> in encouraging greater cross-union support. If the Organizing Institute has
> been less than a success in training a large corps of new organizers, it has
> helped inspire a whole new pro-labor wave of organizing on campuses -
> notably in this Spring's explosion of anti-sweatshop campaigns on campuses
> across the country.
Dunno about the OI's overall influence, but here at the GTFF (grad students union at the University of Oregon) we've been searching for ways to improve our organizing strategy and got some useful tips from the Institute -- in particular, emphasizing one-on-one contact as the key to all campaigns, and setting up infrastructures which support this (e.g. internships, more resources to organizing positions, etc.). It should be interesting to see how this goes -- I'll try to keep the list updated on how this goes.
The other thing worth mentioning is that, in addition to the local and national levels, it's also important to look at the state level, where important battles are beginning to happen. Here in Oregon, there's a feisty campaign for AFL-CIO-Oregon President between Joe Devlinck and Tim Nesbitt; Tim has a powerfully progressive agenda which will shake things up big-time, and is generating lots of support on the ground. The GTFF and other progressive unions have also been pushing our own affiliate, AFT-Oregon, noticeably to the Left.
-- Dennis
(the duly-elected President of the GTFF... just don't ask how I manage to do this *and* work on a dissertation, all at once, because frankly, I don't know)