Marshall Ganz is a Senior Lecturer at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. He is a leading voice in the study and practice of organizing, leadership, and social movements. His organizing journey began in the 1960s with the Mississippi Summer Project and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), later joining Cesar Chavez to help build the United Farm Workers, where he spent 16 years organizing California farm workers.

Marshall has since advised grassroots organizations and major political campaigns—including developing the organizing model for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential run. Marshall Ganz’s award-winning first book, Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement, was published in 2009, and his most recent book, People, Power, Change: Organizing for Democratic Renewal, was published in 2024, both with Oxford University Press.

Labor researchers from the union movement and beyond are using advanced data science to improve outreach efforts via online resources like social media, strengthen and automate list building through pre-established data sets, and increase organizer efficiency by better predicting when to house call workers during organizing drives. They are also innovating powerful and creative new tools to disrupt employer anti-union campaigns. Learn from some of the experts in this new movement about the tactics they have innovated, and what you can do to bring some of these tools and strategies to bear in your own organizations and campaigns. Panelists will also share what the see as the best future prospects for coding and other advanced data science in the struggle to empower workers.

Panelists:

• Brienne Ellis, Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU)
• Lynn Hứa, Organized Power in Numbers
• Brad Murray, AFT
• Sean Wiggs, Gen Z For Change
• Shelly Wen, AFL-CIO (moderator)

HERE’s Culinary Union fundamentally changed the future of Las Vegas by organizing hotels on the Strip through member militancy and aggressive comprehensive campaigns centered around the ownership of Vegas’s casino industry. Starting in the late 1980s, the union began strategically organizing with an eye towards building lasting worker power in a right to work state. Today, Vegas sustains some of the highest union density and highest paid service jobs in the nation through continued and constant building of worker power. In this panel, several of the early architects of the Las Vegas Strip campaigns from the Culinary Union will reflect on their strategies and approach, tell stories from the epic early Strip campaigns, and share thoughts or lessons for strategic labor movement researchers from their decades of experience as campaigners.