 Great. So welcome again. And as I said, I am Barbara Madoloni and I am an educator and an organizer with Labor Notes and delighted to have you all here for this really important discussion. Before we get started, just a few things to be thinking about. Try to keep yourself muted when you're not speaking, just so we can hear those who are speaking. We may not have time for questions in the larger group, but we are going to try to have time for breakouts. So hopefully we'll get to that there. And I just want to say a few things about what it means for Labor Notes to be bringing together a panel to talk about building a caucus and transforming your union, sort of the frame for Labor Notes. You're all here because you have some connections to Labor Notes. But just to say, to remind you all, Labor Notes is a publication and education project. We are in our 41st year. And our commitment is to developing rank and file democratic, transparent militant unions with the understanding that it's through democratic unionism that we will be able to win democratic workplaces and that that is key to winning a better world, a more economically and racially just world. That's the path that we're on. So when we talk about forming caucuses in Labor Notes, what we're talking about is people who are committed to the labor movement and committed to unions as a place of transformation. And that it is up to the members to take up the work and begin that transformation. And caucuses are a critical way to do that work. Some might even say essential. So we're going to get started. Have an amazing set of panelists here tonight. Rianna Matos is with the member action coalition in, out of Cortland State University in New York. And she's joined by her comrade in member action, Andrew Del Greco, who's out of the State University Stony Brook campus. And then we're going to hear from Ryan Gray and Jamie Partridge, who are with the Portland caucus of rank and file carriers. So we're east to west coast here. And then we're going to hear from Shira Cohen, who is with the working educators in Philadelphia. And then we're going to move back up to New York State and hear from Patrick Wiesenthal, who is with the caucus of rank and file health care workers. So I'm excited that we have a range of industries here represented to talk about caucus development. And so with that, I'm going to pass things over to Rianna. And tell us your story. All right. Hi, everyone. I'm Rianna Maton. So I am an assistant professor at SUNY Cortland, which is a public university in New York State. I draw upon a range of experiences that I bring to my caucus work. So one is that I'm a former high school teacher and I was a building rep. There I was also an active supporting member of the caucus of working educators, which Shira is a part of. And then I moved to New York State and I joined the United University Professionals UUP. And now I'm a member of the Statewide Member Action Coalition, MAC. And I'm working right now to get a chapter of MAC going on my specific campus with a group of others. So I also research and write about caucuses and teacher union organizing. So just to sort of lay the stage here, my first experience in a union was as a high school teacher in Toronto. Now union leadership had reached out at that time and tried to draw me in. I quickly became a building rep in my first year and I started attending the meetings each month. They tended to involve a lot of debate. They seem to be fairly transparent leadership about their position. So I had kind of a specific kind of image about unions as a result. Now when I joined the United University Professionals Union, I was shocked. There were few meetings and the ones that I went to just sort of involved somebody standing at a podium and talking to an audience. There was no debating, no active engagement. And when I reached out to them, they obviously didn't want me to be involved. So through a friend, I learned that there was a statewide caucus that was starting and I was thrilled. This was MAC. They have a platform that they believe in a transparent, member driven union that embraces democracy and member engagement and involvement. And they believe that we are the union. So I had to get involved. Now no one else was a member of MAC on my campus at that time. So it was really on me to kind of get this going in the initial stage. So first what I did was I started attending some of the meetings for the statewide MAC and I listened in and I sometimes participated. And Andrew, who's also on this on this call, reached out to me and he even came out to the Cortland campus to meet with me, which I thought was really cool. So I invited a friend of a colleague friend of mine from work to come along to the meeting and she was pretty much immediately on board. So quickly we doubled our membership from one to two people. And then I started to think about who I could trust on campus, who has my back politically, and who's on the same page. So when I had first arrived at Cortland three and a half years ago, our cohort of new faculty was a really friendly, really social bunch. So we got to know each other pretty well. So those were the first people that I reached out to to get involved with MAC. And part of the advantage in aligning with other pre tenure faculty was that they were also in sort of a similarly precarious position in terms of their jobs, as well as the fact that we knew one another, we trusted one another politically and relationally. And so we were really on the same page. So we doubled again and we were and we're as of yesterday, we were four members, now we're five. So we're growing and it's happening. It's happening slowly, but it's sort of like each time, you know, we turn around, we've doubled. So that's where we're at right now. And as you can tell, we're at really initial stages to grow our caucus. And I just want to tell you a little about some of the things that we're focusing on and planning as we move forward to grow. So first of all, we're focusing on one on ones. We know that they're really important. We know that listening conversations are vital and listening conversations as was talked about last week in the in the countering apathy workshop at Labor Notes, which was awesome, by the way, that listening conversations should be 80% listening and 20% talking. So we're really kind of honing our technique at this point to run these conversations. And each of us are running these conversations across campus. And we're focusing on both running these with people who are with people who we know and are at sort of a similar level of precarity in terms of their positions. And we're also running it with people who are more established on campus and already have tenure. But we have an initial stages really being focused on sort of our peers. So we're taking it slow to feel this out so that we can really understand the politics on our campus before we dive too deep. We're not just trying to sort of take everything over without understanding what's happening on campus. A second thing we're going to do this summer is a book club. So when I was a member of the Phillies Caucus, which Shira is part of, I was part of a summer book club that they ran a summer book series that they ran there. Now one just a great resource to look out for Shira, who's on this call along with Kathleen Riley wrote a fabulous article for Rethinking Schools, which I really recommend checking out if you want to learn how to run these book clubs. So book clubs are really great ways Phillie Caucus found for attracting new members. They're also really good for developing a common frame of analysis or together developing sort of an understanding of what are the political problems at hand and how should we think about how to approach them. So we're going to run two of these book clubs in the summer, one with two different books. One is going to be more of a basic like what are unions? What could they be? How can we rethink them? And the second book will be Jane Michael Levy's book No Shortcuts so that we can really start to think about honing our technique at organizing on campus. And also so that our group of the inner circle really gets on the same page in terms of our organizing approach. The second or sorry, the third thing that we're doing is running for election. So partly in order to better understand our union and get involved, three of us ran for delegate so that we can vote in a 10 statewide decision making meetings. We did a lot of campaigning around this and I would say it had two purposes. And primarily it was really to get a conversation going. People now actually approach me and ask me about union stuff where they didn't before. And that's a great lead into organizing conversations. And secondarily, of course, the campaigning goddess votes. We tried to run the campaign as visibly democratically as possible so that we are modeling how we want our union to be. And that is member engaged and transparent. I would say that the primary barrier that we're sort of facing right now on campus is that people just don't know what a union is, or what it could do. They don't really understand what unions are for or how they fit in. They see the union as them rather than us. So our first task we see is really focusing on some basic education about this is what a union is and this is what a union can be. And we're gearing our one on ones and our book series in order to address this. So overall, we are trying to build our work together as horizontally and democratically as possible. We want to educate members about what a union can be and really emphasize we are the union. And we also want to welcome in people from a variety of politics. We really don't want the radical left to take over the caucus because we know that this actually would be a weakness in our union. And we want for the caucus to be composed of regular members from across the campus from different jobs and with a range of political perspectives. So we're trying to account for that in our organizing. And we all share fundamentally a vision for an engaged, member driven and democratic union. Awesome. Thank you, Rhiannon, for leading us into thinking about this work. Andrew is also with the member action coalition. And it's going to talk about the work they've done in Stony Brook and some of the lessons they've learned. Hi, everybody. My name is Andrew Silver Greco. I am from Stony Brook. I'm a founding member of the member action coalition. Again, a caucus within UDP. UDP is United University Professions. It is the largest higher education union in the country. An American Federation of teachers local 2190. We are also affiliated with NYSIT, New York State United Teachers. So UDP represents faculty and staff at 29 campuses is broken into 32 chapters. So the local is a statewide organization. There are chapters of UDP, which administer the contract provide services, benefits, etc. support at those campus levels. So the campuses are the SUNY University Centers for your colleges, academic medical centers, etc. So Mac believes that being a part of a union is more than just signing a membership card. It's and having those contractual protections. You know, we understand that unions bring democracy to the workplace and lead to sharing of power in the workplace. But this is only true if union leadership is equally willing to fight side by side with members and share in that power. Too often, sadly, it seems that the status quo for many unions is almost a business union approach, a service union model. We're having a good relationship with management often comes before a steadfast commitment to defending members. Where there is little turnover in leadership, there is almost a suspicion and kind of driving out of newcomers. Issues are often resolved at the highest level or mostly through legal means, through more bureaucratic processes rather than banding workers together and kind of collectively building power and pressuring the boss. So caucuses typically understand that the only way to really win is by this grassroots organizing effort and activating the unorganized organizing the unorganized caucuses understand that union members want and really need more than just an insurance policy or a third party to call on when they have a problem. Unfortunately, many unions third party themselves by saying, you know, contact the union if you need help rather than being proactive and engaging in that organizing work of reaching out to members and not just an email blast or a survey, but doing it one to one as Rhiannon had noted. All unions kind of really make an effort to work hard. There's no denying that but but we within Mac and within caucuses understanding unions have to work smart and that means recognizing as boots Riley from the goose says that we have hella people but they have helicopters. So it's a fundamental understanding of power and understanding who has the power and how things are structured and that really all we have over the boss's people, they have more resources, more financial resources, more more kind of time because we're doing our jobs, their job is to manage. And we must be in this constant state of organizing. So all truly democratic and powerful unions were won through struggle by rank and file by those caucus members who really worked that rank and file members who worked to make those unions truly powerful and truly democratic and responsive to their needs. So I think it's it's fair to recognize that entropy happens to unions too. And then they often end up with kind of by default, this this and by this this kind of crushing of oftentimes the democratic uprising of members, this hegemony sets in and end up with top down leadership that reflects the same power dynamics of management, a desire to solve things mostly behind closed doors. That is conflict averse that is often passive aggressive in its exchanges with members who are trying to really advocate change. And really a hiding behind process, putting kind of process before people. You really see this often weaponized through governance processes, you know, a hiding behind Robert's rules and really hiding behind this process to squelch democratic participation of the membership. It creates this exclusive culture. So Union caucus caucus has really worked to bring that democracy to our unions to to empower our members to be kind of an agent of change, not just a solitary figure in the landscape, but a shaper of a landscape. And a recognition that we alone can't shape the landscape, you know, as a singular person that we have to come together that that that solidarity brings us together and that we are a collective agent of change that this isn't just trusting leadership to go meet with management behind closed doors and solve all those problems. So at Stony Brook, you know, we as members, we were kind of deeply disappointed when our union leadership at our chapter kind of sat idly by in 2017 and 2018 while budget cuts were implemented on our campus. Members were kind of deeply disappointed when our chapter leadership said publicly at the time, we can only save full time jobs. And yes, I mean, a kind of very strict understanding of the contract might state that, but that means that you have to have a resistance that you have to organize. And other unions were doing this, most notably the Graduate Student Employees Union. They united with the undergraduate students and of course their own membership and fought back. They led demonstrations, they occupied buildings, and they were able to successfully save a few programs from being shuttered. That saved our members jobs. And they, being public sector workers, are subject to the same kind of laws and regulations that govern our rights and what we can do and workplace assembly and all these sorts of things. So during those, those series of demonstrations, our chapter leadership attended one of those rallies, but they were at the sidelines with their hat on and sunglasses on. You know, they might as well have had a fake mustache to obscure their presence. So there was a fundamental lack of solidarity and almost a self interest amongst the leadership at the time. They upheld management's desired kind of public perception that higher ed unions are kind of bourgeois, tweet code faculty who are unconcerned about anyone beyond themselves and a bad neighbor. And we know that that's not actually a value that our members feel. And that's not how most of our members are. Our members are workers. Higher education faculty and staff are workers. So it's important that we understand, and this is what, you know, our caucus kind of realized that Stony Brook, that the Janice hit and that our union was not really prepared and they were seemingly unconcerned by the state of organizing at the time. So some of us banded together and we organized a caucus and a slate. We came together quickly. There was a lot of new folks involved who were still finding their place, as Rhiannon had noted. But we also met a lot of longer term folks who were dissatisfied too. And this was kind of our first mistake is that we developed this vision together over many months, but it wasn't solidified enough. Maybe we didn't vet folks enough, especially our candidate for chapter president. And the problem is that these election deadlines are kind of beyond our control. They're set by the statewide union and all the chapters have to be in sync. It's not their fault. It's just the process, right? So we were essentially rushed into these elections, kind of, you know, almost without fully hammering ourselves out of what we were for and not just what we were against. So we had shared this mutual dissatisfaction, but there was not as enough of an articulation of what we wanted in our, what our vision of a union transformed was. So those who seemingly just wanted power, not at their head and perhaps we didn't offer enough of a skeptical interrogation of their ideology. So another mistake that we made was was not really keeping our campus caucus alive after the election. We have since struggled to hold this person accountable for their betrayal of the ideals that they campaigned on and published in writing and the strategic plan that they agreed to, which was one of union democracy and shared power. We have, however, grown max statewide now across New York state from Buffalo to Long Island and everywhere in between. We joined members who were rising up at New Pulse to really kind of springboard to a statewide local wide caucus. We now have a more rigorous vetting process. We ran elections in 2020 for statewide office and we're running folks across the state and chapter elections as Rihanna noted. So we are once again have a full slate of candidates at the Stony Brook election this time, of course, more heavily vetted. Our caucus at statewide and the chapter level has committed to keeping our caucus alive beyond elections and organizing, you know, in a constant state of organizing, not just around elections. So in summary, you know, we feel that there's no one coming to save us. We see conflict diverse leadership at the statewide and chapter level unfortunately. And we've seen Governor Cuomo weakened for over a year now. He lost the independent Democratic caucus, which caucus with Republicans and him to keep a progressive agenda from sailing through New York state politics. He lost tenants right legislation over a year ago, working people one big. And of course, everyone knows the national news with all the scandals. So we see a rising progressive movement, community organizations, DSA, all these organizations, working families party. So we as a union need to build these coalitions, but from the bottom up, not just what leadership wants to do with coalition work, but what our members want to do empowering them in that process. So as Rihanna noted, this is done primarily the caucus work doing is through those one to one conversations. It's a lot of work. It takes a lot of time, but it is built to last. It is not just an email blast. It is not just telling us to call legislators or social media outreach. It is having conversations, building trust and building power. This is key to winning in the workplace. So we really feel a need to save our union, because the organized labor has been under attack for decades now. And union membership is on the decline. It really is flight or fight for the labor movement right now. And it is on us to fight back. It's on you to go to your campus to come together with your to your workplace to come together with your colleagues that you know and trust, build those relationships and start a caucus within your union. All good organizers know that you always leave someone with an ask, and that is the ask that I'm leaving you with today. So Labor Notes is always there to support these efforts. I'm very grateful that support for years now. So if you'd like to learn more, if you'd like to follow along, if you'd like to stay tuned, you could follow us at at UDP Mac. If you'd like to follow what's going on, Stony Brook, our election results are pending. We're very curious to see what happens that's at UDP Mac SBU. And if you want to follow along, you know, for myself, I of course, retweet all these updates as well. I'm at Solar Greco. Now you can see my last name in my kind of bio thing there on zoom, no hyphen for Twitter. So I'm looking forward to hearing from the other panelists and of course participating and seeing you in the breakout groups. Thank you. Great. Thanks very much, Andrew and maybe you can drop those connections in the chat so people can see them. And I've known Andrew for a couple of years now. And like one of the things I just sort of want to pull out from what he said is just really reflecting on your process. Being able to sort of look at what you've done, say, geez, that wasn't the right direction to go. Let's rethink what it means. How can we reestablish ourselves with a vision, the necessity of establishing the caucus and having the caucus be present and active after an election, but always being willing to reflect on the work and what it means being guided and being able to do that with the context of being guided by real clear principles of democracy, transparency and fighting for a strong union, building a strong union. So now we're going to move to Ryan Gray, who is with the Portland caucus of rank and file carriers. And Ryan's going to tell us about how he came to be a part of his caucus and what that's meant to him. Hello. So I'm with the National Association of Letter Carriers. That's the union. And our caucus is called the PDX Rank and File Carriers. I've joined about a year and a half ago. I've been with the post office for just over five years. Our situation for beginning employees as a letter carrier is, I think unique to a lot of places. We have a probationary period of 90 days. And then beyond that, we have this sort of hazing period that goes on and on and on. It's sort of an indeterminate amount of time. Mine was 19 months. And that involves a lot, a lot of work. You don't know which station you're going to be in. You don't know which route you're going to be on. When you're done with a route, they send you out again. So it's confusing just inherently to the job. So it's you're all over the place. Beyond that, anytime you have a question, your shop steward isn't readily available necessarily, because our the way our workday is we only spend like a little bit of time near anybody, like geographically, physically, whatever. And then we're out on the street by ourselves. So there's not a lot of opportunity to speak to anyone for really any amount of time. And again, when you're in this probationary slash hazing period, they're pretty much watching everything you do. So when you do approach a shop steward, you can be yelled at, you can be told to go back to whatever you were doing, even though you have legitimate questions, and you're doing it on the clock or on your break, whatever it is. So it's intimidating to say the least. It's super stressful. I found the shop steward at my original station to be really gruff and not approachable. So I didn't really want to get involved with the union at all. Before I started, I was really excited because it's one of the longest running unions in the country. And I was just like, this is awesome, blah, blah, blah. I found that to not be true. And was told, oh, just call the union, it'll be fine. But every time you call the union, again, you're getting pushed back, you're getting told, just go to your job, don't worry about it. So I didn't really pursue anything with the union, frankly, until I converted, which was, again, 19 months into it. And then I got my regular route, my job became more normal. And then I had a shop steward who I could actually speak with. And then he sort of saw how I said I was getting with things and introduced me to this caucus. And I was like, oh, that sounds perfect. It sounds like a place where I can find people with like-minded sort of views on the workplace, on politics, whatever it was. Again, because the nature of our job, we don't have a lot of time with people, like we're just kind of passing each other or like in these, they're called cases, but basically giant cubicles where you can't see people, you can just hear them. So you're not really able to engage with basically anybody. So you don't really know who's on your side, you don't know who's going to support the way you feel about labor, whether you feel about politics. So the caucus, for me, was like a perfect opportunity to find a group of people that I could communicate with, even though I found out about it right before COVID, so I never got to meet them in person. So it's all been like on the phone or like Zoom, which is frustrating. And there's, it's limited how much you can get done with that. However, it was a very, very good place to throw questions out, to throw comments, whatever it was, nothing. I couldn't get any of that done at work, which is a weird thing to not be able to do. So it became like a really good resource. It helped me with a complaint I have with the coworker that escalated to the point where I was getting harassed. And they were able to really help me go through the entire EEO process, which is a nightmare I hope no one ever has to do that. It was essential for that. I wouldn't have been able to get through settlement or any of that without the caucus. And yeah, we're still kind of in our baby steps growing phase. But it's been around for about two years. And I think we're we're wrapping our heads around next steps, priorities. And yeah, I think we're getting stronger. I mean, month to month, we're getting stronger for sure. However, going back to the CCA thing, those people that are like, in the introductory period, some of them join and they're all excited to get mad and get answers. And then they end up quitting because it's so frustrating. And they're not getting the support they need from the actual union, just from us little, our little caucus, which is not quite enough, apparently, to keep some people, which is really unfortunate, because it's a great job once you end up converting. But sometimes you don't know how long that's going to be. So that said, the caucus is great. I'm really excited it's there. I'm excited to see how it's going to advance and grow going forward. Thanks so much, Ryan. And really wanted to hear from Ryan to sort of like an on the ground sense of like what a caucus can mean. When we're reaching out to welcome people into the caucus, how much it can matter to some body to be to be invited in. And so now we're going to hear from Jamie Partridge, and Jamie is one of the founders of the Portland caucus, and he's going to tell us a little bit about sort of where they're going now, what some of their goals are coming up. Jamie. Thanks, Barbara. Hello, everybody. Jamie Partridge, National Association of Literatures, Portland, Oregon. I'm on the executive board. And as you can see behind me, my virtual background is a something we developed for the membership. Zoom meetings so that even when the when the leadership of the Union wanted to ace us out and prevent us from having an influence, you could just see how you can get in touch with our caucus. This is how but I'm going to I'm going to come off come off this virtual background because it looks so weird. Hello, everybody. I want to tell you a little bit about how we got started. It was a about three different groupings within within our Union, which is about about 12, 2000 members here in the Portland area. And it was a group who tried to start a women's caucus within our Union and got no support from our branch leadership. And they were particularly concerned about mandatory overtime, interfering with family obligations, childcare, elder care, you know, meal preparation and tried to bring this. And so a number of us got together and moved this agenda through a branch meeting, got a resolution passed to have our Union bring this to the local negotiations that we were going to make demands of management that people who had family obligations were not required to work mandatory overtime. And if we unfortunately that we have been blocked and paced out in that process so far. But in any case, another set of workers were stewards who were just really disappointed with the branch leadership's unwillingness to take on management to fight to take their their grievances, you know, to the next step. They dropped grievances or settled the grievances unsettled since factually. And then there's the same group that the round was referring to the CCAs, the 25 percent of the workforce, who is just really facing oppressive conditions, you know, working 10 hour days and six and seven day weeks. And and they were attracted. So all these groupings came together. And we built a caucus over two years of about about 35 people have signed on to our platform. We have about 15 active. We're in 14 out of the 19 post offices in Portland. We have about eight shop stewards and alternates. And we helped folks you know, win steward elections and get involved with the steward meetings that happen every month. And we've actually organized on the on the station at the station level or, you know, in multiple stations, a number of resistance campaigns to management poolery. Yeah, there was a pilot experiment called Consolidated Casing at one station where we had members that were it basically was delaying the mail. And so we reached out to community members and we actually ran a campaign where we won and got this pilot project dropped. We organized we've organized to enforce masking at our stations. We've organized resistance to working in the smoke smoky atmosphere with the wildfires to, you know, encourage and people to refuse to work in those unsafe conditions. And the same thing with some we had a huge snow day where, you know, management was all over the place about forcing people to work and we organized to help people refuse to work and get the administrative leave that they deserved. And at one of our stations, the one of our CCA members actually organized the other CCAs in the station to actually take days off regular days off and basically call in, you know, and they just organize themselves. And then another station and one of our members organized carriers to get medical restrictions. So, you know, the doctor says you can only work eight hours. So in different ways, we've encouraged and supported people and to to organize resistance without without or in addition to using the grievance process and without the support of our our branch leadership. And we've we also organized a vote no campaign on our national national contract, which passed. But we've intergroup, we intervene, intervene as a group and at at membership meetings, which really makes it a lot really cuts through a lot of the alienation that we all feel at membership, which is who wasn't somebody was describing a membership. The first person that spoke was describing membership meetings where the, you know, the leader gets up and basically does a monologue. And that's what happens at our membership meetings. But we've we've been able to also pass, you know, several resolutions through membership meetings challenging leadership. So recently we we have been reevaluating our caucus and our goals and what we've been able to do. We've in particular decided to democratize the caucus more and and rotate who sets the agendas and who cheers the meetings. And we feel like we've accomplished quite a bit, especially group problem solving and building confidence in people finding a home for the long haul, you know, and countering the frustration of dealing with and being targeted, frankly, by the union leadership. I mean, we we ran a slate. Well, a couple of candidates. I won executive board and I was immediately framed up on a charge and they tried to get me off the executive board and we had a bitter fight and one. I'm still on the executive board. But yeah, people that was a pretty discouraging experience. But we're still we're still in the in the fight. And we discussed our well, we also felt that in evaluating what we've been through that we sometimes ask too much of each other and, you know, get burned out and move too quickly, you know, mistaking the kind of support that we think we have in our stations and and, you know, we provoke retaliation for management that really scares people. But we we we generally agree that our, you know, our focus should be on problem solving at the station level and or multiple stations that will then lead to more effective union meetings and eventually to capturing our branch leadership. All that growing out of power at the station level. And when we're better, we're better able to achieve, you know, better condition conditions with carriers in our stations, then more carriers will join and eventually vote us into office. And we also agreed to prioritize defending and mentoring the CCAs. How am I doing for time? Am I all right? Yeah, you got a few minutes. Yeah, OK. We also have been discussing our communications tools. I mean, obviously the one on one conversation is the, you know, the gold standard. But we also try to utilize the branch newsletter that's a monthly union newsletter that sometimes we can get articles in and we take it, you know, take turns sub opinion articles and those that are rejected. We have our own newsletter that we put out quarterly and. Yeah, and we also have a Facebook Facebook group and we're writing up a a CCA kind of cheat sheet or your your rights, know your rights kind of thing that we want to distribute to all the CCAs in the city to help them navigate their way in these those crucial that first first year or so. And finally, we're doing a series of trainings for our caucus members on secrets of a successful organizer. And we have a group is just just for our caucus and then for another and another group of workers, school bus drivers, actually. We're going to do it together. And we have Mark Brenner that's going to help us out with this training, who is one of the authors of the Secrets of the Successful Organizer. Of course, former director of labor notes that go our go to home for figuring out what what to do as we navigate this exciting path of caucus work. Thank you. Thank you, Jamie. I just want to say, so Jamie talked about like bringing people into fights, organizing at the work site, trainings, communicating with membership. I think that easily sort of summarize the list of things. They're being the union that the union needs to be. If the union is not going to welcome members, they're welcoming members. If the union is not going to bring members together to learn how to fight, they're bringing the members together to do that. And that that is the the key to what it means to be a caucus. As you start off, you it's it's about I see somebody writing about like what's a program. Rosie asking like what is the being clear in a vision about what what kind of union you can be, what kind of union you want, offering that as an alternative to members, that this is what a union can be. And then going out and actually doing it. And that's what we just heard from from Jamie and Ryan. And we're going to hear more of that now from Shira Kohn out of the Working Educators in Philly. Thanks, Barbara. Hi, everyone. I feel overwhelmed following all of the amazing people before. It was really it was just good to hear you all say things that I was planning to say. And I'll just like echo them and say like it's all the same. I think a lot of what we're dealing with. So that's always good to know that we're all in the fight with in the fight with each other. So I'm Shira. Shira Kohn, I'm a teacher in North Philadelphia. I teach seventh graders math at a school called the Feltville School of Arts and Sciences. And I'm a member of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, which is the largest union in Philly with 13,000 members and one of the largest in the state and one of the largest teachers unions in the country. And I'm a member of our rank and file caucus of working educators, which has been around for seven years. And I just want to echo what Barbara said at the beginning today, which is that I think everyone here knows that unions can be a really powerful vehicle for change. And that caucuses are one of the answers to making that possible and combating this top down unionism that makes it often really hard to organize and really hard to win. And so the fact that you're all here is like urgent and critical. And it's just really good to see so many people who are excited to start caucuses. So I am tasked with sharing a little bit about we and then also sharing some mistakes and challenges that we've come up against and how we've moved around them and through them. So our caucus was founded in 2014, when in a moment and see many years of our union really failing to organize people against austerity budgets and layoffs and school closures, students dying in schools where there were no nurses, our union not having a contract for four years. And the list goes on and on and on silent on racial and economic justice issues. And over the course of the last seven years, we've evolved and we've shifted and we've grown. And right now, one of the things that we're focusing on is what it looks like to do base building and like really deep relationship building to build that high participation union that we need. And so the first thing that I wanted to share around like what does it look like to really welcome people? I know that we've covered this a lot tonight, but I think one of the things that's really important in terms of welcoming people is really meeting people where they are on their issues. So when I'm a teacher, I want to be talking to other teachers, paraprofessionals related service providers around what it really looks like to be a person who's a worker in their workplace. What does it look like to work with students? What do they want for their students? What do they want for their families? And like what's actually happening in the work site or in the building and not necessarily making it at all about me and Rhiannon said like it's 80 percent listening and Andrew talked a lot about one on ones. And I feel like the one on ones are how we build. We've tried to take shortcuts and we've tried to like build really big lists and have lots of emails and lots of phone numbers. But that doesn't really build anything. It only you only build when you're really getting to know people and talking to people and someone tonight. I can't remember who it was talked about building trust with each other. And I think that's one thing that we're really working on now. So when we bring new people into the caucus, we're inviting them to meetings. We're asking them to do work with us, not for us. We're asking them to be a part of actions. We're asking them what it's like to organize in their school. And we really want to make it about building schools that we deserve that our kids deserve like at the individual and collective level. And I think that ultimately that builds trust because people start to see you as somebody who is in the work with them who will like will literally do this. Like you're going to do this for the long haul. Someone else talk. I think Jamie talked about what it means to be in the work for the long haul. And when we're in a union that does not do that, there is no trust. Our union leadership does not trust the rank and file. It's not emulated at all. It's very top down as caucus members. We've run against our leadership twice. We've lost two times. I'll talk about that a little bit tonight. There is no trust. There's a lot of antagonism and hostility. And so we have to build that trust with each other when that's not coming from up from up top. So I think one lesson is just recognizing that it's in the one on one that's in the relationships and it's in like building together literally one person at a time. So in terms of challenges and things that we've done, things that we wish that we might have done differently, I think one piece around what it means to really be the union that we want to be and what it looks like to build a high participation union with an active base. It means being in touch with people, not letting things fall off. Like when they're interpersonal conflicts, we want to work through them and build together and not just marginalize people and things that are happening. When you're building an organization, we have a big organization now. We have 400 people in it. And so stuff's going to come up and we want to make sure that we're working through those pieces together. Training people is really hard and so necessary. And in the last couple of years, we've been doing it more. Book groups have been critical for us, actual workshops and training around what it looks like to have a one on one. What does it mean to map your workplace? How do you talk to people about issues? How do you have a chapter meeting at your school? I'll put the link in the chat later. But some of you may have heard of strike school in the fall. Jane McAleavy, who wrote the book that Rhiannon was talking about No Shortcuts, ran this incredible program that we sent a few people to. We're going to send more people in May and June. And so I think finding trainings and training each other and like using the labor notes book, Secrets of the Secrets of a Successful Organizer, that's all been critical for us to train people and do it consistently because organizing, I think one thing I've learned is that organizing is like you have to learn how to do it. And some people are really good listeners and can be really good at organizing, but we have to develop people. And when people don't know how to have a one on one, it's not their fault. Like we have to teach people how to do it. And we have to, I need to have like I need to practice having one on ones. We can always grow as organizers and we still say that years and years in. I think another piece that we've thought a lot about is what it means to organize in the workplace versus citywide. I loved what Jamie said about really focusing at the station level. We're focusing on the school and bargaining unit level. Like what are wins that we want people to win in their school? What do we want people to win in their workplace? It doesn't necessarily have to be about big picture stuff up here. It doesn't. I mean, we can talk to people about the budget. We can talk to people about austerity. We can talk to people about school board elections, like all of these things that are really, really big up here, but what's really happening in the workplace is so important. And you can do both. And I think sometimes we've prioritized the citywide big picture stuff over the nitty gritty in the workplace. And so that feels incredibly important. And a couple of examples of what this has looked like is or one specific example that I'll focus on is when we fought for a safe reopening this year. We all know what's happening in K to 12 education in during COVID and the pandemic. Our district and our union leadership would have definitely sent us all back in in August without the drop of a hat. And because of the organizing grassroots rank and file work that we've been doing all year at the building level, we've saved lives. We've bought time. We've made sure that people were able to stay safe. And it was all because we had people talking to each other in the buildings, not like big picture. Let's have lots of big meetings and conversations. Like what does it mean for 30 people in a school to sign a letter saying we cannot go back until it's safe? And so really making sure that people are talking to each other in their schools and in their buildings. A couple of other pieces. One, a lot of people are talking about elections. It's OK if you don't run for election right away. We ran for leadership a year after we were founded. And I think you could ask different people in we about what that means in the lesson. Some people say it was too early and actually we decided to run a year after we were founded. The election itself was two years after and like it might have been too early. Like we didn't we didn't have a lot of people yet. We didn't necessarily know ourselves really deeply yet and know each other really deeply. And so it's OK to wait. Another thing that I've been thinking a lot about with elections is that there are a lot of practices and like organizing skills that you learn during elections, like having one on ones, making flyers, having meetings, talking to people about building power, talking about contracts. And we want to be doing that not just during elections. We want to be doing that all the time. And so I think it's important to get really, really good at those skills. Maybe before you run, that's just like my own personal thing that I've been thinking about and to be able to put that into practice. And at the same time, we know that elections are really important and that for us, like the biggest, like two of the biggest teachers unions across the country, Chicago and LA caucus is one leadership of their unions and we're able to really change how the union was run and what was happening in the city. So elections are really important and also it's OK to not do it right away and think really strategically about whether it's the right time and moment to do it. And the last thing, I think this has come up a lot. Like what does it mean to not necessarily just focus on your union leadership? It's like a daily struggle for me and all of our core members. Like what does it mean to take our focus away from our leadership and really focus on the rank and file and also focus on the bosses and like focus on the district and the mayor and city council and all the people who are making decisions that are impacting our kids and us every day. And we one of my comrades often says like we really want to show members of our union that organizing wins and you show people that by focusing on like focusing away from the leadership and focusing on each other and focusing on all of these folks who are making decisions. So when we've run campaigns around toxic schools, when we've run campaigns around funding, when we've run campaigns around our contract, like it's been about the district. We really try to make it not about the leadership. And I think one thing to emphasize is that we've had a huge impact on our union over the last seven years, even though we are not in leadership, we've run in three elections, two for delegates to AFT, PA and national, and then two for one for that and then two leadership elections in general. We've lost all of them. Our counts went up every time. But because of that, our leadership sees us as having an impact on our members and therefore they're moving. We're not asking them to move. We're not asking them to do anything, but they see what we're doing around base building in our schools. They saw what we were doing around reopening. They saw what we were doing to try to get all of the asbestos across our buildings remediated after years and years of neglect. And they have started to act because they see us doing the work. And so and that will happen. Like guaranteed that it will happen because they have to. Otherwise, like people start to not pay attention and they start to pay attention to us. And they're like, they don't want people to pay attention to the caucus. They want people to pay attention to leadership. And so they are they're doing they're doing the work, not in the way that we want them to do it, but they are starting to do it. And so I think there are a couple of other a couple of other pieces. I think like we've seen them start to ask people to do more. They ask people to not go into work on February 8th, when the district was, you know, having us all go into really unsafe buildings and nobody went in a few people actually that's wrong. Many a few people across the district they go in, but a majority stayed out and reopening was delayed. Their rhetoric justice like around social racial and economic justice has shifted. They have been communicating more and it's slow, but they are shifting. And so we are having an impact even though we aren't in power. And I think like the most important lesson that we've learned is that you can't just talk to each other and like talk up here above people. You have to talk to people in their workplaces and you have to talk to workers and you have to bring them in and make people feel welcome because we all want a high participation democratic union and the only way you're going to do that is if you are literally talking to everyone. And as someone else said tonight, organizing the unorganized or organizing the unorganized and the only way we do that is by talking to people we don't know and that we haven't met yet. And so we're really trying to transition to a place where we're all like leaders in our caucus are excited and ready to do that. And I think the last piece is that like winning or losing sorry, losing to elections is really, really hard. And also like you like when you when you run like you may lose and you can't leave like you can't give up and leave because when we do that, like we're leaving our unions like we don't know. Like and so like someone said, you know, we are the people who can make our union stronger and we do it through organizing and talking to people and really being responsible to each other to win. And so even if you lose and even if there's hostility coming from the top, like I find solace in the people I organize with and the workers who I meet and talk to every day. And so like one of my I'll end with one of the members of our steering committee. She's a parent in the district and she just keeps at she said in a meeting recently, she was like just like I think about what happens if we give up and it just like really stunned everyone and it just makes me remember like we can't give up even if we lose. Even if it's hard because again, like I think organizing caucuses, caucus organizing feels like the most critical work of labor right now. And we we are winning even when it feels like we're losing all the time. And so I'm excited for all of the caucuses that will emerge from tonight and all of the ones that will continue to grow. And I yeah, I think that's all I have. Awesome. Thank you so much, Shira. So many good lessons in there. It's like great that y'all are packing it all in. And now we're going to hear from Patrick Waisensault. Patrick, you there? Yeah, thanks, Barbara. So I'm Patrick Waisensault. I'm a CTE technologist out of Colorado Health, which is Buffalo, New York. I'm the newly elected vice president of CWA 1168. And just to give you an idea in terms of CWA, we're health care. We're not Verizon, though I love my Verizon brothers and sisters and everybody else from flight attendants. But we're the largest health care local in CWA. We have about 4,800 members. And core, which is the caucus of rank and file health care employees, we just ran. I'll get into a little bit of the story of how we came to be, which I think will help shed some light. And maybe you'll catch yourself saying like, oh, I recognize that in my own union. And maybe that's why that drove you to join us tonight here. But in the elections in the fall we ran for 13 seats. And we won 12 of them. So the new board just took office in January just a few months ago. And we hold a super majority on the board. So the first part, I'm going to talk a little, like I said, talk a little bit about how core, how we came to be. And the details aren't as important as seeing how they tie in to maybe what you're experiencing in your workplace, even if you don't come from health care. And then I'm going to talk a little bit about at the end how we built our campaign around being the union we want to be and the union we're starting to rebuild again now. So I come from a local that is very unusual. We have our contract is housed with three other unions. CWA makes up 60% of that contract. We have SCIU 1199 makes up about 40%. And then we have 10 to 20 operating engineers in there. And the bargaining over the last 10 and a half years since I've been around has been very top down. CWA is much more democratic than 1199 SCIU. But we're nowhere to the level we should be. And that's really why core is in power today. All signs when we go to bargaining is 1199 basically goes in and tells their delegates how to vote. Now CWA is much is better, much better. They give our folks who are elected to bargaining the autonomy to make their own decisions and vote how they may, but they really are good at working the room and pushing people to come to a final decision and really put the pressure on. The other little thing about our contracts are in CWA the national holds our contract. It's not it's communication workers of America it's not the local. So the national has staff that sits at the table with us whether you were in my contract or whether you're in other contracts in CWA. And that's the avenue that I've experienced and some of my comrades and folks from core around this call tonight have experienced when they've sat through bargaining is the point of the national is to kind of push people in that direction. You have a vote but here's why we think it's best. So just uptown Catholic health is the second largest health care provider. They are almost fully union. It's our sister local. They have open bargaining. So open bargaining for CWA at least in West New York became a thing in 2016 when we took on a big fight public fight against Catholic health. So for those who don't know what open bargaining is there's many different things. There's open big bargaining. But when I talk about open bargaining and the way we've seen it at CWA is it's a gallery. If you're on your lunch your break we're in the hospital. You're in the area. If we're bargaining at a hotel banquet room one day if it's your day off and you want to come spend the whole day or 20 minutes you come in you sit down and you hear it all. You hear the joint sessions and you hear the caucus of the union. Like if you want to come and listen you are able to listen. When we wanted to go roll out and collide in 2019 we started in February of 2019 SCI U1199 if you remember is that other large 40% of the group we sit with at the table they were against it. And CWA 1168 was a little divided on it. And in the end since the national was at the table we never discussed it. We never got to talk about the pros and cons. And those of us who were elected to bargaining I was not but many folks that have helped form core with me over the last few months were there and they didn't even get a vote. They're coworkers and the members of the local put them there and they didn't even get to say if they can include rank and file folks in bargaining. Our biggest focus of the last round of bargaining was double tiering. We have a lot of double tiering. We even have triple tiering which is you talk about double tiering being bad triple tiering is even more disgraceful and staffing if you have a friend a relative a neighbor who works in health care you know staffing is a problem across this country not only in health care in many you know in education setting but my members and my coworkers live and breathe staffing being a problem and that's what we really wanted to take on in bargaining. So that's a little bit of like how we right from the get go had no say at bargaining. You know we wanted to open up make it more democratic and more transparent and the way things twist and turn in the room it just never got there we never got to say. How did we fix staffing we did not fix staffing and I say we that CWA our local and that contract all we all they did was create more bureaucracy more committees more things to keep us busy more things to keep us talking with management and not out on the front lines talking to our coworkers our men our members to say you know how can we really battle back staffing what what is the real way to fight this so that that was one stark thing that stuck out was we're sitting in conference rooms where we're so disconnected from what's going on in the front lines. So those of us that were left around bargaining we made a ruckus the rest of the time like if this is the way you want to cast the bow off like this is how the rest of bargaining is going to go. So we made sure we were included in everything there's little subcommittees and bargaining. We through fits and I say fits but just like no sidebars if you want to have a discussion that's not for leadership to leave the room if you want to talk you say it over the table you say it in front of everybody we have a huge bargaining committee it's like 50 it's 50 folks who are elected so 50 folks should be able to hear it. And the other thing is there's no there were never any real updates going out just list of TAs oh we agree to this that this that no one got to say what was in the TAs beyond that basic survey that goes out in the beginning. We didn't get to see proposals we didn't even know what the TAs said the updates just said TA 12 hours of work and work schedules done and then we seen it at the end and you had to read a book of 400 art 400 pages to know what that change was. We have a huge contract it would be impossible to read before before going to vote. So after bargaining this is where core came in. Our executive board just a month after getting an agreement a voted a TA they fired myself as the director of mobilizing and organizing they fired a good friend of mine a fellow troublemaker Mary Noison she's on the call tonight. She was one of the most vocal people in bargaining. They shut down our consulting relationship and some of the movement building we do with labor notes and probably the craziest one was they shut down all of our member engagement and mobilizing budgets that created funds to actually get members involved and allow them to take part in their union and grow it and they were national directives these were things that came post Janice. So how do we get to elections? We kind of made ourselves known by we look through our bylaws. So how do we reverse the decisions of our executive board? Read your bylaws if you don't know them they have a lot of power but we went out and just started talking to folks. Our executive board would not set a special membership meeting to talk about the two firings the shutting down of everything. So we found through our bylaws that if we could get 800 signatures we can force a special membership meeting. So what did we do? We went out over six days over Memorial Day weekend. We got four times the amount of signatures we needed and we forced them to have a membership meeting. And the importance of that is one we went out and we talked to folks we told the story and we told them we need you. This is our union. You have a voice. You may have not felt like you had a voice before but like a simple signature here means a whole lot. And then we're gonna ask you to come to the membership meeting. So we had a membership meeting there about 145 folks who attended and we organized to get folks there. Our folks who were coming knew what they were coming for. They were coming to take back our union. We would never let an employer treat our fellow members like this. So why do we let our executive board treat our own union members like that? So the quick moral of the story is we organized 125 votes all our way. We got everybody put back in their positions. We then froze everything and put work dealing with those budgets back in the members' hands. The executive board couldn't make these unilateral changes anymore. So this is where when elections started coming we knew if we wanted our union to change we didn't want things like this to ever happen again. Like this was the time to actually take action. So we put a slate together and from the beginning we decided we wanna build the union that we would like to see. And we decided from day one in our campaign you have to act the way you're going to act if your fellow coworkers put you in a leadership position. We wanted to make sure it was rooted in a foundation for a union that we all wanted to build and we started right away. So the three biggest things were there's a lot but I'll touch quickly on three things was a platform. So we put out this flyer. I'll put a link in the chat once I'm done but so if you wanna take a deeper look at it it was a platform. It's clear, it was concise, it was shortened to the point. And we put in a chart format. So on this side was our goals, the five goals of what core had if we were to be in leadership. And then the other side was simple bullet points of how we would achieve that in the action plan to get there. For the 10 and a half years that I've been around very rarely if I don't wanna say they never did but you could count on your one hand how many times our union took a hard public stance on where they stood and why let alone even ask members where should we draw a line? Like where should we not go past? And the next piece was rounding invisibility. So there's a lot of folks on the panel who spoke before me talked about going out and talking to folks in the workplace one-on-one, like it's not social media blasts it's not emails and mass texting but healthcare is 24 seven, 365 like a hospital never shuts down. And we have lots of off shifts and off sites and the reality of our union prior to January was if you were in day shift you didn't know who any of your executive board members were they could walk past you in the hallway and you'd have no clue. You just think it was somebody off, I don't know the 15th floor. So we made sure we were very systematic on where we rounded. We made sure how many times we tracked how many times we rounded when it spoke to folks on those units. And even when we were there who we spoke to and who we didn't meet yet. So next time when we went back oh we met Alan, Jamie and Sue but oh, Jeff and Sally are off today. Well, when did they work again and we'll make plans to come back and meet them? You have to be very systematic and track where you're going and who you're speaking to. And for night shift it wasn't hard for them to feel like it was something totally different. Because it was the first time they've ever seen someone from their union executive order someone from the union face to face at 3 a.m. Like no one ever went and did that. And the last thing that's and I think is one of the most important and is most important to the work we're doing now is no one was regarded as the professionals that they are or were. You know, it was the we know best as the leadership of the union. So we never pretended we knew everything. And I think if you pretend you know everything that's the most detrimental stance a union representative can ever take. And if you come from a hospital like I do or if you work in a school, factory, I mean anywhere we all come from shops that have different titles and departments and folks that we work with we may know the basics of what they do as a department or in their job title but we're not the experts. I may know what a nurse does. I'm not a nurse, but they are the expert. And even within nursing there's different types of nurses and different units and different specialties. So we stopped pretending we knew everything. We told folks we still tell people today you are the expert. All we're here to do is help bring folks together lead discussion, make sure everybody has a say and help navigate the process but you're the ones who really know the work. And in the end, this stops all of that coming out from behind closed doors with deals or decisions that were already made it cutting people out of processes. And right now our team really that's in power strives to include everyone at every level of our membership because they're the experts they do it every single day. They eat, sleep and breathe it. They take it home with them. So to close up, I think the thing that pulls it most together is so Larry Cohen was a past president of CWA. I don't know his stance. I don't know how he was as a president. I think he moved on just after I became a member but when Bernie ran for president the first time Bernie came to Buffalo and had a huge rally at the University of Buffalo. And I was the lucky individual who got to pick Larry Cohen up from the airport and we had a good 20 minute conversation. I never met Larry, Larry never met me but we just jumped right in it. And it was like the greatest day of my life at that point. But Larry said one thing that I always tell the people I work with is your mouth can do the talking but your feet have to do the walking. So what I'm trying to convey to everybody who's joined us for the call tonight is when you decide it's time to take the next steps in your caucus, whatever step you're at don't just explain what you're gonna do. You have to, from day one you have to go out and actually do it. You have to show your members and your coworkers that something is different and you have to let your actions show it. And in the end they have to feel it. Like they're not gonna go check a box in a vote or on a ballot just because what you say on paper what you tell them like they have to feel it right here. So I'll drop some links in the chat if you wanna look at some of our stuff we got a good Facebook page. We'll let you in if you request it but it's been a great pleasure and thanks for having me tonight. Thank you, Patrick. Thank you to all of the panelists. There's like so much good information here. I'm really glad that we recorded this so that we can share it and have time to go back and look at it. We had planned on going into breakout rooms but I don't think we're gonna have time to do that. So I thought we might take like two maybe three questions if you wanna ask a question put it in the chat and while we're waiting for that I'm gonna say to those of you who've spoken to the panelists to be thinking about what's one thing that you heard. Somebody else say that got you thinking or something that you were like, oh, I really should have said that and I forgot. And actually while we're waiting for that I'm gonna invite Lisa to take herself off of mute and tell us about the UAWD caucus and what's happening with that Lisa. Okay, thanks Barbara. I didn't prepare anything but it's pretty much what I just wrote in the chat so me, Scott Holdeson, Keith and I think some other UAWD members might be on right now. So we're rank and file caucus in the UAW. Some of you might know United Auto Workers has experienced a really massive corruption scandal in the last few years but that's just kind of the tip of the iceberg in terms of the changes we need to make in the union. So in this fall UAW members up to a million active members and retirees will have the opportunity to vote in a union wide referendum to adopt direct elections of top leaders. Same way everyone can vote for president of the United States. We think union members should be able to vote for our top leaders and hold them accountable. So we're launching a fundraiser so that we can win this referendum. So we're just asking for help and if you know UAW members, connect them with us. I'll drop my email in the chat. So yeah, we're just launching, hoping to launch a large scale organizing effort for the referendum. So yeah, appreciate your support and thanks Barbara for letting me speak. Thanks Lisa. Thanks for reminding me to let you speak really important international union that need some grassroots support and real organizing in order to win this referendum. So thank you. It looks like we have a question from Tammy. Union executive board meeting and monthly faculty represent rep meeting. Sometimes the general membership are invited to. Is it good to have a monthly general membership meeting? Can general membership speak during the faculty rep meetings according to Robert's rules? Or does it depend on bylaws and standing rules? I know my answer to this question. You can do whatever you organize the members to have the power to do. It's a short answer. I don't know if any of our panelists wanna add to that if you've had a particular experience with it. Yeah, I would just say real quick that, I mean, process is always going to be like the boss's tactic, you know? And it unfortunately seems to very much come true with the union leadership. This is something we've struggled with for, over a year now with our chapter is there's always these kind of process barriers thrown up to stall kind of justice and to stall or squelch the member initiative and that organizing work. And it's important to understand Robert's rules and kind of all of this stuff, but it is a realm that is more difficult to win in because that process will often be pulled out of thin air. Documents that you've never heard of before will be cited. You'll spend hours kind of rifling through these documents and you can win these battles sometime, but it's often a better use of time to have those one-on-one conversations, to get new people to come out and speak up and speak out. So, you know, there's executive board meetings, at least for my union. There are public meetings that the members can attend and are invited to. Oftentimes the word doesn't go out because they kind of, you know, they meaning the incumbent leadership might not want you to see how the sausage is made. They might not want you to see what's happening behind closed doors, but that's where the decisions are made. So it is really valuable to come out and attend those events and speak up and turn people out to say, hey, you know, I mean, this is where kind of understanding of Robert's rules might help. You have a right to amend the agenda. You don't want to. It's good to know that. It's good to know that you can kind of shape the discourse. So if they say you're not allowed to amend the agenda, well, actually you are. The agenda has to be approved. So understanding of Robert's rules can help, but it is definitely not the be all end all. And if you're, I'm not saying you are, but if some people think that, you know, slugging it out on just process is gonna win, it's not gonna win. You have to have that kind of diversity of tactics. And that's often what we see with our unions is that there is not a diversity of tactics. There is just the same tool that gets used over and over and over again. And that's why we might find ourselves in these moments of decline. So general membership should speak up. And it does help to understand these kind of Robert's rules and all these sorts of things, but not just that, but to have those one-on-ones and to turn people out and to recognize that we need to have that broad approach with tactics. Great, thanks. Shira, did you want to speak to that? Yeah, I can speak to it quickly. I think it's a good question around like how we organize in these spaces that we are not in charge of that are run by people who are running the show and it's really hard. And I think what we've done in Philly is try to figure out how to like strike a balance between not spending too much time on it, but also using those moments to really politicize people. Like I've trained a lot of organizers around me, like when we're all on a general membership meeting on Zoom, especially like in our contract meetings that were awful in August, I was like, start some check chains with people, like talk to people about how they're feeling, like people were pissed. And like there were people who were really mad who weren't participating at all because there were so few venues to do so. And we were able to bring people in because of those meetings, because of what they saw and witnessed happening. So it's interesting to think about different ways to use those spaces when like hours are so opaque and on Zoom it's even harder. So I think like figuring out how to talk to people during and after those meetings is also really important because they do, when asked the right question, like, is this just, is this okay? Is this what you want? That can turn somebody from being like, oh, this is stupid. I don't wanna be in the whatever to like really moving them to wanna change something. So they're different. I think there are different ways to use those meetings too to talk to people during and after them. It's really important. Yeah, and I think your comments about sort of finding the balance is really important because we don't wanna just spend our time fighting with the leadership. Nobody wants to go to that fight. Nobody's interested in that. What members are interested is seeing the union and being able to be a part of a union that is behaving differently. That is walking a walk. That's moving towards a vision that they want. And so not getting caught up in that, I think is a key piece and as Andrew and Sher have pointed out, like those are spaces that can politicize people because they come to understand the lack of transparency, the misinformation, you don't have to tell them they get to see it. Just like you do an open bargaining when people get to see how the boss early operates. We have a question, we have time for just one more question and I think it was Amy who's interested if people have thoughts about how to organize, bring a caucus together at this moment in the context of people working remotely. I'm happy to answer that again, but I wanna leave space for the other panelists too. I can just say a couple of words. So kind of getting back to some of what I spoke about earlier with the one-on-ones, the book clubs, like I think the point is finding ways to connect. So whether that's sort of doing a dry call to somebody like somebody who you've actually never met but you could meet them over Zoom, like that could be a sort of fruitful conversation and then getting their cellphone number and texting them occasionally with updates or invitations or like organizing things. Like the book club is sort of an example of a thing you could organize, but there's lots of things you could organize. So I think just figuring out like what are ways so that I can organize something to invite things to. So like one example too is Mac organized lot this week actually a forum to talk about our upcoming contract negotiations that are gonna happen. And in some ways it's about that topic, but in other ways it's also about this is just something we can invite some people too and really like form sort of help them understand better what we're doing and to connect with them. So I think figuring out what are those things that we use to connect with people. Thanks. Yeah, it just always comes down to how are we talking to people and how are we bringing people together to talk to each other? Those two steps are just absolutely essential. Okay, we're just about out of time. So I'm gonna invite the panelists. They're questions that I wish we had time to answer. Important ones to think about. Something you heard that you wanna speak to something that you realized you really wanna say that you forgot to say or didn't say in the moment. So just go ahead and jump in. And Ryan had to jump off. So he won't be, don't be looking for him to speak. The only thing I'll say is, and it ties into the last question I think was from Amy, how in these times from working at home do you organize? And then tying it into thinking about how core, where I come from grew is, I think we're all zoomed out now by this point, but what it's proven in healthcare at least where folks are very burnt out, late days, early mornings, it allows us to still connect at eight, nine o'clock at night, which we wouldn't go, sit in a park somewhere or do and have those discussions. And the only other thing I'll add is it's very easy to be discouraged even when you win elections like core did and your calls are small. You're expecting 20, 30 folks to show up and 10 folks show up or maybe even four folks show up. And you're like, where the heck is everybody? Some of the best discussions and organizing that we've done and I've witnessed is with calls of four and five people. You just get right down to the business. So in a time when zoom, we're all zoomed out, we found it to be a really great tool and don't be discouraged if it feels very small because everything starts really small and it's very easy to give up, but we have a lot of examples from folks here tonight that we've heard from or just across the labor community of things that have started really small and have exploded to be huge and gigantic. So really you cannot give up. I would just add that, it's really important that when we have these one-on-ones that we work to develop folks' confidence. I mean, there's folks with them, Mac, who are saying, I'm way too introverted. I could never possibly have these conversations. We'll start small. Start with the people you know very well, the people who are like basically your friends and colleagues already. It's being in this constant state of exercise. So not just that the muscle doesn't atrophy but that the muscle grows stronger. And you'll find yourself comfortable to, well, speak up. There's someone that I had met that was very, very apprehensive to publicly speak in any form or another. And then boom, one thing after another, they're speaking at a public forum with hundreds of people in attendance. And yet it was on Zoom, it's a lot easier. But that I know was a challenge for them and they really rose to that occasion. So developing our collective confidence and our collective strength but also being humble, you know, telling your story, why are you doing this? Discuss your limitations, find a role for everyone and not just vaguely say that but offer that role. Hey, we need help with a website. You're not outgoing, you're not comfortable speaking to people, that's fine. This backend stuff, we need a lot of help with that. Developing in graphics, you know, social media management, all these things. There is a role for everyone, you just have to identify it. It comes with kind of the mapping of a campaign. Also it's critical to be positive. You know, people are motivated by a constructive vision. There is a role for negativity and kind of blasting the status quo but doing that more than, you know, about, you know, doing that too often, it's not enough. People are not going to get involved and especially in an election campaign vote. If it's just, well, you know, those people over there, they're not doing a great job. You know, you have to rather say, this is what we would bring to the table. This is what we would do differently. So for Amy's question specifically, you know, I think searching for folks in social media, people are very outspoken about their opinions and their views, especially if you're in academia. You know, find out, do that research, map your perspective membership, find out their research interests or even their general interests on social media. This is all great fodder for outreach. Hey, John Smith, I saw that you're doing research into, you know, kind of prisons and racial incarceration. We have strong feelings about this stuff. We want to work on racial and social justice. I think you could bring a lot to the table. Do you have 30 minutes to chat on Zoom? You know, Zoom does make things a little bit more accessible and it really helps people with kind of overcoming that kind of sense of fear they might have about engaging in conversation. So, you know, it really comes down to finding that role for everyone, finding their issue and tying it to the work that you're doing and the platform you're building and not just tacking it on and not being insincere but bringing them to a seat at that table. Again, building that union that we want to see. We want to see a democratic, inclusive, power-sharing union. Let's practice it by developing that vision together and reaching out to people. You know, say, hey, we need you. We need you and your contributions and your skills and your passion and not feeling bad making that ask. Other panelists want to jump in with last thoughts? I think Andrew just had a really powerful thing so I hesitate to follow up after him. But I'll just say that, like, Patrick, when you spoke about sort of the list of goals and how to achieve them, I think that's a really useful framework and it got me thinking about the necessity of going back to sort of visioning and really thinking through, like, what are we aiming for and also that being a really collective process, like, not just a couple of leaders, but the whole caucus together, really thinking about what is our vision and constructing that kind of document together seems really important, both for, like, sort of the inherent democracy of it, like, in the thing that's produced, but also for the ways that then it allows people to get on the same page and, like, debate through some of the issues. Like, I think Ellen mentioned in the chat earlier how it's really important to debate, but debate with love. And so I think, you know, it can sort of foster that approach, which seems important, and just, like, a chance to sort of think through those things and make sort of a stance that's publicly available. So I just love that, Patrick. Thank you for sharing that. I just like to throw in that on a kind of a different view that what came up in this discussion for me was to reinforce the idea that, I think our caucus should do a book study on democracy as power. That was such an important book for me, that Labor Notes book. It's been around for a few years, but it still just packs up wallop. And it really, it really gave me a sense about how working caucuses work and how, you know, yeah. And so, you know, we're gonna do a Secrets of Successful Organizer training, which is really, we really need that. But we also need this bigger view of where we're going and democracy as power is really fabulous for that in that regard. Thank you, Jamie. I know Ellen mentioned it in the chat and I entirely agree. Excellent book. Shira, did you have any last words? Yeah, my last words are just again, like, don't give up and stay strong and don't do it by yourself. And also, I feel like a broken record, but everyone should go to strike school in May and June. The story that I wanna share is that the professors union at Rutgers University sent a hundred people to this training in October and it completely turned their contract fight in like pandemic era, organizing on a college campus around. And so if you are like, if you have other people who you can do it with it, it changed my life and it changed a lot of other people who did it because we finally understood what it means to build power in the workplace and also to feel connected to literally thousands of other people on as you know from all over the world. You better go straight up to bed, I think. Incredibly powerful. So I'll put the link in the chat again and it's free also. Yeah. Awesome, I guess we all should wrap up and go straight up to bed. That was a really, really appreciate all the panelists for telling your stories, Riannan and Andrew and Jamie and Sharon Patrick and Ryan who had a leave and really appreciate the comments in the chat. I do wanna say like let's really be thinking a lot about how we can use some of the tools that we've been offered in the chat, what we've heard here. Go back into your locals, find a group of people to talk to, have those one-to-ones, bring people together and to Patrick's point, like our role is to bring people together and to create opportunities for workers to know themselves, to be experts, to identify issues, to come up with solutions and to act collectively to win. And when we do that, we will be transforming our unions and we do it democratically, that's what we need. So thank you all very much, really appreciate. Solidarity everybody, stay well, good night. Solidarity.