Writing
Organizers with substantial, direct experience in the field have an entirely different focus than authors who have not been involved in campaigns: we focus on how the work gets done (methods), and how to win.

West Virginia teachers protest

The WV Education Strike Shows that Winning Big Requires Creating a Crisis: Cover story in the Nation

The teachers understood that to win, to not go down in the record books as another huge defeat, they had to stay on strike and escalate the crisis. They could not have achieved the victory without having the community firmly on their side. Educators, like health-care workers, have an incredibly powerful, organic relationship with their communities—relationships so strong they are durable against sophisticated right-wing attacks. Read More

The Nation: Beating Harris v Quinn and Right-to-Work Attacks from the Inside Out

Unions are in trouble. Short of a giant meteor crashing on top of the nation’s union headquarters emblazoned with the words, “warning, you will soon be crushed by right-to-work laws,” few things could be clearer from the Supreme Court’s Harris v. Quinn ruling. Harris v. Quinn unites some of the most toxic trends in American labor tradition. Read More

The Nation: Labor’s Last Stand

I’ve penned another piece for The Nation titled “Labor’s Last stand” Emboldened by November’s election results, corporations and their right-wing allies have launched what they hope will be their final offensive against America’s labor unions. Their immediate target is government workers’ unions. While New Jersey’s Republican Governor Chris Christie has gained national fame by beating up on public school teachers, the threat to unionized workers is playing out in all fifty states, to the drumbeat in the media about states going broke because of government workers’ wages, pensions and benefits. Read More

Nation Conversations: Why Unions Are Not the Problem

This week, thousands of public employees, students and their allies flooded Wisconsin’s streets to protest Governor Scott Walker’s plan to take away workers’ right to collective bargaining. This very public display of workers’ power is a much-needed reinvigoration of a beleaguered labor movement, and as Jane McAlevey outlines in her article in this week’s issue of The Nation, could be the first step toward rebuilding an ethical American economy. Read More

Nation magazine cover, 12/20/2010

The Nation: Making Unions Matter Again

I recently published a cover story in The Nation title “Making Unions Matter Again” Union organizers–paid staff and rank-and-file workers–should begin to take to the doors and begin to meet hundreds of thousands of workers and galvanize a movement to demand economic justice. If unions do this with unorganized workers and together they win campaigns, it’s more likely these same workers will consider unionization to be a good option in their work life. Read More