Organizing

How To Change The World In 3 Easy Steps

December 24, 2015 Nafeez Ahmed, www.medium.com Strategize! Activism, Creativity, Organizing

By Nafeez Ahmed for Medium - I often get asked by people about what they can do to change things, to change the world, when each of us is just one person, in the face of so much that we cannot even hope to control or influence. What can we do? Why bother, given our powerlessness? As we look back on the key events of 2015, and the processes that led to them, it would be all too easy to succumb to despair. Despite fighting the ‘war on terror’ for 14 years since 9/11, we’ve only succeeded in seeing terrorism accelerate, metastasising into the so-called ‘Islamic State’ in Iraq and Syria.

When Bank Workers Occupy the Banks

October 30, 2015 Michelle Chen, www.thenation.com Resist! Banks, Organizing, Workers Rights and Jobs

By Michelle Chen for The Nation - After about eight years of seeing Main Street households get owned by Big Finance, front-line bank workers are now trying to reclaim Wall Street, branch by branch. In Los Angeles, where communities are still reeling from the financial crisis, front-line bank employees, and activists last week occupied the lobbies of Wells Fargo and Bank of America and demanded fair terms for the customers and the workforce. As we’ve reported previously, bank workers have been organizing to demand more equitable banking practices for those buying and selling some of the most lucrative financial products at the community level.

Mississippi’s Women, Some of Poorest, Getting Organized

October 27, 2015 Kenisha Potter-Stevenson, www.billmoyers.com Resist! Organizing, Women

By Kenisha Potter-Stevenson for Moyers & Company - When I think of it, I get chill bumps. I never thought I’d see the day when so many women — of all backgrounds, but mostly women of color — would come together to make Mississippi a better place for ourselves, a better place for our children and a better place for our future. But that’s what we’re doing right now with the Mississippi Women’s Economic Security Initiative (MWESI) — a movement to push an agenda that was developed the old-fashioned way: by talking to people about the obstacles they face and then addressing the issues they are concerned with.

The Fight For 15 Just Landed At America’s Busiest Airport

October 5, 2015 David Moberg, www.inthesetimes.com Resist! Fight for 15, Organizing

By David Moberg for In These Times - Encouraged by an energetic rally of more than 100 janitors and other members of Service Employees (SEIU) Local 1, a group of low-wage security, cleaning and passenger service workers at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport on Tuesday launched a campaign to organize 5,000 airport workers to win higher wages and the right to form a union without intimidation. The O’Hare organizing drive hopes, first, to bring the non-union workers at the airport into the Fight for $15 movement, initiated three years ago among fast food workers and, according to SEIU, already responsible for raising wages of 11 million workers. Then SEIU organizers hope to use the energy of that campaign for higher pay—and whatever success they have—to help create a union that can continue to defend and bargain for better working conditions.

Grassroots Organizing Shapes Response To Killing Of Walter Scott

May 31, 2015 Kerry Taylor, www.southernstudies.org Resist! Community, Organizing, Police violence, South Carolina, Walter Scott

By Kerry Taylor in Facing South. The city of North Charleston, South Carolina, has received strong praise for its handling of police officer Michael T. Slager's fatal shooting of 50-year-old African American Walter Scott during an April 4 traffic stop. According to various media commentaries, the city's quick response saved North Charleston from the outbreaks of vandalism and clashes with law enforcement that occurred in Ferguson, Missouri. At the local level, North Charleston's response was shaped by the emergence of a decentralized network of political activists who have been organizing around progressive causes, including labor rights and economic justice, LGBTQ equality, and racial disparities in policing. This network of activists sprang into action just hours after Scott's killing to offer a counter-narrative to the official version of events. They provided victims of police violence an outlet to express their pain and anger by organizing demonstrations, speak outs, and cultural events across the region. And they have carried out a range of protest activities aimed at securing reform. Their collective efforts at movement building, while diffuse and sometimes contradictory, represent an overlooked aspect of the Walter Scott story that has local political significance and strong national resonances.

Zero Emissions Day September 21

September 3, 2014 ZeDay, www.zeroemissionsday.org Create! Climate Change, Global Warming, Organizing

On March 21, 2008, a Website calling for a "A Global Moratorium on Fossil Fuel Combustion on September 21" was launched from Sealevel in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The message, "Giving our planet one day off a year", was simple yet profound. For true global reach the moratorium call was translated into 12 languages with assistance from Han Vermeulen and Anett C. Oelschlaegel at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany (Dutch, German, Russian), and Ramzi and Linda Kawar in Halifax (Arabic). The initial inspiration for this actually happened 20+ years earlier. One day Ken Wallace of Sealevel Special Projects, was strolling his new born daughter past a nasty idling truck parked – driverless – by the neighbourhood pizzeria. This truck in combination with the surrounding unrelenting traffic swirling by gave rise to a strange epiphany: "Stopping all this for a bit would be most excellent for our world altogether." How could one initiate such an event? In the 1980s Usenet was emerging as an early Internet discussion system and after a logistics meeting with friends, a carefully composed "message of great importance" was posted to Usenet through a computer at Dalhousie University. Not much came of it at the time, still the idea stuck and – with the emergence of Internet social networks in the new millennium – the notion of creating a global celebration that had potential for universal benefit seemed a real possibility.

Oakland Organizes To Stop Urban Shield

September 2, 2014 Alyssa Figueroa, www.alternet.org Organize! Militarization, Oakland, Organizing, Police

Heavily armed officers, weapons drawn, move across a bridge draped with a banner reading “No war for oil” and “We are the 99%." One corner of the banner sports the A anarchist symbol. Shortly after, they capture their targets: protesters. This scene may be all too familiar to protesters. But it’s actually a staged police training put on by Urban Shield, a SWAT team training program and weapons expo that has taken place in the Bay Area for the past seven years. This year, as last, Urban Shield’s weapon show takes place in the Oakland Marriot Convention Center in downtown Oakland, CA, September 4-8. In a city that has a tense relationship with police, hosting a conference that is ultimately an effort to militarize policing and hawk weaponry doesn't sit well with community members, who are organizing to stop Urban Shield from coming to town. “They try to put Urban Shield under this umbrella of public safety because there’s also collaboration with fire departments and emergency medical response teams,” said Kamau Walton, a War Resisters League organizer. “But the tools and the tactics they are utilizing, that they gain from the vendor show are being used against community members on a regular basis. And these are not emergency situations, these are peaceful protests, like the ones we’ve seen in Ferguson.”

Crown Heights Tenant Union Shows The Way

September 2, 2014 Alex Ellefson, www.facebook.com Organize! New York (NY), Organizing, Unions

Crown Heights, the neighborhood east of the Brooklyn Museum and the tranquil fields of Prospect Park, has the fastest rising rents of any community in Brooklyn. Trendy restaurants and boutiques, with names like the “Owl and Thistle General Store,” have accompanied the more affluent newcomers who are driving up rents. But for the neighborhood’s longtime residents, who are mostly African-American or Caribbean, the changes have attracted real estate and private equity companies that see an opportunity to make an enormous profit by driving tenants out of rent-stabilized apartments. Some of those longtime residents are turning to the Crown Heights Tenant Union (CHTU), which started last fall as a group of about a dozen residents and community organizers and has since established a presence in dozens of buildings throughout the neighborhood, including 10 buildings where strong tenant associations have taken root. When CHTU held a meeting in mid-July, almost 100 people, including representatives for a local state assemblyman and the city comptroller, crowded into a sterile, linoleum-floored room at a local nursing center. Those who couldn’t find a seat in one of the chairs arranged in a circle around the room leaned against the walls near the doorway. As people introduced themselves, they called out their addresses: 740 Franklin Avenue, 410 Eastern Parkway, 15 Crown Street, 1115 President Street and so on around the room.

Depressed? Stages To Awakening, Catalyzing Transformation

August 11, 2014 The Daily Censored, www.dailycensored.com Strategize! Depression, Imagination, Organizing

Depression can be ontologically (way of being) embraced as a natural expression of empathy; a rational response to the present conditions of psychopathic Earth “leadership.” Choosing to embrace rather than resist so-called “depressed” thoughts and feelings opens a pathway to possible proactive thoughts, speech, and actions to transform present conditions to unpredictable and even unimaginable virtues. That is, if a human being is going to participate in the transformation of present Earth conditions, then it seems normal for most people to have reactions that may include shock, horror, denial, sadness, fear, rage, depression, and anxiety in becoming responsible (response-able) to Earth conditions when factually embraced. This is a temporary stage that those of us with experience observe often, and almost all of us have gone through ourselves. Initially painful reactions is a transitory phase to discovering openings for action in this condition. It also opens real-world exercise of religious/spiritual/philosophical self-expression for ontological peace within this condition.

Walgreens Backs Down After Threat Of Boycott

August 6, 2014 Mark Kleinman, www.news.sky.com Resist! Organizing, Taxes, Walgreens

Walgreens Will Remain Headquartered in US After Planning Move Outside of the Country to Avoid Taxes One of America's biggest corporate names is poised to bow to intense US political pressure by retaining its headquarters in the US even as it secures a full takeover of Boots, Britain's biggest pharmacy chain. Sky News can exclusively reveal that Walgreens, the giant drug-stores group, will announce as soon as today that it plans to acquire the remaining 55% of Alliance Boots that it does not already own in a deal costing in the region of £5bn. However, sources on both sides of the Atlantic said that Walgreens is likely to disclose as part of its announcement that it intends to remain a US-domiciled company rather than pursuing a so-called tax inversion which would involve moving its corporate headquarters to the UK or Switzerland. The news will represent a significant victory for President Obama, who said recently that US companies which moved their headquarters overseas to save tax were damaging the country’s economy. "My attitude is I don't care if it's legal, it's wrong," he said in July.

Detroit Water Brigade: Statement On Extension

August 6, 2014 Detroit Water Bridage, www.detroitwaterbrigade.org Resist! Detroit, Organizing, Water

We are glad to see that the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department have decided to extend the moratorium on residential water shutoffs 3 more weeks, until August 25th This past Saturday, over 30 volunteer Water Advocates from the Detroit Water Brigade took part in the city’s first-ever Water Affordability Fair from 8:30am-5pm at 13303 E McNichols Rd on the East Side. Our trained volunteers – clearly identified by their orange safety vests – transported residents to and from the event, assisted residents in understanding their water bills, and provided refreshments and music outside of the Customer Service Center. In total, over 400 Detroiters attended the event and many left reporting positive experiences. While the Brigade acknowledges these important first steps towards ending the shutoffs and revitalizing the Water Department, we must also report that several of our Water Advocates were routinely denied entry into the Customer Service Center, threatened with arrest, and even ejected from the center. The specific incidents where our Advocates – and the residents they accompanied – faced intimidation are [documented here]. It is essential that our Water Advocates are allowed unimpaired access to residents to ensure that this shutoff moratorium will be honored by the Water Department in full.

Nat Gat Gives Voice To Voiceless; Supports Gaza

August 5, 2014 InterOccupy, www.interoccupy.net Organize! Gaza, Occupy, Organizing, Solidarity

Voice to the Voiceless Solidarity Declaration We, a diverse group of people brought together by the spirit of resistance, recognize that the time has come for brave, cooperative action to throw off the chains of our current broken and outdated political and economic institutions. We, the 99%, hold that all life on earth is inter-connected and endowed with certain natural rights which cannot be granted or permitted by any coercive institution. Because we are deeply concerned with the violations of these rights perpetrated by corporations and corrupt governments, both here and abroad, and fear for the future of our planet and our children, we declare our moral and spiritual outrage regarding the failures of our current oppressive political and economic systems. Rising to the challenges posed by tyranny, we stand in solidarity with one another and all people who strive not only to survive, but to lead lives of dignity, integrity and freedom.

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