I’ve been thinking for a long time about what would be most effective in helping us make progressive change. There are probably a lot of answers to that question, but lately what keeps coming up for me is this: we need to start getting strategic. No, I don’t mean strategic like Linda “won’t somebody think of the rich white women?” Hirshman suggests.
What I mean is, we should be taking a scientific approach to progressive organizing—discarding tactics that have proven ineffective and using those that generally work. The trouble is, we didn’t learn about organizing strategy in school, unless we had one-in-a-million amazing teachers like Karen Salazar. We learned the history of the powerful. As Utah Phillips once said when speaking on this topic, “Well of course that was deliberate, wasn’t it?” If oppressed people knew the history of successful anti-oppression movements, they’d be acting very much like Salazar’s students are right now.
There are lots of books that outline what works. The Midwest Academy Organizing Manual is pretty good. A shameless plug: Students Active For Ending Rape (SAFER) has an entire 100+ page manual devoted to effective strategy for anti-violence activists on college campuses. There are sociological studies that look at what has worked for social movements and what hasn’t. Personally, I’ve found histories of people’s movements and autobiographies of their leaders to be very useful.
We can also look to the opposition for tips. Brownfemipower recently posted about Ralph Reed, who truly is a strategic genius. Karl Rove is brilliant. These men should be carefully studied by progressives. There are also tons of conservative leadership training programs (which I encourage you to infiltrate—I learned conservative media strategy from GOPAC. It has come in handy). The Leadership Institute, Young America’s Foundation, GOPAC, and others have learned that training and mentorship to help young conservatives develop tactical skills are key to the strength of the conservative movement.
I think that we should really take some time to study this stuff if our situation allows it. For one thing, our opposition is doing it, so we’re hopelessly outgunned if we don’t. For another, without it we’ll make the same mistakes that have been made by earlier organizers without even knowing it, which is a total waste of time.
Of course, there are some aspects of social change that can only be learned by doing. That’s where activism at the local level, where you personally actually have the potential to measurably change things, comes in. You can write an email to your Senator about FISA (please go do that) and work for the presidential candidate of your choice (do that too), but it won’t teach you half of what forcing your local school board to implement comprehensive sex education would.
Big-picture goals are necessary, but the great thing about studying strategy and then using it to move toward our own concrete, measurable goals at the community level is that we can all have those big-picture goals that we sometimes get together and work for, without giving up the specific issues that matter most to us. As a bonus, we’ll be more effective at moving toward broader goals, because we’ll have some collective organizing savvy.
I don’t claim to have all the answers, or even a small portion of the answers, when it comes to building an effective feminist/progressive movement. But what I do know is that if we don’t make a conscious effort to place our actions in a larger strategic framework, we’re totally gonna get our ass kicked. And I’m getting pretty tired of seeing us get our ass kicked.