Strategy in Organizing: You Gotta Have a Plan!

July 1, 2025

IM  -  

by Gabe Kristal, AFM Organizing Services Director and Assistant to the President

It has been my great honor to be director of Organizing for the American Federation of Musicians for the last year and a half. During this time, I have been able to assess organizing potential and opportunities for growth across our represented areas.

From this, the Organizing Department has developed core organizing priorities: expanding the number of film and TV signatories, organizing video game musicians, targeting music education programs, and creating a program to provide membership incentives for freelancers and gigging musicians.

To achieve meaningful progress and implement our strategic plan, we need the full support of our locals—the very backbone of the AFM.

Over the last several months, the Organizing Department has trained dozens of officers at regional conferences. Our number one objective in the training sessions is for the participants to form a strategic plan for organizing in their jurisdictions.

Locals undertake organizing in three areas:

•External (new) organizing: Signing up new members or organizing new bargaining units.

•Internal contract organizing: Organizing to get the best possible collective bargaining improvements.

•Internal contract enforcement: Organizing collective action to enforce collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) or to make improvements that are not currently covered by the CBA.

In our leadership training, attendees learned how to identify all possible organizing targets, CBAs, and activists to begin the process of creating a strategic plan for their locals. All targets for new organizing must be analyzed in order to determine the best use of the local’s resources, with consideration to such things as benefit to existing members, difficulty to organize, contacts, and integration with international campaigns.

Local leaders will then review all current CBAs to create a campaign calendar for the next two years. This will allow them to strategically organize members, ensuring maximum strength for upcoming negotiations. Finally, they’ll assess existing leaders and activists and develop a plan with clear goals to recruit additional support as needed to win campaigns.

The Organizing Department is working with the Freelance Services Department to develop a specific toolkit for every local to use to grow their freelance membership. We would like to see every local hold annual “Know Your Rights” training for freelance and gigging musicians.

All leaders who have completed the new officer training in 2025 were asked to go back to their locals and work with their fellow officers to develop their local’s own strategic plan that integrates freelance organizing.

So far, we have trained dozens of officers at the Western, Eastern, and Southern conferences, and we are scheduled to do trainings at the Midwestern and Canadian conferences later this summer. The Organizing Department will follow up with all participants to assist their locals in the strategic planning process.

If you and your local leaders want to learn more about the AFM’s organizing initiatives or how you can assist in organizing efforts, contact the Organizing Department. We’ll be happy to review the training with you and provide guidance on developing an organizing plan.

Imagine what we can do if all the AFM locals work strategically to organize musicians across the United States and Canada. In unity, there truly is strength!

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