[There is need to invest in different structures, organizing
alongside or outside of the traditional unions, base-building and
nonprofit organizations for multi-year struggles, especially worker
organizing and scaled disruptive direct action. ]
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BUILD NEW INFRASTRUCTURE FOR A BROADER MOVEMENT  
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Jeff Ordower
February 20, 2021
Organizing Upgrade
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_ There is need to invest in different structures, organizing
alongside or outside of the traditional unions, base-building and
nonprofit organizations for multi-year struggles, especially worker
organizing and scaled disruptive direct action. _

,

 

Organizers can draw so much encouragement from 2020. The uprising in
the wake of George Floyd’s murder became the largest movement in
U.S. history. So many groups threw down brilliantly to flip back the
battleground states. The pandemic and the support of groups like
United for Respect made tech tools ubiquitous for organizing.
Frontline Amazon workers, Instacart shoppers and healthcare workers
pushed back against the pandemic profiteers.

Last year almost the entire progressive organizing infrastructure
participated in the elections to some degree. That was necessary, and
in large part successful, at least in defeating the most pernicious
manifestation of Trumpism. Now we will see some strategic realignment
within the social movement Left. Some groups are going all-in to win
what they can from President Biden and Congress in the first 100 days.
Others are doubling down on a commitment to build local and state
political power, and winning significant issues and policies that come
with that. Most groups have an eye towards base-building and growing
their scope and power, concurrent with winning. Most encouraging on
the strategy front is that the larger “we” of the movement
ecosystem has learned from the early Obama years and is unafraid of
inside-outside strategies.

The years ahead will no doubt be even more tumultuous than this last
one. As a result, many of us also need to invest in different
structures, organizing alongside or outside of the traditional unions,
base-building and nonprofit organizations, thus enriching our movement
ecosystem and augmenting our work for the multi-year struggles ahead.
New approaches to worker organizing and to direct action seem
particularly worthy of nurturing.

WORKERS STEP OUT

The huge upswing in worker organizing in 2020 often had union support,
but with an experimental twist.

Over the first few months of the COVID-19 epidemic, workers from
bridal shops to pizza places to supermarkets were organizing to get
Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), and winning. They used tools like
the coworker.org [[link removed]] site, which helps anyone
start up a petition in their workplace and make demands. Groups like
the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee
[[link removed]] (EWOC), a project of the Democratic
Socialists of America (DSA) and the United Electrical Workers Union
(UE) supported those workers taking independent action. EWOC provides
a sophisticated intake system combined with veteran labor movement
coaches to support workers winning their demands.

Groups like United for Respect [[link removed]] and
different coalition partners of Athena [[link removed]],
fighting Amazon, have been building worker organizations and winning
changes at some of the largest corporations on the planet. United for
Respect has raised wages at Walmart, and won better conditions for
pregnant workers. [[link removed]] The
Awood Center in Minnesota, which predominantly organizes East African
workers, has changed Amazon’s practices in their warehouse to make
sure that workers have accommodations
[[link removed]]
for Ramadan and throughout the year as well.

Gig workers have no legal right to organize a union, but despite the
law, Uber and Lyft drivers, Instacart shoppers, and Doordash delivery
workers have been organizing before and during the pandemic. Groups
like Gig Workers Rising [[link removed]], a group of
rideshare drivers, have won minimum wages and benefits and concessions
around unfair deactivations. Subsequently, gig companies spent $200
million to claw back many of those gains through Proposition 22 on the
California ballot; but at least they had to spend more than any other
ballot measure in history. Gig Workers Rising teamed up with
drivers’ groups around the world to organize the Global Uber Strike
in 2019
[[link removed]],
shutting down Market Street in San Francisco for hours in front of
Uber Headquarters, and continue to push forward a high level of
militancy.

Once workers exercise power in the workplace, they are building the
confidence to exercise further power and build increasingly powerful
organization. Worker militancy can create huge wins in the workplace,
without entering into collective bargaining agreements. We can support
workplace organizing both directly and indirectly.

BACKSTOPPING WORKER ACTIONS

_SUPPORT AT THE WORKPLACE._ This sounds simple but it cuts to the core
of how we think about labor organizing. Increased workplace militancy
begets increased militancy, as shown by the explosion of wildcat
strikes in the 1930s. Increased militancy also leads to increased risk
for workers. Most veteran union organizers are of the mind that we
need organizational backing before workers can publicly take action. I
am not sure that is entirely true. Workers might be able to take
independent action, and then go to organizations if they run into
trouble. Jobs With Justice has been filling this labor rapid response
role for decades, and the Fight for 15 enlists faith leaders to
accompany strikers back to work. This summer’s uprising has
supercharged all of this infrastructure, and increasing numbers of
folks are looking for opportunities to mobilize in solidarity.
Movement infrastructure support, combined with traditional labor and
faith actors and perhaps a National Labor Relations Board determined
to move quickly and support collective action at the workplace, makes
this an especially fortuitous time for us to both organize and support
direct action at the workplace.

_FINANCIAL UNDERGIRDING FOR UNION ORGANIZING_. Sometimes unions will
support new forms of organizing and sometimes not, but workers paying
dues right off the bat can support full or part-time organizers. The
Communications Workers of America is doing the best work on this right
now, collecting dues on bank draft or credit card through new projects
with workers ranging from Google engineers
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to hospital workers
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Two hundred workers paying $15 per month in dues pays for an organizer
who would be making roughly the same amount as workers in retail or
delivery. This may be a moment we can create sustainable economic
models fairly quickly.

_SUPPORT FOR SALTING_. A salt is someone who takes a job with the
intent of organizing a workplace. Unions like UNITE/HERE have used
salts to organize hotels and there are currently salting projects at
different warehouses as well. While we should not necessarily
publicize current salting projects for reasons of security, we could
be recruiting large numbers of young people and recently retired folks
to engage in salting and organizing. For example, with so much of
campus life on-line, student organizers could be rerouting their
activism to the workplace. Sometimes, a group of people salting in a
region live together in a group house, or we could find solidarity
housing with folks who are long-time labor activists who have spare
bedrooms. As workplace organizing and militancy comes back in vogue,
we should be lowering the barriers to entry, and recruiting large
numbers of salts, and thinking about how to create infrastructure that
supports that, especially because wages, the most important thing, are
already paid by the company.

_TRAINING AND MENTORING._ Increasingly, we are seeing large strike
schools and other mass worker and organizing training happening. All
the projects mentioned above have real leadership training and
development for workers, but tracks for organizers lag a little bit
behind. This is because unions are still very invested in staff union
organizers. As salts and militant workplace activists blur the line
between “workers” and organizers, we should be creating mentorship
and peer infrastructure for those workers, salts and organizers, even
if they are outside of traditional infrastructure. The right program
could solicit many veteran labor organizers and rank-and-file leaders
to serve as mentors. Community organizations, not just unions, could
provide some training for emerging labor organizers as well.

A freewheeling militant orientation, undergirded with support
structures and increased tools and training, could radically increase
the amount of collective workplace action over the next few years.

DIRECT ACTION AND DISRUPTION

The second important area for which we need support is scaled
disruptive direct action. Last summer’s uprising was spontaneous,
raw, courageous, and moved the needle in a significant way towards
defunding law enforcement and moving a significant swath of white
folks towards supporting the dismantling of white supremacy. Sometimes
uprisings happen, and we need to be ready to support them. There are
things we can do to try to foment uprisings. And finally, there are
direct action campaigns that are inherently or potentially disruptive.
Direct action requires some distinct kinds of scaffolding.

_INFRASTRUCTURE THAT UNDERGIRDS MOVEMENT MOMENTS_. Since the Ferguson
Uprising the number of local medic collectives and jail support
structures has skyrocketed. Despite more “dots on the map,” we
still collectively underinvest in that infrastructure. Good criminal
defense lawyers are too scarce. Jail support is still insufficient for
mass arrest situations. Many cities lack the numbers of trained medics
we need. Tech tools such as broadcast texting for mass actions are not
yet in use everywhere. Finally, we always need more money, and we need
more formations willing to use money in flexible ways for needs such
as legal support, food and housing for front-line protestors, and
other unanticipated but necessary expenses. However, there are very
few entities that can both collect and disburse money in loose but
legal ways. Even where there is good infrastructure, sometimes there
are disparate abilities to access that infrastructure, as the
spontaneity that accompanies uprisings often means that organizations
can be slower to support things that just “pop off.” Resourcing
that infrastructure now means that we have more potential to support
and maintain uprisings and movement moments as they happen.

_SUPPORT FOR IMPERMANENT ORGANIZATIONS_. Edge organizations that can
create conditions like last summer’s rebellion, or create a left
flank, are not necessarily built to last, but are immensely valuable.
Most of the edge organizations we see now exist to move a particular
piece of legislation or a campaign, and then disband.

The Home Defenders League, which grew out of the Occupy Homes movement
in 2011, disbanded in 2014, after homeowners had engaged in direct
action and jail solidarity
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at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. in 2013
[[link removed]].
(People do jail solidarity by refusing to give their names or post
bail.) The homeowners and their allies prompted the Obama
administration to begin holding banks accountable
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again, to the tune of billions of dollars. A year later the Home
Defenders League, believing its final action had pushed the envelope
as far as it could, began to wind down.

If we support and sponsor edge organizations that do not have to worry
about their self-preservation, we create a lot more room for
risk-taking and bold action. The Home Defenders League did not exist
in a vacuum. It drew support from the Leadership Center for the Common
Good, which arose from the destruction of ACORN and was one of the
groups that merged to form the Center for Popular Democracy. We should
invest capacity in creating fiscal sponsors, legal support and
mentorship for high-risk, time-bound projects. Right-wing attacks,
SLAPP suits and government surveillance might destroy such
organizations, but organizations can be expendable, particularly if we
can protect the people involved from threats, and keep them in the
work.

_SUPPORTING DIRECT ACTION CAMPAIGNS._ Long-time Indigenous resistance
to fossil fuel infrastructure caught the attention of the world in
2016. That resistance is still going strong in the campaign against
 Line 3 [[link removed]], a pipeline that will
carry tar sands oil into the United States at great peril to the
planet, to Indigenous lands, and to all of our Midwest freshwater.
Organizers are launching a growing number of winter action camps
[[link removed]]. Activists are locking down to
block construction equipment two to three times a week, and engaging
in multi-day tree sit
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in the Minnesota winter. Participants in these camps are getting a
crash course in building movement infrastructure – and a huge
infrastructure will be needed to support thousands of water protectors
traveling north to stop construction over the vast territory the
pipeline will cover. With enough support, the Line 3 fight could rise
to the level of Standing Rock – and should, given the courage of
those resisting on the frontlines.

_SCENARIO PLANNING._ We collectively engaged tens of thousands of
people and spent millions of dollars in scenario planning for
responses to a potential coup. As a result, tens of thousands of
people thought about civil resistance, and hundreds of others thought
about shutting down ports and commerce. We need to figure out under
what other circumstances some of those unions, community groups and
Indivisible chapters would be willing to plan mass scaled disruptive
actions. This might mean we will have to create edge or impermanent
structures that can avoid legal risk.

_EXPANDING OUR VIEWS ON PAID ORGANIZING AND POLITICAL WORK._
Institutions, especially longer-term base-building institutions, both
labor and community, are vital. Leaders of those institutions are
often a combination of the best in the movement, detail-oriented
visionaries who work night and day building their organizations. But
we also need to support people who view organizing as their unpaid
political work, or who are not seeking to build nonprofits or move up
the organizing management pathway. We can coach and mentor them if
they want to move into more freewheeling, impermanent organizing
experiments. We can think about ways to reduce their cost of living
with solidarity housing, shared meals, and other arrangements that
would give them much more time to engage in the work of organizing. If
we can support their choices, and provide them some ability to meet
their basic needs, the number of talented, experienced organizers
outside of our current structures will grow.

Crisis presents movement opportunities of which we cannot yet
conceive—but we can build the scaffolding, skills, and people who
are able to vision, throw down and support in these times of crisis.
May we strengthen the old and build the new.

 
_Jeff Ordower comes out of ACORN and has been a community and labor
organizer for the past 25 years. He is currently thinking about how to
create structures that undergird or foment mass-scaled action through
the Disruption Project, while simultaneously supporting the creation
of the Green Workers Alliance, an organization for current and
aspiring green workers fighting for better wages and working
conditions, while being a clear worker-led voice for a just transition
off of fossil fuels._

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