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Strategize!

strategy-iconThe section provides articles on strategy to assist you in making your campaigns more effective. They include case studies of social movements and information about the current resistance environment. Visit the Resources Page for links to organizations that provide both online and in-person training on strategy and tools for designing and evaluating your campaigns and actions.

Breaking The Law In Response To Climate Change

September 25, 2023 Andrew Curry, Resilience. , , ,
The Marxist cultural critic Raymond Williams once described TV as “flow”. He was writing in the days when you had to watch everything live, as it was broadcast, before even VCR was invented, and obviously we don’t watch TV like that so much any more. (Even though we use the word ‘streaming’). But there is a deeper truth all the same in Williams’ account: that sense that all television washes past us, each of its genre conventions so tightly defined that nothing ever surprises us or breaks out of the screen. Watching Channel 4’s documentary ‘Is it time to break the law?’, about the limits, or not, of environmental protest, was for these reasons and others a complete surprise.

Auto Bargaining In Canada—Stuck In The Past?

September 24, 2023 Tony Leah, Labor Notes. , , , , , ,
Bargaining with the Detroit 3 auto corporations is happening in Canada and the United States at the same time this year—the first time that bargaining has aligned since the disastrous bankruptcy negotiations and forced concessions of 2009. Unifor just reached a tentative agreement with Ford earlier this week, while the United Auto Workers’ strike against selected Ford, Stellantis and General Motors plants is ongoing. This is indicative of the major differences in the strategies of the two unions. The UAW, under new leadership, is doing things dramatically differently—raising bold demands, mobilizing their membership, and developing innovative strategies and tactics.

German Anti-Racists Get Creative With ‘Rave Against The Right’

September 21, 2023 Paula Reisdorf, Waging Nonviolence. , , , ,
At first glance, it seemed like any other Monday evening in Görlitz, the most eastern town in Germany — where Poland sits just across the river. It was July 31, and a couple hundred people had gathered as part of the so-called Monday demonstrations to protest refugees, the COVID-19 vaccine and the government’s green energy politics.  They carried banners that read “stop the flood of asylum seekers and the import of violence” and “we are the youth without a migration background.” Some clutched onto an inflatable balloon of German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach in convict clothes, insinuating he should be in prison over COVID-19 vaccine regulations and lockdowns. There were flags of the German empire and flags belonging to the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party, with the slogan “our country first.”

Joe Biden Is Afraid Of The UAW Strike; That’s A Good Thing

September 21, 2023 Enid Brain and Jason Koslowski, Left Voice. , , , , ,
At midnight on September 15, the UAW began its strike at three plants of the the Big 3 — GM, Ford, and Stellantis. While limited, this strike immediately sent shockwaves across the nation with every bourgeois news outlet turning to cover the strike. Indeed, the strike is proving very popular: 75 percent of Americans side with the UAW in their fight. This strike is part of what some have dubbed a “Hot Labor Summer,” characterized by an averted strike at UPS and the on-going entertainment industry strikes amongst many smaller strikes and labor actions, like Blue Cross Blue Shield workers also represented by the UAW. It’s placed the working class at the center of the national agenda.

Don’t Do The Boss Any Favors

September 20, 2023 Joe DeManuelle-Hall, Labor Notes. , , ,
Management everywhere relies on workers “going the extra mile.” We cut corners, we skip breaks, and we look the other way on common violations of the contract, work rules, or even safety. But it’s also possible, when the time is right, to just stop doing the boss these favors. After all, how often does management do workers a favor? As they build momentum for a possible strike, General Motors worker Nick Livick in Kansas City reports that his co-workers are refusing to help management as they normally would. Instead they are waiting for direct orders, and stopping the line when management starts it up early after a break.

Corporate Criminal Behavior Is Almost Exposé Proof

September 18, 2023 Ralph Nader. , , ,
Corporate law firms have taught their wayward corporate clients how to use accretions of privileges and immunities to ward off or wait out the most devastating books, documentaries and media exposés. Corporate P.R. firms know that the media doesn’t follow the efforts of civic advocacy groups as a regular beat. Feature exposés are prime candidates for big journalistic awards like the Pulitzer Prizes. Reporters usually do not get awards for covering ongoing reform efforts, which require consistent media coverage to put heat on hesitant lawmakers or prosecutors – say on the push to make Congress increase corporate accountability.

The Exposing Of US’ Anti-Assad Psyops Brought Ongoing Repercussions

September 18, 2023 Rainer Shea, Orinoco Tribune. , , , ,
A hidden disadvantage of our ruling class within the US/NATO imperialist sphere is that frequently, these elites need to scramble in response to developments they haven’t foreseen, and whose consequential outcomes they have limited control over. When the Democratic Party and its partnered intelligence agencies used the DNC leaks to construct a narrative about “Russian hacking,” they hadn’t planned the inciting incident; they were reacting to it. And their attempt to turn the leak in their favor by pointing to it as “evidence” of a Russian plot against America wasn’t ultimately effective. When somebody decides to lie strategically, they then take on the risk of that lie getting exposed.

UAW’S ‘Element Of Surprise’ Strike Appears To Be Working

September 17, 2023 Sarah Lazare and Jeff Schuhrke, In These Times. , , ,
Workers walked off their shifts on September 14 at midnight to cheering crowds as the United Auto Workers launched its first simultaneous strike against the ​“Big Three” automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis. The initial work stoppages were not company-wide but instead targeted three locations: GM’s Wentzville Assembly in Missouri, Stellantis’ Toledo Assembly Complex in Ohio, and Ford’s Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, Mich., just outside Detroit. The plants employ some 12,700 of the roughly 150,000 UAW members who work for the Big Three. The strike strategy, developed under the leadership of reform challenger Shawn Fain, was defined by its element of surprise.

Students Of The Strikes

September 16, 2023 Emily Hilliard, Dissent Magazine. , , ,
On Monday, August 21, hundreds of students at West Virginia University, the state’s flagship land-grant institution, walked out of their classrooms to protest the massive gutting of their university by its administration. Students wore red T-shirts and red bandanas around their necks, carried homemade signs with messages like “Stop the Gee-llotine” (a reference to WVU President E. Gordon Gee), played protest songs on fiddles and guitars, chanted “STOP THE CUTS!” and shouted impassioned speeches into megaphones. At issue was the administration’s proposal to fire 16 percent of the faculty and cut 9 percent of its undergraduate majors and twenty graduate programs in response to a projected $45 million shortfall over the next two years.

Why Democracy Is Not Possible Under Capitalism

September 14, 2023 People's Dispatch. , , , ,
In Atlanta, residents are using the existing democratic systems under capitalism to fight the construction of a multi-million dollar training ground for militarized police repression, and finding those systems lacking. Meanwhile, in socialist Cuba, the people and the government collaborated on formulating the world’s most progressive family code. Is it possible to have democracy under a capitalist system? Under a different economic system, such as socialism, what would democracy look like? Mariah Parker, Stop Cop City activist, labor organizer with the Union of Southern Service Workers, and rapper, spoke to over 300 attendees of the Dilemmas of Humanity: A Socialist Horizon conference in Atlanta on September 2, as part of a panel discussion on Socialism and Democracy.

The Pedagogy Of Power

September 11, 2023 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , ,
I am standing in a classroom in a maximum security prison. It is the first class of the semester. I am facing 20 students. They have spent years, sometimes decades, incarcerated. They come from some of the poorest cities and communities in the country. Most of them are people of color. During the next four months they will study political philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes, Niccolò Machiavelli, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx and John Locke, those often dismissed as anachronistic by the cultural left. It is not that the criticisms leveled against these philosophers are incorrect. They were blinded by their prejudices, as we are blinded by our prejudices. They had a habit of elevating their own cultures above others.

Learning From Chile: Navigating Complexities Of Political Crises

September 11, 2023 Pauline Lipman and Rico Gutstein, Convergence. , , ,
Twenty years of grassroots organizing by Black and Latinx community organizations, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), and the broad Left propelled CTU organizer Brandon Johnson to victory in the April 2023 Chicago mayoral race. Similarly, across the country, progressive and left organizations are focusing on electoral politics as a central arena of struggle. These campaigns are part of a larger motion—a new generation of social movements, union organizing, and Black-led uprisings against racist state violence—provoked by intertwined political, economic, social, and ecological crises in the US and globally. Yet our movements and campaigns lack political cohesion.

The Struggle To Stop Cop City By Any Means Necessary

September 10, 2023 Micah Herskind and Kamau Franklin, The Forge. , , , ,
Cop cars on fire. Occupations of the Weelaunee Forest. Weeks of action. Volunteers with clipboards, collecting referendum petition signatures in the summer heat. Weekly canvassing. Town halls and open mic sessions. Direct action and civil disobedience. Record-breaking numbers of people showing up for public comment (on three separate occasions!). Regular food distributions and mutual aid. Surveillance cameras smashed. Music festivals in the forest. Comrade care clinics. Protests outside the homes of politicians and CEOs. Trivia night fundraisers at local restaurants. Shareholder divestment campaigns. Wheatpasting, movement art, and diss track competitions.

Fight For Safety, Own The Shop Floor

September 9, 2023 Keith Brower Brown, Labor Notes. , , ,
Earlier this year, on the Ford stamping line in Buffalo, sewage started pouring onto the floor. Careless managers had shut down a pump to install new equipment and caused a deluge. The workers didn't work meekly through the dizzying stench. They shut down their line, fast. And they did it with so much unity that their manager decided not to fight back. That collective action didn't come out of nowhere. Over the last few years, Auto Workers at Local 897 have built a fighting safety culture. They elected new local officers who turned “militant” into a badge of honor. Members stopped the line when poorly routed forklifts dropped metal sheets near workers.

‘There Is An Attack On Black Literacy’: Education And Activism Go Together

September 7, 2023 Tinashe Chingarande, The Real News Network. , , ,
A 2022 report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, dubbed the nation’s report card, reported that 33% of Maryland’s eighth graders could not read at a basic level. For Black students, this number was an alarming 46%. Furthermore, 82% of Black students could not read at a proficient level, according to the report. As reading levels fall, Black Baltimoreans are slipping further away from their ability to liberate themselves. Particularly during a time where socioeconomic barriers, further pronounced by the COVID-19 pandemic, and draconian legislation actively bar Black children from accessing wholesome education.
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