Pushback Network » elect08

Ten Tips for Effective Collaborative Organizing

Samiya Bashir — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 14:00:07 +0000

DO: Approach key local and regional groups before the strategy is set. Tailor efforts to the culture and politics of individual communities. No state is one community. Incoming organizers should seek synergies with existing work.

DON’T: Bait and switch. Be clear and honest with grassroots organizers about intentions and objectives.

DO: Share information and resources. Provide complementary funding, where appropriate, through clear accountable agreements to build long-term capacity that keeps working between election cycles.

DON’T: Come in with an agenda already in place. A useful ally’s agenda is informed by ongoing work on the ground.

DO: Work in areas where local leaders have identified existing gaps. Collaborate on strategies that strengthen long-term capacity to target demographics where local capacity is weakest.

DON’T: Employ messaging that is in conflict with ongoing campaigns. Design media strategies with long-term social change work in mind.

DO: Build on existing strengths and capacities on the ground.

DON’T: Poison the base and burn up turf. Work with grassroots organizations to extend their base, and yours, and share credit for shared work.

DO: Extend training opportunities to local organizers. Even when resources are left with local groups, those groups are too often left without the training to maintain them. Offer local organizations the training needed to maximize collaborative resources before you head home.

DON’T: Take the infrastructure and run. Hand-off what the campaign has built; hand off local volunteers and staff. Take the time for evaluation and debriefing with local partners.

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Collateral Damage

Samiya Bashir — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 14:00:22 +0000

Follow The Project, PBN’s live, daily, multi-media civic engagement project every day through November 7th. To lead us off, PBN is publishing a few critically important pieces that look at the importance of sound investment in effective civic organizing. Click here for updates.

During the 2006 electoral season, PBN partner Kentuckians for the Commonwealth learned first hand how paratrooper tactics disrupt years’ worth of work in their communities. According to nationally based, numbers-centric guidelines, national groups did a better job targeting the KFTC’s population, and reached more people.

But a closer look shows that while KFTC contacted a third of the people the national paratrooping group reached, they did it for a tenth of the money. KFTC’s numbers, unlike those of the paratroopers, reflected three person-to-person contacts for each individual counted. KFTC’s contacts included civic education and leadership development on a personal level – a crucial benefit that lasts, and one that you can’t get from mailings or robocalls.

This was achieved despite having to constantly firefight to battle the bull-in-a-china-shop blunders of the national organizers. “Last November, on election day, our Lexington organizer was flooded with phone calls from people all over the state asking for a ride to the polls,” said KFTC director Burt Lauderdale. “Somebody at a national organization had contacted our office months before and asked, in general terms, if we provide rides to the polls. We said yes and gave them the info for the local guy.”

“What happened next,” said Lauderdale, “without our permission or notification, was that 36,000 letters were sent to a targeted selection of voters from all over the state. The letters were a mildly threatening attempt to increase turn out by intimidating voters who stayed home for the last election. The organization didn’t identify itself in the letters, listing only a P.O. Box. What they did say was, ‘If you need a ride, call this number.’ That number was the direct line to our lone organizer who was inundated with calls from hundreds of miles away. KFTC had nothing to do with this direct mail piece, but communities across our state were left with negative feelings about us and our work.”

“Now, when I talked to the director of that organization in the days after he was embarrassed,” Lauderdale continued. “He apologized for the miscommunication, then turned around this Spring and did it again. This same group sent another huge mailing to their database encouraging them to register to vote; only it was sent out to them after the voter registration deadline. This was all very expensive to do. It’s frustrating because it’s an ineffective waste of money. Plus, it creates a mountain of mess that we’re left to clean up.”

This organization was knowledgeable enough to locate KFTC and put their phone number onto its direct mail outreach. The next logical step is to find ways to connect with their work in a complementary way. This is where paratrooper tactics fail, and where effective bottom-up collaboration wins.

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Want to change the country? Include a Southern Strategy.

Samiya Bashir — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:00:30 +0000

“Y’all don’t know what you’re doing anyway,” is how Kentuckians for the Commonwealth’s Burt Lauderdale paraphrases the widespread dismissal of Southern leadership. “It’s a total mystery for progressives.”

“I was in a meeting right before the 2006 national election,” said Lauderdale. “The speaker got up and talked about all the really good work that was happening around the country. And then he said, ‘Well, of course the South is lost.’”

Afterward, Lauderdale approached the speaker, told him he was from Kentucky, and pressed him not to write off the South. “He seemed sort of stunned that I was even at the meeting and didn’t know what to say,” recalled Lauderdale. What did he come up with? “‘Well, it’s not the organizers,’ he said. ‘There’s just too many Baptists.’ As if piling insult on top of insult might make his first gaffe better.”

If we’re serious about changing the country we cannot afford to entire states or regions. When it comes to the South and the Southwest, the people designing the electoral strategies often have no knowledge of the regions. They’re afraid of them and filled with prejudice. As a result the attitude toward folks on the ground is disrespectful and dismissive. As a result, when paratroopers drop down to run campaigns, they often stumble from one lost opportunity after another.

The assumption that we can’t move a progressive agenda in the South or the Southwest is wrong. This conclusion is usually offered by people who look at the map through the political version of those old 3D glasses. All they see is red or blue with a little purple sprinkled in for texture. What they don’t account for is that when you are actually in these communities – and no state is made up of only one community – a completely different story is being played out.

We have developed leaders who are assertive, detailed and clear about their goals. There is a great deal of synergy in our operations that national groups are missing out on. As Missouri Jobs with Justice’s Lara Granich told us, “The learning curve can go both ways.”

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Walking New York City’s Streets

Samiya Bashir — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 23:47:50 +0000

Community Voices Heard was bustling on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 21st.

I had just walked in from the busy New York subway system only to be met by an even busier canvass team. Alfredo Carrasquillo, Ferdinand Joseph, Cha’ta Green, Demitrus Gonzales, Philneia Timmons, and Ann Valdez—the CVH Queens canvassers—were collecting their pledge cards, nonpartisan voter guides, and know your rights handouts and ready to hit the streets.

“I am a voice for the voiceless,” said Joseph, a 55-yr old man from the Bronx about why he walks with CVH on this campaign. “I’ll stick my neck out for them. Tenants who live in these projects have issues that need to be addressed and they’re looking for someone to show them how to get it done. In the buildings they live in, there are a lot of problems like tenant issues, no hot water, no heat, and the land lord doesn’t do anything. They feel like they’ve been forgotten.”

What campaign drives Joseph, and the rest of the walk team, into New York City public housing developments to knock on doors and speak to the residents? November 4th, CVH is asking voters to send a message to the next New York State Senator: it’s time to get serious about funding public housing.

CVH’s canvassers are holding conversations with the residents of public housing about the stakes involved in the upcoming senatorial race. They are informing them that the next state senator will have the power to determine how much funding New York State will provide for NYCHA in NYC. They are letting people know that the State Senator can improve the conditions in public housing, and in order for their issues to be heard, they need to show them that they’re voting.

While I was at one of the doors with Alfredo “Red” Carrarasquillo in a Queens public housing development, I had the opportunity to listen to the passionate concerns of such a resident. When Red asked the voter to fill out a pledge card telling the candidates about the concerns of public housing residents, the person wrote, “Everything. Rent, lack of services for youth, and maintenance.” A conversation between Red and the resident ensued. They both understood the realities of living in public housing and could relate to each other on a deeper level about the issues each was facing.

After we left the door, Red turned to me with an ear to ear smile. The resident was very receptive to the message Red delivered. When I asked him why he was smiling he said, “It feels good as hell. It feels like we’ve been friends for years. It’s beautiful.”

Flash forward to Thursday, October 23rd. I am headed on a moving train to Yonkers with Sarah Thomason, the CVH community organizer in Westchester. We are meeting up with two CVH members to walk public housing developments.

“Right now we have a campaign in Yonkers around issues of community development and gentrification,” Sarah explains to me. “They are building developments that low-income people can’t afford and are being pushed out. There’s a lot of affordable housing that’s being lost. So we are fighting for the development to include low-income apartments, to train and hire Yonkers residents, and we’re asking city council to put conditions on the money to preserve public housing. Whoever wins, if they see that we turned out 500 low-income residents, it can definitely be a deciding factor.”

The development Sarah is referring to is planned for Chicken Island and Getty Square. The City Council is about to take a vote on the development and the plan doesn’t include housing or jobs for low-income residents.

It is this very reason that motivates Valerie Pearson, a CVH member and recently elected board member, to speak to her neighbors on this very chilly Thursday evening.

“I am door knocking because the election is coming up and I want the community in Yonkers to get out to vote because voting makes a difference. If we don’t vote, then nothing gets done.”

When we are at the doors, I am struck by her style. She is warm, but frank, and the residents respond positively to her message.

“My style is called burning down the house. I say listen, this is what’s going on. I know you’re tired, I know you work. But at this rate, if they don’t hear our voices, if they don’t know we’re listening, if they don’t know we’re watching, they’re gonna do what they want to do. And we have to stick together at this point in time. It’s crucial. I just tell him do it for your kids, do it for your grandkids. And they can hold it in their hearts that their mom did that, their grandma did that. And it’s important. We work hard. We pay the most taxes. And why shouldn’t we live.”

From these two distinct experiences, I had the fortune of witnessing CVH’s message in action. Community Voices Heard mission is about bringing low-income people together to work collectively for social change. They build their leadership from the people directly affected by the issues and by doing so are building power in these very communities. The strategies I saw employed during these days, i.e. leadership development, voter engagement, and grassroots volunteer recruitment, leads me to believe they will succeed in pushing those in power to implement more fair and equitable policies in New York City and Yonkers!

Here are more great pics from our Walk: