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.

Solidarity Across Species

September 24, 2020 Astra Taylor and Sunaura Taylor, Dissent Magazine. Organize! Development, Meat, Rewilding, wildlife

We are animals. While human beings often repress this basic fact, the novel coronavirus has revealed our connection to and dependence on the well-being of other creatures. In various ways, our disregard for other species led to and worsened this pandemic. To mount an adequate response—and to prevent future disasters—we need to start taking animals into consideration. Like countless fearsome diseases, including Ebola and AIDS, COVID-19 is zoonotic in origin, meaning it jumped from one species to another (likely from bats to humans).

Meet Students Organizing The First Campus-Wide Undergraduate Union

September 16, 2020 Indigo Olivier, In These Times. Organize! Higher Education, Student Workers, Unions, Worker Rights

On August 31, students at Kenyon College, a private liberal arts college in Gambier, Ohio, announced their intent to unionize with the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) in an open letter to the school’s president and board of trustees. Students have requested voluntary recognition through a card-check neutrality agreement with the school’s administration. If successful, the Kenyon Student Worker Organizing Committee (K‑SWOC) will become the first union to organize its entire undergraduate workforce, which will include all 800 student worker positions available on campus.

Time For Unions To Give The Democratic Party An Ultimatum

September 15, 2020 Hamilton Nolan, In These Times. Organize! Democrats, Joe Biden, Labor Unions, popular power

On Labor Day, Joe Biden did an online event with AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka to talk up unions. At this point in his political career, Biden can do these things in his sleep. His well rehearsed grab bag of pro-union lines (”My uncle in Scranton, Uncle Ed, used to say, ‘Joe, you’re labor from belt buckle to shoe sole’”) flow out easily. The question for America’s union members is whether anything tangible will flow back to us if Biden is elected, or if we will — as has happened in previous Democratic administrations — have to satisfy ourselves with pats on the head and White House photo-ops.

We Can Still Win The War On Plastic

September 15, 2020 Michael K. Dorsey, Fair Observer. Organize! health, Plastic, Water, Wildfires

For many years, even decades, before the current global pandemic, environmental advocates have waged a war against single-use plastic. We’ve been winning that war. More and more consumers are carrying reusable bags for groceries and other shopping items, asking restaurants to use more sustainable materials for take-out containers, and using fewer plastic straws. Homeowners are even rethinking and replacing plastic PVC (polyvinyl chloride) in everything from home siding to piping. As with so many other things in 2020, the full-out war against plastic has abated.

Sept. 26: No New Cold War International Forum

September 12, 2020 NoColdWar.org. Organize! China, International Solidarity, New Cold War

For our second international webinar, we’re bringing together peace activists from China, the US, Britain, South Africa, India, Morocco, Bolivia and Belgium to discuss how to oppose the US-led New Cold War. The event will take place on Zoom, on Saturday 26 September, 2pm UK / 9pm China / 9am US Eastern / 6am US Pacific. To get a ticket to the Zoom event, register on Eventbrite. Registered users will receive a link within 24 hours of the event starting. The event will also be streamed to Youtube and Facebook.

Graduate Workers: ‘Reopening Endangers Students, Highlights Racial Inequalities’

August 28, 2020 Northwestern University Graduate Workers, Daily Northwestern. Organize! COVID-19, Graduate School, Higher Education, Illinois

It is less than a month before Fall Quarter begins, and despite daily warnings against doing so, Northwestern insists on proceeding with the harmful and dangerous plan of reopening campus. The current fall reopening plan expects students to return to campus while holding most courses remotely. Despite Northwestern’s assurances that they are following best practices, the current return to campus plan will inevitably result in COVID-19 clusters among students, faculty and staff that will lead many to get sick and will only deepen the virus’s spread across the Evanston and Chicago region.

Organizing Call: After The DNC And RNC – We Can’t Breathe!

August 26, 2020 Coalition, Popular Resistance. Organize! 2020 Elections, Capitalism, Racism, Right to Protest, Strikes

The Democratic and Republican Conventions are not confronting the crises of our times - the economic collapse, COVID pandemic, lack of access to healthcare, inequality, racism, the cost of education, and never-ending wars and more. No matter which corporate-funded party wins the election, the people must rule from below. The national uprising against police violence and the hundreds of wildcat strikes and rent strikes are a few examples among many that show once again that the only way to challenge this racist, militarized system is with the explosive power of people making demands and shutting the system down. Regardless of what happens in November our only way forward is to stay mobilized! Join us for this important webinar: After The DNC And RNC - We Can’t Breathe!

Teachers Organize As COVID-19 Outbreaks At Schools Concealed

August 26, 2020 Evan Blake, WSWS. Organize! COVID-19, health, School reopening, Teachers

Using the fraudulent pretext of “protecting medical privacy,” a growing number of states and school districts across the United States are deliberately concealing information from the public on COVID-19 outbreaks in schools that have reopened. These include the states of Maine, Virginia and Oklahoma, as well as Camden County, Georgia, and Orange County, Florida. In Tennessee, Louisiana, and many other states, the decision is left to each individual county, and an unknown number of county officials are concealing outbreaks in schools from the public.

Will COVID-19 Spur A Wave Of Unionization?

August 20, 2020 Steven Greenhouse, Dissent Magazine. Organize! COVID-19, Labor Unions, Recession, Worker Rights

In mid-March, someone asked me whether COVID-19 would spur a wave of unionization. My first reaction was no. How could workers possibly unionize when there was all this social distancing and people couldn’t even meet in groups? Moreover, I thought workers would be so cowed by the horrors of the pandemic that they wouldn’t give much thought to unionizing. That response was short-sighted. I didn’t realize how furious many workers would become about the uncaring, even callous way their companies have treated them during this crisis—about the many employers that didn’t lift a finger to provide masks or hand sanitizer.

Tell The People That The Struggle Must Go On

August 20, 2020 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Organize! Basic Necessities, Brazil, Hunger, Pandemic, Police violence, South Africa

Young children marvel at an obvious contradiction in capitalist societies: why do we have shops filled with food, and yet see hungry people on the streets? It is a question of enormous significance; but in time the question dissipates into the fog of moral ambivalence, as various explanations are used to obfuscate the clarity of the youthful mind. The most bewildering explanation is that hungry people cannot eat because they have no money, and somehow this absence of money – the most mystical of all human creations – is enough reason to let people starve.

Tenant Unions For The Future

August 19, 2020 By Hannah Black, Dissent Magazine. Organize! Cancel the Rent, Housing, Rent Strike, Tenant organizing

Calls to rent strike have yet to cohere into a national political movement. But as the economic crisis deepens, tenants’ fates will ultimately be decided by their level of collective organization. With the arrival of the pandemic, staying home became emergency work for a failing state. Amid disastrous negligence at every level of government, one of the most ordinary facts of life in capitalism—rent—suddenly appeared clearly as an affront. “One section of society here demands a tribute from the other for the very right to live on the earth,” Marx wrote of landlords. In the early spring, with state-level and nationwide eviction moratoriums and tenant protections in place, it seemed like there had never been a better time to refuse these bad terms. Calls to rent strike brought grassroots tenant unions to the foreground. Through the spring, thousands of people turned to tenant organizing, many for the first time.

Largest Private-Sector Strike Of The Year Is Headed For Union Victory

August 15, 2020 Jeremy Gantz, In These Times. Organize! Labor Union, Maine, Strike, Worker Rights

Bath, Maine - It’s no coincidence that the first strike in 20 years at Bath Iron Works (BIW) began months into the Covid-19 pandemic. While Maine has one of the lowest Covid transmission rates in the country, the spread of the deadly virus helped spark the strike that has largely shut down the shipyard at BIW — one of Maine’s largest employers. In June, when around 4,300 Machinists Local S6 union members at BIW voted overwhelmingly to strike, many had already soured on management over its handling of the pandemic.

The Daily Life Of Those Fighting For $15 And A Union

August 15, 2020 Al Neal, People's World. Organize! Fight for 15, Low Wage Workers, Racism, Worker Rights

The rank and file workers that came before us said a union was not the union hall nor the labor temple, nor was it the elected union officials that come and go. The union was its people—the honest, hardworking membership. Comrades of sweat and toil pushed and prodded too far for the sake of an industrial tyrant’s profits. Workers who reached a point and said, “enough is enough,” who joined together, demanded change, and organized. And in the current moment of economic turmoil and political upheaval, workers are experiencing quaint evocations of moments gone by—as if looking through an open window and scanning through the decades of militant union history, scouring the past to understand and confront today’s clear and present danger.

Youth Are Leading The Movement For Police-Free Schools

August 13, 2020 Tasasha Henderson, Truthout. Organize! Black Youth, Police Abolition, Police in Schools, Youth Activism

In this moment of transformative possibility, amid activists’ growing calls to defund and abolish the police, young people across the country are leading a movement to remove police officers from schools. They are demanding that city and school district leaders reallocate funding for police into services and resources for students, including counseling, social workers and restorative justice programming. The movement for police-free schools has a long history of Black youth leading this fight as a key strategy to dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline, a process of funneling predominately Black and Latinx students out of schools and into the juvenile legal system.

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