August 2026
CHANGE IS MADE WITH TEN THOUSAND TINY ACTS
The Social Justice and Solidarity Fund is on track to give away close to a million dollars in 2026, all to grassroots groups that organize workers for solidarity and resistance. As of our July board meeting, we’ve granted $499,000 this year to workers’ movements and closely aligned organizations such as the Association for Union Democracy and Labor Notes.
We thought we’d use this quarterly update to go into a bit more depth on one of our promising grantees, the Caucus of Rank-and-file Electrical Workers (CREW); see below. Our website lists all our grantees.
CREW is a growing movement in an important building trades union, the IBEW. It is also in a position to advance the Green New Deal.
We appreciate that our donors have been so generous, and we’re proud of the seamless way we’ve passed your contributions on. SJSF has no staff; our overhead last year was less than 1% of our grant total.
If you’re not a donor yet, please see How to Donate. We can accommodate stock transfers, ACH or wire transfers, check, and now even recurring monthly donations.
We are always seeking your input on potential grantees — do you know of groups we may have missed? — and on potential other donors. Give us names and we will contact your friends. You can read About Us for background – or contact one of our board members. Don’t be a stranger!
The Report from CREW
The Caucus of Rank-and-file Electrical Workers (CREW) has spent the last 3½ years building a union revitalization movement in adverse circumstances. We spend long days on construction sites in the heat and cold and then come home to more hours organizing toward change. Change is made with ten thousand tiny acts: talking a new member through how to have that first organizing conversation, coordinating a jobsite action against inadequate bathroom facilities, or strategizing how to move local union leaders to organize immigrant workers.
Propelling all this change takes a staggering number of labor hours, and it’s hard keeping the momentum through layoffs, burnout, and every other obstacle. Last year it became apparent that we needed staff to push our work to the next level.
The members of CREW of course pay monthly dues and donations, but those funds are not yet at a level to pay a full-time staffer. We were very fortunate to receive a $75,000 grant for that purpose from SJSF. We devised a hiring process from the ground up and in March hired Leo Hilton of Portland, Maine, a licensed IBEW electrician and CREW member. Leo had been unable to work at his trade because of an injury.
The addition of a staffer has dramatically increased our capacity to do the work of CREW. In Leo’s short time on staff, we have gone from just over 300 members to well over 450, a 50% increase in just a few months. And simply by having someone responsible for manning the phones, we have been able to deepen our relationships all over the country, in union-dense New England and the Midwest, but also in Texas, Georgia, and Virginia.
In a handful of CREW chapters, we come closer every day to building progressive, militant locals that can serve as both models for other reformers and strongholds to build out from. As the IBEW International Convention approaches in September, we have a dozen locals around the country taking resolutions to the floor demanding language equity in Spanish, the lack of which is a major stumbling block to organizing the majority-Latino construction workforce.
Looking Outward
We have also built relationships with reformers in other construction trades. At the 2024 Labor Notes Conference, CREW met members of a small caucus in the United Brotherhood of Carpenters called Carpenters Rank And File Together (CRAFT) and immediately made fast friends. The IBEW needs reform, but the UBC may need a revolution; it is fair to say that their General President Douglas McCarron is one of the great villains of the 21st century labor movement. [SJSF has just awarded a grant of $10,000 to CRAFT to help fund their founding convention.]
CREW and CRAFT recruit and raise visibility for each other. We support each other at rallies and workshops. We even built a collaborative project called Construction Workers United (CWU) that seeks to take the rank-and-file union reform idea to every building trades union.
At the 2026 Labor Notes Conference, CREW had well over 100 members present, and CRAFT had about 30. From their start in Cleveland, they have expanded to chapters in New York and the Twin Cities, and more to come soon. People helped CREW, and we understand that gives us a responsibility to help others.