Think Big Organizing

Authors Becky Bond and Zack Exley worked for a SuperPac, Political Campaigns and social justice movements to learn new ways of mass community organizing. They acknowledged Rules for Radicals written in 1971 by Saul Alinsky, but emphasized the need to move on. Instead, they offer their own rules for revolutionaries to learn new tactics and for literally a political revolution now. Thus the title of their book, Rules for Revolutionaries.*

As I picked up their book during the recent holidays, I listened to their experience with some of the political campaigns like Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama.  Digital campaigning was combined with field efforts, tech enabled and people powered. One campaign won, the other didn’t win the primary, but both allowed people to work with hundreds of thousands of volunteers to create a more just world. Instead of large donations from wealthy donors, $50 contributions from millions of individuals supported these campaigns. Of course they also mentioned other big organizing efforts like the Tea Party organizing, Occupy Wall Street, the Native American tribes and the North Dakota Pipeline, and movements to defend black lives.

But I was especially interested in their conclusion from research showing that TV ads, automated robocalls, direct mail, and big money weren’t the main influencing factors in elections, but instead big grassroots organizing. Volunteers going door to door and talking to people on their doorsteps, or calling them on the phone!  That’s exactly what happened in Alabama with the incredibly large number of volunteers canvassing their neighborhoods and helping to change the outcome of an election that was supposed to lose. Definitely big organizing!

That’s why The Arc asks all of you to personally meet with people, phone people, including your legislators.  We need to share our personal stories, our values, and our sense of social justice for the rights of people with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and their families. We also need to Think Big Organizing!

*Rules for Revolutionaries, How Big Organizing Can Change Everything, by Becky Bond and Zack Exley, Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, Vermont