Worker Organizing & Strikes! in the Digital Age – Curriculum & Instructors

Actual campaigns will be used throughout. [Back to registration page]

Session 1 – March 4  Framing and narrative to build worker power

  • How to develop a powerful story about your organizing campaign that will work to:
    • Build support for your effort with the public and community allies;
    • Help the workers who are organizing see their efforts in broader, compelling terms. 
  • Learn the evidence-based messaging that works 
  • Develop your own campaign narrative using templates prepared for worker organizing
  • Includes access to SMT’s “Story-Based Strategy” course

Session 2 – March 10  Strategy development for effective campaigns

  • How to assess your own and your target’s digital strengths and weaknesses to map out a plan of action for a contract or new organizing campaign that combines online and offline action to build power. This session will be led by deeply experienced union leadership along with leadership of the Midwest Academy.

Session 3 – March 12  “Strategic” or “Comprehensive” Campaigns

A strategic campaign is a comprehensive effort to exert pressure on the various strategic relationships of an employer. Using one or more case studies, we’ll explore:

  • The role of research
  • Using digital tools and tactics to ramp up pressure on primary and secondary targets in a strategic campaign
  • Strategic ad campaigns 

Session 4 – March 17  Strikes & workplace actions: Communication among workers

  • Digital tools to rapidly communicate and engage with members
  • How to determine what to use when

Session 5 – March 25  Strikes & workplace actions: The story and allies

Digital content creation that can help shape the strike or labor action story and show how to create and move effective digital content for your community allies

  • Hashtags that work
  • Narrative elements pre-strike or action
  • How and when to use streaming technology 
  • Ally digital packages
  • Building, maintaining and activating a community supporter list 

Session 6 – April 2  Strikes & workplace actions: Getting the media coverage we want

How to harness digital tools to get the media coverage we need 

  • Digitizing the press release and news conference
  • Making it easy for journalists to cover the story
  • Tools to build an effective media list
  • Creating live online events for the media
  • Engaging online with journalists
  • Case studies: Fight For 15

Session 7 – April 9  Engaging members where they are online, and activating leads in new organizing

What unions and workers are learning about using social media channels and apps to reach people where they are and move them to offline action. 

  • Secret and private Facebook groups from large to tiny, including how to manage them to avoid legal problems with DFRs
  • Training best practices for workers and staff to engage online
  • Using Facebook events, lead ads and surveys to build leads
  • How to make union signups (for members or for workers organizing) easy in the mobile age
  • Using messaging apps to engage with immigrant and other workers

Session 8 – April 22  Non-traditional workforce organizing

  • How gig economy workers are organizing
  • Targeting via app-based geofenced mobile ads

Registration will include access to SMT’s just-developed “WhatsApp for Organizing” training recording – an important resource for organizing in immigrant communities as well as access to “Story-Based Strategy” training recordings (normally $60 each).


Instructors and Panelists

Edan Alva, Worker Leader, Gig Workers Rising. Edan is a ride-share driver and worker-leader with Gig Workers Rising. Edan organizes alongside fellow rideshare drivers to fight for better working conditions and to build a powerful movement of gig workers. Edan has a BA in Middle East studies and Political Science, and is trained in online to offline organizing.

 

Anna Bakalis, Communications Director, United Teachers Los Angeles. Anna uses digital and story-based strategies to bring issues to life, from the classroom to the picket lines.

 

 

Eric Blanc, Author. Author of the book “Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics” (2019), Eric Blanc is a former high school teacher and currently a doctoral student at NYU Sociology. He has appeared on Democracy Now, Rising, and writes for Jacobin, The Nation and The Guardian. During the West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, Denver, Oakland, Los Angeles, and Chicago public education strikes, Blanc has been Jacobin’s on-the-ground correspondent.

 

Shane Burley, SMT Staff Partner and Communications Organizer, SEIU Local 503. Shane is expanding what it means to use digital tools for workplace action. In Local 503’s private-agency homecare campaign, he used Facebook event and advertising strategies for lead capture, combined data mining and internet research, and developed broad messaging strategies. He helped win landmark contracts in Oregon’s state universities and local governments.

 

Darren Carroll, Union Representative, The NewsGuild-CWA. Has been union organizing for several decades, currently supporting national campaign against hedge fund destroying 200+ newspapers, among other campaigns.

 

 

Alex Caputo-Pearl, President, United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA). Alex has been a teacher in South LA for 22 years and has been community organizing for 30 years.  Since 2014, he has been president of UTLA, helping to transform it into an organizing union, building a strong labor/community coalition, and organizing the successful ‘bargaining for the common good’ strike

 

Shona Clarkson, Lead Organizer, Gig Workers Rising. Lead organizer for Working Partnerships USA, where she co-leads Gig Workers Rising. Shona organizes with app and platform workers who are building a powerful, worker-led movement to transform the gig economy and win the wages, rights and dignity due to all workers. She has been an organizer for over a decade and is committed to bold, intersectional organizing that builds and demonstrates the power of working people.

 

Dr. Christina Colclough, Director of Digitalisation, Young Workers’ Lab at UNI Global Union. Dr. Christina Colclough is Director of Digitalisation and responsible for the Young Workers’ Lab at UNI Global Union. The Lab has produced an open-source app designed to give work a firm reality check. Ideal for solo users, union campaigns and/or organising this tool aims to empower workers and unions to champion change.

 

Rebecca Garelli, Co-Founder and Lead Organizer, Arizona Educators United. Professional educator for 16 years and is currently a K-12 Science and STEM Specialist in Arizona.  Rebecca is also a Co-Founder and Lead Organizer with the grassroots educators group, Arizona Educators United/#RedforEd, and is currently a volunteer labor organizer for the AZ for Bernie 2020 Coalition.

 

Rudy Gonzalves, Campaign Director, LAANE (Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy)
Rudy is the Director of LAANE’s Education campaign, and Director of Reclaim Our Schools Los Angeles. He has nearly 20 years of experience with labor and community alliances in building political and electoral power for workers and communities of color. He previously served as a director with Jobs to Move America, a national organization committed to creating good transportation jobs. He was also a political director for the United Farm Workers, AFL-CIO, and SEIU.

Richard Kirsch, SMT Staff Partner. Founder of Our Story – The Hub for American Narratives, which supports progressive groups in telling powerful stories about our core beliefs that shift the narrative, build movements and win campaigns. Richard brings decades of organizing experience to this work, including leading Health Care for America Now, the progressive coalition and grassroots campaign that led to the enactment of the Affordable Care Act. He was the co-Executive Director of Citizen Action of New York for more than 20 years.

Kasey McKeral, Deputy for Digital Communications, Communications Workers of America. Kasey uses digital tools to build worker power. She has led digital strategy on a variety of campaigns including the 2017 AT&T Mobility strike and the 2016 Verizon strike.

 

Kim Rescate, Digital Communications Coordinator, SEIU-UHW. SEIU-UHW is a healthcare justice union of more than 97,000 healthcare workers, patients, and healthcare consumers united to ensure affordable, accessible, high-quality care for all Californians, provided by valued and respected healthcare workers.

Kim will also be joined by other members of the SEIU-UHW team: Jennifer Saldaña and Ella Teevan (Digital Organizers), and Burt Vera Cruz (Web Communications)

Hannah Roditi, Executive Director, Social Movement Technologies. Long-time union (Teamsters, AFSCME, SEIU, ILGWU), community and faith-based organizer. Also Director of Research for Organizing for International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Founded and ran a faith-based – labor coalition in CT for 10 years. Has designed and led social media training for groups from D.C. to Oakland as well as online trainings with up to 500 organizers, including in Spanish and bilingually for mixed language groups.

Deivid Rojas, SMT Staff Partner. Deivid has helped lead the communications work for dozens of worker strikes. He led communications for organizing at Fight For 15 Chicago for 6 years, involving support for hundreds of actions, strikes, and protests. He recently helped lead the communications work for the CTU and SEIU Local 73 Chicago Public School strike of 2019.

 

Eric Ruder, Communications Specialist, Chicago Teachers Union.
Eric helped lead member engagement and communications during the Chicago Teachers strike of 2019 and is the producer of the CTU Speaks! podcast.

 

Jay Travis, Co-Director, Midwest Academy. Jay has worked to highlight the intersection between gentrification and education issues, and helped build community and labor alliances fighting to protect public education and against mass school closings impacting black and brown students. She has directed the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO), one of Chicago’s oldest black-led grassroots organizations and served as a program officer for progressive foundations working on youth organizing. As a founding member of the People United for Action PAC, Jay supports efforts to build infrastructure to support independent candidates and policies to address the needs of low-income and working families. 

Trina Tocco, Organizing Coordinator and Digital Manager, Change to Win/Justice for Port Drivers. Trina Tocco is an Organizing Coordinator at Change to Win, has worked for labor unions and allied organizations for close to 20 years. She is currently managing digital for the Justice for Port Drivers campaign.

 

Fermin Vasquez, SMT Staff Partner. Led social and digital media for SEIU Local 2015, California’s largest labor union, where he ran integrated digital campaigns that helped win pro-worker policies, new contracts, and increased union membership and engagement. Led the communications efforts of Californians for Justice and the Community Coalition of South Los Angeles.

 

Eric Zachary, Co-Director, Midwest Academy. Eric has deep roots in both community and labor organizing. Before coming to the Midwest Academy, he was the co-director of the Department of Human Rights and Community Relations at the American Federation of Teachers. He was the founding director of the NYC Coalition for Educational Justice, and a union organizer for Local 1199 of the Hospital and Health Care Workers Union.

 

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