Haven’t been very active here lately because I’ve been out on the street organizing and protesting but wanted to send a reminder to workers that if you’re looking to organize your workplace, it starts with talking to your coworkers.

You also want to social map as a means of facilitating your one-on-one conversations. But if you’ve got a group of highly agitated coworkers looking to make a change, plan to meet outside of work and look into formulating what you want to address and how! https://twitter.com/bvwu_iww/status/1287451196727336966?s=21

Let’s say you and 4 coworkers are frustrated and want to create change. Alongside social mapping, write down specific concerns each person has. Does management fail to address concerns by women? Does management treat marginalized workers differently from white/cis workers?

By listening and writing down these concerns, you’ll be able to identify both what the most common/broad issues are as well as site-specific issues. Maybe your store suffers from misogyny whereas another location’s main challenge is racism.

When it comes to taking action, our impulse is to strike because that’s the most visible labor action we know about. But a strike is actually the result of a lot of smaller work, a lot of building the worker coalition, a lot of escalation tactics. It’s the end of the line.

When organizing, you want to start small. Identify who the lowest person on the rung of power is who could produce changes in your workplace. Is it the Mates/shift leads? The manager? Regional? HR?

Then find actions that match both your concerns and who has the power to address them.

Work slowdowns, a written letter presented to store management during huddles, phone zap to regional/HR/whoever, and sickouts are just some things you can do.

Communicate offline, form a whisper network. Signal allows you to join with any phone number you want — that can be a free Google Voice to protect your real number — and allows for disappearing messages. Telegram lets you hide your phone number.

Organizing is a long term process. People want to rush to action when there’s a problem and then abandon the cause when that issue is resolved, then come back when something else goes sideways.

Organizing ensures those issues never get a chance to happen.

Solidarity is about working together to resolve problems you’re experiencing, yes, but it’s about staying with it and helping others whose problems are beyond your scope but are caused by the same systemic issues.

Fair-weather solidarity never produces lasting improvements.

During 1-on-1 conversations with coworkers, remember AEIOU.
Ask questions: let them vocalize their experiences rather than telling them what you’ve seen.
Educate: help them realize the problems are because you weren’t organized enough to prevent them. https://twitter.com/suffolkdsa/status/1287839620248604674?s=21

Inoculate: Bosses will offer the moon and stars to undercut organizing. They’ll give one person a pay raise (saves the company money!) to avoid improving conditions for all.
Organize: See above thread
Union: This comes after months or years of work! https://twitter.com/suffolkdsa/status/1287839620248604674?s=21

Alright, now let’s get back out on the streets and keep up the pressure to abolish cops and every aspect of this fascist carceral state we live in.

An injury to one is an injury to all