During my so-far admittedly brief career as a union organizer, it has come to amaze me how labor unions, perhaps the largest well-spring of local, grassroots, volunteer activism in the country (world?), do not have a significant netroots presence. Certainly, there are excellent blogs devoted to labor, such as
Nathan Newman and there are email lists such as Working Families Activist Network, but overall there are not many ways to become directly involved in the labor movement through online activism. This is especially striking since union membership in this country has been on the decline and, as a result, traditional hotspots of union activism, union meeting halls in particular, have become far less a part of people's lives than they were at one time. Certainly, tapping into the rise of the netroots would be a means for labor unions to help fill their declining activist rolls.
With all of this in mind, the Meetup.com model of activism strikes me as an obvious tool for reinvigorating labor activism through monthly, face-to-face meetings of concerned union members, activists and organizers. Further, with around 20,000,000 union members nationwide, and over 100,000,000 million members worldwide, tapping into the vast ocean of labor union activism strikes me as an equally obvious target for Meetup.com. Considering that a Union Members Meetup seems like a natural fit for both parties involved, my simple question is, how do we go about starting one up?
While I have been to several Meetups for different candidates and causes, and while I watched the birth of the Meetup political model around 15 months ago both here and especially on the old MyDD, I actually have no idea how one goes about starting a new Meetup. If anyone can answer any of the following questions, please do so in the comments section:
-How does one go about starting a Meetup?
-How much money does it cost to maintain a Meetup?
-Would it be useful to petition the AFL-CIO to help with the startup? If so, how would we go about preparing such a petition?
-Who would be willing to help on such a project? What unions, activists, officeholders and volunteers would be interested?
And once, a Meetup was in place, here is the sort of thing I had in mind:
Sample Agenda
-Introductions
-Discussion on the labor movement, possibly with speakers and prepared discussion topics. Sample topics include organizing strategies and tactics; contract negotiation strategies and tactics; unions and political activism; how to reduce competition between unions; trade, the anti-globalization movement and unions; international labor; internal union structure; the history of labor unions; labor union culture; the portrayal of unions in the mass media and popular culture; the state of labor unions in America today; new areas / industries / fields where labor should attempt to organize, etc.
-Information about local organizing initiatives / actions, preferably with representatives from such actions / initiatives for people to connect with afterward.
-Ways to find information on unions and/or how to improve your skills as a labor activist
-General socializing / vote on discussion topic for next month.
Obviously, my vision of a Union Member Meetup is not, at this time, a particularly thorough one. However, I think it would be an extremely important project for the future of labor in this country, and if anyone has any comments, suggestions or ideas, I would love to hear them.