FAM is Building Coalitions across Campus and the State — and it’s working

Working together = more power for all

Thursday, February 19, 2026 

You likely know about the collective work we do together as FAM: negotiating on your top priorities, winning fair contracts, taking action to protect our members, and holding management to the CBA when they violate its terms. But did you know that FAM has also been building coalitions beyond our bargaining unit? 

A coalition is a strategic alliance of different groups who work together to achieve common goals. Collaborations and coalitions with students, community members, and other unions give us more people, more power, and more leverage to win. 

You can see this often in the labor movement, such as in the coalition of labor organizations identifying legal avenues to hold the state of Ohio and the federal government accountable. The AFT, AAUP, AFL-CIO, and other national unions have been collectively suing (and winning). Throughout the US, including in Ohio and Southwest Ohio, coalitions of social justice movements are leading ICE OUT trainings and Defending Our Neighbors actions. Coalitions work because together, we have more power. 

FAM’s on-campus coalitions with students include the Miami Ohio Student Association (OSA), which has been working with other OSA chapters across the state and a national coalition called Students Rise Up (in collaboration with the Sunrise Movement) to protect higher education from assaults coming from Columbus with escalating actions on the first Friday of each month, culminating in a May 1st walkout. We have also been collaborating for years with Miami’s Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), Miami Democrats, and more. 

FAM and Miami OSA have held several successful events, from our November 7th March for Academic Freedom to our January 30th ICE OUT Walkout to our February 6th Public Town Hall. (Read our Town Hall speeches by TK and Pixie Menezes). OSA has also collaborated with FAM on our recent successful Make It Miami actions, in which students and FAM members talked with prospective students and their parents about how management is engaging in union-busting and harming student learning on campus. These efforts have resulted in OSA students winning two meetings with upper administration to hear their demands and a verbal promise on the part of management to share Miami’s policy about DHS and ICE agents on campus with the student body. 

Working together at Make It Miami also led directly to management finally sending bargaining dates for March. We are keeping up the pressure at all recruitment events until we have fair contracts for librarians and faculty. 

With the support of our Southwest Ohio Labor Coalition, FAM and OSA are currently developing a Butler County ICE OUT and Know Your Rights Training. And our coalition with Miami YDSA is working toward making Miami University a sanctuary campus (among other goals). And internally on campus, we have been hosting regular International Solidarity Lunches to share resources and to advocate for international staff and faculty at Miami.

Off campus, FAM has also been building coalitions. We co-sponsored a January 23rd ICE OUT FOR GOOD solidarity march in downtown Cincinnati. We are part of a Southwest Ohio Labor Coalition that includes area higher ed unions, the Ohio Federation of Teachers, the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers, the Ohio Nursing Association, and more. We are building power across the region and state by sharing information and ideas, winning grants, and strategizing collectively about how to build power in the state. Coming up on March 4th, the coalition is hosting a press event in downtown Cincinnati at Levine Park (the same location where the Alex Pretti vigil was held) focusing on proposed state legislation around immigration. We are inviting state and local political leaders as well as the press to show our solidarity with immigrant neighbors, colleagues, and students and to urge Ohio lawmakers to take action against ICE. Our coalition has also won a MOVE Grant to pay for member-to-member organizing ahead of the crucial Ohio gubernatorial election this November. 

Several FAM officers have also been attending AAUP and AFT national, regional, and state-level conferences in order to network and strategize collectively. We have received trainings in mass mobilization, nonviolent direct action, de-escalation and non-cooperation techniques, Know Your Rights, and street medic training. At next week’s OFT Conference, FAM is taking the lead in Ohio on strategizing our statewide fight against SB1, HB 698, and other higher-education legislation aimed at destroying our profession and harming students’ freedom to learn. 

Authoritarianism requires us to organize differently. How do we build capacity to be courageous in a time of tremendous fear? We can’t win with a single strategy, like voting. We need collective pushback and collective non-compliance. The people in power at the state and national levels are not just attacking higher education; they are also targeting K-12 education, librarians, social workers, nurses and other health care workers, and workers in general — they want a compliant workforce most of all.  

While authoritarians build power over others, we are building power with others. People power is non-hierarchical, shared power based on working together toward common values and goals. It is power with others, not power over others. That’s what solidarity means. Historically, people power wins.

As we have seen in Portland, Minnesota’s Twin Cities, and right here in Oxford, coalitional direct action: 

• Stops injustice 
• Asserts rights
• Refuses to comply
• Sounds the alarm / educates
• Creates community solutions 
• Amplifies voices
• Builds people power

Our on- and off-campus coalitions with students, community organizations, and area unions are already yielding results. Want to be part of the solution? Check out our Take Action! page and write us at info@famiami.org with your ideas or to get involved!