Labor-Community Coalitions That Work

When you read about building coalitions, it can almost sound easy, like part of a do-it-yourself organizing recipe. You find a chapter titled something like “Building Effective Coalitions,” read a few general rules, check out a couple of examples from successful campaigns, and off you go to call churches, community groups, and other like-minded organizations to build a coalition around your campaign. . . .

When you read about building coalitions, it can almost sound easy, like part of a do-it-yourself organizing recipe. You find a chapter titled something like “Building Effective Coalitions,” read a few general rules, check out a couple of examples from successful campaigns, and off you go to call churches, community groups, and other like-minded organizations to build a coalition around your campaign.

It’s never that easy.

FULL PLATES

The toughest part of building a coalition around your campaign is the fact that it’s your campaign. In today’s world, just about any organization, especially if it’s a labor organization, has more than enough on its own plate to keep it busy, much less take on your campaign too.

And even though some groups, like Interfaith Worker Justice committees or the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP), exist primarily to support labor or community organizing, their plates are pretty full too. By no means is it automatic that you can just call and they’ll be there when you need them.

So, how to bring religious, student, labor, and community forces to bear in your battle?

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which grew out of the Immokalee, Florida farmworker community—one of the poorest, most isolated communities in the country—has been extremely fortunate when it comes to coalition building. Over the past several years our community has benefited immeasurably from a growing alliance of organizations across the country committed to holding fast-food companies accountable for human rights violations in the fields where their tomatoes are picked.

We will be calling on those allies again this April when we head to Chicago for two days of protests in McDonald’s hometown, demanding a fast-food industry that doesn’t rely on endless exploitation of farmworkers.

We’ve learned a few lessons over the past several years that have been key to building the coalition of allies behind our campaign. We began organizing ten years ago in Immokalee and for several years we were focused exclusively on directly confronting the local powers of the produce industry, crew leaders and local growers, through community-wide strikes, marches, and hunger strikes.

We didn’t even think about building a coalition of allies around our struggle during those years, as our strength and our base was the community itself and our employers had no name or brand in the public eye.

Over time, however, we realized that the industry our members work in didn’t end at the farm gate. If it did, no one would ever eat the food our members worked to harvest and pack. Rather, the industry that begins in Immokalee’s fields ends on tables across the country and the real power in our industry lies in the companies that sell you the food you put on your table.

The power to force wages down in the fields is in the hands of companies like Taco Bell, McDonald’s, and Wal-Mart, and our organizing was going to have to confront those powers if we were to make real change in Immokalee.

SUPPORT LABOR NOTES

BECOME A MONTHLY DONOR

Give $10 a month or more and get our "Fight the Boss, Build the Union" T-shirt.

So, our first lesson was really internal–we had to identify the forces shaping the conditions we were organizing to change before we could reach out to other organizations help take on those larger forces.

ALLIES, NOT SUPPORTERS

While we may not have needed allies to wage our struggle locally, we realized quickly that if we were to take on the $100 billion fast-food industry, with its billions spent every year in advertising, we’d need a few more people on our side. A campaign on the national stage would require a national network of allies.

Once we understood that bigger picture, we made a crucial decision: we were going to set out to find allies in our fight, not supporters. What’s the difference?

Supporters generally come to your cause as outsiders, motivated by sympathy or solidarity, but motivated by their feelings about your issue. Allies, on the other hand, are people who join your fight for their own interests as much or more than yours, people who want to take on your adversary for reasons of their own.

We looked at our potential allies. Young people targeted by the fast-food industry, for example, who were exploited in their own way as consumers and, at major demonstrations in Seattle, Washington, and Miami, had mobilized to fight corporate control of their lives. Joining forces with, and respecting the autonomy of, our student allies was a natural and obvious move.

The same held for our allies from the faith community. Many faith-based organizations and churches define their struggle to live according to their faiths as seeking to make decisions in their lives, including their decisions as consumers, based on their faith’s vision of justice.

By joining forces with our campaign, those organizations joined a battle that sought to reshape the food industry, an industry central to all our lives, in a way consistent with their own vision for a more just economy.

Finally, we could not build effective alliances, or “coalitions,” if we ourselves were not strong. The same solid community base from which we began our struggle ten years ago in the streets of Immokalee is the base from which we lead our campaign at the national level today.

Though we are spearheading a national campaign with many allies, we can never afford to take our eye off the ball right here in Immokalee. The source of our strength and the glue that keeps our diverse allies united is the unquestioned leadership, consciousness, and commitment of the young immigrant workers who pick McDonald’s tomatoes.

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers is asking labor, community, and faith allies to mobilize for two days of action in Chicago April 13 and 14. More information.