9 Ways to Change the World?
May Miller Dawkins’ piece about the nine theories of change talked about how change processes are highly complex and unpredictable. Dawkins’ nine theories of change included charity, market-orientated aid and funding, mutual aid and cooperation, behavior change, building empathy and global citizenship, social mobilization, monitory democracy, leadership and international networks, and meta-movements. These nine theories of change further explore their implications, impacts, and pitfalls regarding five “meta-trends”: geo political shifts, migration, identity, and connection, interdependence and learning, science and technology, and space for citizen action.
Dawkins summarizes each of the nine theories of change by stating the theories of each change, who has agency, and what infrastructure or tactics are used. For example, charity is defined as “gifts of money and goods [used to] help alleviate suffering and poverty. Individuals and groups, particularly in northern countries, hold the agency to donate to countries in need. Online fundraising and INGO’s are key mechanisms in the facilitation of charity.
This reading was interesting because it examined common ideas such as charity or empathy and took a more in depth look into each theory to help identify strengths and weaknesses. For example, while many people that volunteer their time in countries of need, negative impacts are often overlooked by the positive notation felt by the volunteer. In an egotistical way, we feel better about ourselves when we volunteer in countries of need. However, we often neglect that volunteering can take away jobs from locals or reinforce dependences. After reading about these nine theories, it makes me wonder what is the best way to initiate change, specifically when addressing climate change? It’s quite difficult to alter one’s behavioral patterns regarding consumption and energy usage, so perhaps a combination of these nine theories will result in the most drastic change.
Pathways for Change: 10 Theories to Inform Advocacy and Policy Change Efforts
Sarah Stachowiak explored 10 theories to inform advocacy and policy change efforts by separating the 10 theories into two sets: Global theories and Tactical Theories. Global theories, as described by Stachowiak, help explain how policy change occurs in a broader sense. Included in Global theories are Large Leap, Policy Windows, Coalition, Power Politics, and Regime theories. Tactical theories apply to common advocacy tactics, such as grassroots campaigns. Tactical theories include Messaging and Frameworks, Media Influence, Grassroots. Group Formation, and Diffusion theories.
For each of the 10 theories, Stachowiak explains the theory, underlying assumptions, as well as application to advocacy. In addition to this, she includes a flow chart for each theory, with strategies related to the theory and possible outcomes. When examining Media Influence Theory, Stachowiak suggests that the media plays a significant role in influencing the public agenda. It assumes the media shapes reality and is typically biased from source to source. She also includes that mass media is typically the primary source of news for people.
Reading about these 10 theories made me think a lot about current issues. One of the theories that struck me the most was media influence. Mass media has skyrocketed in the past decade and it was quite evident during this year’s election. Significant biased is seen throughout present day mass media and it seems like main news sources are either extremely liberally biased or conservatively biased, with not much in between. It’s hard not to argue the media played a significant role in the results of the presidential election. Striking me the most was the idea that “political issues that are salient and ever-present in the media tend to be the same issues that the public have awareness of and consider key. Unfortunately, this held true in this year’s election because the media didn’t focus nearly enough attention on issues related to climate change. Therefore, the public didn’t consider this a key component when voting.
Making Change Happen
Power. The ability to achieve a purpose. The strength required to bring about social, political, and economic change. These moving words spoken Martin Luther King Jr help to summarize the importance understanding power and the different variations power resides in our world. In this article, visible power, hidden power, and invisible power are explained. Each of these labels of power are evident in our society. Visible power is the making and enforcement of rules by leaders and organizations. Through the use of policies and laws, biases are frequently created regardless of intent. For example, some health care policies don’t adequately address the poor or women’s reproductive needs. Power to, power with, and power within strategies such as lobbying, negotiation, and education are used to combat power over policies created with visible power.
Hidden power sets the agenda without sufficient communication to the public. Hidden power can be exemplified through oil-gas companies that control environmental polices regardless of negative effects the company has on the environment. Under hidden power, leaders are considered “trouble-makers,” but the media doesn’t consider these groups “newsworthy.” In response to this, coalitions, movements, and organizations are strengthened to defend such hidden power. Shaping meaning, values, and what’s “normal” is portrayed through invisible power. With this form of power, the public is unaware of some key information, therefore, remains “invisible.” Research, education, and empowerment are ways to respond to this power.
What struck me the most in this article was the quote from Mouffe 2002 regarding the success of right wing populism and how such success is due the amount of hope provided to the people. Going on further, “exclusion in which xenophobia usually plays a central role.” I thought I was reading an article about present day United States and President Trump’s newly issued travel ban. I found it most interesting that not only did Trump promise restoration of power to the people, but now fear of people with different religious beliefs has struck as a central topic. This quote was spot on to present day populism.
Intellectuals and Power
In this article, Zack Malitz describes power as a “force that acts through every institution and relationship in society, so that our very sense of self is a product of its shaping force.” He goes on to say that power is everywhere and is “decentralized.” Relating back to the Making Change Happen article, Malitz acknowledges invisible power as the most effective power because people “can only resist what they can see.” Therefore, power that remains invisible is hard, if not impossible, to challenge. Malitz also identifies intellectuals as the primary supply for interpreting and interacting with the world. Intellectuals, ranging from engineers to teachers, help facilitate social change. This is most effective through showing by example rather than just telling.
The one idea that stuck out most to me was the idea that we don’t necessarily need leadership. Rather, “resources, technical knowledge, and assistance in navigating dense webs of institutional power” is required. An organization can have the best leadership, but if there is a lack of resources or knowledge to help facilitate such leadership, the power is almost useless.
Organizing Notes—pages 1-32
Marshall Ganz address leadership and organization in the first 32 pages of this piece. Ganz notes that leadership requires the acceptation of “responsibility for enabling others to achieve purpose under conditions of uncertainty.” Leadership requires an individual to be adaptable, able to learn, and asks the rights questions, opposed to someone who feels they know everything and neglects to ask questions. The three main questions a leader and organizer must ask include: who are my people, what is their urgent problem, and how can they turn their resources into the power to solve their problem. Values of the people in need and capacity to share must be deeply understood by the organizer in order to be effective.
Organizers of campaigns must adhere to five phases in order to be most successful. The first phase foundation. Here, resources necessary to launch the campaign are collected and leadership is developed. The kick-off phase follows and the campaign begins. This phase helps create a deadline for recruitment, planning, and preparation. The next phase is a series of peaks, building off one another. Development of issues and interpretation of actions is seen in this phase. Once “maximum mobilization” is reached, the peak stage occurs. The peak of a campaign may come in the form of a rally, mass meeting, or march. It’s important that the peak is the fourth stage because if it occurs too early, the campaign will crumble. The last stage is resolution. This a reflective stage and “to succeed at winning you must realize when you have won.” This stage is important to understanding when the campaign concludes and reflects on the effectiveness of it.
Trading resources and the example of the friends exchanging gas money for transportation to the movies was an effective way to display power with and power over. It was interesting to analyze a situation like that and see how the power shifts from one party to the other. Negotiation is an important trait to have in situations with power. Creating a lot of “power to” will eventually lead a successful challenge to “power over.”
Dying from Dioxin—chapters 10-12
These set of chapters helped to educate on the basics of organizing. If change is sought out, the “truth has to be understood by a large group of people.” Organizing for change is a way to “carve the tunnel of hope.” The formation of coalitions helps change happen. Coalitions help promote ideas for change and educate people on the issues. That being said, education must always be used by coalitions because there will always be someone who doesn’t have appropriate education on the issue at hand.
The basics of organizing is broken into 12 parts: talk and listen, figure out who should talk and listen to first, create and distribute fact sheets, recruit new members, conduct meetings, create an organizational structure, set goals, identify targets, conduct research, take direct action, target the media, and use laws and science to support and organize. According to the reading, these 12 parts in organizing for change help to successfully initiate change. It’s important to branch out your organization and listen to what others have to say.
Once an organization is carefully established, targeting the media seems to be an important determinant of the organization’s success. In today’s mass media world, the media has the ability to make or break individuals, groups, and organizations. It’s important to ensure good relations with the media because they can be a positive contributor in publicizing the issue at hand and the organization that’s fighting for change. Organizations must make events available to the media. These events must be short and creative in order the gain the most attention of the media. Having a spokesperson at events is also helpful and ensuring the media knows who is the designated spokesperson is just as important. That way, the organization knows correct and accurate information will be given to the media.
Environmental Warriors: Going to the root of the problem
Idle no more, 350.org, and LA Bus Riders Union are three examples of environmental advocacy groups that are helping lead the fight for environmental justice. Idle no more is an indigenous group leading the fight “against destruction of native lands in Canada.” The group is a peaceful way to “honor indigenous sovereignty and to protect the land and water” in indigenous areas. 350.org is a webite created by environmentalist Bill McKibben. The website’s name is inspired by the amount of carbon dioxide in parts per million that is considered to be safe. Unfortunately, we have surpassed 400 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. LA Bus Riders Union is an organization composed of primarily public school students and low income black and Latino workers in Los Angeles with the goal of eventually improving public transportation in LA to the extent that cars can be abolished from the city.
Organizations like these are helping lead the way in environmental justice. While climate change affects everyone, the biggest effects are seen in vulnerable populations and minorities. Idle no more and LA Bus Riders Union are two examples of how vulnerable and less represented populations are fighting against climate change. The effects of climate change are seen in the African American community. African American make up 13% of the US population, however they generate 20% less greenhouse gases than non-Hispanic whites per capita. The troubling fact about this is that African American communities are much more susceptible to the effects of climate change, even though they generate 20% less greenhouse gases.
My favorite part about the article was a simple quote: system change, not climate change. That’s the most succinct and meaningful way to advocate for climate change. We are not going to seeing an improvement in climate change without system change. While all of these advocacy groups are great, immense change will not happen without system change.
Rose Chapter 1
This chapter was about what makes a campaign successful and how to create a successful campaign. Campaigns tend to only have public support and are high risk ventures. In order to create an effective campaign, the issue had hand must be short and easily understood, while also linking the problem to the solution. Campaigns are most effective by showing, motivating, and mobilization, opposed to arguing about the issue at hand, education, and accumulation of knowledge.
Other ways to create a successful campaign include understanding power, organizing with engagement mechanisms, offer an agency, and offer a solution. The seven basic principles a campaign needs include: being multidimensional, engagement by providing agency, moral legitimacy, provoking conversation in society, infectious energy, strategy, and communicable as a story. These principles will help lead to a successful campaign and can be used to help lead the environmental justice fight.
A Social Change Model of Leadership Development 18-69
These pages were about the 7 C’s of successful leadership: collaboration, consciousness of self, commitment, congruence, common purpose, controversy with civility, and citizenship. Each of these 7 C’s were defined, exemplified, and shown how they relate with each other. The writer broke these 7 C’s into either group, individual, or societal leadership. Collaboration, common purpose, and controversy with civility are all components to help aid in group leadership. Consciousness of self, congruence, and commitment are aspects of individual leadership. Citizenship is used for societal leadership.
It was interesting to see the importance of journal keeping come up in multiple definitions of the 7 C’s. Journal keeping can help maintain individual consciousness of self and congruence. Writing down your thoughts, ideas, and views in a journal will help to keep your thoughts straight and organized. Reflecting on what you find is important can help facilitate better leadership qualities because you have a better understanding of your own views are and what you can do to help spread such ideas. It’s a great way to become better aware of your true beliefs and emotions.
Each of the 7 C’s are important traits to think about when talking about leadership and not one is more important than another. Having the ability to collaborate with others helps to identify issues and can help facilitate ideas. You must first be able to become aware of your own beliefs in order to contribute in a conversation with others. Asking for feedback on your ideas will help improve congruence and lead to a more successful conversation. Once ideas are presented and feedback is received, a common purpose will hopefully form. Having a common purpose will generate more thought ideas. Commitment is then necessary from you and others or else ideas won’t be turned into action. If you have ideas but don’t commit to an action, then what is the point of brainstorming ideas?
Four Capabilities of Leadership
Professor Ancona identifies sense making, relating, visioning, and inventing the four capabilities of leadership. Sense making is simply “making sense of the world.” It involves collaborating with individuals of all levels, changing models that outline goals, and maintaining flexibility in all aspects. Relating involves maintaining open communication, making yourself visible in a higher position, reassuring others on a regular basis, and reinforces a sense of urgency to mitigate complacency. Barack Obama did this while in office by not sugar coating tragedies, but rather stating a sincerer approach such as saying “challenges will be met.”
Professor Ancona notes that “an effective leader creates a compelling vision.” Visioning is important to leadership because it helps to demonstrate values, urgency, hope, community, and confidence. Including a phrase such as “now is the time” will help portray the sense of urgency. Finally, “an effective leader invents the future” by illustrating clear priorities and developing ambidextrous organizations. All in all, a leader should possess these four characteristics and must be adaptable. If leaders are not adaptable, voices won’t be heard and success will be challenged.
When We Fight We Win: The Struggle for Economic Power
“When we fight we win” was a popular slogan used by Occupy Wall Street protesters in 2011. This article addresses the Occupy movement and the worldwide influence it had. For the past 30 years, the income of the top 1% increased by 275%. To put a better perspective on how wealthy the richest people in the world are, the 85 richest people in the world have more wealth than half of the global population. Also, one in four kids grow up in poverty in the United States. Clearly, this inequality of wealth is not right and something must be done to combat this issue. Movements such as Occupy Wall Street helped initiate a global conversation about economic inequalities.
While the Occupy movement was mainly focused on the wealth inequality, issues surrounding racism, sexism, homophobia, and oppressive behaviors were on the forefront as well. Unfortunately, there was a shortcoming in addressing these other issues. As important wealth inequality is, these issues are just as important to overall equality. In order to fully combat wealth inequality, we must also “dismantle racism.” Without addressing racism, we will not be able to address racial inequalities, especially regarding house foreclosures. African American neighborhoods are a larger target for foreclosure than white neighborhoods. The Occupy movement lacked non-white participants. In fact, over 80% of protesters were white. This must improve if we want racism and wealth inequalities to improve.
I found it interesting to read about Bank of America and why its image became so tarnished. I was aware that Bank of America’s image greatly decreased, but was unsure of the details. It’s quite serious that they were able to pay $25 billion to cover up thousands of “robo-signed” foreclosures without verifying information.
The Most Important Leadership Competencies, According to Leaders Around the World
Sunnie Giles asked 195 leaders from 15 countries and 30 global organizations to choose the 15 “most important leadership competencies from a list of 74.” The 10 most chosen leadership competencies were then grouped into five themes: strong ethics and safety, self-organizing, efficient learning, nurtures growth, and connection and belonging. These five themes help to demonstrate how these 195 leaders, and presumably most other leaders, view leadership and how to be an effective leader.
About two-thirds of respondents picked “high ethical and moral standards.” This was the only characteristic that more than 60% of the responders picked. Combining a high ethical and moral standard with clear communication of expectations helps to create a “safe and trusting environment.” Maintaining clear communication with employees will to limit any blindsiding and will keep everyone happy. Having such a relationship with workers creates a “safe environment” where “employees can relax” and allows for increased “social engagement, innovation, creativity, and ambition.”
The concept of “Deep Fast Forwarding” is an interesting way to improve decision making. Imagining your own funeral and the eulogy presented there can help gauge how people will remember your life. Reflecting upon this will help prioritize what’s most important to you.
Telling Your Public Story
Marshall Ganz wrote about the significance of storytelling and what stories can help communicate. Through language of the heart, also known as emotions, stories help to teach how we manage ourselves, how we approach difficult choices, and how we view unfamiliar situations and uncertain outcomes. The best stories portray challenges you faced, the choices you made to address such challenge, and the resulting outcomes of your choices. When addressing your challenge, it’s best to describe how you felt it was a challenge, why it was a challenge and why it was your challenge. Then you must elaborate on the choice you made to address the challenge, how or if you got the courage to do so, and where you got hope during the challenge faced. The outcome should be addressed similarly to the challenge. How the outcome felt, why it felt that way, what you learned and how you can teach others, and how you want others to feel.
The best public stories address the story of the self, story of us, and the story of now. The story of the self focuses on the challenges you have faced, how you dealt with them, along with the satisfactions, or frustrations, experienced. Listing every job, project, class, or unique experience such as camping or attending a political rally can help to brainstorm a good story of the self. Connecting such experiences with your values makes an even stronger story of self. Brainstorming any community, organization, movement, culture, nature or the constituency can help connect with others. This helps to address the story of us. The story of us helps to define “who as you hope to call upon to join in your public narrative.” The story of now focuses on asking questions about shared values. Are your values the same as our countrymen and women that sacrifice themselves for the country? Will your values be passed onto the next generation? Are you values shared by powerful institutions? These questions help to go one step further and creates a “call to ‘hopeful’ action.”
What is Public Narrative?
A public narrative “is a leadership art through which we translate values into action: engaging heart, head, and hands. Public narratives are built from challenges, choice, and outcome. When telling a public narrative, it is important to understand the two ways of knowing: narrative and analysis. Narrative helps us engage because it “teaches us how to cope with uncertainty.” It also helps to answer the question of why we should act. Analysis on the other hand is used to critically reason and present “evidence to understand data.” Analyzing helps to achieve outcomes.
Emotion, motivation, and action are three traits that are communicated through “emotional experience.” These help to facilitate an emotional response for the listening. Emotional response is driven by two key systems: disposition and surveillance. Disposition is the “continuum from depression to enthusiasm” and surveillance is measured by what we expect to happen versus what we actually see happen.
Mobilizing action is one last important aspect of a public narrative. How your narrative is presented helps to determine how the audience responds. A sense of fear can paralyze listeners while a sense of urgency or hope grabs the attention of the audience and inspires them to act. Confidence and solidarity offer similar outcomes. Perhaps one of the most important things a leader can do is to present the idea of You Can Make a Difference, or YCMAD. Offering such an idea helps combat self-doubt and makes an individual more confident with their actual value and worth. It creates a sense of importance.
Chapter 1-4 in "Organizing for Social Change."
Chapter one looked back at the history of social change. Historical leaders such as Tom Paine, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and more are discussed, touching on their inspiration and leadership of their respective movements. The New Deal, presented by President Roosevelt, and the CIO worked for human rights to organize, minimum wage, social security, unemployment compensation, and the eight-hour workday. Leaders have always been an important aspect of American history. Without courageous leaders, change would be unable to occur.
Chapter two looks at the fundamentals of direct action organizing and the importance of self-interest. Self-interest helps to ensure motivation, a sense of moral justice, as well a better sense of others. Relationships are important to help reflect basic values and care about others. A type of organization discussed in this chapter is direct action. Direct action contains three main principles: win real, immediate, concrete improvements in people’s lives, give people a sense of their won power, and alter the relations of power. Together, these three principles help to organize issue campaigns.
Chapter three looks at the difference between problems and issues. Problems only regard a broad area of concern while issues are solutions or a partial solution to a problem. Within this chapter, characteristics of a good issue are present. Some examples of what makes a good issue include: improvement in people’s lives, altering the relations of power, being winnable, worthwhile, widely, or deeply felt, and have a pocketbook angle, or in other words, saves people money.
Chapter four is all about developing a strategy. Strategies are different than plans because they are the “design of the campaign combined with an analysis of power relationships,” while plans are basically just steps. When developing a strategy, things you should have include: a map of the area where you are campaigning, overlays of a map sowing political districts and election returns, a list of your own board members, and a few other resources such as the internet or phonebook. Goals, organizational considerations, allies and opponents, decision makers, and tactics should all by presented in a strategy chart to ensure maximum success.
Organizing Notes pages 75-89
Marshall Ganz relates back to his earlier writing about strategizing and turning resources into power. He examines how a good strategy is developed and how tactics help to create specific actions that help implement the strategy. The bottom line of strategy is that it’s creative, “linking resources to outcomes through intentional choice of tactics.” It’s important to link resources together so communication is developed, allowing for more effective strategy.
Ganz also developed five main strategic questions that must be asked. Knowing who your people are, what change they need, your theory of change, what tactics will be used to achieve your strategic goal, and finally what your campaign plan is and how and when to deploy tactics over time are all questions that must be answered when developing a strategy. When thinking about your people, you must create a community like atmosphere, enabling for the ability to build relationships. When addressing what change these people need, focusing on specifics helps to create a more concrete, imaginable goals. The theory of change is identified by stating who you’re organizing, what outcome you wish to see and present how and when this outcome is achieved. Targeting is also a tactical way to help achieve your goal as well. Given these five areas to examine, strategies will be best developed if they are all taken into account.
Chapter 5—Strategy Development
Strategy development assesses particular situations by selecting achievable objectives. An action plan is created by using strategy development. Five main elements make up strategy development: objectives, audiences, diagnosis, action plan, and evaluation. Objectives are created for the long term as well as short term. Questions regarding who you are, what is the problem, what vision you see for change, and what objectives will be focused on are addressed when looking at objectives. Audiences are an important element to strategy development. When thinking about audiences, you must think who has the power to make it happen, question how are changes made, what is at stake, and who the key audiences are. Knowing the key audience is most effective when developing a strategy.
The diagnosis element of strategy development looks at what is possible, the capacity to engage in advocacy, where the group is at the moment, what the external environment is like, and what is possible once everything is put together. This helps to assess how realistic and manageable the strategy is. The action plan addresses how to get started, how to move audiences to make or not block change, how to protect against risk, what the actual work plan is and what resources we need in order to start, and it’s also important to have a backup plan in the event something goes wrong. Looking at what could change, how such change would affect the action plan, what could go wrong, the worst case scenario, and thinking about a plan b are all a part of the evaluation element of strategy development.
Tactics
This article presented 30 unique tactics that can be used to help get your message across to an audience. All of the tactics were peaceful, creative ways to take action and help you stand up for what you believe in. A lot of them caused some sort of disturbance, but in a peaceful manner. Disturbances will help catch others attention, and hopefully even the people in power that possess the ability to create policy change or whatever you may be fighting for. Reading through these tactics was interesting because I have heard of some before, but never realized what power they have. For example, I’ve heard of flash mobs and human banners before, but I never realized how useful they are in organizing a large number of people into one large group. Strength in numbers help to make these tactics even more useful.
I found the electoral guerrilla theater tactic interesting because I related it to the 2016 US Presidential election. This tactic is used by people to run for office as a creative prank. The purpose of this tactic is not about winning, but to get attention for radical critique of policy or sabotaging a campaign. I think during the 2016 election many people may have though Trump was running only to gain attention about himself or what he believed was wrong with our government. For the longest time, I think people thought he was using a similar esque tactic and would eventually drop out. However, we unfortunately learned this theory was untrue and he was indeed running a serious campaign. Sad!
Chapters 5 and 7 in "Organizing for Social Change."
Chapter 5 was all about the guide to tactics and what criteria is necessary for tactics. The main idea of a tactic is to focus on the decision maker or secondary target of the campaign, not someone or something else. Tactics should put power behind a specific demand and help to meet your organizational goals as well as your issue goals. Some useful tactics include petitions, letter writing, turnout events, visits with public officials, public hearings, mass demonstrations, and marches. These tactics help to publicize your group and issue, display strength in numbers, and organize people to help spread awareness.
Chapter 7 talks about how meetings with officials can help put pressure on achieving your end goal. Such meetings work best with elected officials because they are the ones that will be able to initiate the final change. When planning for such meetings, thinking of your goals, understanding power dynamics and self-interest, when and how it will be done, who will conduct it, and how the public or group will be informed it was completed. You must also take into consideration the level of fun this will be and you must demonstrate your real power.
Chapter 6—Skill Building
This chapter looks at collaboration, use of information and research, message development, and message delivery including working with the mass media and lobbying in regards to building skills. Collaboration is important to decide when to enter a coalition, how to manage the coalition once entered, and the benefits of a coalition. It’s important to enter a coalition at the right time because differences among members could prevent progress, an investment in time and energy are necessary and will be taken away from using those in another manner, and entering a coalition could make it difficult to act autonomously. Diversity in leadership and membership, trusting relationships, and effective communication are the keys to managing coalitions.
The use of information and research is necessary to develop a research plan. Looking through laws, policies, newspaper articles, opinion polls, photos, and anecdotes is a good way to analyze data needed for a research plan. When developing a research plan, thinking about what information is needed, where you can look for it, how you can access it, who will research, and what is the time frame are all necessary. Message development is needed to ensure a core message is portrayed. By keeping the message simple and knowing your audience, a message will be best developed. Once developed, the message must be delivered through mass media and lobbying. These are the most effective ways to build relationships, educate and provide information, and collect more information.
Chapter 9 "Organizing for Social Change."
Chapter 9 focused on Building and Joining Coalitions. Coalitions are an organization of an organization that works together for a common goal. They are a useful way to bring progressive organizations together and create a common power that has the ability to win. Coalitions bring forth advantages such as offering a large number of people with similar views on an issue, creating an ongoing power base, increasing the impact of an individual organization’s efforts, developing new leaders, increasing resources, and broadening the scope. However, like many groups, there are evident disadvantages to coalitions. Coalitions can be distracting from other work, too many compromises can be settled upon, an unequal amount of power can be seen, individual organizations may not receive credit when necessary, and cultural clashes can come as a result of coalitions.
The basic principles of a coalition include choosing a unifying issue, hiring a neutral coalition staff, and achieving self-respect and interest among the coalition. Achieving self-interest is important for the coalition to gain new members, raise money, be perceived as powerful, receive media coverage, build relationships with other groups, and give its leaders a public role. As relationships are being built, the organizer of the coalition must ensure that all key stakeholders are spoken to during the same time frame so not one organization feels as though they are less important than others. The organizer of the coalition must also minimize tensions among all members, work with leaders from other organizations ensuring maximum participation, and the organizer must never become involved with the internal politics of any aspects of the coalition.
Chapter 14 "Organizing for Social Change."
Chapter 14 looked at using the media and media strategy for your strategic. The first part of the chapter was interesting because it really related to current times in the media. The chapter mentioned that the media is not neutral, and they have two main goals: to make money and to promote a political climate that allows them to make even more money. It talked about how even some far right media outlets get endorsed by people or corporations so certain things are targeted for the news. The beginning of the chapter reminded me of the whole “fake news” outbreak now. Media stations are audibly attacking each other, claiming the other is fake news or unreliable. Media has transformed greatly over the past few years and it’s important to have a good understanding of how it works nowadays so that you can successfully use it for your own campaign.
Events, press news conferences, interviews/talk shows, letters to the editor, Op-Eds, meetings with editorial boards, announcement/bulletin boards, video press releases, radio actualities, and web based media are all options of media that can be used to get your message across. Some important tips when addressing media include writing a headline, writing a strong media advisory, contain hard news such as an event where a large amount of people showed up for your issue, having quotable quotes or sound bites from people, offering help to reporters as they do their work, and getting to know the staff. These are some of the ways in which you can prepare to host a successful media campaign.
Internet and Social Media
Internet and social media have revolutionized grassroots campaign. Websites such as Change.org and even YouTube have helped to spread awareness of the countless organizations and petitions happening nationwide. The internet and social media have expanded “people power” and have helped to better mobilize and expose grassroots campaigns. The internet has enabled progressives to create their own alternate news sites. Campaigns such as Kony in 2012 helped raise awareness about what is happening in Uganda. The campaign exploded all over the internet and millions of people became more aware of this. Unfortunately, the whole truth was not presented to the public so this type of campaign actually confused people about the issue. It neglected to talk about the actions President Obama was already taking to combat this. Internet and social media play an integral role nowadays. While internet and social media have helped raise awareness for campaigns and other issues, information can mislead the public.
Netroots have gained popularity as of recent as well. These are sites that “enable activists to bypass corporate media gatekeepers both to expose social and economic justice and to build public support for solutions.” These help to create a personal connection between activists and help to nationalize progressive campaigns. They help to reaffirm the importance an individual and their role in activism.
Chapters 12 and 13 "Organizing for Social Change."
Chapter 12 was all about planning and facilitating meetings. When preparing for meetings, you must consider the following things: goals, site, date and timing, chairperson, agenda, food, background materials and proposal, meeting rolls, room arraignments and logistics, turnout, and fun. Each of these things play a role in the success of your meeting. The main focuses of the meeting are to develop a strategy and timeline for your tactic and implementation of the campaign, to recruit volunteers and new members, evaluate goals or programs and plan for the future, and decide upon organizational positions. In preparation of the meeting, you must also assign the following roles: facilitator/chairperson, note taker, timekeeper, presenters, tone setter, and greeter. These roles will help facilitate a successful meeting. After finishing the meeting, on time, a follow up is recommended to ensure actions that were spoken about are implemented.
Chapter 13 was about PowerPoint presentations and public speaking. It provided many tips on running a successful presentation. One tip shared is to research the audience. Language and humor must be geared toward the audience. You must also take into account that information is transmitted differently according to class, region, life experience, geographic location, and age of the audience. The more information you have about the audience, the better your information will be conveyed. When writing your speech, break it into a beginning, middle, end, and closing remarks. It often helps to write your introduction last because it is typically a summary of what you will speak about. You must also decide your main form of communication. Will you be using your voice as the main source or the slides? Or will text, graphics or a video be the main form of communication. This was helpful because I have always been taught to have your voice as the main form of communication, so it was interesting to learn there are other ways to approach public speaking and PowerPoint presentations.