AFL-CIO Shows How Grassroots Organizing is Done

David Broder of the Washington Post has a column in the November 11, 2007 edition about the efforts of the AFL-CIO and their "Working America" project. This project, started in 2003, has added two million to the ranks of the AFL-CIO. The program works like this, according to Broder:

So instead of organizing at the workplace, Working America reaches out to people in their neighborhoods. On a typical evening, Nussbaum said, she has about 150 paid organizers going door to door in working-class communities, often in the suburbs and exurbs.

Using lists of union members, they skip the households that are already unionized and knock on the doors of their neighbors. The message: We know you're not part of a union, but you probably have the same concerns we do about jobs and schools and health care. We work on all those issues. Would you like to become an individual member of the AFL-CIO?

"Astonishingly," Nussbaum said, "two out of three people we talk to join." And they are immediately recruited to write a letter to a member of Congress or some other official on an issue about which the labor federation is lobbying. "One out of five writes to their congressman that night," she said.

Former Speaker of the U.S. House, the late "Tip" O'Neill, once said that "people want to be asked and they want to be thanked." All the internet connections in the world aren't as effective as actually going out and banging on doors. People who want to form political organizations and bring about political change in America should learn from the AFL-CIO's experience.