ChangeMakers

Jane McAlevey is a fierce advocate for winning social change through organising. Her organising method, grounded in decades of experience, mentorship, and the battles of many movements across US history, is that workers and people need to lead their own change. She specialises in teaching how you can support people to do this. 

For unionists, her work is well known - and this episode is a joyous journey into how she came to this approach, and how that approach works. For others in the climate movement or racial justice movements - this is a useful introduction to what Jane means by organising, how it is different to mobilising and some of its crucial features. 

If you are interested in Jane's work, she has published three books and a free online book of case studies that can all be downloaded here - https://janemcalevey.com/. You can find Jane on Twitter at @rsgexp. 

She also runs a global training program called Workers Rising - the most recent session is described here and future sessions will be advertised on Jane's website (you can sign up for updates). 

For more on ChangeMakers - check us out at https://changemakerspodcast.org/, or Twitter at @changemakers99 or @amandatatts. 

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This week we explore what it would take to build a movement for nature. Sam Rye is a manager at the Conservation Volunteers Australia. He has been involved in a lifetime of work around regeneration and in networks involving decentralised leadership. He is bringing those two passions together to imagine how people can reimagine their relationship with the earth.

For more on ChangeMakers check us out:
Via our Website - https://changemakerspodcast.org
On Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ChangeMakersPodcast/
On Twitter - @changemakers99 or @amandatatts

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We talk to one of the biggest names in US community organising, Ernie Cortes. We chat about the history of organising, exploring how it has changed and how it has created a powerful network of organisers that spans the globe. Ernie reflects on the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) under Saul Alinksy, his work building the IAF after Alinsky's death, and some of the practices the IAF uses to develop powerful organisers.

Across the conversation, Ernie mentions dozens of important references and readings that will be food for any existing and want-to-be change maker. We have put that list on our website too, for those who weren't quick enough to grab a pen - https://changemakerspodcast.org/ernie-cortes-changemaker-chat/

For more on ChangeMakers check us out:
Via our Website - https://changemakerspodcast.org
On Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ChangeMakersPodcast/
On Twitter - @changemakers99 or @amandatatts 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As Afghanistan falls again to the rule of the Taiban, we want to share a lesser-known story of hope - the work of the Kabul Peace House. During the 2000s in the mountains of central Afghanistan, soon after the US invasion, a remarkable but unlikely peace movement began. Led by a man called Insaan, they committed to a process of building peace between people. Over decades they created understanding and connection between ethnic groups and genders in ways that invasion and ideology never could.

This story was written and recorded by our reporter Mark Isaacs on location in Afghanistan, and first released in 2020. Life in Afghanistan is far more complex than how it is portrayed in the daily Western news, in this episode we celebrate the Afghani community leaders who continue to work for a better place and real peace.

You can find out more about this story in the book about Kabul Peace House, by Mark Isaacs - https://markjisaacs.com/product/the-kabul-peace-house/

Find out more about ChangeMakers on our website - https://changemakerspodcast.org/

You can follow us on Twitter @changemakers99 or our host Amanda Tattersall @amandatatts. Or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ChangeMakersPodcast/

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In 2018 we interviewed Hahrie Han one of the United State's prominent researchers on community organising, community leadership, and social change. This episode explores her research on civic engagement and some of the cut through theorising she has done contrasting ‘mobilising' and ‘organising strategies. For anyone interested in how people can work together to make powerful change to advance their values and solve their problems - then this is for you! We release this now as Hahrie has just released a co-authored book called Prisms for the People - the next installment of powerful thinking in this space.

For more on ChangeMakers - go to https://changemakerspodcast.org

For more on Hahrie's books - https://www.hahriehan.com/books

Follow us on Twitter - @changemaker99 or Facebook here

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When can political parties be real change makers and produce big change? Ed Miliband, former Opposition Leader for the UK Labour Party shares some of the lesser-known stories that have shaped his political identity and his ambitions for a politics that can go big. We discuss the role of labour and social democratic parties in the change making space. We reconsider the idea that ‘politics is the art of the possible' and Ed shares some of his insight into the kind of politics that is needed for these challenging times.

We have some follow up resources for this episode:

In the episode, Ed makes reference to Arnie Graf. For a ChangeMaker Chat with Arnie go here - https://changemakerspodcast.org/arnie-graf-community-organiser-changemaker-chats/

Ed also mentions Citizens UK. For a podcast with Jonathan Cox Citizen UK's co-director go to - https://changemakerspodcast.org/jonathan-cox-scale-and-organising-changemaker-chat/

Ed mentioned BREXIT, for a ChangeMaker story about how the campaign worked go to - https://changemakerspodcast.org/episode-2-win/

For more information about ChangeMakers, you can find us at https://changemakerspodcast.org/, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ChangeMakersPodcast/ and on Twitter at @ChangeMakers99

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On 14 February 2018 a lone gunman entered Majory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida and killed 17 people. In the days following, a group of students from the school built a campaign to change gun laws in America. Everyday students like Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg became household names as a social movement called March for Our Lives staged a national conversation around gun violence. This episode tells their story featuring teachers, students and parents who were there that day and part of the movement that grew. We released this story in 2020. It is part of a three-part series about March for Our Lives. Episode two is about art and politics after Parkland, and episode three is about identity. 

For more on ChangeMakers visit our website - https://changemakerspodcast.org/. You can find us on Facebook or on Twitter at @changemakers99.

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One of President Biden's first acts was to stop the Keystone Pipeline. It was a victory that arose out of a long battle. First Nations leaders from Standing Rock, in coalition with Indigneous leaders from around the world, initiated this campaign in 2016 to protect their land and water from destruction. But for hundreds of years before this, the Sioux Nations have defended their land and fought for sovereignty. This story features the voices of some of these leaders. The story was first released in 2017, years before the pipeline was stopped.

For more about ChangeMakers visit - https://changemakerspodcast.org/.  You can find us on Facebook or on Twitter at @changemakers99. 

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What does it take to build powerful coalitions between different groups with different interests and passions? The idea of working together sounds nice, but what makes a coalition work when the rubber hits the road.

This is an episode of two very different but equally successful coalitions. The first talks to organisers in the coalition that delivered the BREXIT deal in the United Kingdom. The second tells the story of the grassroots leaders who build a coalition to stop gas fields being built across the Northern Rivers of NSW in Australia. Each story draws out crucial, transferable lessons about coalition building, drawn in part from our Host Amanda Tattersall's book Power in Coalition (2010).

There are further links to writing and training about coalition building on our website - www.changemakerspodcast.org (via story page).

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Scale is a buzzword in social change circles, but what does it actually mean to scale social change? Community organiser and Deputy Director of Citizens UK Jonathan Cox unpacks the idea of scale. We discuss the importance of one-to-one relationships, organisation, and networks as resources that help social change ideas move from the small to the big and from place to place.

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