The 2020 election is still over 500 days away, but the media buzz makes it feel a lot closer. Instead of focusing on “the ritual of pushing buttons in the quadrennial extravaganzas,” we should be paying attention to what Noam Chomsky recently called the “regular political engagement that is the foundation of functioning democracy.”
It is the same advice we heard from Rev. William Barber, who was just convicted for protesting peacefully at the North Carolina statehouse: “We put too much of our actions into electoral campaigns. And when the campaign is over, and we lose, we go home until the next campaign. Even extremists don’t do that. Even when they’re in the minority, even when they lose a vote, they continue to organize.”
So this week we took a trip into our archive and have come back organized. From the potential for solidarity in Silicon Valley, to how to organize immigrant workers, to the role that faith-based activists can play, today’s essays are the perfect reads to help you get prepping for 2020.
—Rosie Gillies
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How new approaches to worker organizing are finding success.
In 1963 and today, the real work happens elsewhere.
Rev. William J. Barber II on civil disobedience, the failures of electoral campaigns, and why the South is key to a political transformation of the country.
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Unions are being strangled by laws that block workers from organizing, striking, and acting in solidarity. Becoming a rights-based movement is the only way to save labor.
