Workers who’ve waged a years-long struggle for a union at the Nissan auto plant in Canton, Mississippi are about to get some star power.

On March 4, Senator Bernie Sanders, NAACP President Cornell William Brooks, actor Danny Glover, and even a professional football player or two are expected to show up in solidarity with the workers.

The rally will certainly boost the profile of a campaign that has already mobilized faith, civil rights, and student groups in support of the plant’s 5,000 employees, about 80 percent of whom are African American. But major labor battles like this one are not won in a day.

Leading the campaign’s day-to-day work in the trenches is Sanchioni Butler. A United Auto Workers employee since 1988, Butler relocated to Mississippi in 2008 and has been the lead organizer for the Nissan workers in Canton for several years.

In this challenging position, Butler has learned many valuable lessons, especially about organizing black workers in the part of our country where barriers to unionization are highest.

A key lesson, Butler says, is the need to “leave all egos at the door.” In an interview for the Institute for Policy Studies report And Still I Rise, Butler explained that “You can’t come to the South with an attitude of, ‘I’m coming to save someone.’ You can’t be judgmental. You can’t be a person who is going to look down or criticize, judge, or have a savior attitude. Organizers need to listen.”

One thing Butler has heard a lot about is the Japanese firm’s efforts to demonize the UAW. Despite the fact that Nissan plants in other countries are unionized, Canton workers say management there has used various union-busting strategies, including interrogations and surveillance of workers, as well as threats to close the plant if they vote for the union.

How has Butler worked to overcome these scare tactics?