Fall 2023 Southern Worker School
Participants at the Spring 2023 Southern Worker School
Interested in participating in the school and building a workers assembly in your area?
Contact us at info@southernworker.org for more info on how to join the Fall 2023 Southern Worker School! In your message, please include your city, phone number, workplace, and other info about workplace or other organizations you’re involved in.
In April, upwards of 120 workers from different sectors across the South gathered in Charlotte, NC for a weekend of strategizing, training, and network building during the Southern Worker School.
Since that time, workers assemblies have been formed in four additional Southern cities. Across the South and the country, the upsurge of worker struggle and organizing shows no signs of slowing down, and a new poll revealed that a staggering 88% of people under 30 support unions. Meanwhile, the right wing is waging a full scale assault on working class and oppressed people, particularly in the South, and the looming 2024 elections promise to sow more division and confusion. How can we best coordinate militant workers across the region to intervene in this environment?
The Southern Workers Assembly will be convening a Southern Worker School on November 10 – 12 in Charlotte, North Carolina, to take up these and other questions around building a more unified workers movement to build power in the workplace and organize the South!
The worker school will open on Friday evening and run through mid-day on Sunday. The weekend will include a series of discussions taking stock of the period and raising plans for coordinated interventions across the region, training on building workers assemblies and other organizing skills, and will include time for sector-based discussions and other exchanging and network-building throughout the weekend.
We encourage worker cadre and other activists engaged in building local workers assemblies to make plans to attend the school in Charlotte. If you are part of a workers assembly or otherwise part of the Southern Workers Assembly network, you will receive the registration link separately.
We would also like to extend an invitation to other workers and activists in the South who are not yet engaged in building a workers assembly, but who are interested in learning more and developing one in your area, to join us as well. If this applies to you, please reach out to us at info@southernworker.org for additional information about participating.
The Southern Worker Schools are the SWA’s primary regional gathering, and have been held at least once per year most years since our founding in 2012. The schools bring together worker cadre engaged in assembly building and organizing in their workplaces from across the South for a weekend of political education, organizing skills training, strategy discussions and campaign development, and relationship/network building.
There are always many costs associated with organizing these types of regional convenings. With the expanded scope of participation for this year’s Southern Worker School, those costs will be even greater. If you are able to make a donation to support the gathering and delegations of workers who will be traveling to participate, please do so here.
This will be an exciting and important gathering. We look forward to sharing additional updates as we build towards the school in November, and seeing many of you there. Organize the South!
