The first session of the Southern Workers Assembly’s upcoming Southern Workers School convenes this Sunday, April 18 at 5pm eastern. The school will consist of a four part series of discussions, convening every other Sunday through the end of May. The full schedule of Southern Workers School is included below.Please register at this link to participate in the school. If you’ve already registered, you should have received an email with a unique Zoom link to join the sessions. If you have any trouble or questions, please contact us at info@southernworker.org

The primary goal of this school is to build rank and file-anchored and led workers assemblies as the infrastructure of a Southern workers movement. While all are invited to participate, we encourage you to engage your coworkers, your fellow union or workplace committee members, and other rank and file workers in your area to join the four sessions of the upcoming Southern Workers School. 

Our first session this Sunday, April 18, will take up a review of Amazon and how it embodies 21st century capitalism, a discussion about how to identify significant workplaces in your area for the purposes of developing a local workers assembly, as well as an assessment of the initial outcome of the campaign by Bessemer Amazon workers’ fight for a union. We encourage participants to re-read the Southern Workers Assembly’s statement on the Bessemer struggle prior to Sunday’s session, which is available here.

The school will take up broader political questions alongside practical skills development around how to develop workplace committees and workers assemblies at your job and in your community. Each of the four sessions will be participatory, with a mix of presentations, discussions, and followup assignments to deepen our understanding of the topics covered in each. Here’s the full schedule:

Sunday, April 18
Session 1: Fighting 21st Century Capitalism: The Case of Amazon

Session Focus: A review of how Amazon fits into 21st century capitalism and how to identify significant workplaces in your general area
 

Sunday, May 2
Session 2: Building a 21st Century Working Class Movement

Session Focus: Who and what is the working class? What is the methodology to conduct effective outreach to those significant workplaces identified in the first session?
 

Sunday, May 16
Session 3: Organizing the Workers Movement Today

Session Focus: What is the relationship between capital and the state? How do we construct effective campaigns based on the issues identified by the workers recruited in those significant workplaces?

Sunday, May 30
Session 4: The Southern Workers Assembly

Session Focus: Pulling it all together and building an effective worker assembly in your area
 

The school will be most beneficial to your local work if you are able to commit to attend all four sessions, though if you have other conflicts that prevent that, you should still feel free to register and we can make accommodations so you receive the materials from a session that you may not be able to attend.

You can register to participate in the school here.  

Organize the South!