. Mutual aid is a new term for some, but providing it is an old practice in many Black communities. “As a southern Black girl, who grew up in rural Mississippi, mutual aid has always existed in my life,” Calandra Davis, an organizer with the Jackson chapter of Black Youth Project 100 (BYP 100), told NewsOne. Davis said community institutions have always provided aid in times of need. “The churches [and families] in my community always provided mutual aid,” she added. Providing support to communities in Jackson and across the state, the Mississippi Rapid Response & Relief Coalition is a statewide coalition, including rural partners. Member organizations include the Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign, the People’s Advocacy Institute, the Milestone Cooperative, Mississippi M.O.V.E., Mississippi Prison Reform Coalition, BYP 100 and Sarah’s Touch.

US Journalists Form Unions To Survive ‘Hedge Fund Vampires’ And COVID-19

March 4, 2021 Billy Anania, Shadowproof. Organize! Corporatism, Journalism, Labor Unions, Media

Many of these unions have sought representation from the NewsGuild, a branch of the Communications Workers of America (CWA). They include editorial staff, who recognize the shared working conditions of an industry in crisis. By forming regional guilds, workers are able to form a network separate from their publications’ overly corporate culture, allowing them to establish shared demands and speak candidly about dwindling job opportunities, racist hiring practices, shrinking newsrooms, and scarcity myths promoted by fat-cat executives. Much of this activity is unreported at the national level, but workers have publicized their actions on social media. Members of the New Yorker Union, for example, have detailed their negotiations with Condé Nast since their January 21 work stoppage. Management has been slow to propose methods of achieving a better work-life balance, and weeks of bargaining sessions have become public record on Twitter.

Educators’ Safety Struggle Rekindles Collective Workplace Action

March 4, 2021 James Kerr, Labor Notes. Organize! COVID-19, Teachers, United Kingdom (UK), Worker Rights

United Kingdom - Former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson famously said that “a week is a long time in politics.” In early January, even a week was too long, as current Prime Minister Boris Johnson performed a dramatic 24-hour U-turn on the question of schools reopening after the Christmas break. On Sunday, January 3, Johnson told journalists “there is no doubt in my mind that schools are safe,” part of a media campaign to get schools open and people back to work. But by the next day, he described those same schools as “vectors of transmission” for Covid. He included their closure in the nationwide lockdown, except for the children of key workers (the British term for essential workers) and those designated “vulnerable.” What spurred this sudden conversion? Had Johnson finally seen sense and prioritized lives over the profits of corporations? Were the nearly 100,000 Covid deaths in the United Kingdom playing on his mind?

Amazon Workers: ‘Everyone In The Community Is Cheering Us On’

March 3, 2021 Steven Greenhouse, The American Prospect. Organize! Alabama, Amazon, Labor Unions, Worker Rights

As lead organizer in the potentially historic effort to unionize 5,800 Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, Josh Brewer heads a small army of organizers for the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. Brewer recognizes that it’s a high-stakes campaign—it’s the first time a union has sought to unionize all the workers at an Amazon warehouse in the United States. Bessemer, a suburb of Birmingham, was once a thriving union community, with steel mills, coal mines, and a Pullman railcar factory. Brewer, 33, is an ordained minister who gravitated from the pulpit to union organizing because he saw it as a more effective way to lift struggling Americans. The National Labor Relations Board mailed out the unionization ballots on February 8; they are due on March 29, and only then will the ballots be counted.

It’s Time To Make Large Corporations Pay Living Wages

February 28, 2021 Phil Mattera, DC Report. Organize! Amazon, Minimum Wage, Walmart, Worker Rights

Landing a job in the ’80s with a large corporation was, even for blue-collar workers, a ticket to good wages, generous benefits and a secure retirement. Women and workers of color did not share fully in this bounty, but they generally did better at big firms than small ones. All this began to unravel in the 1980s. Big business used the excuse of global competition to chip away at the living standards of the domestic workforce. Assault on unions, which were key in bringing about job improvements, proliferated. Meatpacking, for instance, what had been high wage and high-density union, turned into a bastion of precarious labor.

Honduras: Solidarity Needed As More Activists Are Killed

February 28, 2021 Christine Blower, Labour Outlook. Organize! Honduras, Indigenous Activist, State Violence, US Regime Change

Two Indigenous activists were murdered in Honduras during December in less than a week, confirming the country as amongst the deadliest in the world for those opposing land grabs and environmental destruction. The killing of Tolupan Indigenous leader Adan Mejia took place three days after the murder of Lenca farmer leader Felix Vazquez. They join a death toll of over a hundred Indigenous people murdered in the past decade defending their lands against illegal exploitation through dams, mining, logging and agribusiness. An ongoing international campaign is also demanding answers from the Honduran authorities about the July 2020 kidnapping in the Caribbean coastal town of Tela, of four members of OFRANEH, the Afro-Indigenous Garifuna Peoples’ organisation of Honduras, by heavily armed gunmen wearing national police uniforms and badges.

We Who Believe In Freedom Cannot Rest Until It Comes

February 26, 2021 Anoa Changa, Scalawag Magazine. Organize! Failed State, Joe Biden, Mutual Aid, Southern Movement Assembly

As winter storms rocked Texas and others across the South last week, Southern organizers waited for no one to do what they do best: stepping up to make it happen. Volunteers signed up to phonebank for wellness checks, and mutual aid networks continue to expand their capacity to intervene where policy has failed. The government failures may continue to pile up while Southern communities are left to resolve multiple crises on their own, but people are building collective power across the South—people committed to making sure our communities not only survive, but thrive. Mutual aid—along with regional action and local policy change—is just one of the tactics central to the People's First 100 Days, a regional organizing campaign to grow Southern movement power.

Build New Infrastructure For A Broader Movement

February 25, 2021 Jeff Ordower, Organizing Upgrade. Organize! Direct Action, Gig Workers, Labor Unions, Worker Rights

The huge upswing in worker organizing in 2020 often had union support, but with an experimental twist. Over the first few months of the COVID-19 epidemic, workers from bridal shops to pizza places to supermarkets were organizing to get Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), and winning. They used tools like the coworker.org site, which helps anyone start up a petition in their workplace and make demands. Groups like the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC), a project of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the United Electrical Workers Union (UE) supported those workers taking independent action. EWOC provides a sophisticated intake system combined with veteran labor movement coaches to support workers winning their demands.

Higher Education Workers Are Organizing For Their Own Safety

February 22, 2021 Brian Wakamo, Inequality.org. Organize! COVID-19, Higher Education, PPE, Worker Rights

President Biden included $35 billion in funding for higher education in his American Rescue Plan. If this aid makes it into the final Covid relief law, college and university employees across the country will no doubt applaud. The pandemic has hit this sector hard. Around 260,100 university employees (14.6 percent of the total workforce) have lost their jobs since February 2020. Staff also make up most of the Covid-19 deaths on college campuses. But while federal funding is welcome, it is no guarantee of equitable treatment for higher education workers. Economic disparities and unsafe working conditions are motivating staff on a growing number of college campuses to build power through union organizing. One of the most ambitious university organizing efforts is taking place in Arizona. Late last year, staff at two schools — the University of Arizona and Arizona State University — formed United Campus Workers Arizona Local 7065, a “wall-to-wall” union representing all of the schools’ employees.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

assetto corsa mods

Daily movement news and resources