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How can we balance the opportunity to bring in people energized by the moment with the work of bringing in those who are not yet engaged?
This article is part of the Prospect’s series on The Future of Organizing.
The social movements of this era have brought lots of new people into organizations that aim at long-term power for change. People’s Action, which I direct, is no exception. Many of the most inspiring people in our network came to us through Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, or one of Sen. Sanders’s two presidential bids.
Some people use the term “absorption” to describe the process of bringing people animated by social movements into long-term power organizations. Here’s a simplified example: Evidence of mass injustice agitates large numbers of people. The 2008 financial crisis produced vivid new evidence that our economic and political systems are rotten. A group occupies Zuccotti Park. The action spreads quickly over social media; the mainstream media takes note. Local Occupy groups pop up across the country. Lots of new people are activated.
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Then, a community organizer, instead of knocking on 50 doors a night to uncover issues and identify potential neighborhood leaders, can engage people at a single large event, through social media, or both. They can also organize related events as a means of responding to the moment, attracting new people to the organization.
All of which makes sense. It would be an odd choice to sit out these transitional moments, and why pass on an opportunity for growth?
Ten years into a trend, it feels worth pausing and asking: When prioritizing this path for growth, who are we not reaching? How does this path change the nature of our organizations?
People rarely hit the streets out of nowhere. Many of the people we are absorbing are well versed in the language of the left. They are tuned in to the moment, have figured out how to plug in.
At one level, this makes the life of an organizer easier. People are already in motion, and don’t need to be convinced to act. The ideological gap between new and existing members is narrowed. The work of developing shared language has a head start, and the time-intensive work of bringing people along is lessened. This is good—a sign of a country waking.
But how does this impact the work of engaging the tens of millions of low-income and working-class people who are not animated by today’s social movements?
Many organizations have more members than ever, and acknowledge that their membership is more educated and has higher incomes than ten years ago. But if we’re not careful, we could end up with an organizing field that is less connected to low-income and working-class people, especially those not reached by social movements. Less practiced in the work of listening to uncover issues, to understand people’s take, to start where people are at; and despite our best intentions, creating spaces that can feel exclusive, assuming that everyone knows or should know certain terms and frameworks.
How can we balance the opportunity to bring in people energized by the moment with the work of bringing in those who are not engaged (at least not yet)?
We are due for an organizing revival. One that builds upon the incredible shifts that have taken place over the last ten years and recommits to some core organizing fundamentals that have received less emphasis of late.
We have shifted a field that was largely designed to win the best thing possible in the existing political and ideological landscape to one intent on changing that landscape altogether. This has included a sharper—if still in progress—reading on the systems of racism, patriarchy, and capitalism; a big shift toward doing electoral politics; and an ability to use technology to engage more people than we could otherwise.
Let’s connect these shifts to a revival of core fundamentals of organizing that are time-tested at getting lots of people who are currently not tuned in or do not believe change is possible to come together, build power, and win.
Let’s create spaces that welcome and develop the still waking. We all got to where we are through a process: life experience, political education, being part of organizations. Let’s bring as many people into that process as possible.
Most of all, we need to re-invest in organizing that starts with listening. Too many organizers today are expected to be mobilizers, not organizers, on issues selected somewhere else by someone else. We have to make the case for investing in organizing that trusts that people know what they want, and they will figure out what to put in the win column.
Too many organizers today are expected to be mobilizers, not organizers, on issues selected somewhere else by someone else.
Following the 2016 election, People’s Action had thousands of conversations with people in small towns where we just listened. Anchored by organizations like Down Home North Carolina and Rights & Democracy, we asked what were people’s most pressing struggles, what they saw as the solutions, and who and what they saw as responsible for the challenging conditions in the community. The most common refrain was “nobody has ever asked me before.”
There was a time when this was how most organizing was done—we started with listening and worked on the exact issues that people identified. We brought people into organizing who never would have found their way to us if we didn’t initiate the conversation and honor their call as to what was prioritized.
We need an organizing revival that starts with a mass listening campaign, and then organizes to win on the exact issues that are most widely and deeply felt in the community. To be clear, there are organizations doing this kind of organizing; it has just become less the norm for a variety of reasons.
The people coming in through absorption can help with this work. They can be trained to engage those who are not yet with us. Many organizations are doing this. At People’s Action, we’ve trained thousands of new (mostly progressive) volunteers energized by the moment to take on the project of having tens of thousands of deep canvass conversations with everyday people we would not be in touch with otherwise. This has felt like absorption done right, absorbing left movement energy to take on the work of bringing more low-income and working-class people into the fight.
The social movements of today have propelled change that organizing in a vacuum could never touch. Seizing the energy from movements has been a powerful way to grow our organizations. What got us here is not necessarily what will get us over the top. To deliver on the promise of this moment, we have to reach millions who are not part of our growing choir. Let’s wrestle with how to do both—bring in those energized by the moment, and speak to those who are not (at least not yet). We will be more grounded and powerful as a result.
