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If members run the local... what exactly is the union rep's job? We asked four experienced staffers how they approach their day-to-day tasks while keeping the rank and file in the driver's seat. Photo: Jim West/jimwestphoto.com
Suppose you're a union staff rep. (Or a business agent, an internal organizer, whatever the local lingo is.) And suppose you believe in union democracy: the members should run the fight against the boss.
Where do you come in, then? What exactly is your job, and how can you do it in a way that keeps the rank and file in the driver's seat?
Suppose you're a union staff rep. (Or a business agent, an internal organizer, whatever the local lingo is.) And suppose you believe in union democracy: the members should run the fight against the boss.
Where do you come in, then? What exactly is your job, and how can you do it in a way that keeps the rank and file in the driver's seat?
The obvious danger: you work for the union all day, while members have their jobs to do. It can be all too easy for members and staffers alike to start thinking "the union" means the people who have desks at the union hall: the top brass and the reps they hire. That's not only undemocratic--it's a terrible foundation for building power.
We asked four experienced staffers how they see their jobs and how they translate the idea that the members run the union into their day-to-day tasks.
One union tackles the problem at its root by drawing a thick line around the role staffers play.
University Professional and Technical Employees "takes member-run to the nth degree," said Vice President Lisa Kermish. She was a research administrator at the University of California before coming to work for her union.
Stewards do all UPTE's representation, even arbitrations that pit them against management attorneys. Union staff do no direct grievance handling.
Staffers don't participate in bargaining; they're not even in the room during negotiations. Nor do they participate in discussions of the union's policies or direction. Instead, their job is to recruit and train members to do these tasks.
"Our golden rule is, don't do for members what they can do for themselves," Kermish said, "and its platinum corollary is, if there isn't a member to do it, it won't get done."
Holding fast to these rules isn't always easy. What's a staffer to do when the clock is ticking on a grievable situation and no steward is willing to take it on? Sometimes the union has to call in a "super steward" from Los Angeles to handle a case an hour away in Irvine, or throw a new steward "into the deep end of the pool"--with support from staff, but never with a staffer doing the task for the steward.
The policy, Kermish said, is "based on the premise that, if we're really a member-run union, we have to do more than talk the talk."
Part of a union rep's job, Joe Fahey says, "is to help people do things they're not used to doing. None of the big changes that we're trying to make in the labor movement, in our workplaces, in the world, are going to happen if we don't make small changes, like in how we talk to each other and how we run meetings."
Democracy is a lot more than elections. A democratic union is "more about voices than votes," Joe Fahey says. Who gets to speak in meetings? Who has a say in the strategy? Make room for real debate.
Members make the decisions at every step of organizing, not just the end. It's not good enough if "some well-worked-out plan has been arrived at, and then members come to a meeting to give it their stamp of approval," says Ellen David Friedman.
UPTE's "golden rule": staffers shouldn't do for members what members can do for themselves--even if that means sometimes a task goes undone.
Get members talking and working with one another, not just with you. Fahey kept grievances in a stack on his desk. When someone brought a new one, he'd say, "If it's just you, it'll go in the pile, but if you can bring back two to three people who have similar problems, it'll go to the top."
Encourage people to connect their experiences to a bigger picture. When he organized home care workers, Matthew Luskin learned nearly all had faced abuse or sexual harassment from a client. Each story might feel personal, "but they also knew it was deeply linked to sexism in the industry," he said--a pervasive atmosphere, not just one abusive guy.
Members may not expect the union to deal with racism, sexism, or the economy until you open the door. When he did, Luskin found, "people had a lot to say."
Fahey, a retired Teamster, was a union staffer for two decades. He recalls a bottling plant where different groups of workers took out their tension and mistrust on the steward.
"The workers would have a steward election and then be extremely dissatisfied with the steward, whoever it was," he said, "and so there would be a call to get rid of that damn steward and put somebody else in their place. It just looked like an impossible setup."
So he called a meeting and asked all the workers to consider themselves potential stewards.
They went around the circle answering the question, "What qualities do you have that would make you a good steward?" Then they went around again to answer, "What would be difficult for you about the job?"
Some said they were shy, didn't like conflict, or had trouble understanding the contract language. A couple of people said they'd be terrified to do something the old steward used to: stand up near the end of lunch break and yell that the union meeting was going to be on Tuesday.
"By then it was sort of self-evident: there's no perfect steward," Fahey said. "Everybody's going to have parts of the job they could do more easily than other parts."
He asked the group, "Is there anybody here for whom it wouldn't be a difficulty to yell that at the end of lunch?" Most hands went up. "So, if someone else was otherwise the best steward, is there anybody here who would help do that part of the job?" The same hands went up again.
Members reached a consensus on the most important qualities of a steward, and agreed it would take a team effort to support whoever had the job. The next steward stayed on for years.
The staffer doesn't have to be the idea person. In this instance Fahey guided the process, but didn't supply his own opinions on who should be steward or which qualities were important.
Especially "being a white guy in a union full of mostly Mexican women, more often than not I didn't have the best answer to the problem facing the group," he said. "It's easy for a group to recognize a good idea. My role was to ask the question that led to generating the most ideas, so the group could pick the best one."
Ellen David Friedman, who organized for many years with the Vermont National Education Association, agrees: be careful not to pre-judge the solution.
Whatever the problem you're setting out to confront, she said--member apathy, division inside the union, a bad boss, a contract campaign--it's members who need to define it and plan what to do.
"It's not authentically democratic," she said, "if members are simply going out with a goal, like 'we have to get so many signatures on a petition,' or 'get so many people to turn out at a rally.'"
Instead, begin by finding out who's already aware of a workplace problem, and get them talking to each other.
Your job in the conversation is "to turn what looks like just a dead end or an endless cycle of wheel-spinning or pessimism--'we've tried that, it hasn't worked, no one cares'--into a frame-able, settable goal," David Friedman said. "With some dose of, if not optimism, at least commitment to try something."
Encourage members to figure out who else is likely affected by the problem and how to bring them into the conversation, she said. You can help them prepare and practice what to say to their co-workers.
Maybe the group agrees to do a survey. When you come back together, she said, "now instead of five people concerned, we've talked to 50, and wow, 88 percent of them said their problem was x." Maybe they write up the results, go back out to check in with people again, hold a meeting.
Again you might role-play or talk through how to frame the issue. The organizer's task is "to prepare people for having their own conversations with each other," David Friedman said. "Those are where the democratic process is going on."
But "it's not as if the organizer or staff person is invisible. They have a job to do: matching power to appropriate goals," she said. "Members who are not experienced organizers might have an idea of what they want, but it bears no relationship to what can be achieved based on existing power."
So your role is to point out, "If we really want to do that, we need to build up our power.
"The question is always, how detached can the organizer be from controlling the outcome? Things may go in a different direction than you expected. They may take a lot longer. They may be a lot messier. But the result is authentic and powerful."
For Chicago Teachers Union organizer Matthew Luskin, a big part of the job is to put union strategy on the table for members to discuss.
"Organizing can't just be about getting people to do things," he said. "It has to be about getting people to believe in why we're trying to do these things."
The reformers who won leadership of CTU in 2010 believed it would be necessary to build towards a strike. They also knew many members weren't yet thinking that way.
So organizers' job wasn't just to turn out members for this or that event. It was "winning people on the whys" of the strategy that officers were proposing. "We were engaging people in a very honest conversation," Luskin said: "'here's what the challenges are, here's what the risks are, here's what we think we could win.'"
Organizers also talked with members about "what sorts of experiences would build people's confidence that these were strategies that could win," he said.
Members weren't just asked to wear red union T-shirts every Friday, for example. It was discussed: this will show the scared members at your school how much support the union has. Other activities aimed to prove the union could get parent support.
"I have a low tolerance for meetings where you pretend everybody can participate but really there's only one acceptable outcome," Luskin said. "I'm not saying we don't have a planned strategy we're trying to get people to agree to. I'm just saying they can say no to it."
Before and since the 2012 strike, dozens of members have gone through CTU's summer member-organizer program. There they receive much of the same training a new staff organizer would get: how to draw out a fellow member's issues and move that member to action.
They learn strategy and campaign planning, too. "It's important to push back against the ultra-professionalization of organizing work," Luskin said, "the idea that it requires a secret handshake and training that are not accessible to the rank and file.
"Are there skills and training that staff get, through experience and time? Sure. But the problem we have in the labor movement is not needing more brilliant strategists and tacticians. It's 'do we have huge numbers of people willing to take real risks to fight?'"
The point of CTU's member-organizer program isn't to boost a particular campaign. The point is how members are changed by the experience.
"We want members to come out of this able to organize their co-workers and community around a struggle in their neighborhood," he said. "We want to expand the number of fights the union can take on, and that can only happen if more members feel comfortable developing strategies themselves."
Trump and Musk are on an unconstitutional rampage, aiming for virtually every corner of the federal government. These two right-wing billionaires are targeting nurses, scientists, teachers, daycare providers, judges, veterans, air traffic controllers, and nuclear safety inspectors. No one is safe. The food stamps program, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are next. It’s an unprecedented disaster and a five-alarm fire, but there will be a reckoning. The people did not vote for this. The American people do not want this dystopian hellscape that hides behind claims of “efficiency.” Still, in reality, it is all a giveaway to corporate interests and the libertarian dreams of far-right oligarchs like Musk. Common Dreams is playing a vital role by reporting day and night on this orgy of corruption and greed, as well as what everyday people can do to organize and fight back. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. |
Suppose you're a union staff rep. (Or a business agent, an internal organizer, whatever the local lingo is.) And suppose you believe in union democracy: the members should run the fight against the boss.
Where do you come in, then? What exactly is your job, and how can you do it in a way that keeps the rank and file in the driver's seat?
The obvious danger: you work for the union all day, while members have their jobs to do. It can be all too easy for members and staffers alike to start thinking "the union" means the people who have desks at the union hall: the top brass and the reps they hire. That's not only undemocratic--it's a terrible foundation for building power.
We asked four experienced staffers how they see their jobs and how they translate the idea that the members run the union into their day-to-day tasks.
One union tackles the problem at its root by drawing a thick line around the role staffers play.
University Professional and Technical Employees "takes member-run to the nth degree," said Vice President Lisa Kermish. She was a research administrator at the University of California before coming to work for her union.
Stewards do all UPTE's representation, even arbitrations that pit them against management attorneys. Union staff do no direct grievance handling.
Staffers don't participate in bargaining; they're not even in the room during negotiations. Nor do they participate in discussions of the union's policies or direction. Instead, their job is to recruit and train members to do these tasks.
"Our golden rule is, don't do for members what they can do for themselves," Kermish said, "and its platinum corollary is, if there isn't a member to do it, it won't get done."
Holding fast to these rules isn't always easy. What's a staffer to do when the clock is ticking on a grievable situation and no steward is willing to take it on? Sometimes the union has to call in a "super steward" from Los Angeles to handle a case an hour away in Irvine, or throw a new steward "into the deep end of the pool"--with support from staff, but never with a staffer doing the task for the steward.
The policy, Kermish said, is "based on the premise that, if we're really a member-run union, we have to do more than talk the talk."
Part of a union rep's job, Joe Fahey says, "is to help people do things they're not used to doing. None of the big changes that we're trying to make in the labor movement, in our workplaces, in the world, are going to happen if we don't make small changes, like in how we talk to each other and how we run meetings."
Democracy is a lot more than elections. A democratic union is "more about voices than votes," Joe Fahey says. Who gets to speak in meetings? Who has a say in the strategy? Make room for real debate.
Members make the decisions at every step of organizing, not just the end. It's not good enough if "some well-worked-out plan has been arrived at, and then members come to a meeting to give it their stamp of approval," says Ellen David Friedman.
UPTE's "golden rule": staffers shouldn't do for members what members can do for themselves--even if that means sometimes a task goes undone.
Get members talking and working with one another, not just with you. Fahey kept grievances in a stack on his desk. When someone brought a new one, he'd say, "If it's just you, it'll go in the pile, but if you can bring back two to three people who have similar problems, it'll go to the top."
Encourage people to connect their experiences to a bigger picture. When he organized home care workers, Matthew Luskin learned nearly all had faced abuse or sexual harassment from a client. Each story might feel personal, "but they also knew it was deeply linked to sexism in the industry," he said--a pervasive atmosphere, not just one abusive guy.
Members may not expect the union to deal with racism, sexism, or the economy until you open the door. When he did, Luskin found, "people had a lot to say."
Fahey, a retired Teamster, was a union staffer for two decades. He recalls a bottling plant where different groups of workers took out their tension and mistrust on the steward.
"The workers would have a steward election and then be extremely dissatisfied with the steward, whoever it was," he said, "and so there would be a call to get rid of that damn steward and put somebody else in their place. It just looked like an impossible setup."
So he called a meeting and asked all the workers to consider themselves potential stewards.
They went around the circle answering the question, "What qualities do you have that would make you a good steward?" Then they went around again to answer, "What would be difficult for you about the job?"
Some said they were shy, didn't like conflict, or had trouble understanding the contract language. A couple of people said they'd be terrified to do something the old steward used to: stand up near the end of lunch break and yell that the union meeting was going to be on Tuesday.
"By then it was sort of self-evident: there's no perfect steward," Fahey said. "Everybody's going to have parts of the job they could do more easily than other parts."
He asked the group, "Is there anybody here for whom it wouldn't be a difficulty to yell that at the end of lunch?" Most hands went up. "So, if someone else was otherwise the best steward, is there anybody here who would help do that part of the job?" The same hands went up again.
Members reached a consensus on the most important qualities of a steward, and agreed it would take a team effort to support whoever had the job. The next steward stayed on for years.
The staffer doesn't have to be the idea person. In this instance Fahey guided the process, but didn't supply his own opinions on who should be steward or which qualities were important.
Especially "being a white guy in a union full of mostly Mexican women, more often than not I didn't have the best answer to the problem facing the group," he said. "It's easy for a group to recognize a good idea. My role was to ask the question that led to generating the most ideas, so the group could pick the best one."
Ellen David Friedman, who organized for many years with the Vermont National Education Association, agrees: be careful not to pre-judge the solution.
Whatever the problem you're setting out to confront, she said--member apathy, division inside the union, a bad boss, a contract campaign--it's members who need to define it and plan what to do.
"It's not authentically democratic," she said, "if members are simply going out with a goal, like 'we have to get so many signatures on a petition,' or 'get so many people to turn out at a rally.'"
Instead, begin by finding out who's already aware of a workplace problem, and get them talking to each other.
Your job in the conversation is "to turn what looks like just a dead end or an endless cycle of wheel-spinning or pessimism--'we've tried that, it hasn't worked, no one cares'--into a frame-able, settable goal," David Friedman said. "With some dose of, if not optimism, at least commitment to try something."
Encourage members to figure out who else is likely affected by the problem and how to bring them into the conversation, she said. You can help them prepare and practice what to say to their co-workers.
Maybe the group agrees to do a survey. When you come back together, she said, "now instead of five people concerned, we've talked to 50, and wow, 88 percent of them said their problem was x." Maybe they write up the results, go back out to check in with people again, hold a meeting.
Again you might role-play or talk through how to frame the issue. The organizer's task is "to prepare people for having their own conversations with each other," David Friedman said. "Those are where the democratic process is going on."
But "it's not as if the organizer or staff person is invisible. They have a job to do: matching power to appropriate goals," she said. "Members who are not experienced organizers might have an idea of what they want, but it bears no relationship to what can be achieved based on existing power."
So your role is to point out, "If we really want to do that, we need to build up our power.
"The question is always, how detached can the organizer be from controlling the outcome? Things may go in a different direction than you expected. They may take a lot longer. They may be a lot messier. But the result is authentic and powerful."
For Chicago Teachers Union organizer Matthew Luskin, a big part of the job is to put union strategy on the table for members to discuss.
"Organizing can't just be about getting people to do things," he said. "It has to be about getting people to believe in why we're trying to do these things."
The reformers who won leadership of CTU in 2010 believed it would be necessary to build towards a strike. They also knew many members weren't yet thinking that way.
So organizers' job wasn't just to turn out members for this or that event. It was "winning people on the whys" of the strategy that officers were proposing. "We were engaging people in a very honest conversation," Luskin said: "'here's what the challenges are, here's what the risks are, here's what we think we could win.'"
Organizers also talked with members about "what sorts of experiences would build people's confidence that these were strategies that could win," he said.
Members weren't just asked to wear red union T-shirts every Friday, for example. It was discussed: this will show the scared members at your school how much support the union has. Other activities aimed to prove the union could get parent support.
"I have a low tolerance for meetings where you pretend everybody can participate but really there's only one acceptable outcome," Luskin said. "I'm not saying we don't have a planned strategy we're trying to get people to agree to. I'm just saying they can say no to it."
Before and since the 2012 strike, dozens of members have gone through CTU's summer member-organizer program. There they receive much of the same training a new staff organizer would get: how to draw out a fellow member's issues and move that member to action.
They learn strategy and campaign planning, too. "It's important to push back against the ultra-professionalization of organizing work," Luskin said, "the idea that it requires a secret handshake and training that are not accessible to the rank and file.
"Are there skills and training that staff get, through experience and time? Sure. But the problem we have in the labor movement is not needing more brilliant strategists and tacticians. It's 'do we have huge numbers of people willing to take real risks to fight?'"
The point of CTU's member-organizer program isn't to boost a particular campaign. The point is how members are changed by the experience.
"We want members to come out of this able to organize their co-workers and community around a struggle in their neighborhood," he said. "We want to expand the number of fights the union can take on, and that can only happen if more members feel comfortable developing strategies themselves."
Suppose you're a union staff rep. (Or a business agent, an internal organizer, whatever the local lingo is.) And suppose you believe in union democracy: the members should run the fight against the boss.
Where do you come in, then? What exactly is your job, and how can you do it in a way that keeps the rank and file in the driver's seat?
The obvious danger: you work for the union all day, while members have their jobs to do. It can be all too easy for members and staffers alike to start thinking "the union" means the people who have desks at the union hall: the top brass and the reps they hire. That's not only undemocratic--it's a terrible foundation for building power.
We asked four experienced staffers how they see their jobs and how they translate the idea that the members run the union into their day-to-day tasks.
One union tackles the problem at its root by drawing a thick line around the role staffers play.
University Professional and Technical Employees "takes member-run to the nth degree," said Vice President Lisa Kermish. She was a research administrator at the University of California before coming to work for her union.
Stewards do all UPTE's representation, even arbitrations that pit them against management attorneys. Union staff do no direct grievance handling.
Staffers don't participate in bargaining; they're not even in the room during negotiations. Nor do they participate in discussions of the union's policies or direction. Instead, their job is to recruit and train members to do these tasks.
"Our golden rule is, don't do for members what they can do for themselves," Kermish said, "and its platinum corollary is, if there isn't a member to do it, it won't get done."
Holding fast to these rules isn't always easy. What's a staffer to do when the clock is ticking on a grievable situation and no steward is willing to take it on? Sometimes the union has to call in a "super steward" from Los Angeles to handle a case an hour away in Irvine, or throw a new steward "into the deep end of the pool"--with support from staff, but never with a staffer doing the task for the steward.
The policy, Kermish said, is "based on the premise that, if we're really a member-run union, we have to do more than talk the talk."
Part of a union rep's job, Joe Fahey says, "is to help people do things they're not used to doing. None of the big changes that we're trying to make in the labor movement, in our workplaces, in the world, are going to happen if we don't make small changes, like in how we talk to each other and how we run meetings."
Democracy is a lot more than elections. A democratic union is "more about voices than votes," Joe Fahey says. Who gets to speak in meetings? Who has a say in the strategy? Make room for real debate.
Members make the decisions at every step of organizing, not just the end. It's not good enough if "some well-worked-out plan has been arrived at, and then members come to a meeting to give it their stamp of approval," says Ellen David Friedman.
UPTE's "golden rule": staffers shouldn't do for members what members can do for themselves--even if that means sometimes a task goes undone.
Get members talking and working with one another, not just with you. Fahey kept grievances in a stack on his desk. When someone brought a new one, he'd say, "If it's just you, it'll go in the pile, but if you can bring back two to three people who have similar problems, it'll go to the top."
Encourage people to connect their experiences to a bigger picture. When he organized home care workers, Matthew Luskin learned nearly all had faced abuse or sexual harassment from a client. Each story might feel personal, "but they also knew it was deeply linked to sexism in the industry," he said--a pervasive atmosphere, not just one abusive guy.
Members may not expect the union to deal with racism, sexism, or the economy until you open the door. When he did, Luskin found, "people had a lot to say."
Fahey, a retired Teamster, was a union staffer for two decades. He recalls a bottling plant where different groups of workers took out their tension and mistrust on the steward.
"The workers would have a steward election and then be extremely dissatisfied with the steward, whoever it was," he said, "and so there would be a call to get rid of that damn steward and put somebody else in their place. It just looked like an impossible setup."
So he called a meeting and asked all the workers to consider themselves potential stewards.
They went around the circle answering the question, "What qualities do you have that would make you a good steward?" Then they went around again to answer, "What would be difficult for you about the job?"
Some said they were shy, didn't like conflict, or had trouble understanding the contract language. A couple of people said they'd be terrified to do something the old steward used to: stand up near the end of lunch break and yell that the union meeting was going to be on Tuesday.
"By then it was sort of self-evident: there's no perfect steward," Fahey said. "Everybody's going to have parts of the job they could do more easily than other parts."
He asked the group, "Is there anybody here for whom it wouldn't be a difficulty to yell that at the end of lunch?" Most hands went up. "So, if someone else was otherwise the best steward, is there anybody here who would help do that part of the job?" The same hands went up again.
Members reached a consensus on the most important qualities of a steward, and agreed it would take a team effort to support whoever had the job. The next steward stayed on for years.
The staffer doesn't have to be the idea person. In this instance Fahey guided the process, but didn't supply his own opinions on who should be steward or which qualities were important.
Especially "being a white guy in a union full of mostly Mexican women, more often than not I didn't have the best answer to the problem facing the group," he said. "It's easy for a group to recognize a good idea. My role was to ask the question that led to generating the most ideas, so the group could pick the best one."
Ellen David Friedman, who organized for many years with the Vermont National Education Association, agrees: be careful not to pre-judge the solution.
Whatever the problem you're setting out to confront, she said--member apathy, division inside the union, a bad boss, a contract campaign--it's members who need to define it and plan what to do.
"It's not authentically democratic," she said, "if members are simply going out with a goal, like 'we have to get so many signatures on a petition,' or 'get so many people to turn out at a rally.'"
Instead, begin by finding out who's already aware of a workplace problem, and get them talking to each other.
Your job in the conversation is "to turn what looks like just a dead end or an endless cycle of wheel-spinning or pessimism--'we've tried that, it hasn't worked, no one cares'--into a frame-able, settable goal," David Friedman said. "With some dose of, if not optimism, at least commitment to try something."
Encourage members to figure out who else is likely affected by the problem and how to bring them into the conversation, she said. You can help them prepare and practice what to say to their co-workers.
Maybe the group agrees to do a survey. When you come back together, she said, "now instead of five people concerned, we've talked to 50, and wow, 88 percent of them said their problem was x." Maybe they write up the results, go back out to check in with people again, hold a meeting.
Again you might role-play or talk through how to frame the issue. The organizer's task is "to prepare people for having their own conversations with each other," David Friedman said. "Those are where the democratic process is going on."
But "it's not as if the organizer or staff person is invisible. They have a job to do: matching power to appropriate goals," she said. "Members who are not experienced organizers might have an idea of what they want, but it bears no relationship to what can be achieved based on existing power."
So your role is to point out, "If we really want to do that, we need to build up our power.
"The question is always, how detached can the organizer be from controlling the outcome? Things may go in a different direction than you expected. They may take a lot longer. They may be a lot messier. But the result is authentic and powerful."
For Chicago Teachers Union organizer Matthew Luskin, a big part of the job is to put union strategy on the table for members to discuss.
"Organizing can't just be about getting people to do things," he said. "It has to be about getting people to believe in why we're trying to do these things."
The reformers who won leadership of CTU in 2010 believed it would be necessary to build towards a strike. They also knew many members weren't yet thinking that way.
So organizers' job wasn't just to turn out members for this or that event. It was "winning people on the whys" of the strategy that officers were proposing. "We were engaging people in a very honest conversation," Luskin said: "'here's what the challenges are, here's what the risks are, here's what we think we could win.'"
Organizers also talked with members about "what sorts of experiences would build people's confidence that these were strategies that could win," he said.
Members weren't just asked to wear red union T-shirts every Friday, for example. It was discussed: this will show the scared members at your school how much support the union has. Other activities aimed to prove the union could get parent support.
"I have a low tolerance for meetings where you pretend everybody can participate but really there's only one acceptable outcome," Luskin said. "I'm not saying we don't have a planned strategy we're trying to get people to agree to. I'm just saying they can say no to it."
Before and since the 2012 strike, dozens of members have gone through CTU's summer member-organizer program. There they receive much of the same training a new staff organizer would get: how to draw out a fellow member's issues and move that member to action.
They learn strategy and campaign planning, too. "It's important to push back against the ultra-professionalization of organizing work," Luskin said, "the idea that it requires a secret handshake and training that are not accessible to the rank and file.
"Are there skills and training that staff get, through experience and time? Sure. But the problem we have in the labor movement is not needing more brilliant strategists and tacticians. It's 'do we have huge numbers of people willing to take real risks to fight?'"
The point of CTU's member-organizer program isn't to boost a particular campaign. The point is how members are changed by the experience.
"We want members to come out of this able to organize their co-workers and community around a struggle in their neighborhood," he said. "We want to expand the number of fights the union can take on, and that can only happen if more members feel comfortable developing strategies themselves."
"Thank you to the hundreds of thousands of Americans across the country who are standing up and speaking out for our voting rights, fundamental freedoms, and essential services like Social Security and Medicare."
In communities large and small across the United States on Saturday, hundreds of thousands of people collectively took to the streets to make their opposition to President Donald Trump heard.
The people who took part in the organized protests ranged from very young children to the elderly and their message was scrawled on signs of all sizes and colors—many of them angry, some of them funny, but all in line with the "Hands Off" message that brought them together.
"Thank you to the hundreds of thousands of Americans across the country who are standing up and speaking out for our voting rights, fundamental freedoms, and essential services like Social Security and Medicare," said the group Stand Up America as word of the turnout poured in from across the country.
A relatively small, but representative sample of photographs from various demonstrations that took place follows.
Demonstrators gather on Boston Common, cheering and chanting slogans, during the nationwide "Hands Off!" protest against US President Donald Trump and his advisor, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, in Boston, Massachusetts on April 5, 2025. (Photo by Joseph Prezioso / AFP)
"Everyone involved in this crime against humanity, and everyone who covered it up, would face prosecution in a world that had any shred of dignity left."
A video presented to officials at the United Nations on Friday and first made public Saturday by the New York Times provides more evidence that the recent massacre of Palestinian medics in Gaza did not happen the way Israeli government claimed—the latest in a long line of deception when it comes to violence against civilians that have led to repeated accusations of war crimes.
The video, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), was found on the phone of a paramedic found in a mass grave with a bullet in his head after being killed, along with seven other medics, by Israeli forces on March 23. The eight medics, buried in the shallow grave with the bodies riddled with bullets, were: Mustafa Khafaja, Ezz El-Din Shaat, Saleh Muammar, Refaat Radwan, Muhammad Bahloul, Ashraf Abu Libda, Muhammad Al-Hila, and Raed Al-Sharif. The video reportedly belonged to Radwan. A ninth medic, identified as Asaad Al-Nasasra, who was at the scene of the massacre, which took place near the southern city of Rafah, is still missing.
The PRCS said it presented the video—which refutes the explanation of the killings offered by Israeli officials—to members of the UN Security Council on Friday.
"They were killed in their uniforms. Driving their clearly marked vehicles. Wearing their gloves. On their way to save lives," Jonathan Whittall, head of the UN's humanitarian affairs office in Palestine, said last week after the bodies were discovered. Some of the victims, according to Gaza officials, were found with handcuffs still on them and appeared to have been shot in the head, execution-style.
The Israeli military initially said its soldiers "did not randomly attack" any ambulances, but rather claimed they fired on "terrorists" who approached them in "suspicious vehicles." Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an IDF spokesperson, said the vehicles that the soldiers opened fire on were driving with their lights off and did not have clearance to be in the area. The video evidence directly contradicts the IDF's version of events.
As the Times reports:
The Times obtained the video from a senior diplomat at the United Nations who asked not to be identified to be able to share sensitive information.
The Times verified the location and timing of the video, which was taken in the southern city of Rafah early on March 23. Filmed from what appears to be the front interior of a moving vehicle, it shows a convoy of ambulances and a fire truck, clearly marked, with headlights and flashing lights turned on, driving south on a road to the north of Rafah in the early morning. The first rays of sun can be seen, and birds are chirping.
In an interview with Drop Site News published Friday, the only known paramedic to survive the attack, Munther Abed, explained that he and his colleagues "were directly and deliberately shot at" by the IDF. "The car is clearly marked with 'Palestinian Red Crescent Society 101.' The car's number was clear and the crews' uniform was clear, so why were we directly shot at? That is the question."
The video's release sparked fresh outrage and demands for accountability on Saturday.
"The IDF denied access to the site for days; they sent in diggers to cover up the massacre and intentionally lied about it," said podcast producer Hamza M. Syed in reaction to the new revelations. "The entire leadership of the Israeli army is implicated in this unconscionable war crime. And they must be prosecuted."
"Everyone involved in this crime against humanity, and everyone who covered it up, would face prosecution in a world that had any shred of dignity left," said journalist Ryan Grim of DropSite News.
"They're dismantling our country. They're looting our government. And they think we'll just watch."
In communities across the United States and also overseas, coordinated "Hands Off" protests are taking place far and wide Saturday in the largest public rebuke yet to President Donald Trump and top henchman Elon Musk's assault on the workings of the federal government and their program of economic sabotage that is sacrificing the needs of working families to authoritarianism and the greed of right-wing oligarchs.
Indivisible, one of the key organizing groups behind the day's protests, said millions participated in more than 1,300 individual rallies as they demanded "an end to Trump's authoritarian power grab" and condemning all those aiding and abetting it.
"We expected hundreds of thousands. But at virtually every single event, the crowds eclipsed our estimates," the group said in a statement Saturday evening.
"Hands off our healthcare, hands off our civil rights, hands off our schools, our freedoms, and our democracy."
"This is the largest day of protest since Trump retook office," the group added. "And in many small towns and cities, activists are reporting the biggest protests their communities have ever seen as everyday people send a clear, unmistakable message to Trump and Musk: Hands off our healthcare, hands off our civil rights, hands off our schools, our freedoms, and our democracy."
According to the organizers' call to action:
They're dismantling our country. They’re looting our government. And they think we'll just watch.
On Saturday, April 5th, we rise up with one demand: Hands Off!
This is a nationwide mobilization to stop the most brazen power grab in modern history. Trump, Musk, and their billionaire cronies are orchestrating an all-out assault on our government, our economy, and our basic rights—enabled by Congress every step of the way. They want to strip America for parts—shuttering Social Security offices, firing essential workers, eliminating consumer protections, and gutting Medicaid—all to bankroll their billionaire tax scam.
They're handing over our tax dollars, our public services, and our democracy to the ultra-rich. If we don't fight now, there won’t be anything left to save.
The more than 1,300 "Hands Off!" demonstrations—organized by a large coalition of unions, progressive advocacy groups, and pro-democracy watchdogs—first kicked off Saturday in Europe, followed by East Coast communities in the U.S., and continued throughout the day at various times, depending on location. See here for a list of scheduled "Hands Off" events.
"The United States has a president, not a king," said the progressive advocacy group People's Action, one of the group's involved in the actions, in an email to supporters Saturday morning just as protest events kicked off in hundreds of cities and communities. "Donald Trump has, by every measure, been working to make himself a king. He has become unanswerable to the courts, Congress, and the American people."
In its Saturday evening statement, Indivisible said the actions far exceeded their expectations and should be seen as a turning point in the battle to stop Trump and his minions:
The Trump administration has spent its first 75 days in office trying to overwhelm us, to make us feel powerless, so that we will fall in line, accept the ransacking of our government, the raiding of our social safety net, and the dismantling of our democracy.
And too often, the response from our leaders and those in positions to resist has been abject cowardice. Compliance. Obeying in advance.
But not today. Today we've demonstrated a different path forward. We've modeled the courage and action that we want to see from our leaders, and showed all those who've been standing on the sidelines who share our values that they are not alone.
Citing the Republican president's thirst for "power and greed," People's Action earlier explained why organized pressure must be built and sustained against the administration, especially at the conclusion of a week in which the global economy was spun into disarray by Trump's tariff announcement, his attack on the rule of law continued, and the twice-elected president admitted he was "not joking" about the possibility of seeking a third term, which is barred by the constitution.
"He is destroying the economy with tariffs in order to pay for the tax cuts he wants to push through to enrich himself and his billionaire buddies," warned People's Action. "He has ordered the government to round up innocent people off of the streets and put them in detention centers without due process because they dared to speak out using their First Amendment rights. And he is not close to being done—by his own admission, he is planning to run for a third term, which the Constitution does not allow."
Live stream of Hands Off rally in Washington, D.C.:
Below are photo or video dispatches from demonstrations around the world on Saturday. Check back for updates...
United Kingdom
France
Germany
Belgium:
Massachusetts:
Maine:
Washington, D.C.:
New York:
Minnesota:
Michigan:
Ohio:
Colorado:
Pennsylvania:
North Carolina:
The protest organizers warn that what Trump and Musk are up to "is not just corruption" and "not just mismanagement," but something far more sinister.
"This is a hostile takeover," they said, but vowed to fight back. "This is the moment where we say NO. No more looting, no more stealing, no more billionaires raiding our government while working people struggle to survive."