By Steve Early
Beyond Chron
March 16th, 2026
Review of Keep Going: A Guide to Organizing When It’s Hard., by Ellen David Friedman. (PM Press, 2026.)
Six years ago, Labor Notes ran a contribution to its popular “Steward’s Corner” column by Ellen David-Friedman, a long-time labor educator and former organizer for the National Education Association in Vermont.
Entitled “What to Do When Your Union Leaders Break Your Heart,” her article was addressed to workers around the country who might be “wondering how it is that their union, an organization that exists to make work life better, is in the hands of people who are not doing that?”
David-Friedman offered solid, practical advice for rank-and-filers fed up with “top down” unions, in which “all the important information, decisions, and actions” are kept in the hands of “a small group.” This, she pointed out, helps foster a culture of membership apathy, disappointment, and even despair.
Her bottom line message–for those inspired to make their unions “more democratic, inclusive, and activist” in nature–was “don’t act alone.” Find “other union members who are ready to do something” about workplace issues that they care about. And then “bring them together to develop a plan for collective action”—up to and including creating an opposition caucus and running reform candidates for union office.
Popular Education Material
All of the above being easier said than done, Labor Notes soon developed a very popular training session, based on David-Friedman’s column, that has been held around the country. Now, in collaboration with PM Press, the labor education and newsletter project has published a 280-page book, entitled Keep Going: A Guide to Organizing When It’s Hard, Illustrated by Fernando Marti, a SF-based artist and printmaker, it draws on the author’s nearly sixty years of hands-on work, in the U.S. and abroad, with students and workers in both the private and public sector.
Unlike labor consultants who charge for their services, David-Friedman is not trying to peddle some personally branded organizing model, strategy, theory, or formula. (See McAlevy, Jane). Her book also side-steps any insider arguments about whether such organizers are part of a skilled craft, crazy cult, or just paid staffers ordered to sign up new members for the organization that employs them.
In the author’s view, the process of bringing workers together to change the balance of power between them and their bosses should be none of the above—if it’s going to be bottom up and deeply democratic. Keep Going provides many case studies illustrating the importance of building personal “relationships of solidarity,” encouraging rank-and-file initiative, and fostering new leadership development.
Internal and External Organizing
Her invaluable handbook is clear, simple, direct, and jargon-free. It can be used by less experienced activists and those more advanced in the field, who are engaged in either organizing the unorganized (aka “external organizing”) or the “internal organizing” required for successful strikes, contract campaigns, and union reform struggles involving existing members.
On the first front, winning bargaining rights in private sector workplaces has definitely gotten harder since President Trump and his appointees started un-doing the good work of NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, under the Biden Administration. So David-Friedman helpfully highlights the inspiring example of UAW supporters. They became the personification of “patience and persistence” at a big non-union Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
They “started organizing in 2014 and lost two elections, before winning a decade later on their third try in 2024.” Finally, in February of this year, after 500 days of bargaining, they won a first contract covering 3,500 workers. And that’s why Yolanda Peoples, an assembly line worker hired when the plant first opened, stresses the importance of building an in plant-wide organizing committee that grew to 200 members, rather than relying on UAW payrollers.
As David-Friedman reports, Peoples and other in-plant volunteers decided that, based on past failures, “on-the job conversations should be the heart of the campaign.” As Peoples told the author, if you are “working beside these people for eight to 12 hours a day and see them more than your own family,” that opens the door to many new conversations and friendships, that build trust and personal connection.
Scott Houldieson, a UAW member for 36 years, took a “winding road to reform” that was decades longer. As a Ford assembly plant electrician and local union officer, he watched “top leaders of the International union colluding with the auto makers and stealing funds for their personal benefit.” The resulting “horrifying corruption scandals” adversely impacted membership morale and, of course, made organizing non-union plants in the South more difficult.
Winning Direct Election of Officers
To change this situation, Houldieson “helped found the reform caucus called Unite All Workers for Democracy. UAWD successfully campaigned for adoption of a “one-member/one-vote” system of electing top union officers to replace balloting by a few thousand delegates at leadership-controlled conventions.
When the UAW’s first-ever direct election was held three years ago, UAWD candidates, including current UAW president Shawn Fain, won a majority of the executive board seats. At the local level, Houldieson mobilized other members in his plant to join what David-Friedman calls “the wildly successful Stand Up Strike at the Big 3 in 2023.” Earlier this year, Houldieson decided to put his labor organizing experience to work in a first-time run for public office.
He announced his candidacy for an Indiana State Senate seat in order “to add a blue-collar perspective” to policy making in Indianapolis. His platform calls for repealing the state’s “right to work” law, restoring its prevailing wage statute, raising the minimum wage, increasingly unemployment benefits, and strengthening public sector collective bargaining. “Indiana’s low wages and weak labor protections aren’t in place by accident,” he points out. “They’re in place due to corporate abuse and bad policy decisions. The good news is we can change them.”
Among those, in other unions, who are touting David-Friedman’s book–because it “equips you to push through your frustrations, anxieties, fears, and burnout”–is Jon Schleuss, He was a 32-year old LA Times reporter in a newly organized NewsGuild/CWA unit, when he dared to challenge a longtime incumbent national union president. It took two hotly contested membership votes, but Schleuss and other reform minded Guild activists finally prevailed over the union’s old guard. Since then, the NewsGuild has become a hotbed of new organizing, creative contract campaigning, and white-collar worker strike activity.
Two years ago, more Guild members came to a Labor Notes Conference in Chicago, attended by 5,000 labor activists, than delegates from any other union. In June, at this year’s conference, speakers will include David-Friedman, Schleuss, Houldieson, and local labor figures like Francisco Ortiz, president of the United Teachers of Richmond, who led a successful strike by 1,500 Contra Costa County educators in December. (Registration has closed but it’s still possible to get on the waiting list at https://labornotes.swoogo.com/2026/10093558)
Beyond Chron readers can more easily join a discussion of Keep Going with visiting author Ellen David-Friedman on Saturday, March 28, 4:00 pm-7:00pm. It will be held in the Henry Schmidt Room at the Bay Area Longshore Memorial Association (400 North Point St., S.F. 94133). Sponsored by Labor Notes and PM Press, the event will include book-signing by the author and a social hour with food and drink.
