We learn through our own experience, and the experiences of others. Well designed organizing trainings and popular education workshops motivate workers to tell their story, to listen to the stories of their coworkers, to understand power relationships, trust each other, and develop campaigns to change things together. Below are some websites that may help to design campaigns, teach organizing skills, and foster a continuous learning environment.
Strategic Corporate Research, Tom Juravich, University of Massachusetts Labor Center.
- Geared to unions and worker organizations, this website teaches how to utilize research to develop a multifaceted campaign to move an employer, a corporation or government body, to cede to the organizations’ demands.
- Organizing for Power, resources for organizers and trainers, Lisa Fithian.
- This resource has a ton of information one can use to build our capacity to organize. Both nuts and bolts organizing tools, power analysis and political education, as well as methods to learn and teach campaign strategy and tactics. Compiled by a a veteran labor and community organizer who also has worked in movements for peace, the environment, and global justice- fighting economic austerity, war, and unfair neo-liberal trade deals.
- Community Organizing Handbook, University of Denver, Center for Community Engagement and Service Learning.
- This “Alinskyite” training manual explains the organizing methodology of relationship mapping, coalition building, issue identification, action, and evaluation used by community organizers such as Saul Alinsky, and Cesar Chavez.
- Blueprint for Change: A National Assessment of Winning Union Organizing Strategies, Kate Brofenbrenner, 2003.
- After decades of concession bargaining and corporate appeasement, unions began to try to counter corporations’ assault on workers standard of living in the late 1990’s. This early assessment of comprehensive campaign tactics in private sector union elections showed ways unions could counteract the terror and division that employers used when hiring union-busting labor relations consultants.
- Organizing 2.0
- A collective that offers training in the use of online organizing, digital strategy, and the use of online tools.
- AFSCME Steward Handbook
- This 84 page public employee union steward handbook is a good guide to teach folks some tools to stand up for themselves and their coworkers.
- United Electrical Workers: Information for Workers
- Remember the Republic Doors sit-in in 2008. This is a comprehensive guide for members leading their unions, including labor law, organizing, grievance handling, contract bargaining, health and safety, discrimination, and fighting layoffs.
- Organizing: People, Power, and Change, Marshall Ganz, Harvard University
- A Harvard University professor’s website teaching organizing and campaign skills.
- Partners for Collaborative Change,
- Resources on participatory action research, learning through theory and action, and popular education.
- The Vernal Education Project
- Papers on non-violent social change and collaborative decision making.
- Teaching Democracy
- A two day weekend popular education training curriculum.
- National Council for Occupational Safety and Health
- How to teach workers to identify, report, and organize around health and safety issues.
- Highlander Research and Education Center
- The Highlander Research and Education Center, in the mountains of Tennessee since the 1930’s, trained Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and generations of activists and civil rights organizers.
- Midwest Academy
- The Midwest Academy is a national training institute committed to advancing the struggle for social, economic, and racial justice. From local neighborhood groups to statewide and national organizations, Midwest Academy has trained over twenty-five thousand grassroots activists from hundreds of organizations and coalitions.