How to Organise Your Building

August 3, 2025 / Zabalaza Books

Authors: Rose Lenehan and Tracy Rosenthal

PDF file size: 207 KB

This article by Rose Lenehan and Tracy Rosenthal originally appeared in Jewish Currents. It serves as a basic organising guide for those seeking to build and use collective power to solve issues facing themselves and their neighbours.

Both authors are veteran organisers with the Los Angeles Tenants Union, one of the largest and most successful tenant unions in the United States. Tracy Rosenthal is a co-author of the recent book Abolish Rent.

Source: https://www.blackrosefed.org/how-to-organize-your-building/

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How to Organise a Neighbourhood Popular Assembly

July 8, 2025August 3, 2025 / Zabalaza Books

Authors: Members of the Black Rose/Rosa Negra Housing and Territorial Committee

PDF file size: 532 KB

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This is a basic guide on how and why to build structures for decision making and collective action at the neighbourhood level, what we call popular assemblies. We emphasize the need for popular assemblies to be rooted in a defined geographic area and aimed at organising the people who live, work, or stay there to develop the power to confront social problems together.

This guide draws directly on knowledge and experience of past experiments in building popular assemblies.

Source: https://www.blackrosefed.org/how-to-organize-a-neighborhood-popular-assembly/

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AgitProp #17 – Some Ideas for Community Action

April 30, 2017April 30, 2017 / Zabalaza Books / 1 Comment

Author: Unknown | File size: 179 KB

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These are a few ideas which are open to being added to, changed, and adapted to reflect the needs of particular communities.

Despite the efforts of politicians and professionals to lump together working class communities as problem areas to be policed, those of us who live in these communities often see things differently. For us the problems we encounter daily are often not of our own making. Poverty, inadequate housing and crime are problems that come with the way society is structured. By taking control of our own communities, and deciding for ourselves how we should manage them, we are not only getting rid of the parasites who cause our problems but also starting on the path to a new type of society where each of us can be free to live our lives as we choose.

Republished from Zabalaza: A Journal of Southern African Revolutionary Anarchism, #4, online at:
http://zabalaza.net/2003/06/04/zabalaza-4-june-2003/

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“Only the Organised Survive”: A Rebel Worker Handbook

October 12, 2014October 12, 2014 / Zabalaza Books

Author: Various | File size: 430 KB

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THE INDIGNITY OF WORKING FOR A LIVING is well known to anyone who ever has. Democracy, the great principle on which our society is supposedly founded, is thrown out the window as soon as we punch the time clock at work.

With no say over what we produce, or how that production is organised, and with only a small portion of that product’s value finding its way into our paycheques, we have every right to be pissed off at our bosses.

Ultimately, of course, we need to create a society in which working people make all the decisions about the production and distribution of goods and services. Harmful or useless industries, such as arms and chemical manufacturing, or the banking and insurance scams, would be eliminated….

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[Leaflet] Direct Action: 14 ways to improve your job

October 12, 2014January 25, 2016 / Zabalaza Books

Author: Unknown | File size: 98 KB

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Workers run the world. Everything would stop without our labour. Withdrawing our labour is our weapon, and the right to run things is our demand…. At the same time, most work is a bore. As it is organized in our society, most labour kills the spirit and body of the worker, not to mention the mind. But to simply call for a four-hour day at eight hours pay is not enough. Who will benefit from the automation that could realize such a demand? Who should control technology’s introduction and integration into the economy? Potentially, we can.

Source: http://www.oocities.org/capitolhill/lobby/2625/14_ways.txt

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AgitProp #12 – Organising in the Workplace

June 12, 2014 / Zabalaza Books

AgitProp #12 - Organising in the Workplace ♦ You Have a Problem at Work

♦ You believe that Management is unfair

♦ Something has to be done

♦ Where do you begin?

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Direct Action in Industry

August 3, 2013February 1, 2014 / Zabalaza Books

Author: Direct Action Movement | File size: 339 KB

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To improve one’s working conditions one does not immediately have to resort to strike action. There are ways to achieve what one wants quite simply and effectively by taking ‘direct action on the job’, which also has the advantage of not losing one’s wages while airing one’s grievances!

This pamphlet then, lists several of these direct action methods. To make the most of these methods one needs good job organisation and a general consensus among the workers, that there is something to take action about. Even then, it could be possible that the chosen method does not work. In that case a prolonged strike might be the only answer.

First published by the Direct Action Movement, now
Solidarity Federation | www.solfed.org.uk
The pamphlet is undated but appears to be from the early 1970’s

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Weakening the Dam

May 24, 2012February 1, 2014 / Zabalaza Books

Author: Twin Cities IWW | PDF file size: 350 KB

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A pamphlet put out by the Twin Cities IWW branch for the purpose of promoting the development of workplace organisers, based on their experiences of organising at work. It offers the sort of practical advice we could all be implementing in our own workplaces.

How to Hold a Good Meeting and Rusty’s Rules of Order

May 16, 2011February 1, 2014 / Zabalaza Books

Author: x344468 / IWW | PDF file size: 270 KB

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Good meeting procedure is probably the most basic tool in the organisers’ kit. It’s the most basic building block in any form of collective action. With it a group of people can accomplish a lot more than they could alone, more than the sum of their parts, if you will. Without it they can do very little, except burn themselves out and reinforce the common belief that you can’t fight the powers that be and that collective action is a bore consisting mostly of endless meetings. Maybe that’s why they don’t teach it in school any more.