In the four decades since its founding, the MST has achieved significant milestones: 450,000 families have gained legal tenure of their land, another 65,000 are organized in squatters encampments, fighting for legal recognition of land.
A Starbucks union drive is sweeping across the country. In an industry that has been all but impossible to unionize, these baristas have created an organizing model that can be replicated at similar corporate chains everywhere.
They ultimately decided that achieving the group’s purpose (meeting the needs of their base), required them to hold each other with both compassion and rigor. Accountability was actually a requirement on the path to power and transformation.
"Looking at these corporate supply chains, we've been able to achieve more by getting union agreements through supply chain actions than we've ever been able to achieve in legislative campaigns," says Justin Flores, FLOC's vice president.
Union membership has been declining for more than a half-century. The demographic most positively disposed to unions is younger people, who spend their lives online. Reaching the next generation of union members means online organizing.
Social organizing, (not elections) built the labor movement. When 19th-century American workers had virtually no institutional or political voice or power, they developed both by caring about and for each other.
What follows is a different manual from the one we put out over 50 years ago. Then, movements operated in a robust empire that was used to winning its wars. The government was fairly stable and held great legitimacy in the eyes of the majority.
Exciting video with English captions from 15M Movement in Spain with lessons for USA activists.
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