Recent Articles
The Craft of Campaigns | Campaigning to Limit Comcast
Ten years ago, Philadelphia’s Media Mobilizing Project launched a campaign to force Comcast to provide service to working-class residents. It was a learning experience in “inside game” organizing that continues to shape the city’s progressive movements.
A Powerful Tool for Campaigns and Crises
Too often, we base critical strategies on a series of unquestioned assumptions and untested relationships. Simulation exercises can improve strategy, build stronger relationships, and break down hierarchies.
Countervailing Powers | Community Organizing and Electoral Politics
Is Involvement in Elections a Source of Synergy—or Distraction?
Building the Front, Strengthening Our Movement
This March 9 live-streamed panel will feature movement leaders who are actively fighting the Right while building bases and alliances for the long-term struggle for racial and economic justice and inclusive democracy.
Countervailing Powers | How Los Angeles Tenants Beat the Landlords—For Now
The rise of a renters’ movement and its electoral victories last November have reshaped some fundamental city policies.
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The Great Escape: An Organizing Thriller
The Great Escape is oxygen for the organizer and fire for an organizing revival.
Countervailing Powers | The Tenants Who Went to Washington
The Homes Guarantee Campaign got the attention of policymakers at the highest levels. Now these tenant organizers want to get the policy.
Countervailing Powers | Small Businesses Rise to Fight Wall Street
Small businesses are organizing around increased swipe fees. Their efforts could further an anti-monopoly revolution.
Countervailing Powers | Making Paid Sick Time a Reality
Organizing for paid leave, which is on the verge of passing in Minnesota, is part of a larger challenge to reverse an abusive workplace status quo.
Courtesy of the Working Families Party
Building Resilient Organizations
Toward Joy and Durable Power in a Time of Crisis
Jermaine Amado
Building Local Power
Sarah Johnson talks about the growing leadership of women and people of color across the country, her approach to organizing in suburban and rural areas, and why relationships are so important to building power.
Courtesy of Ravi Mangla
“We have to tell larger stories”
New York Working Families Party communications director Ravi Mangla talks about his new novel, The Observant, and how he thinks about writing fiction and doing politics.
Courtesy of New America
Winning Paid Family Leave in Delaware
Liz Richards on how she planted the seeds for the Delaware family leave bill, formed a coalition from the ground up, and elevated people power along the way.
Courtesy of New America
Planting the Seeds for Movement Building
An interview with Georgia STAND-Up’s CEO, Deborah Scott
“The Bosses of the Senate” by Joseph Keppler
Countervailing Powers | From Countervailing to Prevailing Power
Progressives should plan our fights against anti-democratic oligarchies with the explicit aim of becoming the dominant political force.
Courtesy of Grassroots Collaborative
Lessons from Chicago Coalition Building
How to build a coalition with members who (mostly) don’t hate each other
Element5 Digital
Racism Is Profitable | Battling on the Issues
Pablo Rodriguez of Communities for a New California talks with Solana Rice and Jeremie Greer about electoral organizing.
Vidar Nordil Mathisen
What's the problem with taking state power?
As social movements move beyond the default anarchist sensibility that prevailed through Occupy, they must still reckon with hard questions about bureaucracy and cooptation.
Courtesy of New America
Widening Political Participation in Lexington, Kentucky
An interview with Richard Young of CivicLex
Jandos Rothstein
Countervailing Powers | Using Policy to Reorganize Power
Even the best structural reforms will not succeed without aggressive organizing.
MACMILLAN (WikiMedia Commons)
Rupture | ACT UP Was a Vanguard Organization
Sarah Schulman talks about the impetus for ACT UP, the group's structure and strategies, and lessons for organizers today.
Image courtesy of Worker Power
Building Worker Power
Unions are among the few institutions where people learn to practice genuine, robust democracy. Building worker power means strengthening those democratic practices within the labor movement — and then bringing them out into the country.
President Carter signing the Community Reinvestment Act on Oct. 12, 1977. (Jimmy Carter Library/National Archives and Records Administration). Source: Federal Reserve
Countervailing Powers | The Reinvestment Movement vs. the Bankers
David is very nimble, but Goliath is more powerful than ever.
What I Learned About Organizing From My Sex Worker Grandmother
An adapted excerpt from Someday Mija, You’ll Learn the Difference Between a Whore and a Working Woman
Koshu Kunii
Los Angeles Is Creating a Model for Fighting Mass Incarceration
In the past five years, abolitionists and advocates of criminal justice reform in Los Angeles County have amassed some impressive victories—laying out a vision for reducing incarceration and providing care that could have national significance.
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The Schools Our Students Deserve
The UTLA and CTU fights for safer schools during COVID
Courtesy of SEJ
The Bridge Project: Reframing the Prevailing American Narrative for 2052
We are sharing the findings of this report with organizers, movement leaders, storytellers, and cultural influencers in the hope that you will help us imagine a future in which the prevalent story of American identity is untethered from white supremacy.
Courtesy of the author. SEIU880 homecare and childcare providers demand raises and recognition, fall 1998
Amazon, Starbucks, And What it Means to Act Like A Union
By trusting workers and empowering them to act like a union, ALU and SBU are building power, moving their campaigns along, and creating a path to collective bargaining and better working conditions despite the hostile legal terrain and vicious employer-led anti-union campaigns.
Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress
Rupture | When Four Students Sat In
Small actions with big plans can sometimes scale quickly
Building Structure Shapes | Florida’s “Fractal” Shaped Alignment Group
In this article, we’ll look more closely at one shape — the fractal — through a case study of several progressive organizations in Florida that formed the StateWide Alignment Group (SWAG)
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Political Polarization Is Pushing Evangelicals To A Historic Breaking Point
Christians are splitting with the religious right over Trump, COVID and Black Lives Matter, creating opportunities for those interested in social justice
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Letter to a Young Organizer #2
You are here to stir the pot. To take the crisis to those who created it. To transform hearts and minds on the way toward transforming how the whole thing works.
Jandos Rothstein
Countervailing Powers | Laws That Create Countervailing Power
A roundtable discussion with Benjamin Sachs, Kate Andrias, and Steve Kest
“Nobody's coming to save any of us”: Lessons from grassroots power building in West Virginia
What grassroots organizing efforts in West Virginia can teach us about how to break free of extractive models of organizing and build real power that can lead to transformative change.
On the Line: An Interview with Daisy Pitkin
The organizer and author Daisy Pitkin talks about the dynamics between staff organizers and members, personal and political risk-taking, institutional culture, and political struggle across a century of union fights in the US.
Courtesy of the author
The Case for Rupture
We cannot dismantle systems of racial monopoly capitalism merely through electoral power or base building alone. We need mass scaled action.
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Practice, Practice, Practice
To build stronger movements, we need to build up our ambition, be strategic in our discipline, and lead with the process.
Building Structure Shapes | ISAIAH’s Multiracial “House”
Executive Director Doran Schrantz went against the advice of non-profit manuals and decided to restructure the staff. How did she reimagine the organizational chart, thus enabling ISAIAH’s house to grow?
Renewing the Lineage of Nonviolent Movement
A Review of Erica Chenoweth’s Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know
Photo courtesy of the Center for Popular Democracy
“Who have we learned from? The people.”
Steve Kest talks with Stephanie Maldonado, Christina Livingston, Allison Brim, and Arlenis Morel about the importance of organizing basics like door knocking, listening, and leadership development in driving their organizations; what they’ve learned from older organizing traditions; and how they’ve adapted or changed those traditions to become more effective and powerful.
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Leveling the Information Playing Field
University financial analyses can serve as political education and organizing tools.
An MST march. (Facebook/Gustavo Marinho)
How movements can maintain their radical vision while winning practical reforms
Forty years of struggle by Brazil's landless workers movement offers lessons on engaging the system without being co-opted.
photo credit: Getty Images
Revolutionary Grounds
On February 23, the DSA International Committee, Starbucks Workers United, and the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee hosted Revolutionary Grounds to hear insights from Starbucks workers organizing from Buffalo, New York, to Valparaíso, Chile.
Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives,Cornell University Library
“It’s Never the End Because the Struggle Continues”: An Interview with Kim Kelly
Kim Kelly on her new book, labor journalism today, and what is giving her hope right now.
Image courtesy of the author
Strategy Charts & Power Maps: A User Guide
Check out these useful guides to create strategies for labor organizing and other social movement campaigns. These tools ask us to think deeply about how we are building the power of disruption to win.
Courtesy of Color Of Change
Building Structure Shapes | Color Of Change’s “Big Tent”
Color of Change’s Arisha Hatch talks with Joy Cushman and Melanie Brazzell about the Building Structure Shapes report and the organization’s “big tent” structure.
Wikimedia Commons
Could This Time Be Different?
Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island just won a union. Is this the signal the labor movement’s been waiting for?
Building the Leadership of Members
Cecily Myart Cruz, the current President of UTLA, and area leaders Georgia Flowers Lee and Maria Miranda talk with UTLA Secretary Arlene Inouye about their organizing efforts, the barriers that still confront women of color, and how to dismantle these barriers to build the future we want.
photo by, Maksim Sokolov (Maxergon)
What the US can learn from Canadian activists who blocked truck convoys
As the trucker convoy makes its way to Washington, Canadian blockades offer lessons on how to stop far-right occupations in their tracks.
photo credit: Getty Images
What to Do When the World Is Ending
So what do we do when the world is ending? The same things that so many of the giants on whose shoulders we stand did when their worlds were ending. We choose to face our despair — to walk towards it and through it —choose to take action, choose to build movements. We do it because we don’t know how it ends, because there are possibilities out there that we simply can’t see from here.
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Ukraine doesn’t need to match Russia’s military might to defend against invasion
Throughout history, people facing occupation have tapped into the power of nonviolent struggle to thwart their invaders.
Photo by Amaury Laporte, Wiki Commons
It’s time to take inspiration from Ukraine and double down on global democratic solidarity
As courageous Ukrainians and Russian antiwar protesters resist Putin’s brutal war, we can do far more to support pro-democracy activists and movements.
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Building Power with Popular Education
Popular education is essential to building an equitable future — especially for base-building organizations.
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The Lost Art of Listening for Issues
Let’s move from funding organizations to mobilize, and instead allow the space to organize.
Wikimedia Commons
Bet on Institution Building, Not Manchin
A case for building movement infrastructure in the times we feel at sea
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An End to the Housing Market as We Know It
A conversation with Meg Daly, René Moya, B. Rosas, and Cea Weaver about the path to decommodifying housing, the false promise of increasing housing supply, and what the recent victory in Saint Paul means for the future of tenant organizing in the city — and across the country.
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Should we disrupt the Democratic Party or try to take it over?
How movements settle the debate on whether to engage with political parties from the inside or outside will have a profound impact on their effectiveness.
photo by, Mykyta Dolmatov
Collaborative Governance: How We Build Power Together
Philadelphia City Council Member Helen Gym, former Gainesville City Commissioner Gail Johnson, State Innovation Exchange Co-Executive Director Jessie Ulibarri, and Texas Organizing Project Strategy Director Crystal Zermeno discuss best practices, identify promising strategies, and highlight lessons from their on-the-ground experiences with co-governance in the U.S.
Photo by Colin Lloyd
To Tackle Racial Justice, Organizing Must Change
Racial justice is increasingly embraced across our movements, but the strategic work to live up to that vision is still all too lacking.
Photo by Gage Skidmore for Arizona Education Association
Yes, Social Media Can Help With Real-World Organizing
We can’t change the world just by posting on social media. But as the 2018 red state teachers strikes show, if organizers make strategic choices about their online organizing, social media can be used to build mass, militant actions like strikes.
Photo courtesy of New Virginia Majority
Lessons from the Virginia Election
Mat Hanson talks with Alexsis Rodgers, the State Director for Care in Action; David Broder, President of SEIU Virginia 512; Maya Castillo, Political Director for the New Virginia Majority; and Luis Aguilar, State Director for CASA in Action about the lessons they’re drawing from the election.
Katie Rodriguez
The Hard Truth Behind Rigorous Organizing
We must let go of the idea that success in organizing is determined by the amount that we do rather than the power we build and the practices and culture we create in the process.
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New York City Taxi Drivers Went on a Hunger Strike — and Won
We sat down with New York State Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani to talk about why he joined the hunger strike, the value of an inside/outside strategy, and what’s next for the taxi drivers.
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Building Prisms of Power, Not Sandcastles that Get Washed Away Each Election
What the current debate over Democratic strategy leaves out: why groups that invest in long-term constituency organizing win
Image courtesy of the author
Building Structure Shapes | The NY Working Families Party's "Stool"
This article looks at one shape — the stool — through a case study of the New York Working Families Party.
Image courtesy of the author
Structure/Strategy | Building Structure Shapes
This report offers a framework and vocabulary that can support movement leaders in deepening their structuring capacity in times of organizational challenge.
Koshu Kunii
Movement Capture: Lessons from Funders and Organizers
Dorian Warren, Megan Ming Francis, and Maurice Mitchell talk about the history of "movement capture" and the work it will take to create healthy and sustainable movement cultures.
Alex Radelich
“Power doesn’t give up power easily”
Hahrie Han on her new book, the moments of uncertainty that face every organization, and why base building is critical to navigating changing power dynamics over the long haul.
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Building People-Powered Budgets
Insights from budget campaigns across the PowerSwitch Action network
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Drafting Chile’s New Constitution
Mapuche representative Rosa Catrileo on her work in the community, the Mapuche demands for land and water in their historic territory, and how the new constitution can address those critical issues.
Photo courtesy of Working Families Party
Debriefing the NY Primaries
Four veteran organizers talk about the recent elections in New York, the fractures that persist on the left, and how the movement failed to take advantage of ranked-choice voting to sweep the races.
Photo by Charles Edward Miller (WikiCommons)
Making Our Demands Both Practical and Visionary
How social movements are employing the concept of the “non-reformist reform” to promote far-reaching change
Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona
How DOJ Can Defund the Police
A Justice Department strategy can deflate police budgets while asserting community control over federal grants.
Getty Images, Rudzhan Nagiev
“We wanted to keep those jobs”
Lena Eckert-Erdheim talks with three workers who were active in the drive to unionize No Evil Foods about their experiences of the company’s anti-union campaign and the challenges of unionizing progressive workplaces.
Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk
“Who Feeds Us While We Feed You?”
This spring, immigrant New Yorkers secured a historic victory: a $2.1 billion fund for workers who lost jobs and income during the pandemic but received not a cent of government relief.
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Polling for Progress
At Data for Progress, we see polling as a tool for organizers and the progressive movement to shape public narratives and persuade stakeholders.
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Reflections on the Field
Five leaders in the movement reflect on where we have been — and where we are going.
Photo courtesy of Rights and Democracy
Fighting the GOP’s War on Democracy
How did an emerging national conversation about race — a conversation that a majority of Americans in 2020 said they wanted to have — become hijacked by an attack on a field called critical race theory?
Photo from: Library of Congress
Dying With Our Boots On
Lessons from Daniel Berrigan as we push Biden
Jorge Serrato via @arteprecario.org
“Let the horrible night cease.”
Jacobo Albán talks about the years of work leading to the strike in Colombia, the opportunity this moment presents for mass political education, and how those living outside Colombia can support the demonstrations.
Yulieth Rincon via @arteprecario.org
“We’re going to achieve our demands together.”
Colombian labor leader Wilson Sáenz on the demonstrators’ demands, the government’s refusal to negotiate in good faith, and what it will take for the strike to come to an end.
Yulieth Rincon via @arteprecario.org
“We are at a very high level of physical and moral exhaustion.”
Colombian human rights observer Nathalie Pareja talks about the human rights violations taking place across the country right now, why the demonstrations continue, and the path ahead for Colombians.
Yulieth Rincon via @arteprecario.org
“This is a serious human rights crisis.”
An anonymous protestor in Colombia on the austerity measures causing the protests, the government’s violent crackdown, and why the strike continues despite severe repression.
DonkeyHotey on WikiCommons
Let’s Stop Chasing Joe Manchin
We’ve got to use our resources wisely, which means betting on deep, long-term, place-based organizing.
Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona
Call for Proposals: Youth Organizing Across the World
We are currently seeking proposals for articles for the international youth organizing issue.
The Center of the Economy Isn’t Industry, It’s Care Work
Dave Kamper talks with Gabriel Winant about his new book, The Next Shift, and the organizing potential in care work.
Ask A Digital Organizer | How can I ethically use social media for my campaign?
How do organizers square our criticisms of Big Tech with our reliance on its platforms to build the movements we need to win?
Senate Democrats, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Can social movements realign America’s political parties to win big change?
In claiming the goal of "realignment," groups such as Sunrise and Justice Democrats are reviving an old idea, with hopes of provoking new political transformations.
Courtesy of Heather Booth
“We Need Love at the Center”
Drew Astolfi talks with Heather Booth about her long career in organizing, how the movement has changed, and what’s giving her hope for the future.
Courtesy of David Rolf
The Fight For $15 | “Power is the end game.” Lessons from the Fight for $15.
David Rolf looks back on the last decade of organizing for a $15 minimum wage and wrestles with what it will take for the next labor upsurge to win.
Damon Bowe
The Fight For $15 | Tipped Workers and the Fight for $15
Mat Hanson talks with Nikki Cole about why tipped workers must be a central part of the effort to raise the minimum wage.
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The Fight For $15 | One Fair Wage Is the New Era of the Restaurant Industry
As cities and states start relaxing COVID restrictions and mask mandates, tipped workers have reported a substantial decline in tips, a disturbing increase in sexual harassment, and an overwhelming responsibility to protect public health. We can’t go back to the old normal.
Courtesy of Adriana Rivera
The Fight For $15 | Give The People Something to Vote For
How the Florida Immigrant Coalition got out the vote to help win the Fight for $15.
The Fight For $15 | More Popular Than Trump and Biden. How $15 Won in Florida
Kofi Hunt talks about what it took to build a coalition that delivered real change for working families in Florida.
The Fight For $15 | How Workers Won the Fight for $15 in Florida.
Starbucks worker and member organizer Sammy Conde spoke with Mat Hanson about their role in the successful Fight for $15 in Florida — and how they shifted gears to build power during the pandemic.
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The Amazon Loss & What We Owe Each Other in the Labor Movement
Bessemer is the latest, highly-visible example of one of the American labor movement’s prime weaknesses: the lack of systems or mechanisms that allow information, strategy decisions, and lessons learned to be shared across the movement.
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The Fight For $15 | The Fight for $15: Past, Present, and Future
In the months and years ahead, the movement must continue pressing for a federal minimum wage increase for all workers — and for legislation that will make it easier to build fighting unions to empower workers in the long term.
Images courtesy of Keith Kelleher
The Fight For $15 | Fast Food Fight
The early fight to organize Detroit’s fast food workers
The All-Nite Images https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en
The Fight For $15 | The Fight for $15
Unprecedented organizing has helped build worker power and raise wages for millions of workers over the past decade. What can we learn from the Fight for $15, and what is still left to be done?
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It’s Time for Labor to Embrace Antimonopoly
We need both movements if we are to democratize our economy and protect it from corporate power.
Courtesy of Jennifer E. Cossyleon
Healing from Carceral Oppression
Given the legacy of women of color as the backbone for racial justice movements, it is no surprise they are leading the movement to abolish our carceral society and to collectively heal from centuries of oppression.
Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University
Organizing 9to5
A conversation with two leaders of the 9to5 movement
Courtesy of Alicia Garza
The Purpose of Power
Solana Rice talks with Alicia Garza about how our movements build power, the role of social media in organizing, and why Black communities need their own spaces to get organized.
Photo by, Can Candan
An Uprising for a Democratic University in Turkey
Boğaziçi professor Taylan Acar talks about organizing for the resistance at the Turkish university — and what U.S. labor organizers can learn from their struggle.
Courtesy of Siembra
Five Lessons From the Past Four Years
If campaign organizing is a series of peaks and valleys, 2021 has already brought many of us vertigo.
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Healing in the Post-Trump Era Is Necessary Work
The Trump years have had a deep impact on everyone’s mental health. What has it done to those of us who had the responsibility for stopping him?
Courtesy of the author
Fighting Austerity One Voter At a Time
Lessons from the fight to tax the rich in Illinois
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After the Insurrection | “You Can’t Fight Authoritarianism With the Status Quo”
A conversation with Tarso Ramos
Tito Texidor III
After the Insurrection | Building the Movement to Defeat White Nationalism
“This fight is something we need to prepare for right now, and that's going to require us to up our game dramatically.”
Image courtesy of Makia Green
After the Insurrection | #DontRentDC. How organizers stopped white supremacists from returning to the capital.
A conversation with Makia Green
Koshu Kunii
After the Insurrection | An Abolitionist Response to White Supremacy
Abolition teaches us that a fight against “domestic terrorism” isn’t what we need.
Courtesy of Color Of Change
After the Insurrection | Seizing the moment: How progressives can combat white supremacy
A conversation with Rashad Robinson
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A Letter to a Young Organizer
There’s no getting around it. Organizing is hard. But the context you are organizing in right now? It’s a whole different thing.
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After the Insurrection | We Must Hold Wall Street & Silicon Valley Accountable for White Supremacist Violence — Before It Gets Worse.
One way we can beat back white supremacist movements is by taking on the corporations that enable them to spread their ideology, recruit followers, and plan attacks.
Photo courtesy of Pouya Najmaie
After the Insurrection | “Be in touch with your neighbors”
When white supermacists came to Minneapolis during the uprisings last summer, local organizers formed patrols to defend their neighborhoods.
After the Insurrection | How to Combat White Power
Kathleen Belew talks about the surge in white terrorism during the Trump years and what antiracist organizers need to know to combat it.
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After the Insurrection | A Conversation with Nancy MacLean
"The Republican party has been feeding disinformation and red meat to people for a very long time."
Cooper Baumgar
After the Insurrection | Building a United Front Against Authoritarianism
A Conversation with Lauren Jacobs
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Progressive Must Learn to Co-Govern in Biden's Washington
The historical turning point we now face imposes a profound moral obligation for progressives to immediately pursue a working coalition with moderates.
Racial and Economic Oppression is the Pandemic. Organizing is the Vaccine.
We’ve been in an oppression crisis for generations. Organizers of color can deliver the anecdote— if the rest of us support and help sustain their power.
Images courtesy of Micah Sifry
Organizing in the Digital Age: Lessons from the Indivisible Movement
Lessons from the Indivisible Movement
An Invitation to Organize
A review of Arnie Graf’s Lessons Learned: Stories from a Lifetime of Organizing
Hiring Great Organizers
Who we hire matters. When we take big, strategic bets on new organizers, we don’t just expand our talent pool; we decide who has a voice in the political process and who doesn’t.
Is There a Path to Power in Higher Ed?
Forming “one big union” is the way to meet the challenges posed by the neoliberal university.
What the Teacher Strikes Taught Us — And What We Still Need to Learn
Mass teacher strikes took the nation by surprise in 2018 and 2019. What can we learn from the teacher strikes for the future of public schools and the labor movement in the post-pandemic world?
Brooke Anderson
Lessons from Organizing Slowly with Siblings of People with Disabilities
I’m learning that when I take up space — authentically bringing all of who I am to my organizing work — something else is possible. I’m not concealing my own power.
Let’s Make the Township and Ward Organizations More Like Movements
The Democratic Party must abandon the transactional model of organizing and create relationships that last beyond one campaign. That work should start at the township and ward level.
Ask A Digital Organizer | How do I engage new members?
Trying to up your digital game during COVID? Our columnists are here to help with all your digital dilemmas.
Emiliano Bar
Hot Off the Press | White Feminism Promotes Mass Incarceration
A review of Aya Graber’s The Feminist War on Crime
Inside the Organizers Corner | What is Power?
Ben Chin talks with Nelini Stamp, James Haslam, Arleen Vargas, and Kendall Mackey about how their understanding of power has changed since they started organizing and what shifted their perspective.
Inside the Organizers Corner | Keeping Bottom-Up Democracy Strong
Ben Chin talks with Nelini Stamp, James Haslam, Arleen Vargas, and Kendall Mackey about how they're keeping bottom-up democracy strong as their organizations grow in size and power.
Inside the Organizers Corner | The Ups and Downs of New Voices in the Movement
Ben Chin talks with Nelini Stamp, James Haslam, Arleen Vargas, and Kendall Mackey about the influx of white, upwardly-mobile activists in the movement during the Trump years.
Photo by Gabriel Benois
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.
Photo courtesy of the author
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
For Those of Us With Privilege: It's Time to Use It
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
"Cori is the right candidate for exactly the right time"
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.
The Research of Organizing | Unions and Race: “I don't think we have time to be tame anymore.”
Jake Grumbach on the effects of unions on white racial politics
Image courtesy of 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.
Clay Banks
Reclaiming Rhode Island in a Movement Moment
Bernie volunteers in Rhode Island are turning their presidential campaign operation into a statewide leftist organization. In the process, they’re learning to connect their socialist principles to the demand to Defund the Police.
Bringing Bernie 2020 Organizing Tools to the Workplace
The Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, a project born out of a partnership between the United Electrical Workers (UE) and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), is taking the lessons learned from the Bernie 2020 campaign into workplace organizing.
Library of Congress
How Phyllis Schlafly Found The Right Balance of Racism and Misogyny and Charted the Future of the Radical Right
An excerpt from The Lie That Binds, a new political history of how the radical right used abortion to gain power and hijak the Republican Party.
Organizer Voices | Lessons from the Ferguson Uprisings
Two veterans of the Ferguson uprisings talk about the promises and challenges of Ferguson, what it takes to sustain momentum in the streets, and what organizers today can learn from Ferguson.
Lessons from NYC’s Pipeline Battle
How a multi-racial coalition defeated big oil and gas companies to block the Williams Pipeline.
Hot Off the Press | Our Social Innovation Moment
Ray Brescia on what organizers can learn from past social movements about how to effectively harness new technologies to grow the movement and make lasting change.
Homeless Communities’ Land Takeovers Poke Holes in Chile’s Neoliberal “Miracle”
Sometimes a curse can be a blessing, until it becomes a curse again.
Mapping Our Movement to Go on Offense: An Interactive Tool for Common Good Organizing
The Bargaining for the Common Good (BCG) network is undertaking a new project to support activists nationwide. We are collecting and mapping as many union contract expirations as we can across the U.S. to create a powerful tool for our collective work.
A Brief History of the UNITE HERE Local 11 Remote Unemployment Insurance Mutual Aid Network
UCLA Law students partnered with UNITE HERE Local 11 to establish and run a mutual aid network with over 200 volunteers providing unemployment insurance assistance to thousands of union members. Here’s how they did it and what lessons they learned.
Organizing in the Age of Coronavirus | Building Neighborhood Power
L.A. City Council candidate Nithya Raman and her co-campaign manager, Meghan Choi, talk about using community organizing tactics not just to win an election but to build “resilient neighborhoods” and a people-powered government.
Black Workers Matter: How defunding police could create thousands of good jobs for Black communities
Divesting from police departments and investing in public goods like transit would improve the air quality in Black neighborhoods while creating thousands of new jobs for Black workers.
Anything feels possible in this moment
Jae Hyun Shim on the conversations we need to have about safety, justice, and community if we want to live in a world free from the police.
Organizing in the Age of Coronavirus | Campaigning for Progressive Changes
“I will be damned if they don't happen in my lifetime”
Organizing in the Age of Coronavirus | “We have to tax the rich”
Assembly candidate and tenants' rights attorney Adam Bojak on his fight against austerity politics, how COVID is reshaping his campaign, what he’s doing to prepare for an “avalanche of evictions.”
Organizing in the Age of Coronavirus | “It’s rare to find somebody who’s really dug in”
Emily Gallagher and her campaign manager, Andrew Epstein, talk about their NYS Assembly race and how they’ve pivoted during COVID.
Organizing in the Age of Coronavirus | "We need people that are listening"
Fatima Iqbal-Zubair and her campaign managers talk about their California State Assembly race, the campaign’s turn to mutual aid work during COVID, and how they’re building a sustainable grassroots movement
Organizer Voices | “Cops don’t keep us safe”
Cat Brooks from the Anti Police-Terror Project talks about organizing during the uprisings, what needs to be done to defund the police, and her vision for a national defund movement.
Organizing in the Age of Coronavirus | “Electing socialist politicians expands what is possible by leaps and bounds”
Jabari Brisport and Fainan Lakha talk about their campaign, the DSA’s electoral strategy, and why we need socialists in office.
Organizer Voices | Planting the Seeds of Abolition
Organizers from the Minneapolis abolitionist collective MPD150 talk about changing the narrative to create the world we want to see.
Organizing in the Age of Coronavirus | How to Campaign in a Crisis
Tascha Van Auken talks about how she’s building a people-powered campaign during COVID-19
Organizing in the Age of Coronavirus | "This is all about bringing about justice"
Phara Soufrrant Forrest talks about how her campaign strategies have shifted during a tumultuous spring — and how she’s using her campaign to build a more just New York.
New Media and Political Power: An Interview with Brian Rosenwald
Brian Rosenwald talked with us about the Right’s success at monopolizing talk radio — and the possibilities for the Left to use new media to expand our reach
Neoliberalism Is Over. What Comes Next? An Interview with Ganesh Sitaraman
Ganesh Sitaraman talks about the demise of neoliberalism and the urgency of fighting for — and winning — a more democratic political and economic order.
Organizing in the Age of Coronavirus | Framework: Strategy Questions for Paradigm Shifts in an Age of Crises
Moving through a long-term crisis calls us to vision the future, process tough emotions, and address immediate emergencies in the present moment, often all in the same day or hour. This tool is intended to help community-based organizations map questions for their teams to navigate these difficult and complex times.
Organizing in the Age of Coronavirus | Building Civic Power in the Covid-19 Crisis
The COVID-19 pandemic is not just a public health and economic crisis. America’s worst-in-the-world outbreak reflects a crisis of democracy.
Racism Has a Cost for Everyone
In my TED talk, I tell stories that challenge the zero-sum paradigm of racial competition. I share for the first time how it felt to watch Lehman Brothers collapse from a crisis my colleagues and I had spent nearly a decade trying to prevent. What began with discriminatory loans to Black homeowners (three times as likely to be charged inflated mortgage rates despite good credit) eventually...
Organizing in the Age of Coronavirus | Organizing in the Time of Physical Distancing
This piece was written for community organizations partnering with Community Change and aimed at helping groups manage the organizing challenges of the current moment.
Organizing in the Age of Coronavirus | Strategic Thinking in a Long Term Crisis: One Approach for Community Based Orgs
Moving through a long-term crisis calls us to vision the future, process tough emotions, and address immediate emergencies in the present moment, often all in the same day or hour. This tool was co-created to help community-based organizations map the questions that help them navigate these difficult and complex times.
Organizing in the Age of Coronavirus | Coronavirus and its Political Offspring
Veteran political strategist Mike Podhorzer brings his analytical rigor to COVID-19 and raises important questions about the political implications.
Race, Class and Coalitions
Sudip Bhattacharya digs into real-world organizing and left political theory to examine the politics of race, class and coalition building.
Organizing in the Age of Coronavirus | Moving Through Contagion Fear, Preparing for Recovery
Note: This essay builds on a March 7, 2020 essay by Larry Kleinman entitled Organizing in a Time of Approaching Pandemic: Campaigns and Contingency Planning Amid the Effects and Fears of Coronavirus” [1]
Organizing in the Age of Coronavirus | Messaging Guidance on COVID-19
This guide is adapted from messaging developed with the Million Voters Project, a coalition of organizing networks in California. It draws upon previous messaging guidance from Nicole Carty and Anthony Torres.
Organizing in the Age of Coronavirus | Keeping Business Alive: The Government as Buyer of Last Resort
The coronavirus threatens the world’s economic life. Social distancing measures, essential to fight the epidemic, are sharply reducing demand in sectors such as transportation, restaurants, hotels, and entertainment.
Organizing in the Age of Coronavirus | Organizando en Medio de una pandemia inminente: Campañas y planes de contingencia en medio de Una Pandemia Inminente: los efectos y temores del Coronaviru.
Un organizador veterano nos ayuda a considerar las preguntas que surgen con respecto a organizar mientras la crisis del coronavirus sigue creciendo cada dia.
Organizing in the Age of Coronavirus | Organizing in a Time of Approaching Pandemic: Campaigns and Contingency Planning Amid the Effects and Fear of Coronavirus
A veteran organizer helps us to think through organizing questions as the coronavirus crisis grows by the day.
Organizer Voices | Building the Movement for Tax Justice
The new book by Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez, The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay has just come out, and it makes a few things really clear.
From the Archives | An Organizer’s Tale
We inaugurate the From the Archives series with a classic from Cesar Chavez.
Organizer Voices | Energy Democracy Campaigns: Building the Green New Deal from the Ground Up
The climate crisis and the fight for a Green New Deal has opened up a new conversation about energy democracy. Three DSA organizers from different states examine the growing movement for public power in comparison and context.
Review in Brief | Merge Left
There’s no excuse for recycling tired phrases about “the middle class,” or simply pointing out how Trump is bad, without injecting our own values and vision into the conversation. We know that ignoring race should qualify as political malpractice. Let’s at least make new mistakes. López and his fellow researchers have given us everything we need to get started.
Dealing with Funders: Lessons from the Long Civil Rights Movement
A Review of “The Price of Civil Rights: Black Lives, White Funding, and Movement Capture,” by Megan Francis Ming, and Poll Power, by Evan Faulkenbury
Organizer Voices | The Sick and the Well: Ableism is the Problem — Medicare For All is the Solution
Examining different experiences (organizing, mobilization, and otherwise), Vinay Krishnan writes about ableism and the fight for Medicare for All.
Organizer Voices | From Textathons to Black Joy: How Color of Change is Re-imagining Organizing
The idea, says Color of Change's chief of campaigns Arisha Hatch, is to center Black joy and to build face-to-face teams, which now number in the thousands, of people meeting and acting locally (and having fun together).
Politically Effective or Just Good at Campaigns?
A research report on capacity building in 501(c)(4) organizations and the role of leadership.
Hot Off the Press | The Triumph of Injustice: From Boston to Richmond
The history of taxation in the United States is anything but linear. It’s a story of dramatic reversals, of sudden ideological and political changes, of groundbreaking innovations and radical U-turns.
Organizer Voices | What ACORN Taught Us
It has been ten years since the community group ACORN was destroyed. At its height, The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now was the largest community organization in the United States with chapters in over 100 cities.
Hot Off the Press | Civic Power: Reclaiming Democracy’s Radicalism
In this excerpt from the book Civic Power: Rebuilding American Democracy in an Era of Crisis, authors K. Sabeel Rahman and Hollie Russon Gilman discuss restoring American democracy and rescuing it from crisis.
Tips for Organizing Member-Led In-District Meetings At Scale
How many times have you just about gotten to the beginning of a Congressional recess, realized you want to run an in-district legislative campaign to influence them when they’re home from Washington, but didn’t do it because you weren’t sure where to begin?
Review in Brief | Shadow Network
Anne Nelson's Shadow Network: Media, Money and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right tells a holistic story of the toxic cocktail of extremist political operatives and a right-wing evangelical base. This is the coalition that is winning our day. It is perhaps the greatest threat to our freedoms and to a progressive future and deserves our full attention.
Organizer Voices | Ten Lessons from Twenty-Five Years in Organizing
My years as a labor organizer have been challenging, joyous, and sometimes devastating, like all organizing. Here are my "top 10" lessons.
How We Fought, Lost, and Learned
What I bore witness to was not merely an announcement about a congressional process. It was seeing people’s faith in our democracy and our world shift.
Organizer Voices | An Interview with Angela Lang
I felt like, if you’re organizing from a place of anger, that is not sustainable at all. I’m trying to figure out different ways to go back to organizing from a place of love.
Welcome to The Forge: Organizing Strategy and Practice
I'd like to welcome you to The Forge. Let us tell you about our vision, our plan, and how to get involved.
Organizer Voices | "I Fight For My Family"
"I fight for my family and my neighborhood." Tyla Pond, mother of four, answered her door in Franklin, Indiana to an organizer from Hoosier Action.
Organizer Voices | Puja Datta
We need to base build. We’re going to have to have mass obstruction of the economic system. We’re going to have to have mass obstruction of the information system.
From the Archives | Organizing: A Secret History
Given the obstacles to organizing and the inability of contemporary unions to increase or even maintain their membership, understanding the history of organizing seems more important than ever.
Cancel Kavanaugh Campaign
I’ve said that the reason that we lost is that we didn’t have the votes and that we ran out of power, but we also lost because we have electeds who are cowards. It’s not their fault, it’s ours, but our the Democrats could not even hold their entire caucus.
Review | Why Changing Minds Isn’t Activism
A book review of Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Anti-Racist.
Interview with Hahrie Han
The Forge spoke to Hahrie Han, co-founder of the new Center on Democracy and Organizing and professor at Johns Hopkins University.
The Kavanaugh Reckoning Is Only Just Beginning
One year ago this week, after a shameful process, the Senate confirmed Brett Kavanaugh.
Kavanaugh One Year Later
What we didn’t know when we started was that this fight would become a sort of reckoning about sexual violence and how power flows along gender lines in our society.
Community Organizing: People Power from the Grassroots
Community organizing is not merely a process that is good for its own sake. Unless the organization wins concrete, measurable benefits for those who participate, it will not last long.
How A Devastating Loss Sparked An Even Greater Movement
It’s been a year since the Senate confirmed Judge Brett Kavanaugh to a lifetime position on the Supreme Court.
Review | The Burning Case for Fan(non)Fiction for the Climate Movement
Review of On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal, by Naomi Klein