Date & Time: March 15-19, 2027; 9:00 am – 6:00 pm daily
Location: UCLA Rev. James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center, Los Angeles, CA
Join the UCLA Strategic Research Lab for its newest training program for social movement researchers and strategic campaigners—the Strategic Campaigns Bootcamp. In this week-long program, activists in labor, climate justice, finance and other areas will learn top approaches to design, plan, execute and win strategic campaigns.
Applicants must come in groups of at least two people working on a real strategic campaign to workshop throughout the week in a series of interactive sessions with expert campaigners working within the labor movement. Participants will complete the workshop with a set of concrete actions to move their campaign forward.
In this five-day intensive training, participants will collaborate to plan and develop a real strategic campaign through a variety of workshops.
Key discussion topics:
- Building a ground campaign
- Conducting a power analysis
- Developing strategy and planning
- Executing escalation tactics
- Communicating about strategic campaigns
- Building internal organizational consensus on strategy
- Evaluating campaign progress
Who should apply:
- Union or labor movement teams of at least two and no more than five people from a single organization or coalition working on a specific and identifiable campaign
- Climate, finance or social justice teams of at least two and no more than five people from a single organization or coalition working on a specific and identifiable campaign
- The campaign can be at any stage—exploration, planning or mid-campaign
Details:
- Dates: March 15-19, 2027
- Time: 9:00 am – 6:00 pm daily
- Location: UCLA Rev. James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center, Los Angeles, CA
- Cost: $625 per participant
Instructors
Justin McBride: Justin McBride is the Program Director of the UCLA Strategic Research Lab and a former union organizer. During his fifteen years in the labor movement with UNITE, SEIU and the AFL-CIO, McBride worked on multiple strategic campaigns, including in the janitorial, carwash and construction industries. These included campaigns around land development, secondary targets, customer outreach and policy initiatives designed to support organizing drives.
McBride is the co-organizer of the UCLA Strategic Labor Research Conference, and formerly co-facilitated the UC Berkeley Labor Center Strategic Campaigns Workshop.
Rosemarie Molina: Rosemarie Molina is a labor organizer, strategist and educator with more than 20 years of experience building worker power. As Organizing Director at the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, she co-founded an Organizing Institute that trained thousands of union members in organizing and membership growth. Throughout her career, Molina has led strategic campaigns to raise the minimum wage, strengthen protections against wage theft and address unsafe working conditions for workers across Los Angeles and California. Her work has included worker and community organizing, political and electoral campaigns, coalition building, leadership development and building the institutions needed to sustain long-term worker power.
Molina teaches Labor Studies at UCLA and CSUDH. She also serves on the Board of the Los Angeles Black Worker Center and the CLEAN Carwash Worker Center. She is the founder of Movement Builders Collective, where she works with unions and worker organizations to strengthen organizing, strategy, leadership and organizational capacity.
About The UCLA Strategic Research Lab:
The UCLA Strategic Research Lab is a capacity-building training hub and network for researchers from labor and community-based organizations. As a research unit of a public university, the SRL seeks to train strategic researchers for the common good. Besides the Coding Camp for Union Research, the Strategic Research Lab also holds its annual Strategic Labor Research Conference, one of the largest annual convenings of labor and movement researchers in the nation.
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