All of these are shortcomings, to be sure, but while working alongside CAUSE I saw a creative, multiracial union led by Black and Latino workers, a vibrant organization steeped in democracy and fighting spirit. At a late-January union town hall, more than 60 RDU1 workers gathered in downtown Garner to discuss and debate issues. The union was founded by the Rev. Ryan Brown, a Baptist minister and an RDU1 worker until Amazon fired him last December, and Mary Hill, a feisty 70-year-old former truck driver who has spent the last year battling both Amazon and cancer. On display in the room that night was an eclectic mix including older African American church devotees, queer youth, socialist activists, middle-aged white workers, and immigrants from different Latin American countries. After three years of diligent organizing in a right-to-work state, under punishing circumstances, “Rev Ryan” and “Ma Mary,” as they are affectionately called by workers throughout RDU1, built a remarkable coalition.

At a time when many union leaders are hunkering down and even cozying up to corporate America and Trump by showcasing their own xenophobia, the CAUSE workers had the guts to meet Amazon in open combat, fighting for all workers regardless of country of origin.

Some labor organizers will argue that the CAUSE election loss shows the futility of elections. They could note that Amazon workers at the JFK8 warehouse won their union representation election nearly three years ago—and still remain stymied from bargaining by Amazon’s endless court appeals. Indeed, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the largest logistics workers’ union in the country, with campaigns at numerous Amazon worksites, has avoided representation elections at Amazon precisely because there is nothing free and fair about them in today’s America.

But election avoidance is shallow analysis. There is no question that a union representation election today entails running a hostile gauntlet. The election path should not be undertaken lightly. Yet the strategy of eschewing elections and pressuring the company through demonstration strikes involving a minority of workers—as the Teamsters have done in New York, the Bay Area, Southern California, Chicago, and Atlanta—also hasn’t moved the company any closer toward union recognition. However, the Teamsters’ lack of success to date doesn’t invalidate the importance of striking; nor does the CAUSE election result discredit voting strategies. Elections can be an effective strategy, so long as they are undertaken with rigorous organizing method—including strong, broad, tested organizing committees—and are seen not as an end goal but as a structure test on an escalating pathway toward powerful, majority-participation strikes.

But the central challenge facing today’s labor movement isn’t the elections-or-not conundrum. It is multiplying the scale of organizing by orders of magnitude.

With 1,445 warehouses, delivery stations, and air cargo centers and 1.7 million direct employees and contractors nationwide, Amazon is simply too large to beat through site-by-site organizing and striking. Given today’s political landscape and Amazon’s anti-union track record, it’s safe to say that a CAUSE election win last week would not have resulted in bargaining.

To build enough worker power to compel Amazon to bargain, organizing will need to happen at dozens if not hundreds of worksites simultaneously, escalating to majority strike actions on a scale that can truly disrupt the company’s operations.

That will require organizing investments on the scale of hundreds of millions of dollars annually. The combined Amazon organizing investment today by unions—largely the Teamsters—is just over $10 million annually. That is barely a start. What’s needed is annual organizing commitments to fund thousands of organizers—both inside and outside Amazon facilities—along with a robust campaign infrastructure to build a new CIO-style industrial organizing movement.

That is eminently possible. Today, US labor movement assets top $35 billion—a 225 percent increase over the last 15 years, according to union researcher Chris Bohner. Collectively, the labor movement has sufficient resources to take on Amazon and win. But financing an industrial organizing campaign at Amazon requires a political decision by labor leaders—and the political will to follow through. Given the dire and declining state of labor and the central role of Amazon in the economy, what on earth are labor leaders waiting for?

In December, the Teamsters led demonstration strikes at eight Amazon facilities. These were all minority strikes—only about 600 workers in total participated—but the actions themselves built worker confidence and sparked organizing conversations among workers in warehouses far away from the strike lines. The demonstration strikes represented both a positive step forward and a learning experience. Likewise, the CAUSE members and those around them, though not victorious in this round, led a principled fight and gained organizing chops.

In the longer arc of labor’s existential struggle to organize at Amazon, the CAUSE election stands as another battleground where overmatched workers valiantly fought back. One hopes that CAUSE organizers will, in the wake of this lopsided defeat, draw lessons about the need to have a disciplined, tested, and broad union structure before plunging into battle again. Equally, one hopes that organizers looking from the outside will resist glib criticism of the CAUSE election, and instead seek to learn what CAUSE did right in building a multiracial, multigenerational union with sheer grassroots energy, chutzpah, and tenacity.

Labor’s challenge is to imagine what is possible when the rank-and-file creativity of CAUSE workers and other Amazon workers around the country merges with the full resources of the US labor movement. That is a fight against Goliath that David might just be able to win.