Why We Need To Build Interconnected Systems
“The ends you serve that are selfish will take you no further than yourself but the ends you serve that are for all, in common, will take you into eternity.” ~ Marcus Garvey
Keys to Power and the Social Change Ecosystem
Here are our main keys to power and the social change ecosystem:
- Remember power is simply “the ability to achieve purpose” (MLK Jr.).
- Power consists of building your movement’s resources (e.g., people, money, legitimacy, etc.).
- Develop multiple aspects of the social change ecosystem for long-term power, including: base building, leadership development, cross-issue campaigns, mass mobilization, electoral organizing, public policy, legal, resource activation, media & communications, and economic capacity.
Defining Power
We follow Martin Luther King Jr’s definition of power which is “Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political, and economic change.”
At its core organizing is about developing people to wield their collective power to achieve social change.
Principles of Power
The Importance of Increasing Resources
Building power consists of building your movement’s resources (e.g., people, money, legitimacy, and number of active supporters). Marshall Ganz writes “Power grows out of the influence that we can have on each other. If your interest in my resources is greater than my interest in your resources, I get some power over you – so I can use your resources for my purposes.”
Ability to Escalate Pressure and Agitation
One key element to successfully wielding power is the ability to increase the amount of pressure you’re using to achieve your goals (e.g., more and more public agitation on elected officials if they are unresponsive to your constituency’s proposals).
The Social Change Ecosystem
Overview
This section highlights all the key elements necessary to foster long-term change. Each of these elements together form a cohesive ecosystem that feeds into each other and helps drive forward long-term change.
Base Building and Centering Those Most Impacted
Base building is all about increasing the number of people involved through focused recruitment and retention. Base building also involves working with key constituencies to get more people engaged (e.g., faith, labor, business, community, etc.).
In addition, Rinku Sen writes in Stir it Up about the importance of “increasing our organizing among the people affected” by the issues. We have to ensure to avoid acting like a “savior” for a certain community, and instead ensure that the people from the community can be the leaders.
Leadership Development
It is imperative to be thinking over the long-term (i.e., decades rather than years) since otherwise, it is easy to get caught up in the cycle of short-term issues and projects. So that means focusing on leadership development year-round, regardless of whether everyone is actively engaged in the current struggles.
This leadership development has to include a focus on both skill development and political education (e.g., how systems work, policies, tackling injustice, etc.). Again, this has to be long-term and so you need a place for people at all levels (e.g., beginner, intermediate, advanced, and extremely advanced).
Sustained and Cross-Issue Campaigns
We need to change policies at all levels through “people powered” issue campaigns. Ideally, issue campaigns feed into each other through a variety of different areas (e.g., criminal justice reform, education, economic opportunity, etc.). We cannot get into “issue silos” where our “base” is fragmented. Some days we may work on one issue, but then the next we need to be ready to support another issue.
Mass Mobilization and Disruption Capacity
As we escalate tactics on campaigns there will be times we need everyone to show up. In some cases, we may even need to engage in “disruptive activities” to further propel change (e.g., think the lunch counter sit-ins in the civil rights movement that put serious economic pressure on cities).
Strategies for Social Change notes “Mobilization structures matter” for social change organizations. You have to be able to turn people out when needed. The authors note “the importance of a strong infrastructure” (e.g., one researcher noted that one reason the Christian Right was more successful in the U.S. than in Canada, was the stronger institutional infrastructures).
Electoral Organizing and Elected Official Support
In some cases, even our best issue-based organizing can have a tough time succeeding if too many of those in office are opposed to our issues. So we have to always support a “parallel track” of strong electoral support.
Here are some keys for this electoral organizing piece:
- Recruitment and Identification: Finding strong candidates.
- Coaching and Accountability: Helping candidates improve and holding them and their teams accountable for improvement/staying on a strong values track.
- Support: Connecting to resources (people, money, expertise, etc.), helping set up systems, and other things candidates need to be successful.
Once our candidates get elected, we also need to provide ongoing elected official development (e.g., building a united caucus of “people centered” elected officials who collaborate, proactively push strong policies, excel at constituent services, and stand up to entrenched status quo forces).
Public Policy Research, Writing, and Analysis
It is important to have strong ideas and well-researched proposals for all areas of decision-making (e.g., school board, city/county council, state government, federal, etc.). This core area should focus on reviewing policy ideas, publishing key findings, writing model legislation, and evaluating existing/proposed policies.
In particular, there should be a long-term plan for how policies build on each other. So, plan backward from the ideal policy and create steps to get to the main policy.
Media and Communications Infrastructure
While it is important to have strong ideas and policies, you also have to have a way to get those messages out in the world. That means having independent systems for media and communications that do not rely solely on mainstream media outlets.
In addition to presenting your own work, there should also be investigation of government, business, and community and presenting informed unbiased analysis.
Economic Capacity
Economic decisions drive a significant amount of policy decisions. Continuing to build economic opportunities and economic engines is important to long-term success.
Legal Pressure
Legal pressure is the process of challenging an existing policy or practice through the court system. The best way to do legal pressure is to build up public pressure over time and build a compelling case.
You have to be willing to use all avenues for change at your disposal, so building out the avenues for legal pressure is important.
Financial Resource Activation
For both issues and elections, it is important to be able to activate financial resources as well as people resources. While it can be challenging for some to engage in asking for money, it is essential to building a strong base for long-term success. Ideally, there is a central place or hub for connecting people to an array of causes and campaigns.
Here are two important aspects to effective financial resource activation.
- List Database: Consistently finding people/ info (e.g., phone, email, address, occupation, giving history, etc.) maintaining a list of people to ask for resources (e.g., time, money, expertise, etc.).
- Activating and Connecting Resources: Building bridges between people and resources and actively asking people to share resources.