We must act decisively, creatively, and smartly to revitalize the craft of organizing to meet the future.

How do we revitalize and reimagine the organizing traditions that work while inventing new ways of power-building to meet current or future conditions with rigor and creativity?

In the field of community and worker organizing, there is a growing drumbeat of frustrated voices saying we’re at a pivotal moment for the craft of organizing. Faced with authoritarianism and white nationalism, climate disaster, public health crises, and continuously growing racial and economic inequality, the optimism that is the lifeblood of bold organizing is threatened on multiple fronts.

Often invisible to the untrained observer — and often unstated in the media — is the extent to which each and every moment of societal transformation in the United States has depended upon grassroots organizing.

The quality and commitment of talent in the field today creates a truly remarkable opportunity to create space to digest the learnings of recent decades and to finally invest in sustaining existing work, testing new approaches and enabling the best of them to scale.

Movement organizations have risen to the occasion, leading rapid-response efforts, facilitating mutual aid, and driving campaigns to advance worker and immigrant rights, voting rights, and more. But we are far from having the power and scale we need to win. How do we deal with a reality in which the very structures of democracy are under threat? How do we step into the openings created by neoliberalism’s failures? How do we revitalize and reimagine the organizing traditions that work while inventing new ways of power-building to meet current or future conditions with rigor and creativity?