Turn Your Grief and Anger Into Action and Hope!

(This article first appeared in the May-June 2015 issue of The American Postal Worker magazine.)

By having hope, we inspire hope. if you wait until you have time, people and resources, you may miss out. If something must be done, we must do it now.

When you ask someone for a little bit of their spare time, they may actually be ready to give you their all. Maybe they were hoping someone would ask them to be a part of a big movement – something that would bring meaning to their life.

You have to renew your efforts every day: 90 percent of organizing is follow-up. Don’t talk at people; put them to work by asking them. We put our heart and soul into rooting out the injustices in our workplace. We need to fight those who want to crush our communities by degrading our jobs, destroying our living wage, and taking rights and benefits from us, our families and our neighbors.

Connect by Sharing
How can we win the hearts and minds of our co-workers and communities? By sharing the stories that inspired us. We have to have faith in the ability of ordinary people to make history.

I suggest you share the story of how postal workers secured a union contract in 1970. Show the video, The Strike That Couldn’t Happen, in the break room, post a link on Facebook, and e-mail it to friends.

Everyone should see the everyday workers who stood outside the post office with signs, saying, “Enough!”

There is no substitute for face-to-face communication. There are many techniques to utilize, but somehow, we have to communicate one-on-one, whether it is by phone or in person.

Social media allows us to reach many people quickly, at a very low cost. It offers excellent tools to build crowds and keep them energized, but remember: It is not a replacement for one-on-one communication.

Large social movements force people to decide whether they are willing to take a stand – to try to create a better world, with decent jobs and strong communities, and whether they are willing to work with organizations to make structural changes.

People can see that there is something explosive going on, that people not so different from them are doing things they never thought could be done.

Keep Moving Forward
We can no longer let management dampen our spirits and take our livelihood from us. In order to change the structure of society, we have to have a different kind of system.

You have to believe in democracy, and believe that people have the capacity to govern themselves. Take time to help them see how they can push themselves to grow stronger, stretch their minds, and work collectively to solve problems.

We want our union members to take on the challenges we face, because we are stronger together. Provide opportunities for people to grow in the movement. Utilize music, culture, and songs of struggle, based on the love of humanity. Trust that we have the ability to control our lives.

We have to convince people who have been ignored or excluded in the past that their involvement will have meaning and that their ideas will be respected. It’s true that the majority of us are not allowed to make decisions about many things that are important to us.

As an organizer, you can help people see that they can help make decisions by getting involved in our movement.

You can’t just listen, you have to act. Practice making smaller decisions that will lead to bigger ideas and activities. The key is teaching the idea that you can make any decisions you want – but make sure they are decisions that everybody in your movement can live with.

We want to help people learn how to be social activists. In our union movement, we look to stewards and others that our co-workers respect. In community organizations, we look to the people that others look to for advice and encouragement.

Organizing Power
In 1955, a few years before she famously refused to give up her bus seat, Rosa Parks attended an organizing workshop at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee.

“At Highlander, I found out for the first time in my adult life that this could be a unified society, that there was such a thing as people of different races and backgrounds meeting together in workshops, and living together in peace and harmony,” Parks said.

“It was a place I was very reluctant to leave,” she added. “I gained there the strength to persevere in my work for freedom, not just for blacks, but for all oppressed people.” Organizing empowers people collectively, not individually.

We have the ability and wisdom to get more people involved. We can make a grand movement happen on a bigger scale.

We must believe in people’s capacity to govern themselves. “We, the People,” own the Postal Service. We must govern our rights to bind our nation together. We must begin this revolution together.

We have a political system that’s broken. Now it’s our time to take back our government and make it a place for the people. People will work hard and take enormous risks, if they truly believe they can make a difference.