Three sentences that changed my life as an activist
When I headed out “into the world to learn the things”, one of the contexts I volunteered in was campaigning…. Fundraising, awareness, politics… You name it. It was on the campaign for a poverty reduction strategy in Saskatchewan that I learned about the “activism formula”.
What is the change you want to see?
Who has the power to effect that change?
What do you control that they care about?
If it had been up to me to design the campaign, I’d have gone to my lefty friends who care about poverty, and asked them to post on Facebook and write letters. Fortunately, wiser minds than mine were designing the campaign. They understood that my lefty friends were never going to vote for the conservative government, and the government knew it.
I would have made the classical mistake of choosing a strategy for “what do you control that they care about” that was too heavy on “within my control”… without paying attention to the “that they care about” part.
The campaign leadership knew we had to convince people who might vote conservatively. Which meant all of our favourite “bleeding heart liberal” arguments were useless. This isn’t to say conservatives don’t care about the poor—like any group of people, some do and some don’t. But in order to mobilize them, we had to show the economic viability of poverty reduction.
Fortunately, this isn’t that hard. Canada has (mostly) socialized medicine. Even small improvements in amount-of-times-in-ER (or jail) fund poverty reduction. And stimulus dollars are most effective when given to the people with the least money—they spend that money quickly, and locally.
With this framing, the campaign was successful in getting the government to make a poverty reduction commitment.
When have my campaigns been least successful? When they’ve focussed on a nebulous change, like “responsible stewardship of the environment”. Or a goal that is the wrong size for the group (which violates the “Big enough to matter, and small enough to win” rule).
Or when they’ve focussed on amassing leverage with the wrong group (“Hey premier! Three thousand people who would never vote for you in a million years are really mad at you”).
Why do so many campaigns seem to violate these rules of effectiveness? Sometimes, as was the case with me, they just didn’t understand the framework. Other times, though, the stated goal of the campaign is not the real goal. At its worst, a campaign or activity is about making ourselves feel superior—a chance to bond and shame others who haven’t “done the work” or don’t seem to care about the cause enough. This isn’t just not effective social change, it’s actively damaging the causes we care about because it builds a reputation of activism as a place where newcomers are shut out or made to feel small.
That said, not every action has to be strategic… Sometimes, you host a potluck and discussion not so much because it has a huge impact on the issue but because you like potlucking and discussing. It is fine to like potlucking and discussing, and everyone deserves to do things they like. And, community building is a good, in and of itself.. In fact, making sure that there is a whole lot of fun sprinkled in with the strategy is a great strategic move… When groups have strong social bonds and trust each other, they’re ready to spring into action when an opportunity for effective strategy appears. For me, the most goofy-off-not-good-use-of-time I did in my activism life—the Hysterical Society—turned out to be one of the most effective things I ever did, in terms of social change. The goal of the organization is lighthearted, but the budget reflects our values.
Want to read more about effective activism? Beautiful Trouble is one of the best guides I know of…. Available in both book and website form.