Blog All Dog-eared Pages: Changemakers by Jane Holgate and John Page

Changemakers: Radical Strategies for Social Movement Organising by Jane Holgate and John Page was an interesting read about organising. A much more traditional activist perspective than any of the work I do. Plenty of food for thought on topics of building power, developing successive and additional leaders, and more.

Here are my dog-eared pages from the read.

Page 12

In transformational organising, the question we need to ask is: when the organiser moves on to the next issue, what level of agency is left behind? Is the community better able to fight its own struggles?

Page 15

Myles Horton, on the other hand, believed that developing people’s vision of themselves as agents of change and unleashing their capacity was more important.

Page 17

[…]the most important divide was not between left and right, or between so-called ‘revolutionary’ and ‘democratic’ socialism, but between socialism from above and socialism from below. What unites the many different forms of socialism from above is the belief that socialism (or their image of it) must be handed down to the working-class in one form or another by a ruling elite who are not subject to their control; this elite could be Fabian reformers, armed guerillas or the central committee of a so-called vanguard party. On the contrary, at the heart of socialism from below is the view that socialism can be realised only through the self-activity of the working-class, reaching out for freedom with their own hands.

Page 25

In contrast, in a power deficit model of change, our objective is not to reduce the subjects of this injustice to the role of begging for help, but to support them to develop and exercise their inherent change-making capacity. It’s not that evidence isn’t necessary, merely that it isn’t sufficient to effect transformational change.

Page 28

It is the process of collective reflection that probes the validity of people’s first assumptions, and moves their answers from what the philosopher and Marxist writer Antonio Gramsci would describe as ‘common sense’ (reflecting the dominant narrative) to ‘good sense’ based on an analysis of their own lived experience and that of people they know. Once you have established your theory of change, it becomes the foundation of your strategy — ‘how to change the resources you have into the power you need to get what you want’ (Ganz 2011a: 15-16)

Page 50

Sometimes to achieve our objective we have to acknowledge that the strategy we have adopted is not working, analyse why it is not working, and then consider what we can do differently to overcome the obstacles.

Page 69

There are two separate concepts here: building power and exercising power, and as usual, while it is useful to separate them out for analysis, in reality in transformative organising, we often build more power by effectively exercising the power we already have.

Page 85

The people who painstakingly create these organisations and leaders at a time when most people attend to the problems of everyday lift — these are the organisers whithout whom no movement can win. (Schutz and Miller 2015: 48)

Page 86

Spontaneity and organising are not in conflict; in fact, the real magic happens when they coincide.

Page 87

This relationship between spontaneity and organisation, between mobilising and organising, is therefore a complex one. Established organisations that can’t relate to new waves of activity outside of their plans, will ossify, while new agency that can’t create organisational infrastructure may burn brightly for a while, but will inevitably fade. Black Lives Matter, Momentum, #MeToo and the Mutual Aid movement during the pandemic are just some examples of moments when vast numbers have become involved in activity, but where there has not been a successful strategy to incorporate those numbers into a long-term organising plan. As campaigners for social justice, we’re in a constant battle to hold on to the gains we have made (and to win more) as opposing forces push against us and seek to reassert their power. To succeed we need more than fleeting mobilisation responses to moments of crisis or opportunity. We need stable and sustainable, but also nimble, organisations, and building them involves strategy, power and a theory of change to get us to the place we want to be.

Page 92

If we are to ‘tie our struggles together’, then our organisations must strive, however imperfectly, to be models of the vision of a society we wish to win. This is not merely a tactical choice, but a definitional restatement of who we are.

Page 108

As with so much of organising, the key to building a diverse base is to go to where the people are, find the natural organic leaders and engage with them. In a society rife with structural inequality and exclusion, simply expecting a diverse group to reach out to your campaign is a flawed strategy. It takes a conscious effort to organise inclusively. It’s not hard or rocket science, and the benefits repay the effort, but like anything else, it doesn’t happen automatically.

Page 112

[…] leadership is about enabling others to achieve results, rather than directing, managing and expecting people to follow blindly. It’s about building relationships that enable groups to grow and increase their influence, while drawing upon the diverse lived experiences of supporters to find appropriate strategies to win.

Page 128

An important, if little understood, element of leadership is therefore simply giving people permission to act. This process of giving permission can also be described as ceding control. Marshall Ganz makes this distinction between power and control.

Page 133

Real movement democracy actively involves the supporters — not merely a small group of activists — in making decisions on a day-to-day basis.

Page 139

We all need such safe spaces to unwind, reflect and recharge, but for changemakers to permanently retreat into these ‘safe spaces’ is a mistake, because if we want to win, then we need to be building our base and widening the scope of our engagement. Too often organisations that begin as outward-looking can over time become almost cult-like as they exclude, consciously or unconciously, people who hold different opinions on a particular subject.

Page 157

Yes, they have prisons, riot squads and even the military at their disposal, but these are only used in times of crisis, the day-to-day business of control is to convince us either that there is no better way to organise society, or that there is no better way to organise society, or that there is no way to achieve an alternative vision. [Gramsci] described this narrative control as ‘hegemonic’, meaning that is can appear incontestable, it becomes what he refers to as ‘common sense’, something which he contrasts with ‘good sense’.

Page 220

What these examples show is that if we want to organise for social justice, we should expect that there will be attempts to disrupt, spy upon, misrepresent and disorganise us. The state, far from guaranteeing our freedoms, will at times conspire to frustrate them.

Page 221

But if we want to maximise our effectiveness, then part of our planning should include considering the likely actions targeted at us, and how we can minimise their impacts.

Page 230

As a movement progresses towards success, there will be a need for different outputs, and different relationships, suggesting perhaps that groups need to be flexible — almost chameleon-like — constantly adapting to the needs of the movement, or perhaps there just need to be a number of organisations, whereby individual groups are able to move in and out of prominence depending on the specific needs of the overall movement at any particular time.

Page 233

This is a militant optimism, a determination that we will not continue to live the way we have lived, we will not be silent and more than anything: we will win. This is not the optimism of the fool, who believes against all evidence to the contrary, but the optimism of the reflective activist who sees the tectonic plates of our society shifting, and knows that opportunities will arise which, if seized and used strategically, will deliver the desired goals.

Page 235

Both #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter were huge moments in the UK and elsewhere, yet the energy and potential to drive systemic change largely dissipated within a short period of time. The lack of a plan to move people from protest to systematic work meant that town hall steps protests became less frequent and ever more poorly attended. Eventually, the anger and the opportunity were gone.

Page 247

In [Deepa Iyer’s] social change ecosystem framework, ther eare shared values at the centre of activism and a range of roles that people need to perform within social change activism. She describes these as follows: [Weavers; Experimenters; Frontline responders; Visionaries; Builders; Caregivers; Disruptors; Healers; Storytellers; Guides]

Page 252

norms can be even more powerful than rules. Rules are someone else’s idea of what you should do. If you break a rule, just don’t get caught and you’ll be okay. But with norms, it’s about what you as a member have signed up for, and what you’ve created. (Brafman and Beckstrom 2006: 89)

[…]

The essence is captured when they say they recognise a regular pattern across decentralised organisations: a catalyst gets the organisation going and then cedes control to the members. The role of the catalyst is to make a start, to set a vision and to involve people. They are lighting a fuse, and the organisation will then take its course when they step away: ‘In letting go of the leadership role, the catalyst transfers ownership and responsibility to the circle. … A catalyst isn’t usually in it for praise and accolades. When his or her job is done, a catalyst knows it’s time to move on’ (Brafman and Beckstrom 2006: 92)

Page 254

When COVID-19 struck in Britain in 2020, a small group of anarchists got publicity for a concept known as ‘mutual aid’. They asserted that we couldn’t rely on the state to provide us with care in the crisis, and that communities must organise to ‘do for self’. No doubt to their complete surprise, a mass movement of COVID mutual aid groups rapidly sprung up across the country. However, they didn’t arise entirely out of nowhere. Local community groups, and the connections between people involved in them, were the base upon which the biggest decentralised organising drive in a generation was built. Tenants’ associations, church groups, ethnic minority community groups, community centres, even trade union branches, became the backbone of a mass, inclusive, decentralised network that saw neighbours looking out for neighbours, collecting food and medicine for those who were isolating, and creating online community chats for people who had previously just passed each other in the street with a nod and a ‘good morning’.

There are two reasons why pre-existing networks are so important: the first is that they create a shortcut that means that not every connection needs to be built from scratch, but equally importantly, they are a source of people with experience in organising. People who, because of their experience, know what needs to be done, people who are recognised and perhaps trusted in their communities, the organic leaders who have already been surfaced.

Page 259

When people are faced with the opportunity to act with a confidence that their actions will make a difference, they move. Our job as changemakers is to help our people remember a truth that they already know but have been persuaded to bury: that when we act together, there is no force that can stop us. We have both the power and a duty to remake the world.