Articles
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Frontline Communities Lead the Way on Housing and Climate Justice Panel
In this panel, housing organizers have identified our most vital source of resilience as climate disasters intensify: the trust between neighbors, which they are forging into a powerful force for collective survival and justice. Tony Samara: Welcome everyone. I’m...
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Razing Liberty Square with Valencia Gunder
This interview was conducted in Fall 2025 with Valencia Gunder of The Smile Trust, about Razing Liberty Square, a documentary about the Black community of Liberty City and how they’re resisting climate gentrification. Misk Noor: Thank you for sending...
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Putting Housing on the High Road
This is a republish of part of a series of CCI substack posts and a policy brief exploring why the United States needs a Green Industrial Policy for Housing. The United States is in the midst of a decades-long housing crisis that has...
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Using Participatory-Action Research to Explore New Campaign Strategies in Red-Trifecta Florida
In the face of a hostile legislature and stalled policies, Miami tenants have stopped asking politicians for help and started building their own power—by turning corporate landlords’ financial records into weapons. The housing crisis in Florida has only worsened...
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The Climate Movement Must Be A Movement Against Fascism
The era of “holding our lane” is over: we must now choose between building a single-issue movement or preserving the democracy necessary for any movement to survive. In America and around the world, fascism is on the rise. From...
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Lessons From Helene: An Organized Community is a Safe Community
When floodwaters consumed the only roads into their Appalachian town, the community’s survival hinged on the deep trust and organizing muscle built by a local group over years, proving that true disaster resilience is forged long before the storm ever...
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Photo cred: Naftali Ehrenkranz Two Years After October 7th, Where is Our Movement Headed?
The Jewish community is at a crossroads when it comes to Israel’s genocide. As organizers, it’s our job to bring them along. As the tenuous ceasefire in Israel and Gaza goes into effect, I am brought back to October 7th,...
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Labor Activist Chris Smalls On Solidarity with Gaza
On July 26, Israeli occupation forces intercepted the Handala, the latest Gaza Freedom Flotilla ship sailing to break the illegal siege of Gaza amid mass starvation. A United Nations-backed organization has just issued an urgent report warning of a “worst-case scenario of famine” in...
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The Revolution Will Not Be Incorporated: Movement Infrastructure vs Nonprofit Industrial Complex
If the success of Left movements relies on nonprofit organizations, we must be honest about the industry’s reproduction of capitalism and state violence. Revolution is the only way. It’s a precious occasion when your most cherished political values merge with...
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Philanthropy and Repression: Not the Exception—The System
“To confront repression and depoliticization head-on, philanthropy must commit to deeply understanding and supporting the interconnected nature of global struggles.” We are living through a compounding, interconnected catastrophe—one long sounded by Palestinian, Sudanese, Haitian, and countless Global Majority communities. Today’s...
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Sick and unsafe: Trump attacks on workers’ rights is an attack on public health
This power shift hasn’t just changed paychecks—it has fundamentally altered the physical and mental health landscape for millions of Americans. American workers stand at a perilous crossroads, with their health and well-being hanging in the balance. Over decades, a deliberate...
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We Say We Want to Save Democracy. So Why Aren’t We Funding the People Who Can?
A protest can spark momentum, but only infrastructure sustains it. If we want a multiracial democracy that lasts, we have to fund the organizers, trainers, and educators building it every day. Philanthropy says it wants to stop authoritarianism. But right...
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How Mass-Based Community Unions Could Transform the Country
Over-reliance on outside funding threatens organizations’ long-term stability. Veteran labor organizer, Keith Kelleher, proposes member-driven “community unions” as a sustainable alternative. We are in a mess right now. Labor and community organizations are under attack. A cascading list of Executive...
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Labor’s Quiet Revolution?
The top ranks of labor leadership are turning over quickly. It’s worth asking what, if anything, it means. The last few months have seen some unexpected and significant changes in high profile labor leadership. The news on May 12th that...
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Resisting Fascism: Lessons from South Asia And Its Diaspora
South Asian resistance movements offer vital strategies for combating rising fascism globally through transnational solidarity, grassroots organizing, and cultural defiance. The presence of Kash Patel at the head of the FBI, Usha Vance in the White House, and Vivek Ramaswamy...
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“Electoralizing” Your Issue Campaign: The Example of Paid Sick Days
Elections are a time when organizers hope to establish their issue as a central priority for both the public and the candidates campaigning to take office. The phrase “electoralizing” an issue during elections has become a frequent term among organizers,...
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Worker Power in Spartanburg,SC
Ben Carroll, Organizing Coordinator for the Southern Workers Assembly details what it takes to build worker power in Spartanburg County,SC. On an unseasonably warm afternoon in early March, four worker-volunteers stood at the employee entrance/exit of a major manufacturer in...
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Taking the Long View of History: A Conversation with Prof. John Wright
Conceptualizing social movements as part of a trans-generational struggle is crucial to both stamina and success, he says In the winter of 1969, a group of 70 Black students occupied Morrill Hall at the University of Minnesota to protest institutional...
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Time for People-Centered Policy
Workshop’s Executive Director, MB Maxwell breaks down five ways to secure people-centered policy wins in their latest. Originally published in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas – Time for People-Centered Policy) Like so many others, I knocked on a lot of doors...
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148 Days and Counting: Georgia’s Battle Against Authoritarianism
Learn how Georgian citizens have fought against their own Trump-like figure to get a glimpse of what may be ahead for the United States. It’s the 148th day of protests in Tbilisi. Rustaveli Avenue, home to Georgia’s Parliament building, is...