Home-Made Organizing: CWA's Strategy in the South Relies on the Folks Who Live There

Abstract

[Excerpt] The CWA's got some down-home organizing cooking down South. Unlike other organizing in the South where the workforce is either predominantly black or white, CWA's targeted workforce in the public sector is composed of black and white workers. The CWA is not new in the South: there are 160,000 CWA members in the region — nearly one quarter of the union's entire membership — 80% of whom are based in the private sector. How do you organize a local composed of black and white workers in the South? LRR Editor Lisa Oppenheim turned to Marilyn Haith, organizer for CWA's District 3 which is composed of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, Florida, and Louisiana.