Strategize!
The 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.
25 years ago, for the six months leading up to the World Trade Organization (WTO) summit in Seattle in 1999, I met Deborah in organizing meetings to prepare. Today, while many of us continue our efforts for a better world in many different places and movements, for 25 years Deborah has remained in constant combat with the WTO, together with global movements as part of the Our World is Not for Sale network. I asked if they could share insights on the impacts of the Seattle WTO confrontation and the current threat of the WTO–including obstruction of the needed transition off fossil fuels and the growing domination of Big Tech.
How To Build A Culture Of Organizing
December 1, 2024
Steve Dubb and Marshall Ganz, Non Profit News.
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Democracy, Nonprofits, Organizing, Social Movements
Democracy is not something you have; it is something you do. If you’re not doing it, it’s not real. Sadly, in our country, there is less and less of it being done.
Take the replacement of self-governing organizations with nonprofits or NGOs: there is nothing democratic there. It is almost like unions are one of the few remaining forces where people are actually practicing self-government.
It is kind of hard to have any real understanding of what democracy means in terms of how we interact with each other and how we govern ourselves when it is not part of your daily experience. It hollows out any real understanding of democracy.
What International Solidarity Means To Palestinian Women
December 1, 2024
Tawakkol Karman and Rawan Yousef, Waging Nonviolence.
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History, International Solidarity, Palestine, Palestine Solidarity, Women's Rights
Nov. 29 is the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, marked by the United Nations since 1977. But how can solidarity be effectively shown in the context of ongoing, escalating war? Here is what women in Palestine say.
Doaa Ahmad, a women’s rights activist and the head of programs for a grassroots organization in northern Gaza, and her three boys just escaped death for the fourth time. Doaa fetches her laptop and work-related material every time she escapes. Even in genocide, Doaa says, I have a duty to help others, particularly women and girls. (Doaa and the other women in this story have had their names changed at their request.)
Applying Indigenous Wisdom Traditions To Modern Challenges
December 1, 2024
David Bollier.
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Capitalism, Indigenous Knowledge, Indigenous Peoples, The Commons
I've always been fascinated by the striking affinities between commoners and Indigenous peoples, as well as their significant differences. Both are keenly aware of life as a deeply relational phenomenon -- one that Western capitalism, science, and market culture don't really understand. Both see commoning as a baseline for mindful living and presence, a process that can help transform the world in positive directions.
And yet, while Western and Indigenous commoners share many values and practices, native cultures have subtle traditions and understandings that go back centuries, often millennia.
Berkeley Free Speech Movement Forged An Organizing Blueprint
December 1, 2024
Derek Seidman, Truthout.
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Berkeley, Campus Movement, Free Speech Movement, History, Repression, Student Activism
U.S. universities have always been sites of contestation and political struggle. Today, their governing bodies are dominated by representatives of corporate power. Issues like the student debt crisis and military research are bound up with universities. The right wing, often joined by establishment Democrats, attacks college curricula and scapegoats students to score political points.
Student activists today are challenging university ties to everything from fossil fuels to racist policing — and, of course, to the genocide in Palestine.
You’re Already On Strike; How to Turn Up the Heat
November 28, 2024
Keith Brower Brown and Jane Slaughter, Labor Notes.
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Detroit, Illinois, Oil and Gas, Strikes, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs
Teamsters at Marathon Petroleum in Detroit have been on the picket line since September 4, their first strike in 30 years. Tankers filled with gasoline regularly exit the massive, belching refinery on a main Detroit artery, as Marathon continues production with supervisors brought in from other facilities.
Workers have handbilled gas stations, as well as sometimes following Marathon trucks and picketing them when they make deliveries. They’ve gotten support from the Detroit City Council and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, as well as other unions like the UAW who have joined their picket lines.
With COP29 Failure Global Struggle Needed To Save The Planet
November 28, 2024
Betsey Piette, Workers World.
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climate crisis, COP29, Environment, Social Movements
The year 2024 is on track to be the warmest year ever. Since January there have been more destructive hurricanes, cyclones and tornadoes than any time in history. Around the globe, record rainfalls have resulted in massive mudslides that wiped away entire towns. As the year’s end approaches, climate scientists report that 2024 “will be the first year in which the world’s average surface temperature exceeded the pre-industrial average by 1.5 degrees Celsius.” (Truthout, Nov. 22)
Global warming “tipping points” established decades ago appear to be on the brink of being surpassed, and many climate scientists already considered the 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature limit to be too high.
How Advocates Won Bike, Bus And Pedestrian Improvements
November 26, 2024
Maylin Tu, Next City.
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Bikes, Buses, California, Los Angeles, Pedestrians, Road Safety, Transportation
Think people won’t vote for safer streets? Think again.
In March, Los Angeles voters passed the Healthy Streets LA ballot measure with over 65% of the vote. What’s the story?
L.A. already had a plan — Mobility Plan 2035 passed in 2015 — to create a network of safe routes for biking, driving and walking. There was only one problem: The city had implemented only about 5% of it.
In 2020, StreetsLA (a.k.a. the Bureau of Street Services) was taking advantage of the pandemic shutdown to rapidly repave city streets. The transportation advocacy organization Streets For All saw an opportunity to implement complete street improvements during repaving.
Palestine Present At International Anti-Fascist Youth Congress
November 25, 2024
Resumen English.
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Anti-fascism, Anti-Zionism, Nicolas Maduro, Palestine, Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), Venezuela
The head of state of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro Moros, presided over the closing ceremony of the International Anti-Fascist Youth Congress this Saturday in Caracas.
The event took place during two days with the participation of more than one thousand young people from 72 nations, including the participation of young Palestinians, who also adopted the agreement to build a think tank to form a school based in Venezuela for anti-fascist training to defeat the common enemy of humanity.
South African Anti-Apartheid Movement Offers Hope
November 24, 2024
Robert Ross, Mondoweiss.
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anti-apartheid, BDS Movement, Biden administration, Donald Trump, South Africa
The Biden administration’s insistence to continue arming Israel despite it carrying out what a growing consensus of scholars and human rights organizations are calling a genocide in Gaza has been one of the greatest moral failures in modern American history. While the Biden administration’s approach to the situation has been disastrous, there are legitimate fears that Donald Trump’s second term in office may prove even worse for Palestinian survival, much less liberation.
In the wake of these traumatizing times, it is worth looking back at the South African anti-apartheid movement during a similar moment in American history for some hope and guidance.
The Right Wing Action Plan To Take Down The Palestine Movement
November 23, 2024
Mitchell Plitnick, Mondoweiss.
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Israel, McCarthyism, Palestine, Palestine Solidarity, Project Esther
The Heritage Foundation got a lot of publicity during this election cycle for its infamous Project 2025. But that’s not the only project they intend to carry out now that Donald Trump is returning to the White House.
Project Esther is a new proposal from Heritage that claims to lay out a plan to combat antisemitism in the United States. In fact, it aims to destroy the Palestine solidarity movement as a first step in a crusade to, ultimately, restrict activism against American policy of all sorts, foreign and domestic. .
It’s not a new enterprise, of course.
Imperialism And The Destabilization Of The Alliance Of Sahel States
November 22, 2024
Abayomi Azikiwe, Black Agenda Report.
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Africa, Alliance of Sahel States (AES), Burkina Faso, France, French Imperialism, Imperialism, Mali, Niger, US Imperialism
Since the formation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, during 2023, the governments of France and the United States along with their surrogates have sought to undermine the political and economic objectives of these developing nations.
When the military Committee for the Safeguard of Our Homeland (CNSP) took power in Niger last year on July 26, Paris and Washington sought to have members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) stage a military intervention into this uranium-rich country to reimpose the French and U.S.-backed ousted President Mohamed Bazoum.
The Case For A ‘Bold Idea’ To End The Era Of Coal, Oil And Gas
November 22, 2024
Matthew Green, DeSmog.
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Activism, Canada, climate crisis, Energy, Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty, Fossil Fuels, Politics and Policy
Could the world negotiate a wind-down of the fossil fuel industry — just as Cold War adversaries once agreed to limit their stockpiles of nuclear weapons?
In an interview for the Climate Consciousness Summit 2024, Tzeporah Berman, founder and chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative said a growing wave of support for the proposal — which has been endorsed by more than 3,000 scientists, 121 cities and sub-national governments, and 14 nations — could ultimately make new fossil fuel projects unacceptable, even in the United States, the world’s biggest producer of oil and gas.
Will International Solidarity Turn The Tables For Striking Gaming Workers?
November 20, 2024
Simon Rosenblum-Larson and Andrew Tillett-Saks, Labor Notes.
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Gaming Industry, Georgia, International Solidarity, Strikes, Unions, Worker Rights
Four thousand workers at the online gaming company Evolution in Tbilisi, Georgia, walked off the job in July protesting low wages, dangerous working conditions, and harassment.
Four months in, their strike is one of the largest and longest that this Eastern European country has ever seen. In August, some strikers sewed their mouths shut with a needle and thread in a hunger strike that resulted in multiple hospitalizations.
A union victory would represent not only a sea change in the Georgian labor movement, but also a major breakthrough in beating back employers who scour the globe for cheap, non-union labor. Companies outsource expecting that workers won’t fight back.
Niger Hosts Historic Conference On The Fight Against Neocolonialism
November 19, 2024
Pavan Kulkarni, People's Dispatch.
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Alliance of Sahel States (AES), Coups, Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), French colonialism, Niger, Pan Africanism, Sahel, Sahel region, West African Peoples' Organization (WAPO)
Delegates from the popular movements, labor unions, peasant organizations, and left parties in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the US have arrived in Niamey, the capital of Niger, to attend the “Conference in Solidarity with the Peoples of the Sahel” from November 19 to 21.
The Pan Africanism Today Secretariat (PAT) and the West Africa People’s Organization (WAPO) have organized this conference “For Anti-Imperialist Unity, Peace, and Friendship between Peoples”, at the time of a critical breakthrough against Francafrique in Sahelian West Africa.
Amid a wave of mass protests against the continued stranglehold of France over its former colonies, popularly supported military coups in Mali in 2020 and 2021, in Burkina Faso in 2022, and in Niger in 2023 swept away the regimes domestically perceived as subservient to France.