Organizing: People, Power, Change MLD 377 Organizing Notes Charts Reflection Questions Marshall Ganz Senior Lecturer in Public Policy John F. Kennedy School of Government Harvard University Spring 2016 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 Organizing Notes What Is Organizing? Week 1 Leadership in organizing is rooted in three questions articulated by the first century Jerusalem sage, Rabbi Hillel: “If I am not for myself, who am I? When I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when? 1 These three questions focus on the interdependence of self, other, and action: what am I called to do, what are others with whom I am in relationship called to do, and what action does the world in which we live demand of us now? The fact these are framed as questions, not answers, is important: to act is to enter a world of uncertainty, the unpredictable, and the contingent. Do we really think we can control it? Or do we have to learn to embrace it? Uncertainty poses challenges to the hands, the head and the heart. What new skills must my “hands” learn? How can my “head” devise new ways to use my resources to achieve my goals? How can my “heart” equip me with the courage, hopefulness, and forbearance to act? Leadership requires “accepting responsibility for enabling others to achieve purpose under conditions of uncertainty”.2 Conditions of uncertainty require the “adaptive” dimension of leadership: not so much performing known tasks well, but, rather learning what tasks are needed and how to perform them well. It is leadership from the perspective of a “learner” – one who has learned to ask the right questions – rather than that of a “knower” – on who thinks he or she knows all the answers. This kind of leadership is a form of practice - not a position or a person – and it can be exercised from any location within or without a structure of authority. Organizing is a form of leadership. Organizers identify, recruit, and develop the leadership of others; build community around that leadership; and build power from the resources of that community. Organizers do not provide services to clients or market products to 1 2 Pirke Avot (Wisdom of the Fathers) Marshall Ganz, “Leading Change: Leadership, Organization and Social Movements”, Chapter 19, 1 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 customers. They organize a community to become a constituency – people able to “stand together” on behalf of common concerns. Organizers ask three questions: Who are my people? What is their urgent problem? How can they turn their resources into the power to solve their problem? They answer the questions in dialogue with their constituency by building relationships, telling stories, devising strategy, designing structure and taking action. Organizers develop new relationships out of old ones - sometimes by linking one person to another and sometimes by linking whole networks of people together. One result is the formation of new networks of relationship wide and deep enough to provide a foundation for a new community in action. Organized communities acquire agency – the capacity to act – by articulating why they must act – their story–and imagining how they can act –their strategy. Organized communities learn to tell their story, a public narrative, of who they are: where they came from, where they are going, and what they must do to get there. Organizers work through narrative to deepen people’s understanding of their values, their capacity to share them, and to draw upon them for the courage to act. They learn to mobilize the feelings of urgency, anger, hope, empathy, and dignity, to challenge the feelings of inertia, apathy, fear, isolation, and self-doubt that inhibit action. Organized communities learn to strategize how they can turn resources they have into the power they need to get what they want. Organizers engage people in understanding how they can act by deliberating on their conditions, locating the responsibility for those conditions, devising ways they could use their resources to change those conditions, a theory of change, and translating that theory into specific goals. Organized communities accept the responsibility to act. Empowerment of a person begins with taking responsibility. Empowerment of a community begins with commitment – the responsibility its members take for it. Responsibility begins with choosing to act. Organizers challenge people not only to act, but also to act effectively. Organized communities build relationships, tell stories, devised strategy, and take action most effectively with the support of a structure based on coaching, teamwork, and leadership development. They operate with leadership teams, based on shared purpose, interdependent 2 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 roles, and agreed upon norms, avoiding the fragility of a single person doing it all or the chaos everyone doing everything. They create widely distributed leadership opportunities, cascading outward, like a snowflake, as opposed to narrowly held opportunities. They exercise accountability and offer support through ongoing coaching. In this way they can build communities which are bounded yet inclusive, communal yet diverse, solidaristic yet tolerant. They work to develop a relationship between a constituency and its leaders based on mutual responsibility and accountability. Organizers work through campaigns. Campaigns are highly energized, intensely focused, concentrated streams of activity with specific goals and deadlines. Through campaigns, people are recruited, programs launched, battles fought, and organizations built. Campaigns polarize by bringing out those ordinarily submerged conflicts contrary to the interests of the constituency. One dilemma is how to depolarize in order to negotiate resolution of these conflicts. Another dilemma is how to balance campaigns with the ongoing work of organizational growth and development. And, win or lose, each campaign must conclude with analysis, learning, and celebration. ©Marshall Ganz, Kennedy School, 2015 Chart #1: What Is Organizing? 3 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 Chart #2: Three Ways to Combine Chart #3: Two Ways to Structure Time 4 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 Organizing Notes Learning to Organize Week 1 Learning to organize is like learning to ride a bicycle. You can read good books about it, watch exciting videos, listen to learned lectures, but your learning doesn’t really begin until you get on the bike and begin to peddle. And, no matter how good the scaffolding - training wheels or parents holding the back wheel - sooner or later you will fall. And that’s the real moment of truth when you either go home, give up, and go to bed or you find the courage to get back on the bike and try again, even though you know you’re likely to fall, because you’ve discovered it's the only way you can learn to keep your balance. That, it turns out, is how we learn any kind of practice, including organizing. That is also the pedagogy of this course: explain concepts, model practice, create opportunities for you to practice, and debrief. In the way of “scaffolding” that can help prepare to take full advantage of this experience, consider the following. In discussing the Buddha’s “Sutra on Knowing the Better Way to Catch a Snake”, in pointing to the difference between the “raft and the shore,” Thich Nhat Hanh helps distinguish among a framework to structure learning, how we learn, and what we learn.3 We may need a good raft to get us across a particular river, but the same raft may inhibit our progress if we hang onto it long after it has served its purpose. To learn organizing, we need a raft because learning any new practice requires enough scaffolding to deal with the uncertainty, ambiguity and novelty.4 And when we face uncertainty, we often feel conflicting emotions. On the one hand, we may be fearful - things will go wrong, we will fail, others will see. We then retract, metaphorically at least, to protect ourselves from danger. On the other hand, we may also be curious - the unexpected can be exciting, bringing new opportunities for growth, calling us to try new things. Faced with the challenge of learning to act in new ways we seem to need to experience enough security to find the courage to risk exploring new behaviors. Learning to balance security and risk is not only key to our own 3 Thich Nhat Hanh, (1993), Thundering Silence: Sutra on Knowing the Better Way to Catch a Snake, "The Raft is Not the Shore" (pp. 30-33), (Berkeley, Paralax Press). 4 Jordan Petersson, (1999), Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief. (New York, Routledge). 5 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 learning, but to the learning of those with whom we work, for whom security may be more elusive and the risks greater. The framework we bring to learning organizing can serve as our "raft” for purposes of this course - a way to focus on critical tools, attend to key questions, observe the interaction of different elements, and share a common language so we can learn from each other's experience. But organizing is fundamentally a practice – a way of doing things, with the “hands.” As Kierkegaard’s story of the helmsman at the wheel of a ship reminds us, learning practice is different from learning theory because it can only be learned from the experience of acting. 5 ´ Acting requires the courage to take risks – risks of failure, making mistakes, losing face, rejection, etc. This is one reason your commitment to your project matters: the more deeply committed you are, the more you will learn because you will be motivated to risk new kinds of experience from which you can learn. Organizing is also a theory, the work of the “head.” But understood well, theory is not some abstract principle to be “applied” in practice, nor is it how things “really” are. In fact, we theorize much of the time. We reflect on our past experience in an effort to simplify reality enough that we can draw general lessons about what we might expect under similar conditions in the future. We a generating “hypotheses” about the future, subject, of course, to testing. 6 So if we are to understand organizing practice we also need to pay attention to the theoretical “rafts” that we bring with us from our prior experience. These assumptions may have served us perfectly well in private life, especially when it comes to social interactions, but may not serve us so well in public life. Cognitive psychologists explain that we develop "schemata" to organize our understanding of the world.7 Schemata enable and constrain. They enable us to make sense of things, generalize, make choices, draw conclusions, and act. But, as stereotypes, they can also inhibit clarity of perception, cause us to see what we expect to see, and make it difficult for us to learn.8 In a sense, they can be understood as are our implicit “theories” of how 5 M.S. Kierkegaard, “When the Knower Has to Apply Knowledge” from “Thoughts on Crucial Situations in Human Life”, in Parables of Kierkegaard, T.C. Oden, Editor. (P) 6 Robert B. Westbrook (1991), John Dewey and American Democracy, (Ithaca, NY, Cornell UP.) 7 Susan Fiske and Shelly E. Taylor, (1991), Social Cognition, Chapter 6, "Social Schemata," (pp.139-42, 171-81), (New York, McGraw-Hill.) 8 Ellen J. Langer, (1989), Mindfulness (Cambridge: Perseus Books); (1998) The Power of Mindful Learning, (Cambridge, Perseus Books). 6 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 the world works -- generalized lessons we learn from our experience, some of which we are not fully aware of, that inform what we expect.9 Psychologist Ellen Langer proposes ways to learn to be more "mindful" of our assumptions so they constrain us less, allowing us to generate fresh ways of looking at things; creating new categories, considering multiple views, etc. So using theory "mindfully" requires stepping back from our experience, writing about it, reflecting critically upon it, and drawing lessons from it. And learning from experience requires entering into it with what Gandhi described as a “spirit of experimentation” – with the discipline to place it in perspective, compare it with that of others, and reflect on it analytically.10 And because organizing is relational – done in interaction with others – the more you can learn to mindfully distinguish among your actions, the actions of others, and how they interact, the easier it will become for you to learn from the data of your own experience. The facility with which we learn to do new things depends to an important extent on how we approach learning: what educational psychologist Carol Dweck calls “mind-set.”11 When we try something new and we fail does this tell us something about what kind of person we are: smart or dumb, talented or ordinary, gifted or average, what she calls “fixed mind set”? Or does it tell us something about what we haven’t yet learned what she calls “growth mind set”? If “fixed” we are likely to avoid risk, deny failure when it occurs, blame it on external causes. If “growth” we are more likely to look at our own practice, discern ways to improve, and conclude that we simply have more work to do. Not surprisingly, her research shows that if we approach new challenges with a growth mind set will learn more quickly, resist less, and be far more open to feedback. Learning organizing is not only a matter of hands and head, but also of the heart. My approach is rooted in a faith tradition that values people struggling interdependently to claim their dignity, a civic tradition claiming an equal right to self-determination, including holding leadership accountable, and a popular tradition of people finding ways to use their own resources creatively to effectively assert their interests. Although some tactics may be similar, the kind of organizing that is the focus of this course is not how to organize an army, a corporation, a 9 Howard Gardner, (1992), The Unschooled Mind, (New York, Basic Books.) Mohandas Gandhi, (1957), An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth, (Boston, Beacon Press.) 11 Carol Dweck (2006), Mindset: the new psychology of success, (New York, Ballantine Books). 10 7 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 marketing firm, or a social service agency. These values, or something similar, however, are found in cultures around the world as people found ways to deal with very similar kinds of challenges. Perhaps the most creative 20th Century innovator of democratic organizing was Gandhi. His combination of Eastern and Western traditions created a legacy further developed in the African freedom movement, the American Civil Rights movement, the work of Solidarity in Poland, and elsewhere. Organizing roots can be found, in fact, wherever people learned to collaborate, to challenge abuses of power, and to struggle to create a better life for their children. To facilitate discussion I use charts because social processes can often be more easily visualized than verbalized. Four basic patterns I use depict relationship, purpose, feedback, and focus. Relational charts depict interactions, balances, and exchanges among parties fundamental to organizing. Purpose charts depict movement or development toward a goal, a peak, and an outcome. Loops - or more accurately spirals - depict ways action leads to outcomes that influence subsequent action. And focus charts show the effect of concentrating diffuse energy and resources on specific targets. Coaching is one of the key learning, teaching, and leadership tools our pedagogy relies on.12 Coaching is a way to work with another person to enable them to improve their effectiveness. It is not about giving advice, preaching, making judgments, or telling someone what to do. But it can facilitate learning by enabling people to overcome three forms of challenge that most inhibit performance: motivational, educational or strategic. Motivational challenges have to do with effort; for whatever reason the individual is not motivated enough to take the risks needed to learn, to put in the hours needed to practice, or to put in that last ounce of energy needed to cross a threshold. Educational challenges include not having critical data needed to do the job, not having the skills required, lacking the experience to acquire good judgement. When someone has the information and the motivation, but doesn’t know where, when, and how to use that information to get the desired result – that’s a strategic challenge. We need to learn to distinguish among these challenges because if you are trying to get someone to try harder who doesn’t have the information you’re likely to just make things worse. On the other hand, if 12 Richard Hackman and Ruth Wageman, “A Theory of Team Coaching” , Academy of Management Review, April 2005, p.269 287. 8 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 they’re very skilled, but, for whatever reason, aren’t putting forth effort, training may not help at all. Learning to distinguish among these challenges – as well as how to intervene successfully - requires learning how to ask questions, how to listen (with both the head and the heart), how to support, and how to challenge. It is not all about praising people for strengths, criticizing them for weaknesses, or telling them what to do. It requires learning to identify a person’s strengths and their weaknesses in order to ally with - or mobilize - the strengths to overcome the weaknesses. Although some coaching may be “corrective” (telling the other person what to do), most coaching is “developmental” (enabling the other person to learn what to do). Engaging in a new experience, critical analysis of that experience, and reflecting on the values within which that experience is rooted can be very challenging. This is why much of our work is interaction with others – constituency, classmates, colleagues, and instructors. This is not an "extra" but at the core of the learning process. Learning how to challenge, support, and motivate those with whom we work - and to accept challenge, support, and motivation from them - can be one of the most useful lessons you can take from this experience. © Marshall Ganz, Kennedy School, 2015 REFLECTION QUESTIONS 1. What do you most hope to be able to learn in this course? 2. What do you think your greatest learning challenges are? 3. How do you think working on your organizing project can help you learn? 4. What can you do to facilitate your own learning? 9 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 Organizing Notes What Is Public Narrative? Week 2 The questions of what am I called to do? what is my community called to do?, and what are we called to do now? Are at least as old as Moses’ conversation with God at the burning bush. Why me? asks Moses, when called to free his people. And, who – or what – is calling me? Why these people? Who are they anyway? And why here, now, in this place? Practicing leadership – enabling others to achieve purpose in the face of uncertainty – requires engaging the heart, the head, and the hands: motivation, strategy, and action. Public narrative can be used to access the emotional resources needed to respond mindfully by mobilizing hope over fear, empathy over alienation, and self-worth over self-doubt. Leaders learn how to tell a “story of self” that can communicate the values that explain why they have been called to lead; a “story of us” that brings alive values their community shares; and a “story of now” of the urgent challenge to those values that requires action. This articulation of the relationship of self, other, and action is also at the core of our moral traditions. As Rabbi Hillel, the 1st Century Jerusalem sage put it, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am for myself alone, what am I? If not now, when?” Narrative is the discursive process through which individuals, communities, and nations make choices, construct identity, and inspire action. Because we use narrative to engage the “head” and the “heart,” it both instructs and inspires teaching us not only how we ought to act, but motivating us to act - and thus engaging the “hands” as well. I first asked myself these questions in 1964, while I was completing my third year at Harvard College. I had become active in the civil rights movement and volunteered for the Mississippi Summer Project. In Mississippi, I found the calling I would pursue for the next 28 years – organizing migrant farm workers, community organizations, trade unions, and electoral politics. 10 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 In 1991, in order to deepen my understanding of my work, I returned to Harvard, completed my undergraduate degree, Class of 1964-92, an MPA in 1993, and a Ph.D. in sociology in 2000. When I joined the Kennedy School faculty, I discovered a second calling as a teacher, scholar, and advocate. And I found myself moved by values rooted in the same life experience that had set me on my first path: the work of my parents as rabbi and teacher; our experience of the Holocaust, and growing up with Passover Seders, challenged by the teaching that the journey from slavery to freedom passes from one generation to the next; and the critical eyes and the hopeful hearts of young people. In recent years, scholars have taken up the study of narrative across a wide range of disciplines including psychology, sociology, political science, philosophy, legal studies, theology, literary studies, and the arts. Professions engaged in narrative practice include the military, the ministry, the law, politics, business, and the arts. This approach builds on our natural understanding of narrative, its analysis across the disciplines, and its practice across the professions. Nineyears ago, convinced that a major challenge we face as individuals, as a culture, and as a nation is to reclaim our capacity to articulate, draw courage from, and act upon public values, I designed this approach as a way to learn how we can translate our values into action. The pedagogy is rooted in the nature of public narrative: a combination of Self, Us, and Now. We model public narrative, engage in reflection on narrative, learn how to coach one another, and learn how to evaluate based on a practical and analytic understanding of what we are doing. Public narrative is not public speaking. As Jayanti Ravi, one of my students from India put it: the course teaches how to bring out the “glow” from within, rather than how to apply a “gloss” from without. Cognition, Motivation and Action: Why, How and What: Heart, Head, & Hands Psychologist Jerome Bruner argues that we interpret the world in analytic and narrative modes.13 Cognitively mapping the world, we identify patterns, discern connections, test 13 Jerome Bruner, (1986), “Two Modes of Thought”, Chapter 2 in Actual Minds, Possible Worlds (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, p.11 – 25. 11 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 relationships, and hypothesize empirical claims – the domain of analysis. But we also map the world affectively, coding experiences, objects, and symbols as good or bad for us, fearful or safe, hopeful or depressing, etc. When we consider purposeful action, we ask ourselves two questions: why and how. Analysis helps answer the how question – how do we use resources efficiently to detect opportunities, compare costs, etc. But to answer the why question – why does this matter, why do we care, why do we value one goal over another – we turn to narrative. The why question in not why we think we ought to act, but, rather why we do act, what moves us to act, our motivation, our values. Or, as St. Augustine put it, the difference between “knowing” the good as an ought and “loving the good” as a source of motivation.14 It takes engagement of both the head and the heart to move the hands in a purposeful way, the domain of action. TWO WAYS OF KNOWING Values, Motivation and Action 14 St. Augustine 12 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 To understand motivation – that which inspires action – consider the word emotion and their shared root word, motor –to move. Psychologists argue that information provided by our emotions, which we experience as feelings, is partly physiological, as when our respiration changes or our body temperature alters; partly behavioral, as when we are moved to advance or to flee, to stand up or to sit down; and partly cognitive since we can describe what we feel as fear, love, desire, or joy. We also experience our values through our emotions. Our emotions provide us with vital information about how to live our lives, not in contrast to reasoned deliberation, but more as a precondition for it.15 Moral philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues that because we experience value through emotion, trying to make moral choices without emotional information is futile.16 She supports her argument with research on people afflicted with lesions on the amygdale, a part of the brain central to our emotions. When faced with decisions, they can come up with one option after another, but cannot decide because decisions ultimately are based on judgments of value. And if we cannot experience emotion, we cannot experience values that orient us to the choices we must make. Some emotions inhibit mindful action in response to challenges while others facilitate it. Exploring the relationship between emotion and purposeful action, political scientist George Marcus points to two of our neurophysiologic systems – surveillance and disposition. 17 Our surveillance system compares what we expect to see with what we do see, tracking anomalies which, when observed, translate into anxiety. Without this emotional cue, Marcus argues, we simply operate out of habit. When we do feel anxiety, it is a way of saying to ourselves, “Hey! Pay attention! There’s a bear in the doorway!” The big question is what we do with that anxiety. And the problem is that we are hard wired to react to anxiety with fear: we run away, we strike out, or we freeze, hoping “it” won’t notice us. When we lived in isolated bands roaming the countryside this reaction may have been quite constructive. On the other hand, when we began to form larger communities, we began to find ways to counter this fear ‘reaction’ with a far more purposeful and agentic “response.” Chief among these ways is the use of stories because stories 15 G. E. Marcus, (2002), The Sentimental Citizen. (University Park, PA, Penn State University Press). Martha Nussbaum, (2001), Upheavals of Thought: The intelligence of emotions. (New York, Cambridge University Press). 17 G. E. Marcus, (2002), The Sentimental Citizen. (University Park, PA, Penn State University Press). 16 13 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 are built around moments of challenge, and because we can identify with the protagonist of a story, we can feel what he or she feels, experiencing their sources of hope over fear, so that they become a resource for us in responding with hope over fear. If we are hopeful, our curiosity is more likely to be triggered, leading to exploration that can yield learning and creative problem solving. So our readiness to consider action, capacity to consider it well, and ability to act on our consideration rests on how we feel. Leadership requires engaging others in purposeful action by mobilizing feelings that can enable a mindful – or agentic – “response” as opposed to a fearful “reaction”. This can produce an emotional dissonance, a tension that may only be resolved through action. Organizers call this agitation. For example, my fear of not upsetting the boss (teacher, parent, employer) because of my dependency on him or her may conflict with my sense of self-respect if the boss acts to violate it. One person may become angry enough to challenge her boss; another may “swallow her pride” and another may resist the organizer who points out the conflict. Any of these options is costly, but one may serve a person’s interests better than another. As the chart below illustrates, while inertia – the security of habitual routine – can blind us to the signs of a need for action, urgency and sometimes anger get our attention. Fear can paralyze us, driving us to rationalize inaction (freezing), run away (flight) or strike out (fight);amplified by self-doubt and isolation, we may become victims of despair. On the other hand, hope can inspire us and, in concert with self-esteem (You Can Make A Difference) and solidarity (love, empathy), can enable us to find the courage to respond mindfully. 14 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 Urgency that captures our attention creates the space for new action, but is less about time than it is about priority. The urgent need to complete a problem set due tomorrow supplants the important need to figure out what to do with the rest of life. The urgent need to attend to a critically ill family member supplants the important need to attend the next business meeting (or ought to?). The urgent need to devote the day turning out voters for a critical election supplants the important need to review the family budget. Commitment and concentration of energy are required to launch anything new, and creating a sense of urgency is often the way to get the focused commitment that is required. What about inertia’s first cousin, apathy? One way to counter apathy is with anger – not rage, but outrage and indignation with injustice. Constructive anger grows out of experiencing the difference between what ought to be and what is – the way we feel when our moral order has been violated.18 Sociologist Bill Gamson describes this as using an "injustice frame" to counter a "legitimacy frame."19 As scholars of “moral economy” have taught us, people rarely mobilize to protest inequality as such, but they do mobilize to protest “unjust” inequality.20 In other words, 18 Anger as contrast of is and ought. W. A. Gamson, (1992), Talking Politics. (New York, Cambridge University Press). 20 Scott (1976) 19 15 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 our values, moral traditions, and sense of personal dignity can function as critical sources of the motivation to act. Where can we find the courage to act in spite of fear? Trying to eliminate that to which we react fearfully is a fool’s errand because it locates the source of our fear outside ourselves, rather than within our own hearts. Trying to make ourselves “fearless” is counterproductive if it means acting more out of “nerve than brain.” Leaders can “inoculate” by warning others that the opposition will threaten them with this and woo them with that. The fact that these behaviors are expected reveals the opposition as more predictable and thus less to be feared. But in reality, it is the choice to act in spite of fear that is the meaning of courage. And of the emotions that help us find courage, perhaps most important is hope. Where do we go to get some hope? One source of hope is the experience of “credible solutions,” reports not only of success elsewhere, but direct experience of small successes and small victories. Another important source of hope for many is in faith traditions, spiritual beliefs, cultural traditions, and moral understandings. Many of the great social movements – Gandhi, Civil Rights, and Solidarity – drew strength from religious traditions, and much of today's organizing occurs in faith communities. Relationships offer another source of hope. We all know people who inspire hopefulness just by being around them. “Charisma” can be seen as the capacity to inspire hope in others, inspiring others to believe in themselves. Psychologists who have begun to explore the role of “positive emotions” give particular attention to the “psychology of hope.”21 More philosophically, Moses Maimonides, the Jewish scholar of the 12th Century, argued that hope is belief in the “plausibility of the possible” as opposed to the “necessity of the probable.”22 While it is always “probable” that Goliath will win, it is also true that sometimes David wins, a sense of the “possible” that we experience in our own lives as well. Hope emerges from this sense of possibility, freeing us from the shackles of probability. Leaders counter self-doubt by attending to the self-efficacy of others, creating the sense that you can make a difference, or YCMAD. One way to inspire this sentiment is to frame action in terms of what people can do, not what they can’t do. If an organizer designs a plan calling for 21 22 Martin E.P. Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, (2000), “Positive Psychology: An Introduction”, American Psychologist. Maimonides. 16 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 each new volunteer to recruit 100 people and provides no leads, training, or coaching, she or he will only create deeper feelings of self-doubt. Recognition based on real accomplishment, not empty flattery, can help, meaning there is no real recognition without accountability. Accountability does not show lack of trust, but is evidence that what one is doing really matters. Finally, leaders can counter feelings of isolation with the experience of belovedness or solidarity. This is the role of mass meetings, celebration, singing, common dress, and shared language. The way we feel about things, however, may have little to do with the present, but rather may be a legacy of lessons learned long ago. Suppose that, as a four-year-old, you are playing on a swing-set at the park when a bigger kid tries to kick you off. You run to your parent for help, but your parent laughs it off. In that moment you are angry and embarrassed, convinced that your parent doesn’t care. You now have learned the lesson that counting on others is a bad idea. As an adult, evaluating what to do about a pay cut, your past experience will make it unlikely that you will join other workers to protest. You fear counting on others, and you may even tell yourself you deserved that pay cut. If you are still in the grips of that fear when an organizer comes along and tells you that, with a union, you could keep the employer from cutting your pay, you will see that organizer as a threat, her claims suspect, and her proposals hopeless. So exercising leadership often requires engaging in an emotional dialogue, drawing on one set of emotions (or values) which are grounded in one set of experiences, in order to counter another set of emotions (or values), grounded in different experiences – a dialogue of the heart. This dialogue of the heart, far from being irrational, can restore choices that have been abandoned in despair. The Power of Story The discursive form through which we translate values into action is story. A story is crafted of just three elements: plot, character, and moral. The effect depends on the setting: who tells the story, who listens, where they are, why they are there, and when. NARRATIVE STRUCTURE 17 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 Plot A plot engages us, captures our interest, and makes us pay attention. “I got up this morning, had breakfast, and came to school.” Is that a plot? Why? Why not? How about: “I was having breakfast this morning when I heard a loud screeching coming from the roof. At that very moment I looked outside to where my car was parked, but it was gone!!!” Now what’s going on? What’s the difference? A story begins. An actor is moving toward a desired goal. But then some kind of challenge appears. The plan is suddenly up in the air. The actor must figure out what to do. This is when we get interested. We want to find out what happens. Why do we care? Dealing with the unexpected – small and large – defines the texture of our lives. No more tickets at the movie theater. You’re about to lose your job. Your marriage is on the verge of break-up. We are constantly faced with the unexpected, and what we’re going to do. And what is the source of the greatest uncertainty around us? Other people. The subject of most stories is about how to interact with other people. As human beings we make choices in the present, based on remembering the past and imagining the future. This is what it means to be an agent. But when we act out of habit, we don’t choose; we just follow the routine. It is only when the routines break down, when the guidelines are unclear, when no one can tell us what to do, that we make real choices and 18 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 become the creators of our own lives, communities, and futures. Then we become the agents of our own fate. These moments can be as frightening as they are exhilarating. A plot consists of just three elements: a challenge, a choice, and an outcome. Attending to plot is how we learn to deal with the unpredictable. Researchers report that most of the time that parents spend with young children is in story telling – stories of the family, the child’s stories, stories of the neighbors. Bruner describes this as agency training: the way we learn how to process choices in the face of uncertainty. And because our curiosity about the unexpected is infinite, we invest billions of dollars and countless hours in films, literature and sports events – not to mention religious practices, cultural activities, and national celebrations. Character Although a story requires a plot, it only works if we can identify with a character. Through our empathetic identification with a protagonist, we experience the emotional content of the story. That is how we learn what the story has to teach to our hearts, not only our heads. As Aristotle wrote of Greek tragedy, this is how the protagonist’s experience can touch us and, perhaps, open our eyes.23 Arguments persuade with evidence, logic, and data. Stories persuade by this empathetic identification. Have you ever been to movie where you couldn’t identify with any of the characters? It’s boring. Sometimes we identify with protagonists that are only vaguely “like us” – like the road runner (if not the coyote) in the cartoons. Other times we identify with protagonists that are very much like us – as in stories about friends, relatives, neighbors. Sometimes the protagonists of a story are us, as when we find ourselves in the midst of an unfolding story, in which we are the authors of the outcome. Moral Stories teach. We’ve all heard the ending – “and that is the moral of the story.” Have you ever been at a party where someone starts telling a story and they go on...and on...and on...? Someone may say (or want to say), “Get to the point!” We deploy stories to make a point, and to evoke a response. 23 Aristotle, The Poetics. 19 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 The moral of a successful story is emotionally experienced understanding, not only conceptual understanding, and a lesson of the heart, not only the head. When stated only conceptually, many a moral becomes a banality. Saying “haste makes waste” does not communicate the emotional experience of losing it all because we moved too quickly – but it can remind of that feeling, learned through a story. Nor can we expect morals to provide detailed tactical information. We do not retell the story of David and Goliath because it teaches us how to use a slingshot. What the story teaches is that a “little guy” – with courage, resourcefulness, and imagination – can beat a “big guy,” especially one with Goliath’s arrogance. We feel David’s anger, courage, and resourcefulness and feel hopeful for our own lives because he is victorious. Stories thus teach how to manage our emotions, not repress them, so we can act with agency to face our own challenges. Stories teach us how to act in the “right” way. They are not simply examples and illustrations. When they are well told, we experience the point, and we feel hope. It is that experience, not the words as such, that can move us to action. Because sometimes that is the point – we have to act. Setting Stories are told. They are not a disembodied string of words, images, and phrases. They are not messages, sound bites, or brands – although these rhetorical fragments may reference a story. Storytelling is fundamentally relational. As we listen, we evaluate the story, and we find it more or less easy to enter, depending on the storyteller. Is it his or her story? We hear it one way. Is it the story of a friend, a colleague, or a family member? We hear it another way. Is it a story without time, place, or specificity? We step back. Is it a story we share, perhaps a Bible story? Perhaps we draw closer to one another. Storytelling is how we interact with each other about values; how we share experiences with each other, counsel each other, comfort each other, and inspire each other to action. Public Narrative: Self, Us, Now. Leadership, especially leadership on behalf of social change, often requires telling a new public story, or adapting an old one: a story of self, a story of us, and a story of now. A story of 20 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 self, communicates the values that are calling you to act. A story of us communicates values shared by those whom you hope to motivate to act. And a story of now communicates the urgent challenge to those values that demands action now. Participating in a social action not only often involves a rearticulation of one’s story of self, us, and now, but marks an entry into a world of uncertainty so daunting that access to sources of hope is essential. To illustrate, I’ll draw examples from the first seven minutes of Sen. Barack Obama’s speech to the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. Story of Self Telling one’s story of self is a way to share the values that define who you are -- not as abstract principles, but as lived experience. We construct stories of self around choice points – moments when we faced a challenge, made a choice, experienced an outcome, and learned a moral. We communicate values that motivate us by selecting from among those choice points, and recounting what happened. Because story telling is a social transaction, we engage our listener’s memories as well as our own as we learn to adapt our story of self in response to feedback so the communication is successful. Similarly, like the response to the Yiddish riddle 21 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 that asks who discovered water: “I don’t know, but it wasn’t a fish.” The other person often can “connect the dots” that we may not have connected because we are so within our own story that we have not learned to articulate them. We construct our identity, in other words, as our story. What is utterly unique about each of is not a combination of the categories (race, gender, class, profession, marital status) that include us, but rather, our journey, our way through life, our personal text from which each of us can teach. A story is like a poem. It moves not by how long it is, nor how eloquent or complicated. It moves by offering an experience or moment through which we grasp the feeling or insight the poet communicates. The more specific the details we choose to recount, the more we can move our listeners, the more powerfully we can articulate our values, what moral philosopher Charles Taylor calls our “moral sources.” 24 Like a poem, a story can open a portal to the transcendent. Telling about a story is different from telling a story. When we tell a story we enable the listener to enter its time and place with us, see what we see, hear what we hear, feel what we feel. An actor friend once told me the key was to speak entirely in the present tense and avoid using the word “and”: I step into the room. It is dark. I hear a sound. Etc. Some of us may think our personal stories don’t matter, that others won’t care, or that we should talk about ourselves so much. On the contrary, if we do public work we have a responsibility to give a public account of ourselves - where we came from, why we do what we do, and where we think we’re going. In a role of public leadership, we really don’t have a choice about telling our story of self. If we don’t author our story, others will – and they may tell our story in ways that we may not like. Not because they are malevolent, but because others try to make sense of who by drawing on their experience of people whom they consider to be like us. Aristotle argued that rhetoric has three components - logos, pathos, and ethos – this is ethos.25 The logos is the logic of the argument. The pathos is the feeling the argument evokes. The ethos is the credibility of the person who makes the argument. – their story of self. Social movements are often the “crucibles” within which participants learn to tell new stories of self as we interact with other participants. Stories of self can be challenging because 24 25 Charles Taylor, (1989) Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). Aristotle, The Rhetoric. 22 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 participation in social change is often prompted by a “prophetic” combination of criticality and hope. In personal terms this means that most participants have stories both of the world’s pain and the world’s hope. And if we haven’t talked about our stories of pain very much, it can take a while to learn to manage it. But if others try to make sense of why we are doing what we are doing – and we leave this piece out – our account will lack authenticity, raising questions about the rest of the story. In the early days of the women’s movement, people participated in “consciousness raising” group conversations which mediated changes in their stories of self, who they were, as a woman. Stories of pain could be shared, but so could stories of hope. In the civil rights movement, Blacks living in the Deep South who feared claiming the right to vote, had to encourage one another to find the courage to make the claim – which, once made, began to alter how they thought of themselves, how they could interact with their children, as well as with white people, and each other. In Sen. Obama’s “story of self” he recounts three key choice points: his grandfather’s decision to send his son to America to study, his parent’s “improbable” decision to marry, and his parent’s decision to name him Barack, blessing, an expression of faith in a tolerant and generous America. Each choice communicates courage, hope, and caring. He tells us nothing of his resume, preferring to introduce himself by telling us where he came from, and who made him the person that he is, so that we might have an idea of where he is going. Story of Us Our stories of self, overlap with our stories of us. And it is likely that we tell more stories of us than any other kind of story. We participate in many us’s, some of them are long term, always being renewed by the telling of stories of self, and some of them over in a moment, flickering into being as the result of someone’s articulation of the shared experience we are having at that moment. And whenever we tell stories of these shared moments – funny stories, sad stories, celebratory stories, regretful stories – the experience with share with others of recalling these moments brings the values at the core of the meaning they hold for us alive. A story of us, then, is experiential not categorical. In other words it is not about any of the usual identity markers, but, rather, the experience of sharing values with others “in the room”. A story of “us” not only articulates the values of our community; it can also distinguish our community 23 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 from another, thus reducing uncertainty about what to expect from those with whom we interact. Social scientists often describe a “story of us” as a collective identity.26 Our cultures are repositories of stories. Stories about challenges we have faced, how we stood up to them, and how we survived are woven into the fabric of our political culture, faith traditions, etc. We tell these stories again and again in the form of folk sayings, songs, religious practice, and celebrations (e.g., Easter, Passover, 4th of July). And like individual stories, stories of us can inspire, teach, offer hope, advise caution, etc. We also weave new stories from old ones. The Exodus story, for example, served the Puritans when they colonized North America, but it also served Southern blacks claiming their civil rights in the freedom movement. For a collection of people to become an “us” requires a story teller, an interpreter of shared experience In a workplace, for example, people who work beside one another but interact little, don’t linger after work, don’t arrive early, and don’t eat together never develop a story of us. In a social movement, the interpretation of the movement’s new experience is a critical leadership function. And, like the story of self, it is built from the choices points – the founding, the choices made, the challenges faced, the outcomes, the lessons it learned. In Sen. Obama’s speech, he moves into his “story of us” when he declares, “My story is part of the American story”, and proceeds to lift of values of the American he shares with his listeners – the people in the room, the people watching on television, the people who will read about it the next day. And he begins by going back to the beginning, to choices made by the founders to begin this nation, a beginning that he locates in the Declaration of Independence, a repository of the value of equality, in particular. He then cites a series of moments that evoke values shared by his audience. Story of Now A story of now articulates an urgent challenge – or threat - to the values that we share that demands action now. What choice must we make? What is at risk? And where’s the hope? 26 Alasdair Macintyre, “The Virtues, the Unity of a Human Life, and the Concept of a Tradition” in Memory, Identity, and Community: the Idea of Narrative in the Human Sciences”, edited by Lewis P. Hinchman and Sandra K. Hinchman, State University of New York, 2001, p. 241 – 263; Margaret Somers, (1992). “Narrativity, narrative identity, and social action: Rethinking English Working Class Formation” in Social Science History 16: 591-629; Margaret Somers. (1994). “The narrative constitution of identity: A relational and network approach.” Theory and Society 23: 605-649. 24 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 In a story of now, we are the protagonists and it is our choices that shape the outcome. We draw on our “moral sources” to find the courage, hope, empathy perhaps to respond. A most powerful articulation of a story of now was Dr. King’s talk delivered in Washington DC on August 23, 1963, often recalled as the “I have a dream” speech. People often forget that what preceded the dream was a nightmare: the consequence of white America’s failure to make good on its promissory note to African Americans. King argued the moment was possessed of the “fierce urgency of now” because this debt could no longer be postponed.27 If we did not act, the nightmare would only grow worse – for all of us - never to become the dream. In a story of now, story and strategy overlap because a key element in hope is a strategy – a credible vision of how to get from here to there. The “choice” offered cannot be something like “we must all choose to be better people” or “we must all choose to do any one of this list of 53 things” (which makes each of the trivial). A meaningful choice is more like “we all must all choose – do we commit to boycotting the busses until they desegregate or not?” Hope is specific, not abstract. What’s the vision? When God inspires the Israelites in Exodus, he doesn’t offer a vague hope of “better days”, but describes a land “flowing with milk and honey” 28 and what must be done to get there. A vision of hope can unfold a chapter at a time. It can begin by getting that number of people to show up at a meeting that you committed to do. You can win a “small” victory that shows change is possible. A small victory can become a source of hope if it is interpreted as part of a greater vision. In churches, when people have a “new story” to tell about themselves, it is often in the form of “testimony” – a person sharing an account of moving from despair to hope, the significance of the experience strengthened by the telling of it. Hope is not to be found in lying about the facts, but in the meaning we give to the facts. Shakespeare’s King Henry V stirs hope in his men’s hearts by offering them a different view of themselves. No longer are they a few bedraggled soldiers led by a young and inexperienced king in an obscure corner of France who is about to be wiped out by an overwhelming force. Now they are a “happy few,” united with their king in solidarity, holding an opportunity to grasp immortality in their hands, to become legends in their own time, a legacy for their children and 27 Dr. Martin Luther King, “I Have a Dream”, Washington DC, August 28, 1963 28 The Bible, Exodus 3:9. 25 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 grandchildren.29 This is their time! The story of now is that moment in which story (why) and strategy (how) overlap and in which, as poet Seamus Heaney writes, “Justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme.”30 And for the claim to be credible, the action must begin right here, right now, in this room, with action each one of us can take. It’s the story of a credible strategy, with an account of how -- starting with who and where we are, and how we can, step by step, get to where we want to go. Our action can call forth the actions of others, and their actions can call others, and together these actions can carry the day. It’s like the old protest song Pete Seeger used to sing: “One man’s hands can’t tear a prison down. Two men’s hands can’t tear a prison down. But if two and two and fifty make a million, We’ll see that day come round. We’ll see that day come round.”31 Sen. Obama moves to his “story of now” with the phrase, “There is more work left to do.” After we have shared in the experience of values we identify with America at its best, he confronts us with the fact that they are not realized in practice. He then tells stories of specific people in specific places with specific problems. As we identify with each of them, our empathy reminds of pain we have felt in our own lives. But, he also reminds us, all this could change. And we know it could change. And it could change because we have a way to make the change, if we choose to take it. And that way is to support the election of Sen. John Kerry. Although that last part didn’t work out, the point is that he concluded his story of now with a very specific choice he calls upon us to make. Through public narrative leaders – and participants – can move to action by mobilizing sources of motivation, constructing new shared individual and collective identities, and finding the courage to act. 29 William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act IV, Scene 3. Seamus Heaney, (1991), “The Cure at Troy”, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux 31 Seeger, Pete, (1964), Fall River Music, Inc. 30 26 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 Celebrations We do much of our storytelling in celebrations. A celebration is not a party. It is a way that members of a community come together to honor who they are, what they have done, and where they are going -- often symbolically. Celebrations may take place at times of sadness, as well as times of great joy. Celebrations provide rituals that allow us to join in enacting a vision of our community -- at least in our hearts. Institutions that retain their vitality are rich in celebrations. In the Church, for example, Mass is "celebrated." Harvard's annual celebration is called Graduation and lasts an entire week. Storytelling is at its most powerful at beginnings -- for individuals, their childhood; for groups, their formation; for movements, their launching; and for nations, their founding. Celebrations are a way we interpret important events, recognize important contributions, acknowledge a common identity, and deepen our sense of community. The way that we interpret these moments begins to establish norms, create expectations, and shape patterns of behavior, which then influence all subsequent development. And we draw on them again and again. Nations institutionalize their founding story as a renewable source of guidance and inspiration. Most faith traditions enact a weekly retelling of their story of redemption, usually rooted in their founding. Well-told stories help turn moments of great crises into moments of “new beginnings.” Conclusion Narrative allows us to communicate the values that motivate the choices that we make. . Narrative is not talking “about” values; rather narrative embodies and communicates values. And it is through the shared experience of our values that we can engage with others, motivate one another to act, and find the courage to take risks, explore possibility and face the challenges we must face. 27 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 Organizing Notes People, Power & Change Week 3 Introduction The first question an organizer asks is not “what is my issue” but “who are my people”? Identify the people whom you hope to organize, your constituency. What are their values, their interests their resources, and, in particular, their challenges? Why might they want or need to organize? Do they live in a particular neighborhood? Do they do a certain kind of work? Do they share particular concerns such as parents, elders, young people? Do they share common values, such as preserving the environment? Why do they care? How do you know? Have you talked with them? Although the source of your constituency’s concern may be local, regional, national or even global, because all organizing is locally rooted, sometimes we link organized constituencies together in coordinated campaigns. Sometimes people in one place, like South Africa during the struggle against Apartheid, may organize in one way (strikes, civil disobedience) while supporters of that struggle around the world may organize in other way (boycotts, political pressure, etc) The second question an organizer asks is what kind of change do they need? What problems do they face? What challenges? Is their neighborhood deteriorating? Are their wages not keeping pace with the cost of living? Are their young people victims of official or unofficial gun violence? Are they morally outraged by the trafficking of young women? Is their children’s future at risk due to climate change? How would their world look if the problem were solved? Why hasn’t it been solved? What would it take to solve the problem? The third question an organizer asks is not “how can I solve their problem for them” but “how can I enable them to work together to turn the resources they have into the power they need to achieve the change they need? 28 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 You will need to map the power to begin finding answers to these questions: in addition to your constituency, what other actions may have a stake in the problem? What are their interests and resources? Who is responsible for the problem? Who holds the resources that might solve it? Whose interests might oppose solving it? Whose interests might be allied? Whose interests might be competitive? Whose interests might be in collaboration? And whose resources are relevant even if their interests are not clear: media, courts, the public, etc. Once you’ve mapped the power, based on your analysis of the change needed, decide on a strategic goal (specific, visible, plausible) on which to focus your effort; e.g., desegregating the busses, passing a local minimum wage ordinance, achieving union recognition, changing hiring practices, changing school text books, closing the local planned parenthood clinic, creating a new course, reallocating funding, etc. A strategic goal not only allows you to focus your efforts, but will also allow your constituency to leverage its resources, to build its capacity, and to motivate participation. Your “mountain top” or ultimate goal may be to stop gun violence in America, for example, but, given your circumstances, what more limited but strategic goal can you focus on that can contribute to building the power you will need to achieve you ultimate goal? How can your constituency create the power it will need to achieve this strategic goal? Could they collaborate to combine their resources to create enough “power with” each other to solve the problem: like forming a cooperative day care or organizing a credit union? Or does someone else have “power over” your constituency because they hold resources needed to solve the problem: a property owner, a bank, a public official, an employer. Could your constituency collaborate to use their own resources in ways to affect that other person’s interests enough to give them an interest in using their resources the way your constituency wants: like raising wages, passing a law, cleaning up their pollution, reducing the rent? This is what we call a “theory of change” and is what drives setting a goal, leading a campaign, and building an organization. 29 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 In this class you will organize a campaign, the real work of organizing is within one’s constituency. As Chart 1 shows, organizing is about enabling a constituency to develop the power it needs to assert its interests effectively, not only now, but in the future. That’s how power is shifted. Organizers begin by building a foundation within their constituency. This usually requires many one on one meetings to learn people’s concerns, discern the sources of the real problems, figure out the power dynamics, and identify, recruit and develop the leadership of a campaign. A campaign is a process through which your constituency can organize itself to create the power it needs to accomplish goals that will achieve the change they need. And running their campaign into an organization gives them access to the capacity to build on their successes into the future. Chart #1 CAMPAIGN Foundation Organization CONSTITUENCY Although you answer these questions in dialogue with your constituency, their leadership, and others, you need to bring an initial road map of where you want to go and how you imagine getting there as a working hypothesis t so your journey can begin. 30 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 PEOPLE Who are the Actors? Constituency Organizers transform a community into a constituency. A community shares values or interests. A constituency is a community organized to use its resources to act on those interests (from the Latin for standing together). Clients (from the Latin for “one who leans on another”) have an interest in services others provide. Customers (a term derived from trade) have an interest in a good a seller can provide in exchange for a cash resource. Constituents are the heart of organizations that serve them. Clients and Customers are usually external to these organizations. Constituents can become "members” of the organization just as citizens become “members” of a democracy. Voters are constituents of an elected official. Workers employed by particular employers may be constituents of a union (why wouldn't they be constituents of their employer?). People with environmental concerns may become the constituents of environmental organizations. Economist Albert Hirschman described three alternative responses to the need for change in a system: exit, voice, and loyalty. Constituents can influence the system through voice: making themselves heard through internal means. Customers and clients can only assert influence through exit, taking their resources elsewhere. 32 The organizers job is to turn a community – people who share common values or interests – into a constituency – people who can act on behalf of those values or interests. Organizers assume that people are not mere “objects” of “social forces” that “cause” them to do things, but are, in fact, “agents” of change or “actors.” As actors we remember, imagine, choose, and reflect on choices. Although "social forces" influence our choices, our choices also shape "social forces." Because we are not atomized individuals, floating in space, we exercise agency interdependently with others whose decisions affect our own. Can we understand the "drug problem", for example, without taking into consideration the myriad dealers, smugglers, and producers who mobilize to frustrate every attempt to solve it? Leadership 32 Albert Hirschman, (1970), Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, (Cambridge, Harvard University Press), p.16. 31 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 Although your constituency is the focus of your work, your goal as an organizer is identify, recruit and develop leadership from within that constituency – initially, a leadership team – who will organize everyone else. Their work, like your own, is to “accept responsibility for enabling others to achieve purpose in the face of uncertainty.” They facilitate the work members of their constituency must do to achieve their goals, represent their constituency to others, and are accountable to their constituency. Leaders of large – or small - bureaucratic organizations may have little relationship with clients or customers. Leaders of civic associations, on the other hand, can only earn leadership through relationships with their constituents - club officers, union stewards, members of a parish council, etc. Full time or part time people who do the day-to-day work of the organization may also serve as leaders, whether volunteer or paid, even if not drawn from the constituency if they are accountable to it -- full time local union presidents, chairs of mission committees, and the people who pass out leaflets on behalf of a candidate. Most organizations have a governing “body” that decides policy, chooses staff, and may or may not be involved in day-to-day activities. In bureaucratic organizations, the governing body may be self-selected, selected by outside groups, or by donors or investors - but rarely include leaders drawn from among their clients. You work with the leadership team you recruit by coaching them in the five organizing practices you are learning: relationship building, storytelling, structuring, strategizing, and action. Developing their leadership is not only the way you, as an organizer, can “get to scale.” It is how you can create new capacity for action – power – within your constituency. This is a critical difference between organizing and other forms of problem solving. To the extent powerlessness is responsible for the challenges your constituents face, developing the leadership who can mobilize others can create power where there had been none - thus getting at a root cause of the problem that needs to be solved. Opposition In pursuing their interests, constituents may find themselves in conflict with interests of other individuals or organizations. An employers’ interest in maximizing profit, for example, may conflict with an employees' interest in earning a living wage. A tobacco company's interests my conflict not only with those of anti-smoking groups, but of the public in general. A street gang's interests may conflict with those of a church youth group. The interests of a Republican Congressional candidate conflict with those of the Democratic candidate in the same district. At 32 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 times, however, opposition may not be immediately obvious, emerging clearly only in the course of a campaign. Supporters People whose interests are not directly or obviously affected may find it to be in their interest to back an organization’s work financially, politically, voluntarily, etc. Although they may not be part of the constituency, they may sit on governing boards. For example, Church organizations and foundations provided a great deal of support for the civil rights movement. Competitors and Collaborators These are individuals or organizations with which we may share some interests, but not others. They may target the same constituency, the same sources of support, or face the same opposition. Two unions trying to organize the same workforce may compete or collaborate. Two community groups trying to serve the same constituency may compete or collaborate in their fundraising. Chart #2: Map of Actors What are their Values, Interests, and Resources? Why would the people whom you hope to organize want to organize? What do they value? What are their interests? Are those values or interests at risk ? How? The desire to create change most often comes as a response to some form of a present that has been made “intolerable”, not simply for the sake of making change. Your reasons for thinking they “ought” to organize might not be their reasons. How do you know? If a problem they are facing goes 33 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 unaddressed, what will that look like? And how would the world look differently if it were addressed? You can only find answers to these questions by interacting with your constituency, but you have to start with a “hypothesis.” Tools of social science, as well as past experience, can give you some idea where to look, what questions to ask, and how to get to know your constituency. One set of tools is illustrated in Chart #3: Needs, Values, and Interests. Psychologist Clayton Aldefer describes motivational dynamics at work within us as driven by existence, relational and growth needs – physical wellbeing, social wellbeing, and developmental wellbeing.33 Our needs matter, but as cultural psychologist Jerome Bruner argues, we learn to value these needs – and ways to satisfy them –in cultural settings in which we grow up and interact with others.34 And because we are purposeful creatures we translate our values into goals – or interests – on behalf of which we mobilize resources. Threats to these goals, the values that shape them or sudden opportunities to achieve them may create an urgent interest in organizing. Having learned to value education as a pathway to a good life, I may want to make sure my child gets a good one. But sharp increases in college tuition, for example, and cuts in public funds, may scuttle my plans. This might give me an interest in working with others to do something – to demand reductions in tuition, at least in public universities; to demand restoration of funds; to find scholarship alternatives. Our values shape our broad life goals and our interests specify outcomes we pursue to achieve those goals. We define our interests, however, which in Latin means, “to exist among,” in relation to others. Most of us have interests in many domains, some more immediate than others: family, community, work, faith cultural or recreational activities, and politics. Learning to interpret the interests of our constituents – and our own interests-- and the values that shape them -- is critical to understanding organizing. Resources matter too. What kind of resource do they have at their disposable with which they can address their interests or meet possible challenges? Do they have the resources? Do they depend on others for their resources? What kind of resources matter? Who holds them? 33 34 C. Alderfer, (1972), Existence, Relatedness and Growth. (New York, Free Press). J. Bruner 34 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 Chart #3: Needs, Values, and Interests . CHANGE So what kind of change might your organizing project aim to achieve? What will be your goal? It may be early to specify a specific outcome for your project, but what goal could you imagine your constituency organizing to pursue? If inequity in education seems to be a challenge, what might more equitable education look like, concretely? If lack of diversity on the faculty seems to be a challenge, what might a more diverse faculty actually look like? The goal of your project may not be to promise a solution to the whole problem, but it could be a step in the right direction. No one strategic goal can solve everything, but unless we choose “a” goal on which to focus our resources, energy, and imagination, we risk wasting precious resources in ways that won’t add up. This pyramid chart is one way to think about how goals may be nested: at each level of a campaign we imagine an outcome, assess resources available to achieve that outcome, and, in light of the context, figure out a way to turn those resources into the power to achieve that outcome (theory of change). Chart #4 35 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 These are some criteria to consider in deciding on a goal for your campaign: • • • • • Focuses your resources on a single strategic outcome. Builds your constituency’s resources and capacity Leverages your constituency’s strength and the weakness of the opposition. Is visible, significant, and important enough to motivate constituency engagement. Is contagious and could be emulate POWER Theories of Change As you begin to identity what the goal of your campaign might be you also have to figure out how you can make it happen: your theory of change. This is challenging because we all have assumptions about how the world works, including why we have the problems we do, what it would take to solve them, and what we can do to make it happen. Articulating a “theory of change” is a way of making these assumptions explicit so they can be examined, evaluated, and, if necessary, replaced with a more realistic set of assumptions. Your theory of change becomes the foundation of your strategy – how to turn the resources you have into the power you need to get what you want. To get at your theory of change, ask yourself why the problem you are hoping to solve hasn’t been solved already? In other words, what’s your theory of “no change”? Is it because the people who could solve the problem need more information? Do they realize it’s a problem, but don’t know how to solve it? Or do they simply have no interest in solving the problem. If they 36 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 don’t, why not? In case of the Bus Boycott, for example, was the problem a lack of awareness as to the hurt that was being caused African-Americans (and, in reality, white Americans as well) by segregation? Was it due to the fact that whites and blacks weren’t “communicating”? Was it too costly to desegregate? Or was the white community committed to using its power to keep things as they were because they wanted them that way? Because it was the “right” way to order of their society, and it was in their political interest to keep it that way. This kind of analysis does not, in itself, produce strategy, but it is the first step in figuring out what KIND of strategy you will need to change things. It is a way to surface assumptions about why things are the way they are, that may or may not be so, but that influence your thinking as to what it will take to change them. So what would it take to change things? If the folks in Montgomery thought the problem was one of “information”, perhaps they could have used their resources conduct an “awareness raising” campaign to communicate to white community just how bad segregation made the black community feel. If they thought the problem was one of of “communication” they might have tried to convene meetings with the white leadership to explain why everyone would be better off without segregation. But they concluded it was a power problem. Segregation persisted because the white community believed in it and had the power to make it so. It would only change if it became more costly to the interests of the white community – or those who held power within the white community – to stay the course than to change. Perhaps losing enough money would give them an interest in change. Perhaps having to pay court fines? Or perhaps it would take going to jail. Based on this analysis they developed a strategy that focused on buses, and, in turn, the tactics – litigation, the boycott, the carpools – through which they could enact that strategy. The reason their strategy was an organizing strategy, however, and that it kicked off the civil rights movement in a way that Brown v. Board of Education had not, was that it was a particular kind of power strategy. Its power grew out of a commitment of the resources of almost every African-American in that community, beginning with the “feet” of the bus riders who would now use them to walk to work. So when victory was won it yielded not only a change in transportation policy but a newly empowered community, a more widely accessible form of struggle, and a whole new generation of leadership, and that is what sparked the growth of the movement. So it isn’t only power that creates change, but from whose resources that power is 37 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 created that determines who is empowered by the change. So what is power? Dr. King defined power as the “ability to achieve purpose.” “Whether it is good or bad,” he said, “depends on the purpose.” In Spanish the word for power is simply poder - to be able to, to have the capacity to. So if power simply describes capacity, why, as Alinsky asks, is it the “p-word” - something we don’t admit we want, acknowledge others have, or even talk about? Relational Power Richard Emerson argues that power is not a thing but a relationship.35 We all need resources to achieve our purposes. Sometimes we have access to all the resources we need, but more often than not our interests require access to the resources of another. This creates an opportunity for exchange: I can trade resources that I have so the other person can achieve their goals for the resources they have that I need to achieve my own. For example, my friend and I want to go to the movies and he has a car, but no money for gas, while I have money for gas, but no car. Based on this mutuality of interests we can influence each other to act interdependently, creating more “power with ” each other than we had singly. Bernard Loomer and Jean Baker Miller describe this as “power to,” “power with,” or interdependency.36 Mobilizing power in this way creates a whole greater than the sum of its parts. New immigrants, for example, may pool their savings in a credit union to make low interest loans available to its members -- increasing their financial power. "Power with” creates the capacity to accomplish together what we cannot accomplish alone. Chart #5: Relational Power 35 R. Emerson, (1962), "Power-Dependence Relations." American Sociological Review, 27: 31-41. B. M. Loomer and Jean Baker Miller, (1976), "Two Kinds of Power," The D.R. Sharpe Lecture on Social Ethics, October 29, 1975." Criterion 15(1): 11-29. 36 38 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 But what if four of us want to go to the movies and my friend’s car only has room for 2 passengers? We could draw straws to see who gets to go and who doesn’t, and each of those who get to go contribute half of the gas. But what if my friend decides that he has an interest not only in going to the movies, but also in making some money from the deal? It turns out that he has control over one resource, his car, that we all need, but no one of us controls the resources he needs, gas money. This imbalance of need, or dependency, gives him the leverage to exercise “power over” us by offering the two spots in the car to the highest bidders, regardless of how much the gas costs. But we still have an option, depending on how badly he wants to go to the movies. All four of us can get together and agree that we will only pay the cost of the gas and not a penny more. If he wants to go badly enough, we will have rebalanced the situation, turning it back into one of “power with.” Organizing is suited to deal with both power problems. First, a constituency may organize to create power “with” one another, through interdependent collaboration, to achieve the change they want; e.g., a cooperative day care, a car pool, a credit union. Second, a constituency may organize to challenge “power” over them held by other actors; e.g., forming a union, conducting an issue campaign, running an election. Organizing uniquely not only “solves the problem” but enables a constituency to acquire power it didn’t have before. And this is what gets at the source of the problem: a powerless constituency. As Gandhi showed, the fact power is interdependent means that its exercise depends on the “cooperation” –or compliance - of the very people who are being taken advantage of. And they can “stop the machine” simply by refusing to cooperate. 39 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 Since power is relational you can use the four questions below to track it down: Two Kinds of Power: Collaboration and Claims Making Both kinds of power – power with and power over – are at work in organizing. Members of our constituency can create the power to achieve a shared goal by collaborating to use their resources interdependently in ways they had not done befor: e.g. cooperative childcare, and credit unions. On the other hand, where real conflicts of interest exist, organizing requires a “claims making” strategy, mobilizing constituency resources to alter relationships of dependency and domination. If workers combine their resources in a union they may be able to balance their individual dependency on their employer with his dependency on their labor as a whole. In this way dependent “power over” relationship can become interdependent “power to” relationship. But creating the power to successfully challenge “power over” may require some “power to” first. Many unions, for example, began with death benefit societies, sickness funds, and credit unions. On the other hand, efforts that began to create “power with” may turn out to be actually challenging “power over” as conflicts of interest that were not previously apparent surface. The strongest opposition to a recent effort to create a community credit union in New York came from actors no one considered—the loan sharks and their political allies. Three Faces of Power 40 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 Why are conflicts of interest not always apparent? As John Gaventa argues power operates on multiple levels, illustrated in Chart #6 below. 37 We can detect the first “face” of power— the visible face—by observing who wins among decision makers faced with choices as to how to allocate resources. Attend a board meeting, city council meeting, legislative session, or board meeting and you’ll see one side win and another side lose, showing who’s got the power. But there’s more to it than that. Who decides what gets on the agenda to be decided? And who decides who sits at the table making decisions? Lukes calls deciding what’s on the agenda and who sits at the table the second “face” of power. This can be observed when there are groups clamoring to get issues on the agenda, but can’t get past the “gatekeeper.” This is the situation that African Americans faced during many years of apparent “racial harmony” before the civil rights movement. There was no lack of groups trying to bring racial issues before Congress, but these issues rarely got to the point of congressional debate because those controlling the agenda kept them off the floor. The third “face” of power is harder to detect. Sometimes the power relationships that shape our world are so deeply embedded that we “take them for granted.” Before the women’s movement, for example, few people claimed job discrimination against women was “an issue." Women’s interests were not being voted down in Congress (there were almost no women in Congress) and women’s groups were not picketing outside, unable to place their issue on the agenda. Yet women occupied subordinate positions in most spheres of public life. Were they “content” with this situation? Perhaps. But sometimes, even though people would like things to be different, they can’t imagine that they could be—enough, at least, to take the risks to make them so. To detect this face of power, Lukes says, you have to look deeper—beyond the question of who decides or who gets on the agenda to look at who benefits and who loses in the allocation of valued resources. If you then ask why the losers lose and the winners win, you may discover the power disparity at work. (This can be tricky because the winners always claim they "deserve" to win while the losers "deserve" to lose, and sometimes they convince the losers). From this perspective, take another look at your project and ask the questions: What is the source of the challenges your constituency faces? Do your constituents lack the power they need to assert their interests? Do they lack resources? Or could they be using the resources they have better? Could they use them better by collaborating with one another (power with)? Could they use them more effectively by using them to influence the interests of others whose resources they need? Did someone fail to allocate resources, as in voting down a school-funding proposal? 37 J. Gaventa, (1982), Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. (Champaign, IL, University of Illinois Press). 41 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 Were the concerns of those with similar interests kept off the agenda? Or do people just assume that this is how things are, so it is wise to make the best of themes legitimated? A couple of years ago, a student asked why so many Harvard students do public service as students, but abandon it in their professional lives. The most common explanation was that her generation just “doesn’t care.” She noticed that, in contrast to the very elaborate recruiting rituals each fall for investment banks and consulting firms, virtually no one was recruiting on campus for careers in public service. She thought this was an example of the third face of power and organized a "Careers and Social Responsibility" conference in response. Chart #6: Three Faces of Power Organizing power begins with the commitment by the first person who wants to make it happen. Without this commitment, there are no resources with which to begin. Commitment is observable as action. The work of organizers begins with their acceptance of the responsibility to challenge others to do the same. Power and Right So what about “power” and “right”? What is the relationship between the two? This is the question Thucydides wants us to consider with his account of the Melian debate. Is being “right” enough? Is insisting on one’s “rightness” always responsible? What’s the relationship between being “powerful” and being “right”? What do you think? The Rhythm of Organizing The Campaign 42 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 The rhythm of organizing is the campaign: coordinated steams of activity focused on achieving specific goals. Campaigns unfold over time with a rhythm that slowly builds a foundation, gathers gradual momentum with preliminary peaks, culminates in a climax when a campaign is won or lost, and then achieves resolution (Chart #7). Our word for campaign derives from a similar source as other words we have come across this semester -- the word for field, this time in Latin. Campaigns were conducted on fields of battle. They were concentrated, intense, had a clear beginning and end, and, usually, a winner and a loser. A campaign was an episode in a much greater undertaking, such as winning a war, but was made of a number of battles that together comprised the campaign. A campaign was not the whole nation, but an event in the life of the nation, which strengthened it or weakened it. Conducting a campaign is not the same thing as managing an ongoing program, but it is how programs are created, strengthened, or renewed. A campaign is a way to organize time – one of the most valuable resources we have. As Gersick shows, organizations have a temporal life as well as a spatial one. Work gets done according to the internal rhythm of an organization that may be more or less well “entrained” with the rhythm of events in its environment. Many people note, for example, that student groups need to get started in the first weeks of the semester or they won’t get started at all. After midsemester, the rhythm changes as people focus on finishing what they’ve begun, rather than beginning new things. Stephen Jay Gould says that time is sometimes a “cycle” and sometimes an “arrow.”38 Thinking of time as a “cycle” helps us to maintain our routines, our normal procedures, our annual budget, etc. Thinking of time as an “arrow” on the other hand focuses us on making change, on achieving specific outcomes, on focusing our efforts. A campaign is time as an “arrow.” Chart #7 38 Gould, S. J. (1987). Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and metaphor in the discovery of geological time. (Cambridge, Harvard University Press). 43 steps Organizing: People, Power, Change Peak goal Spring 2016 Peak goal Kick-off goal Foundation Time Why are Campaigns Strategic and Motivational? A campaign is a strategic and motivational way to organize action. It is strategic because it is a way to create the capacity we will need to win, building it as our campaign unfolds. Each campaign peak lifts us to another level of capacity; moving from recruiting volunteers, for example, to putting those volunteers to work, recruiting supporters. It is motivational because it enacts an unfolding story of the hope that we can achieve our objective. As it progresses, we find we can make a difference. Our work acquires the urgency of genuine deadlines. The solidarity of collaborating with others in a common cause energizes us. A campaign allows us to turn our dissatisfaction (anger) to constructive purpose. Campaigns facilitate targeting resources and energy on specific objectives, one at a time. Creating something new requires intense energy and concentration - unlike the inertia that keeps things going once they have begun. Campaigns are crucibles out of which new organizations, programs, or practices can emerge. Campaigns allow us to maximize the value of our time - our most limited resource. We can invest energy and commitment for a limited number of days, weeks or months at levels we cannot - and should not - sustain for long periods of time. As a campaign ends, we consolidate our “wins” or our “losses,” we return to “normal life," we regroup, and perhaps we undertake another campaign in the future. The “adventurous” quality of a campaign facilitates the development of relationships more quickly - and with greater intensity - than would ordinarily be the case. We more easily come to share a common “story” that we all take part in authoring The timing of a campaign is structured as an unfolding narrative or story. It begins with a foundation period (prologue), starts crisply with a kick-off (curtain goes up), builds slowly to 44 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 successive peaks (act one, act two), culminates in a final peak determining the outcome (denouement), and is resolved as we celebrate the outcome (epilogue). Our efforts generate momentum not mysteriously, but as a snowball. As we accomplish each objective we generate new resources that can be applied to achieve the subsequent greater objective. Our motivation grows as each small success persuades us that the subsequent success is achievable - and our commitment grows. The unfolding story of our campaign makes the unfolding story of our organization more credible and, thus, more achievable. Timing has to be carefully managed because a campaign can peak too quickly, exhausting everyone, and then fall into decline. Another danger is a campaign may “heat up” faster in some areas than in others - as some people burn out and others never get going. What role did timing play with DSNI? Why was Gandhi’s “salt march” a particularly good example of timing? A campaign links relational, story, strategy, and action tactics as each lays groundwork for the next. We may begin the campaign with 5 organizers, each of whom uses house meetings to recruit 15 precinct leaders (75 people), each of whom goes door to door to recruit 5 volunteers for the phone bank (375 people), each of whom contacts and commits 25 voters (9375 people). Along the way, leadership develops, signs go up, people are talked with, rallies are held, and so forth. Using the 1988 California campaign plan, we turned 300 organizers into 11,000 precinct leaders into 100,000 house signs into 25,000 Election Day volunteers into 750,000 additional voters. Although it was not enough to elect our candidate President, we created a new wave of grass roots leadership for political efforts throughout the state for the next several years. Campaigns provide an opportunity for learning by allowing for “small losses” in the early days of a campaign. As Sitkin argues, creating the space for “small losses” early on in a project offer participants the opportunity to try new things, which is essential to learning how to do them.39 And it affords the organization as a whole a chance to learn how to “get it right.” In most campaigns, we know that we will have to change the first “rap” that we write, once the “rubber hits the road” and we begin to use it. It is important to use the early phase of a campaign “mindfully” in this way so it isn’t just a preview of what we will do wrong on a large scale. As is the case with strategy, campaigns are nested. Each campaign objective can be viewed as a “mini-campaign” with its own prologue, kick-off, peaks, climax, and epilogue. The campaign also “chunks out” into distinct territories, districts, or other responsibilities for which specific individuals are responsible. A good campaign can be thought of as a symphony of multiple movements, each with an exposition, development, and recapitulation; but which 39 Sim Sitkin, (1992), "Learning Through Failure: The Strategy of Small Losses", Research in Organizational Behavior, Vol.14, (pp. 231-266). 45 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 together proceed toward a grand finale. A symphony is also constructed from the interplay of many different voices interacting in multiple ways but whose overall coordination is crucial for the success of the undertaking. If this seems an overly structured metaphor, you may prefer a jazz ensemble. What Are the Phases of a Campaign? A campaign strategically integrates relational, motivation, strategic and action tactics - as well as leadership development - in each of five phases: a foundation, kick-off, peaks, the peak, and resolution. Use Campaign Chart #3 (page 5) to look for similar dynamics in the cases we read about or in your own project. Foundation During the foundation period, the goal is to create the capacity (the “power to”) with which to launch a campaign. A foundation period may last a few days, weeks, months or years depending on the scope of the undertaking and the extent to which you start “from scratch." The foundation for the farm workers’ boycott campaign, for example, was built over a period of three years. During a foundation period, relational tactics are emphasized and typically include oneon-one meetings, house meetings, and meetings of small groups of supporters. Interpretive tactics include deliberation to clarify interests, identifying problems, thinking through how to turn problems into issues, researching the terrain, and designing a plan - as well as first formulating the story of the campaign. What kinds of action tactics are most useful for this period? (Remember, you want to build as broad a base as possible while not letting things heat up too quickly). This is the time to nail down resources, conduct a census, handle small issues (claims), deal with individual cases (collaboration), and so forth. This is a crucial period for leadership development. Initial leaders are identified and may be brought together in an “ad hoc” organizing, sponsoring, or campaign committee - a provisional leadership group with whom you can work to develop the initial stages of the campaign. Kick-Off The kick-off is the moment at which the campaign officially begins. A campaign doesn’t creep into existence, without anyone noticing... or it will fade away the same way. Setting a date for a kick-off creates the urgent focused concentration and commitment it takes to get things going. It is a deadline for initial recruiting, planning, and preparation of materials. Typically a kick-off takes the form of a big meeting or rally for which everyone with an initial interest is mobilized (relational). Leadership can be recognized there, the campaign story told, the plan ratified, and the program adopted (interpretive). In terms of action, sign-ups can be gathered, and 46 Organizing: People, Power, Change Spring 2016 commitments can be made to hold a meeting, make phone calls or pass out leaflets - and so forth. A kick-off is also a deadline for the formal delegation of leadership authority to those who will be responsible for carrying out the campaign. Short campaigns have a single kick-off. During the three years of the Grape Boycott, we had another kick-off each spring. Peaks The campaign proceeds toward reaching a series of peaks, each one building on what has gone before. By crossing the threshold of each peak, we are able to make the last burst of effort needed to break through to a higher level of capacity. In the example in the reader, we set an objective for organizer recruitment, precinct leader recruitment, voter identification, house sign distribution, Election Day organization, and total voter turnout. In the marches you read about, what were the peaks? What were the peaks of the Montgomery bus boycott? Were there peaks in the DSNI campaign? As the program unfolds, relational tactics that contribute to the peaks include recruiting, training, committee expansion, periodic “big meetings," etc. In the Pelosi campaign, we had a weekly Saturday AM rally at which new precinct leaders were recognized, voter contact results announced, and special training conducted. As to interpretation, peaks focus on development of issues and interpretation of actions and rea...
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