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Organizing Strategy and Practice

Organizing in Rural America

Secky Fascione

Organizing in Rural America

This issue tells the stories of the diverse and inspiring organizing taking place in rural communities across the country. From West Virginia to Utah, from main street to mobile home courts, we’ll hear how organizing in small towns works and how leaders and organizers sustain themselves. 

Photo by Spencer Davis

Cindy Estrada Chris Schwartz

Organizing Rural Manufacturing Workers Matters

Organizing campaigns that focus on rural manufacturing workers can play an important role in tackling economic inequality, systemic racism, and gender inequality — and sow the seeds of significant social and political change. 

Image courtesy of Voces de la Frontera

Christine Neumann-Ortiz

La Tierra del Queso

Voces de la Frontera has consistently organized mass protests and community-wide strikes to defeat state and local policy threats to immigrant rights. We’ve also begun making inroads into rural organizing — building collective power that we’re now using to flip Wisconsin in the upcoming elections.

Ellen David Friedman Nicole McCormick

West Virginia Teachers Organizing for the Common Good

 “If you want something done, you organize the workers with you. You don't wait on somebody else to do it for you.”

Images courtesy of the authors

Aftyn Behn Emily Tseffos

Indivisible Rural Resistance: Stories from the Field

Indivisible’s rural group leaders organize in some of the most remote and difficult places in the United States. This piece honors their resilience, grit, and ingenuity.

Adam Kruggel Anika Fassia

We Have to Talk About Race in Rural America

Four rural organizers on their campaigns to mobilize a base of multiracial voters and change the narrative about race and government in rural America

Photo courtesy of Phyllis Hill

Phyllis Hill Nsé Ufot Reverend Rhonda Michele Walker-Thomas Secky Fascione

Black Women of the South: Organizing for Power and Change

Black women in the South are envisioning a new future for the region and organizing to make this vision a reality. In this conversation, Black women leaders describe organizing in 2020, the barriers to building power for Black communities in the South, and how they sustain themselves in this difficult work.

Marco A. Fernandez

Progressives Should Be Targeting Rural America

Elections can be won at the margins; progressive movements and campaigns would do well to invest in rural America.

ReShonda Young Amanda Ballantyne

We Need Small Businesses to Build an Equitable Economy

Progressives who are serious about countering corporate concentration and advancing racial and gender justice should embrace small business owners as partners in the fight for a more just economy.

Read the issue

Latest Stories

Photo by Gabriel Benois

Alan RosenblattCraig Johnson

Organizing in the Age of Coronavirus | In the Time of COVID, Digital Organizing is a Must

Digital and social media are not new to campaigns, but in the time of COVID, they are more important than ever.

David Duhalde

Winning Primaries: Coalition, Confrontation, or Both?

A recent essay lays out a framework for assessing two leftist strategies: coalition and confrontation. The liberal-left Winning Primaries alliance shows that this is an unnecessary choice — confrontation is necessary to win and coalition is necessary to effectively govern.

Photo courtesy of the author

Dennis M. Hogan

Building Electoral Power in the Rhode Island Primaries

Even a young organization can quickly become a meaningful political player if it chooses its fights wisely.

Photo by Max Bender

Jeff Ordower

For Those of Us With Privilege: It's Time to Use...

Dismantling the old and building the new requires courage and determination.  But if we all put it on the line, we can break through to the world in which we want to live.

Photo by Patrick Amoy

Kimberly Flores

Ask A Digital Organizer | How do I make sure my emails get read?

Trying to up your digital game during COVID? Our columnists are here to help with all your digital dilemmas. 

We are going to lose if we don’t start canvassing

Listen to the scientists. Wear a mask, practice physical distancing, and get out into the field.

Mat Hanson

The Fight for a Caring Economy | Childcare Providers and the Fight for a Caring Economy

Childcare providers and early childhood educators in California made history when they voted to form Child Care Providers United, a new union that will represent roughly 45,000 workers across the state. In this series, we look at how they did it. 

 

Keith Kelleher

The Fight for a Caring Economy | The Early History of Childcare Organizing in Chicago

The recent victory by 43,000 childcare providers in California is the latest in a long movement started by Black women in Chicago.

 

Valeska Sanchez

The Fight for a Caring Economy | "It’s the movement that makes a difference"

An organizer on the Child Care Providers United campaign talks about what it took to win. 

Miren Algorri

The Fight for a Caring Economy | "One provider at a time"

An organizer on the Child Care Providers United campaign talks about what it took to win. 

 

Jovanna Hernandez

The Fight for a Caring Economy | "The biggest challenge is escalation"

An organizer on the Child Care Providers United campaign talks about what it took to win. 

 

Pam FranksKeith Kelleher

The Fight for a Caring Economy | "There was just no accountability"

Pam Franks talks with Keith Kelleher about organizing the first childcare providers union in Illinois

Rick Perlstein

Hot Off the Press | Christian Soldiers

An excerpt from Reaganland. 

Adrastos Da Silva

"Cori is the right candidate for exactly the...

The lead organizer on the Cori Bush campaign talks about how the campaign coped with COVID, what they did to challenge voter suppression, and what Bush’s victory means for progressive politics in Missouri and beyond.

Jake GrumbachDave Kamper

The Research of Organizing | Unions and Race: “I don't think we have time to...

Jake Grumbach on the effects of unions on white racial politics

Image courtesy of Barbara Helmick

Barbara Helmick

From Fringe to Winnable: The Campaign for DC Statehood

Long considered a long-shot local issue, DC statehood is now a winnable campaign.  Barbara Helmick tells the story of how changing the narrative allowed organizers to build the coalition they need to win. 

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