Rules for Revolutionaries: How Big Organizing Can Change Everything

by Becky Bond

would have been a cakewalk for Bernie.

<eyeroll>

It will be hard to dispel the myth that spending big money on advertising is the path to electoral victory, but we do know that if people organize, we can go up against big money and win.

These tactics may not be AS effective as 1-1, but they are still effective. And they can contribute to the background "facts" people believe to be true.

didn’t care about—and

A poor choice of words, to be sure.

the movement to defend black lives.

Why not name it? BLM

Even though campaigners and policy makers are the drivers of this process, they experience it as proof of the apathy of the people.

The result is that too many elected officials are basing important decisions not on what would be best for all Americans but on what they imagine would appeal to a small number of swing voters usually at the center-right of the political debate.

When organizers figure out how to integrate the huge opportunities that new, social technology provides with effective peer-to-peer organizing principles and practices as part of a smart, centralized plan—that’s big organizing.

Our struggles are all connected.

Big organizing demands a structure that scales. And this structure requires the ability to absorb and delegate work to volunteers at all management levels as the campaign grows.

proved themselves to be effective and accountable through work.

Does this bias leadership to those with the privilege of free time? How do we counteract that?

The Alinsky model simply became the standard for the entire liberal and progressive world. But it’s time to move on.

The big organizing model that can fuel revolutions believes that communities are filled with talented and intelligent people who understand what is broken and, when given material and strategic resources, can wrest power from elites and make lasting change. A political revolution is different from community organizing as we know it today.

Replace the condescending "we know what you need" with focused empowerment. Better, but still presumes to know what the problems are.

The ask should never be for volunteers to add their names to a list so that organizers might call them back later; it needs to be immediate and crucial.

The good news for organizers who want to help build the political revolution is that people really are just waiting for you to ask them to do something big.

But whether someone is willing and able to do the work, follows through on important tasks, and is willing to be held accountable.

Unconscious bias? Specifically, attribution and domination. It is still good advice, but something to watch out for.

It seemed to drive home to him and the whole campaign how big the movement really was.

If it is not led by people of color and immigrants, if it is doesn’t have fighting racism and xenophobia at its core, and if it is not mobilizing white people to lead other whites to choose multiracial solidarity over fear and hate—then it’s not a revolution.

We also need to understand that white supremacy is at the heart of the problem—not just a racially associated economic inequality.

Those are personal acts of solidarity, but they do not excuse us from the need to anchor our political analysis in a critique of structural racism.

Instead of letting a thousand flowers bloom, build a networked flower factory.

What about a more distributed approach? What can be learned from OSS projects? The Cathedral & The Bazaar

It’s important to recognize that a revolution won’t be launched by consensus.

Create a centralized strategic plan using whatever process is right for your movement. Make sure the plan has tasks that can be repeated by volunteers that add up to progress on the plan. Then delegate chunks of work from your plan to a distributed network of volunteer leaders who can work across space and time, and in the numbers necessary, to meet concrete goals and make change possible.

The people running the nonprofits participating in the coalition are not going to support you when you try to blow everything up.

You will then have to keep changing until you connect with and finally communicate in a meaningful way with the people you are proposing to serve.

Don’t let well-intentioned but ultimately disruptive activists drive good people away from the movement!

Grow complexity by solving practical problems as they arise

Solutions grown organically are often the most intractable to improve. Presidential campaigns have a shelf-life beyond which they expire. Other movements sill need a refactor phase to avoid falling into this trap.

Ari had been a state data staffer on the Obama campaign in 2008. I was so excited to have her on the campaign and on our side. I knew she would be an amazing asset and she was.

What does this have to do with the list of problems YOU JUST MENTIONED?

She began by doing the work herself. Then she trained some volunteers. When the team grew to the point of becoming unwieldy, she created roles and gave volunteers responsibility and, with that responsibility, titles. The live chat team soon had live chat volunteers (LCVs) and point of contacts (PCs).

I was proud that I didn’t know what in the world she was talking about. It meant that a real organization was being built far beyond what a few of us had gotten started.

If the fossilized institutions leftover from past movements are allowed to play a key role in the new movement, then the new people will face all kinds of resistance as they enthusiastically try to get to work.