Rhode Island Jobs with Justice

Rhode Island Jobs with Justice (RI JwJ) is a permanent multi-issue coalition whose mission is to organize with labor unions, community organizations, student groups and with the religious community to build unity and support for the struggles of working people and advance racial and economic justice. RI JwJ was founded in 1996 by community and union organizers who realized that the enemies of working people have tremendous power in our society, and that to shift the terms of struggle towards our shared goals of workers’ rights, social, racial and economic justice, we must work together. To this end, RI JwJ uses four strategies to build power for working people’s fights. RI JwJ:

• Harnesses the talents of a broad base of organizational members at the Organizing Committee (the Board) and Steering Committee (the membership of organizations) level, and builds a base of individuals committed to solidarity with working people’s fights;
• Builds strategic worker led campaigns that emphasize creative, militant direct action and community organizing;
• Coordinates local academic, political, religious and community leaders on the RI Workers’ Rights Board to exert moral, public, and political pressure aimed at turning around an unfair employer or exposing abuses of workers and communities; and,
• Networks our local power nationally with the Jobs with Justice network and with other national and international movement building organizations so that our local efforts can have a broad impact.

Jobs with Justice is a national network of locally autonomous coalitions that share a common organizing principle: unions and community organizations need each other to win. Our enemies are often the same, and often their goal is to divide us. By building relationships with one another based on solidarity, reciprocity and mutual respect, and by working together to organize strategic campaigns for worker, economic and racial justice we can fight corporate greed and win economic injustice.