Keep Going: A Guide to Organizing When It’s Hard

This book is a guide to help workplace organizers get started, keep going, and get unstuck when things aren’t going as expected.

Organizing is full of challenges and dilemmas. How do you decide who to talk to, if your coworkers all seem scared or apathetic? What if you invite people to a meeting and no one comes? What should you do when your organizing committee is splitting apart? What if your own union leaders break your heart? This book will help you evaluate any situation and find a way forward.

Drawing on a half century of experiences in training and advising thousands of workplace activists, Ellen David Friedman teaches four essential principles and four basic ingredients of organizing. She shows how to apply these principles and ingredients to familiar situations and invites you to rethink common missteps. You’ll start to see how you can get yourself unstuck, no matter what situation you’re in.

Eight featured true stories of workplace organizers bring the ideas to life, gorgeously illustrated by Fernando Martí.

Ellen David Friedman is a retired organizer with the Vermont affiliate of the National Education Association. She has trained and advised thousands of union members, staffers, and officers, and is the architect of the popular Labor Notes workshop “What to Do When Your Union Breaks Your Heart.” She is a regular contributor to Labor Notes magazine and chair of the Labor Notes board. She lives in Ithaca, NY.

Fernando Martí is a printmaker, community architect, writer, and poet based in San Francisco.