Introduction to Solidarity Research Center

We are almost 10 years old! Next year pushes us over the hill. Our humble beginning was as the research arm of the Industrial Workers of the World. We provided strategic campaign research to rank and file worker-led organizing campaigns. Among the many campaigns we assisted, one highlight includes the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (now the fastest growing section of the union).
Fast forward to today and we are a worker self-directed nonprofit led by 18 brilliant activist researchers. We have three big buckets of work. The first is our political education project, the Municipalism Learning Series, with the aim of exposing broad audiences to radical municipalism across North America. The project was started in January 2022 as a public panel series and has since expanded to encompass the Municipalism Cohort Fellowship and a series of white papers, including the Municipalist Organizing Toolkit.
The second bucket started in tandem with the Municipalism Learning Series and is our experiment to build a radical municipalist movement on the ground, Los Angeles for All. Our hypothesis is that Los Angeles is ready for its municipalist moment: to build an alternative polity and economy that is directly democratic, which will eclipse the current system of racial capitalism and rule by the power elite. We have been convening the People's Movement Assembly since October 2022.
Our third area of work is Regional Solidarity Economy. We partner with grassroots organizations, worker centers, and labor unions to build solidarity economy ecosystems. We provide intelligence on macro and microeconomic trends, historical and future projections of industries and occupations, and the demographics of workforce. In addition, we also partner with worker cooperatives and community land trusts to provide feasibility studies and business planning.
Join us for an introduction to who we are, what we work on, and what we stand for. We will share our origin story, our shared values and principles, and our projects including the Municipalism Learning Series, Regional Solidarity Economy, and Tribal Food Sovereignty.
Speakers include:
ANASTASIA WILSON, Care Economy
ANDREW CURLEY, Tribal Food Sovereignty
JESS FORDEN, Regional Solidarity Economy
MASON HERSON-HORD, Municipalism Learning Series
YVONNE YEN LIU, Los Angeles for All
We will be facilitated by BELINDA RODRIGUEZ and GEORGE YGARZA, two fellows from the inaugural class of the Municipalism Cohort Fellowship.