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Popular Assemblies

Southern Worker School Charts Course For Power

Southern politicians have gone out of their way in word and action to make clear they stand on the side of big business and racism as they’ve recently lamented that the “Alabama [ie – Southern] model for success is under attack” and vowing to “fight unions to the gates of hell.” Nearly two hundred rank and filers who are developing a movement of workers in the South that can build power to make these politicians’ fears a reality gathered in Charlotte, NC on May 17 – 19 for the 2024 Southern Worker School. These convenings are the annual organizing conference of the Southern Workers Assembly network, which includes local workers assemblies, worker organizations, and other workers from various sectors and states throughout the region.

Southern Workers Gather To Build Workers Assembly Movement

Under the slogan “Build the Workers Assembly Movement! Organize the South!” nearly 80 workers from eight Southern states gathered in Durham, North Carolina, for a Southern Workers Assembly Organizing School over the weekend of April 29 to May 1. Workers came to the School from Atlanta; New Orleans; Charleston, South Carolina; Richmond and Tidewater, Virginia; Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham, Asheville and Eastern North Carolina; northern Kentucky; and elsewhere. Over the last year, the network of areas building Workers Assemblies across the South has grown substantially to include nine different cities, the development of several industry-based councils — including Amazon, health care and education workers — and interest in developing assemblies in additional locations as well. 

East Oakland Community Launches Major New Organizing Initiative

By Causa Justa. OAKLAND --- Six of East Oakland’s most prominent community organizations will convene hundreds of East Oakland residents at a massive Community Assembly on Saturday, September 30. This umbrella organization—known as the East Oakland Congress of Neighborhoods—is being formed because neighborhood residents are fed up with a lack of action on extremely pressing problems in East Oakland including the housing crisis and homelessness, illegal dumping, gun violence, prostitution and many more.

Report: Inaugural People’s Congress Of Resistance

By Peoples Congress of Resistance. Washington, DC - On Sept. 16-17, the People’s Congress of Resistance movement was inaugurated with a mass convening of grassroots organizers and front line resistors at Howard University. All told, 727 delegates from 38 states and 160 towns and cities came to Washington, D.C., to discuss the People’s Congress of Resistance manifesto “Society for the Many: A Vision for Revolution,” to share organizing experiences to take back home, to express solidarity with each other and to resolve on common projects and actions for the future.

Get Ready For A ‘People’s Congress Of Resistance’

By Staff of the Peoples Congress of Resistance. The United States Congress does not represent the people who live and work in the United States. Given the threat posed by the Trump regime, the people must take matters into our own hands, together, and claim the power we already have. The People demand a new Congress, a fighting Congress of the working class of all racial and ethnic backgrounds, genders and ages. We must create a Congress of communities under attack by the reactionary Trump agenda and fighting back against it, a Congress of the grassroots and the working class, of resisters, organizers, and activists, of everyone who recognizes we can no longer continue as we have. Such a People’s Congress will confront the Congress of the millionaires. It will galvanize the energy of the many groups resisting Trump. It will demonstrate that this is what democracy looks like.

Popular Assemblies Sweeping the US Are Building The Resistance

By Sarah Lazare for AlterNet. Cheema is one of countless organizers across the country working to pull off large popular assemblies to empower and connect the communities caught in the crosshairs of this multi-pronged assault. With roots in the U.S. Black Freedom movement, Latin American encuentro and left formations across the globe, such forums appear to be gaining steam, as growing crowds cram into packed community meetings to plot out strategies for resistance. While the issues and tactics may vary, organizers from across the country emphasized to AlterNet that the aim is to fortify independent social movement infrastructure to enable a broader and more effective fightback—and determine the needs of the most-impacted communities during this harrowing political moment. In Los Angeles alone, at least 10 popular assemblies since November have drawn crowds ranging from 900 to dozens. “Right now the aim is building support, mutual aid and community power. The basic idea is, let's start helping people get organized and let's do it neighborhood by neighborhood, connecting to where people live and connecting to issues they're facing.”

After The Uprising: Lessons From Rojava For Baltimore

By Ben Reynolds for ROAR. How can we create the fundamental change we so desperately need? We need a superior strategy to the failed strategies of the past; we need a means to turn an uprising into a revolution. History offers a few successful examples of popular organizing we can draw from. During the French Revolution, the popular assemblies of the Paris sections formed a radical base that pushed the developing revolution forward. The Russian Revolution of 1917 saw deliberative popular bodies known as “soviets” overthrow the provisional government in the name of bread and peace. These kinds of systems — based upon deliberative councils and assemblies — frequently appear in any period of unrest or upheaval, and have recently emerged in Argentina, Spain, and elsewhere. In the present, the Kurdish movement in Turkey and Syria employs a developed version of this system known as “democratic confederalism.” Face-to-face neighborhood assemblies form the base of political decision-making, while successive councils operate at the district, city and regional levels. The councils and assemblies deliberate upon all of the issues facing the community and attempt to organize the means to effect necessary changes.
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