For AFGE Local 2065 leaders, there’s life before and after an organizing bootcamp in Jacksonville, Florida, held earlier this year by DEFCON and the Membership and Organization Department (M&O).
Before the bootcamp, local officers described AFGE to potential members as a union that provides representation for service like an insurance company. After the bootcamp, they learned that that description promotes the idea that the union’s relationship with members is transactional, third party, and doesn’t inspire participation and involvement.
They also learned that it’s important to articulate the fact that the union empowers members to have a voice at work, a seat at the table, that they have the power to help shape their working conditions, demand fair treatment, hold management accountable, and make their workplace a better place to work. In other words, the union is them.
Messaging is just one part of the training, but it’s so important that it helped transform the local’s organizing program. Between January and April of this year, the local, which represents employees at several Defense agencies in North Carolina, recruited 56 people. After attending the bootcamp and planning organizing events and changing the way they did New Employee Orientations (NEOs), they recruited 190 in the next four months. People wanted to feel empowered. They wanted to get involved and make a difference. The local even won an organizing award at AFGE’s national convention.
“After bootcamp, we focused on how AFGE needs each one of them to be at the table. We can't do it alone. We need them involved if they want to see change,” said Kelly Keating, president of Local 2065 at Camp LeJeune and Council 240 Marine Corps. “Instead of buying into an idea of an insurance policy, that they assume will pay out if they need it, we try to get them invested to having a say in our direction and control over their own employee rights. We teach their rights to them. We teach them to fight with us.”
Kelly is new to both positions. She was just elected council president at the convention in August. Last November, she was elected local president after becoming acting president in June. She was the first woman to be elected to the position. The bootcamp gave her the necessary skills to lead the local and council and allowed her to pass on the knowledge to stewards and other activists.
“It was phenomenal,” she said of the class taught by M&O Director David Cann. “I had people here who did a good job on their own, never haven’t taken a class. So I took a few of those people and after they went to bootcamp, they came back and did phenomenal with it.”
One of those activists was so good that she was hired by M&O after Kelly kept bragging about her. Yes, the local missed her. No, they’re not trying to lure her back. They are just so proud of her accomplishments.
The local currently has 1,215 members. Their goal is to double it by the end of next year.
Group photo from DEFCON organizing training.
What is Drive to 325?
Under our organizing strategy AFGE Rise, where we focus on empowering members and one-on-one conversations, AFGE reached our 300,000-membership goal in February 2024. Immediately, we set our next goal of reaching 325,000 members by the end of 2025. Our Drive to 325 campaign took shape and energized locals to reach their full potential and strengthen our union.
AFGE also became the fastest growing large union in the U.S. in 2023 with membership surging to historic levels over the past year.
“The key to that growth? It’s the over 900 locals, boots on the ground, sparking conversations with workers about what it means to truly have a voice,” said Cann. “The ‘Drive to 325’ isn’t just filling up rosters; it’s giving workers the tools to fight back against agency overreach, wage cuts, and the erosion of their rights. It’s about turning frustration into power, disillusionment into hope, and giving people the leadership to demand better—not just for themselves, but for everyone who comes after.”
Cann explained that the campaign’s structure is rooted in the belief that the union isn’t some distant entity that people can only reach out to when things get rough. The union is each member with each local becoming its own center of gravity, strong and flexible, ready to respond to challenges at a moment’s notice.
“But let’s not pretend it’s all grit and struggle. There’s also competition, a little friendly fire that’s lighting up locals from coast to coast,” he went on. “The internal competition—locals striving to outdo each other in recruiting new members—has created a buzz, a sense of momentum that has locals not just meeting but blowing past their goals. It’s more than just bragging rights. It’s about being part of something bigger than yourself, something lasting, something that speaks to the soul of what it means to be a worker in this country.”
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