We do our best to win campaigns, but what do we do when we lose? How do we recover, find footing and carry on? Some important lessons can be drawn from a recent generation-defining struggle in New Zealand: the Save Happy Valley Campaign. The campaign has been protecting Happy Valley from invasive coal mining since 2005, including the country’s longest running environmental occupation. Just a few weeks ago their campaign was
I’ve trained in about two dozen different countries, most of them on multiple occasions. Trainers at Training for Change are increasingly training internationally. The last year other trainers have led major trainings in Turkey, the UK, and Thailand — with another trip soon to Colombia (where co-director Nico Amador will lead trainings with trans youth). Because of my range of experiences, I wanted to offer some reflections on how to make
Reading Daniel Hunter’s Strategy & Soul is almost as good as taking one of his Training for Change workshops. It’s a very experiential read, immersing you in the story of community organizing and developing a campaign to keep casinos out of Philadelphia. You quickly find yourself drawn into the details of the struggle and with graceful ease there is a step back to reflect on what is happening and the theory
A few months after last year’s Wisconsin uprising at the state capitol, I stood in front of a packed Quaker meeting house overflowing with labor leaders, religious leaders and radical activists. They carried a wide range of feelings: a mood of failure because Governor Scott Walker had moved through his nefarious legislation, an excitement left over from daily waves of actions and protests, and a shared sense of shock and being
It was during the second presidential inauguration of George Bush. We were a group of over 5,000 “protestors” named Turn Your Back on Bush. When Bush’s motorcade would go by the huge parade of people, we would literally turn our backs – a symbolic action that gained international media attention. My role was to train the street teams that would help coordinate and give information to our participants. Our training was
More and more people see the United States as an empire in decline. It is over-stretching itself in Iraq and Afghanistan, increasing its trade debt astronomically, and unable to even pretend to take care of its own poor citizens after a hurricane. These conditions have created a teachable moment to help bring a new consciousness to the United States. There are two different approaches to how we do that. Imagine a
When armed insurgents in Iraq abducted four members of Christian Peacemaker Teams two weeks ago, something was clearly wrong. Like other hostage situations in Iraq, a shadowy insurgent group took responsibility, The Swords of Truth Brigade. It made a tape of the hostage. They threatened to kill them if their demands – the release of Iraqi prisoners – were not met. But something is very different. Rather than serving as another
My dad was a Baptist preacher. A “classic” sermon of his was the “upside-down kingdom” — the message that God’s kingdom reflected different values of this one. While the values of today might be for money and military and power, the kingdom of God reflected the marginal voices that put love first. He would preach that for God’s kingdom to come a new set of values must emerge — and not
For groups looking for more strategic models and tools to use, here’s a time-tested model for effective social change work. It’s a tool that’s inherently democratic and builds resources for the movement by winning specific goals. And, as an added bonus this tool is sizeable to local as well as national contexts. The tool? It’s one used throughout history by large and small social movements for everything from overthrowing dictators to
“We need to educate people,” is one of the most common refrains from social change activists. But what does it really mean? The rise of popular education and insights from anti-oppression movements give us major insights into how to do meaningful education. Here’s how I’ve taken these lessons to heart to be more effective. STEP ONE: BREAK OUT OF THE BELIEF THAT MERE RECITATION OF FACTS IS SUFFICIENT Take the counter-recruitment