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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.

Building Class Power By Fighting For The Common Good

January 13, 2021 Stephanie Luce, Organizing Upgrade. , , ,
As activists orient to the post-election landscape, we’re having lots of conversations about building power for the long term. We’re taking stock of the types of power we need and how they can reinforce each other – narrative, organizing, mobilizing, and electoral power, to name a few. And despite the decline in union membership and strength, workers’ collective bargaining power also offers a means of making gains for broader communities. “Bargaining for the Common Good” (BCG) makes this real. Unions that adopt a BCG framework incorporate community demands alongside their workplace demands in contract bargaining.

Transit Unions Join Forces To Win Safety Protections And Beat Back Layoffs

January 12, 2021 Richard Marcantonio, Labor Notes. , , ,
Transit workers have been hit hard by the pandemic. Last year at least 100 from the Amalgamated Transit Union and 131 from the Transport Workers lost their lives to Covid-19. Before Covid, transit unions in the Bay Area—six ATU locals, and one local each of TWU and the Teamsters—often faced their individual struggles in isolation. But during the pandemic, these locals united across the region and came together with riders to demand protections for all. That unity forced reluctant politicians to make Covid safety a priority. It also set the stage for the unions and riders to team up again to stave off layoffs. And there are more fights ahead.

Eviction Moratorium Is A Useful Lesson In How Reform Happens

January 12, 2021 Ray Valentine, Organizing Work. , , ,
It didn’t make a lot of headlines, but in the recent stimulus and government funding deal, Congress extended what is probably the most significant federal housing policy in a generation: the nationwide eviction moratorium. We should study how it came to be, because it illustrates how working class people successfully influence public policy through collective action outside the political process. Originally implemented by the CDC in September, the moratorium is obviously imperfect in a number of ways: it is clearly designed to be narrowly targeted at “deserving” tenants and to compel people to pay what they can, its reach is limited because in practice it has to be implemented by local judges and sheriffs...

How To Keep On Keeping On

January 11, 2021 Ellen David Friedman, Labor Notes. , , ,
Even asking the questions is exhausting. Who’s making the Covid decisions, and why do they change every day? How has the workload doubled? What about the new extremes of micro-management? Which of my co-workers, or their families, or my customers or patients or students are going to get sick? And why can’t we seem to do anything to stop all this suffering? The pull to give up, to withdraw, to hunker down and “just survive” is almost irresistible—even for a committed activist like you. But here we are. We are connecting to one another at work, even if just through images on a screen.

Will US Farmers Follow India’s Lead?

January 8, 2021 Leanna First-Arai, Truthout. , , ,
Thousands of farmers in India are braving cold winter temperatures in the outskirts of New Delhi, their tractors and tents blocking traffic along three main roads leading to the capital city, in protest of new agricultural laws that farmers say leave them at the mercy of multinational corporations. The protests, which began in August, morphed into a general strike of 250 million workers on November 26, which has been called the largest-ever global demonstration. The ongoing demonstrations have struck a chord with agricultural communities in North America, where solidarity protests were held throughout December, including a march to the Indian Consulate in Toronto and a protest outside of Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California.

University Of Michigan Strike Showed The Power Of Student Organizing

January 7, 2021 Kalena Thomhave and Matt Sehrsweeney, Waging Nonviolence.  , , ,
As the winter university semester is set to begin, the coronavirus is surging. The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, like many universities reliant on tuition dollars, tried to reopen in September with a “public health-informed” semester, as the university called it. That meant a mix of in-person and remote classes and dormitories operating at about 70 percent capacity. Throughout the summer, the graduate workers union at the University of Michigan, the Graduate Employees Organization, or GEO, and Local 3550 of the American Federation of Teachers, had also been preparing for the fall semester by organizing against an unsafe campus opening in the face of a global pandemic.

The ABC’s Of Google’s New Union

January 4, 2021 Clarissa Redwine, Collective Action in Tech. , , ,
Google workers have organized for pay equity, opposed unethical uses of machine learning, protested sexual assault, and more. Our small team at Collective Action in Tech has been archiving these organizing events for years. Now the workers of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, are building worker power through a non-contract union they’ve named The Alphabet Workers Union. This isn’t the first time Google workers are unionizing. In 2017, Security guards at Google and Facebook had their union recognized and fought through a long contract negotiation. In 2019, Google cafeteria staff employed by vendor Bon Appetit won their union election.

Black Lives Matter DC Demands City Stop Attacks By Violent Trump Supporters

January 4, 2021 Black Lives Matter DC, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Washington — Today, Black Lives Matter DC leaders issued demands to Mayor Bowser, Deputy Chief Contee, City Council members and business owners and leaders in the District, telling them to send a clear message to racist Trump supporters planning to attack the city on January 6, 2020. “Mayor Bowser, Deputy Chief Contee and local businesses, tell the racists that they’re not welcome in our city,” said Née Née Taylor, a core organizer with Black Lives Matter DC (BLM-DC). “Earlier this month, the mayor, the police and local businesses aided and abetted white supremacists by allowing them to run rogue across our city, desecrating Black churches, violating Black Lives Matter Plaza, all while refusing to wear masks and socially distance.”

The Julian Assange Pardon Drive

January 2, 2021 Binoy Kampmark, Counterpunch. , , ,
The odds are stacked against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks publisher who faces the grimmest of prospects come January 4.  On that day, the unsympathetic judicial head of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser will reveal her decision on the Old Bailey proceedings that took place between September and October this year.  Despite Assange’s team being able to marshal an impressive, even astonishing array of sources and witnesses demolishing the prosecution’s case for extradition to the United States, power can be blindly vengeful. Such blindness is much in evidence in a co-authored contribution to The Daily Signal from this month. 

Sara Nelson, The Labor Movement Leader We Needed Most

January 1, 2021 Esther Wang, Portside. , , ,
In January of 2019, weeks into Donald Trump’s government shutdown, Sara Nelson accepted the labor federations’ MLK Drum Major for Justice Award with a soaring, and startling, speech. The annual award doesn’t typically lead to national news headlines, but that year Nelson, the charismatic head of the 50,000-strong Association of Flight Attendants-CWA union, used the opportunity to boldly call for a general strike. “Almost a million workers are locked out or being forced to work without pay,” she told the audience. “Others are going to work when our workspace is increasingly unsafe. What is the labor movement waiting for?”

New Organizing Model Helps Build Worker Power

December 28, 2020 Erin Dirnbach, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and lockdowns started in March, a new class of “essential workers” continued to go to work across the United States under new dangerous conditions. As stories came out about workers lacking personal protective equipment, or PPE, and working in crowded workplaces, union workers began to take action. They stopped work, organized sick-outs, won hazard pay, protested employer COVID-19 policies that left them unsafe and negotiated for improvements. Unions have made workplaces safer, as research has shown that unionized essential workers have had better COVID-19 workplace practices during the pandemic.

Torture Victims And Advocates Oppose Biden National Security Nominees

December 22, 2020 Witness Against Torture. , , ,
Washington, DC - Today, torture survivors and their advocates released an Open Letter urging President-Elect Biden not to nominate torture defender Mike Morell for CIA Director and asking the Senate not to approve Biden’s nominee Avril Haines, a torture enabler, as Director of National Intelligence. The letter was also delivered this morning to members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, as well as President-Elect Biden and Vice-President Elect Kamala Harris. Signatories include: Mansoor Adayfi, a writer from Yemen imprisoned for 14 years without charge at Guantanamo Bay, where he was force fed for two years; Moazzam Begg, a British-Pakistani ex-Guantanamo detainee...

New York City Food Delivery People Are Organizing

December 20, 2020 Explica. , , ,
New York - Yellow taxis have for years been a symbol of the visual landscape of New York. The Empire State Building, the Bull of Wall Street, Central Park, Times Square and the famous Subway, stand out in the city that until a few months ago did not sleep. Delivery men running daily on their bikes and their electric motorcycles; some on skateboards and scooters, carrying food orders across the city’s five boroughs, are also notorious in the New York cityscape. It’s hard not to see them walking everywhere, sometimes more than public service vehicles, with their helmets and bags of food, with the logos of well-known applications or the names of restaurants. But many feel invisible.

Fast-Food Workers Demanded — And Won — COVID Protections

December 18, 2020 Sophia Kasakove, Report for America. , , ,
Durham, NC - In early September, Jamila Allen led a group of 18 co-workers out the front doors of Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers to protest the lack of safety measures taken by management in dealing with COVID-19. A coworker had tested positive for COVID-19, but the restaurant had refused to pay workers for time to quarantine. The strikers demanded a professional deep cleaning of the store, two weeks paid leave to self-quarantine, and $15 per hour hazard pay. Outside the eatery in West Durham, workers at the national fast-food chain were joined by dozens of supporters from the Fight for $15, the Poor People’s Campaign, and other local groups, who joined in chants of “I believe that we will win” and “Put some respect on my check.” 

Latin American Academics Endorse Boycott Of Complicit Israeli Academic Institutions

December 16, 2020 Latin American BDS Coordination, BDS Movement. , , ,
In their statement, the signatories commit not to participate in any type of academic exchange or cooperation with or accept funding from complicit Israeli institutions or the State of Israel. In addition, they call on Latin American universities to suspend cooperation with complicit Israeli institutions, until Israel respects the UN- sanctioned political and human rights of the Palestinian people. The boycott of complicit Israeli academic institutions was initiated in 2004 and later became a key part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel's occupation and apartheid regime. It was launched in response to the institutional support of all Israeli universities...
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