You may have heard recently that the New York City teachers union, the UFT, was going to go on strike. It's not. Our leadership sold us out for a song and is crowing like a rooster over what an amazing deal it got.

This is not a particularly big surprise, given that the leadership caucus is a massively liberal enterprise that whose idea of organizing is taking our dues and making campaign contributions and makes zero effort to ever activate the rank and file for anything. Nonetheless, when they started talking seriously about a strike, I took a look at my chapter and saw that someone needed to get something going. Our chapter leadership was brand new after some older teachers stepped down, and while our chapter leader had been going to all the UFT meetings and keeping everyone abreast of events, nothing beyond that. Meanwhile there was no direction coming from the top.

I am not a massive hero organizer. I've been in a blah funk for months, just massively anxious, having a hard time. But this I felt like I could do. I had some organizing training from the DSA, some resources from MORE, the left, rank and file caucus I belong to. I started by prompting my chapter leadership, sending them resources my caucus was putting out. I created a Whatsapp group and my chapter leader sent out the link to everyone on her email list. We got about a third of the staff, maybe less. When I asked if there was anyone who knew they wanted to get involved in organizing, no one responded, but we started sharing info. I created a second, organizing Whatsapp group that started with just me, my chapter leader and the delegate.

I explained how to do organizing calls, made a doc with FAQ's and info, and put together a spreadsheet with all the staff with their contact info for outreach. I sent out a survey to the staff (again, about a third responded) and identified who was a high priority to contact based on their responses. We started making calls. My first call, I activated someone as an organizer and added him to the organizing group. Boom, boom, boom, as we kept calling more people kept agreeing to get involved and call others. Some other people just straight up volunteered. We got around 15 core organizers in a group that started from three. More and more people kept joining the main group. A few more days and I would have had that chapter fucking strong and strike ready from nothing. It felt amazing, after being so isolated and gray for months. The Executive Board authorized a strike. The delegates were voting the next day.

Then our president reached a last minute deal that squandered all our power on nothing much and presented it as a fait accompli. I was devastated. I felt like I had put in this work, got excited over nothing, like an idiot. I was pissed off all afternoon and evening yesterday, and when I stopped being pissed off I had an honest to god panic attack, not a common occurrence for me.

Then today, I was watching our WhatsApp. Our chapter members are talking to each other, sharing info, memeing about the terrible town hall the union leadership held today. The organizers are still talking to each other, discussing what's next. My chapter leader, delegate, and a bunch of my coworkers are joining the MORE Caucus, not because of a sales pitch I made, but because they saw who was doing the actual work. I sent out a link that my delegate asked for to a group that's planning actions in my area and my chapter leader and like four other people joined completely unprompted. My chapter is better organized, concious of itself in a way it never was before, just because I decided that someone had do it. I made a real, tangible difference, and it makes me proud. It makes me cry, very real, very unironic tears in a way that posting on Chapo never does.

Organizing is a hell of a drug, you libs. If you haven't tried it, you should.