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.

Major New Study Calls For A Ban On Facial Recognition In Schools

August 10, 2020 Fight for the Future. Organize! Facial Recognition, Schools, Student Rights, Surveillance

A new study from the University of Michigan on the use of facial recognition in schools is recommending that lawmakers and school administrators ban the use of this technology in educational settings. The researchers behind the study write that facial recognition in schools “will likely have five types of implications: exacerbating racism, normalizing surveillance and eroding privacy, narrowing the definition of the ‘acceptable’ student, commodifying data, and institutionalizing inaccuracy. Because FR is automated, it will extend these effects to more students than any manual system could.” “Using facial recognition in schools amounts to unethical experimentation on children,” said Evan Greer (she/her), deputy director of digital rights group Fight for the Future who have been organizing to ban facial recognition for more than a year.

Letter To The Socialists, Old And New

August 9, 2020 Chris Townsend, Regeneration Magazine. Organize! Labor Movement, Left Politics, Socialism

I joined the labor movement 41 years ago. I had enrolled in the socialist movement two years before that. When I started out my links to the rest of the socialist movement were few; there were dwindling handfuls of people who identified publicly as “socialists.” The U.S. Mail and shortwave radio were my links to the bigger movement out there in the world. What remained of the socialist movement was rapidly decelerating and fissuring after the big 1960’s radicalization had run its course. Even in these inopportune conditions I managed to climb aboard and find my places in both the labor and socialist movements.

Black August And Black Liberation: ‘Study, Fast, Train, Fight.’

August 7, 2020 By BAP National Coordinating Committee, Black Agenda Report. Organize! Black August, Black Liberation, political prisoners

Each August since 1979, the surviving sectors of the Black Liberation Movement, our supporters, and the new entrants into the ranks of resistors to the ongoing oppression against the African/Black masses and colonized peoples of this territory now called the United States and its settler state, have paid homage to our fallen freedom fighters and those incarcerated for decades in the cages of this country. The struggle for African/Black freedom in the United States began with the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to this territory in 1619. The tradition of resistance to the settler state is different from the tradition celebrated by the elites of this country in response to the death of U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-GA). Our positionality, first as an enslaved people and after the formal period of slavery as a nationally oppressed people, had forged for us a different interpretation of U.S. history and our relationship to this state. For the Black Liberation Movement, reconciliation with the settler state toward a “more perfect union” was not only an impossibility because white-supremacist settler power has been crystallized into the state.

Nuclear War Can Be Stopped Before It Begins

August 6, 2020 Marina Martinez, Waging Nonviolence. Organize! disarmament, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear weapons have been posing a threat to humanity for 75 years — ever since the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. These days, our focus is understandably on the COVID-19 virus and the threat it poses to human life. But as we commemorate the anniversary of these bombings, it is important to acknowledge that unlike the coronavirus, nuclear weapons can only be remediated with prevention. Millions of people could be killed if a single nuclear bomb were detonated over a large city, and the added threats of radiation and retaliation could endanger all life on Earth.

‘We Are On The Cusp Of Something Great’

August 2, 2020 By In These Times. Organize! Black Lives Matter (BLM), Defund the police, Democracy, Rebellion2020

Since the nation erupted after the May 25 police killing of George Floyd, Black organizers and community members have been working around the clock to channel mass protests into tangible victories. Nikita Mitchell, 26, is national coordinator of The Rising Majority, formed in 2017 by the Movement for Black Lives, a coalition that includes Black Lives Matter. Rising Majority is led by Black people and people of color, and brings social movements together in an anti-racist, anti-capitalist Left for radical democracy.

Child Care Workers Now Have A Huge New Union

August 1, 2020 Hamilton Nolan, In These Times. Organize! California, Child Care, Labor Union, Worker Rights

A 17-year organizing campaign in California culminated this week in the successful unionization of 45,000 child care providers—the largest single union election America has seen in years. The campaign is a tangible achievement that brings together union power, political might, and social justice battles for racial and gender equality. Now, the hard part begins. Child Care Providers United (CCPU), the umbrella group now representing workers across the state, is a joint project of several powerful SEIU and AFSCME locals in California.

Korean Americans For Black Lives

July 31, 2020 By Lisa Kwon, LA Taco. Organize! Black Lives Matter (BLM), Korean-Americans, Racism, Rebellion2020

Liberty Park is one of the very few public green spaces left in Koreatown; the choice for ‘Ktown for Black Lives’ to meet here is intentional. Organized by the neighborhood’s activists and community members, the monthly gathering aims to mobilize residents against state-sanctioned violence that regularly takes the lives of Black and Brown people. Since its start in June, hundreds of ‘Ktown for Black Lives’ attendees have assembled on the 2.5 acres of land to participate in political education and mutual aid efforts such as the redistribution of meals and sanitary supplies. ‘Ktown for Black Lives’ points to the growing momentum among L.A.-based Korean and Asian American organizers standing in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and calling for Black liberation. The Korean response to today’s Black Lives Matter movement is rooted in deep personal education.

It’s Time For A New Labor Movement In The Performing Arts

July 30, 2020 Josh Loar, Current Affairs. Organize! Pandemic, Performing Arts, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

I'll never forget the time I 128 hours—without overtime. There are, of course, only 168 hours in a week, and by the time you have worked your 128th, you no longer have professional standards, boundaries, or even much of an identity left. Me, personally? I was cackling at every provocation and blinking too often to chase away sleep. At the time, I was a concert sound engineer, lighting designer, and technical director, and I was in the process of opening a new concert venue (that must remain nameless) in New York City.

Strikes Are An Option To Force Schools To Reopen Safely

July 30, 2020 By Madeline Will, Education Week Teacher. Organize! COVID-19, Schools, Strikes, Teacher's Union

The executive council of the American Federation of Teachers has voted to pursue various tactics—including strikes—to keep schools from reopening for in-person instruction without proper safety measures. "If authorities don't protect the safety and health of those we represent and those we serve, as our executive council voted last week, nothing is off the table—not advocacy or protests, negotiations, grievances or lawsuits, or, if necessary and authorized by a local union, as a last resort, safety strikes," said AFT President Randi Weingarten in a Tuesday speech during the national teachers' union's biennial convention. The resolution passed by the 45-member council says that school buildings can only open in places where the average daily community infection rate among those tested for COVID-19 is below 5 percent and the transmission rate is below 1 percent, and where there is effective contact tracing. Safeguards also need to be put in place, the AFT says...

Poultry And Prisons: Toward A General Strike For Abolition

July 24, 2020 Carrie Freshour, Black Agenda Report. Organize! Poultry Plant, Prison abolition, Prisoner rights, Worker Rights

On April 28, 2020, Donald Trump utilized the Defense Production Act to keep meat-processing plants open. As of this writing, twenty-two plants have closed, if only temporarily, after large numbers of workers tested positive for COVID-19.1 Yet, the number of worker deaths across the industry, including four workers at a Tyson chicken-processing plant in Camilla, Georgia, continues to rise.2 Black workers, who make up a majority of the Tyson plant’s workforce, live in neighboring Dougherty county. This county was once central to the cotton-producing region of the Black Belt, constructed through the violence of plantation slavery entwined with the productivity of the soil.

The Fight For Black Power Requires The Immediate Release Of All Political Prisoners!

July 24, 2020 the Black Is Back Coalition. Organize! Black America, Black Libneration, Black Power, political prisoners

The month of August is recognized as “Black August” by many militants associated with the prison movement. This is due in part to the impact of George Jackson, imprisoned revolutionary and Field Marshal of the Black Panther Party, who was killed in San Quentin prison on August 21, 1971. Jackson was murdered by prison guards one year after his 17-year-old brother, Jonathan, was killed escaping from a Marin County courthouse siege after taking three people hostage and demanding the liberation of black political prisoners known as the Soledad Brothers. The 2020 Annual Conference of the Black is Back Coalition will focus on the issue of political prisoners and Black Power. It is a theme that speaks to this moment in history when the resistance of African people threatens to derail the imperialist locomotive that has enslaved and dominated Africans and the world’s peoples for the last few hundred years.

New Tech Labor Movement Unites Office And Gig Workers

July 23, 2020 Tyler Sonnemaker and Allana Akhtar, Business Insider. Organize! Strikes, Tech Workers, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

The recent wave of employee activism and organizing efforts represents a widening rift between the industry's rank-and-file employees and its executives. For the first time, developers and product managers with higher pay and closer ties to management are siding with their lower-paid colleagues in warehouses, cafeterias, and contract gigs. A global pandemic and sweeping protests against systemic racism have brought workers across pay scales, job types, geographies, and companies together in an unprecedented show of solidarity. They've protested unsafe and toxic workplaces, racial and gender discrimination, and stagnating wages as tech companies rake in record profits. At the same time, workers who build the technologies shaping our society are demanding a say in how those products get built.

The Post Office Belongs To The Public

July 18, 2020 Mark Dimondstein and Richard Koritz, In These Times. Organize! Congress, Privatization, Recession, USPS

On June 15, Louis DeJoy of Greensboro, N.C., began his new job as Postmaster General of the United States. We are postal worker union activists who also hail from Greensboro (and are now American Postal Workers Union president and solidarity representative, respectively). For decades we have defended the interests of the public Postal Service and postal workers, and we bring a much different perspective than that of multi-millionaire businessman DeJoy. We are concerned that DeJoy, a mega-donor to Republican Party causes and to President Trump, has been tapped to carry out the administration’s agenda.

Trade Unionists Back Campaign To Free Assange

July 18, 2020 Don't Extradite Assange. Organize! Extradition, Julian Assange, Labor Unions, Wikileaks

In Birmingham, Plymouth, and Newcastle trades councils have voted to join the campaign to halt the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States where he could face 175 years in jail. In recent weeks the three metropolitan trades councils, which are attended by delegates from all the local unions, have voted overwhelmingly to support Assange. Even in Plymouth where a similar motion was defeated last year the National Union of Journalists’ inspired resolution sailed through last week. Both Birmingham and Plymouth meetings invited a speaker from the Don’t Extradite Assange campaign to address them before the vote was taken.

‘Attempted Murder Of Your Post Office’

July 16, 2020 Jake Johnson, Commondreams. Organize! Congress, Privatization, US Postal Service, Worker Rights and Jobs

Postal workers and their allies in Congress are vowing to fight back after the new head of the U.S. Postal Service—a major donor to President Donald Trump and the Republican Party—moved this week to impose sweeping changes to the popular government agency as it faces a financial crisis manufactured by lawmakers and exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Washington Post reported late Tuesday that Postmaster General (PMG) Louis DeJoy, who took charge last month, issued memos announcing "major operational changes" to the USPS "that could slow down mail delivery, warning employees the agency would not survive unless it made 'difficult' changes to cut costs."

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

assetto corsa mods

Daily movement news and resources