Practical Radicals

In this, our final episode of the Practical Radicals Podcast, we hear from over a dozen progressive leaders, including several former students, and reflect with them about what we’ve learned since the book Practical Radicals came out last November and what we make of the path ahead — as the U.S. and the world face a daunting and overlapping set of crises.

We offer thoughts on the seven strategy models, looking at exciting developments in the field as well as areas that could improve. Base-building in community organizing faces major challenges. Sulma Arias has reoriented her organization, People’s Action, to spark a “revival of community organizing,” a field whose crisis became more acute and widely acknowledged during the COVID pandemic. The labor movement, by contrast, is experiencing its most exciting resurgence in decades. Stephen Lerner — whose organization, Bargaining for the Common Good, brings together unions and community groups to work on joint strategies — sees tremendous promise in labor’s upsurge, pointing especially to the prospect of organizing entire sectors and taking on “the giant corporations that are driving the whole economy.”  Thomas Walker of the Communications Workers of America explains why he thinks building on labor’s momentum calls for unions to spend more of their assets on base-building and to support new ways of organizing. 

Maurice Mitchell of the Working Families Party argues that movements need to get serious about governing power, which requires treating progressives elected to office as co-conspirators rather than targets. Lydia Avila describes her work with California Calls, which hopes to build a grassroots leadership development pipeline and combine the best principles of community organizing with electoral politics. 

A key strategy in the years ahead will be disruption, which Lisa Fithian, author of Shut it Down, argues is a “transformational process” that can give people a greater sense of agency over their own lives and the world. Lissy Romanow, who used to run the training institute called Momentum, points to hopeful examples where momentum as a strategy is being combined with more long-term base-building work. 

We then offer thoughts on the ways movements and organizations need to adapt to get sharper on strategy. Texas activist Asha Dane’el addresses the importance of developing a long-term vision and investing in leadership development that combines “rigor and compassion.” Alex Tom tells us how the Chinese Progressive Association hit upon a hugely successful new approach to fostering organizational alignment and preventing unnecessary internal conflict by writing a “culture operations document,” which is given to all new staff and explains the organization’s vision and leadership philosophy as well as key terminology. Doran Schrantz describes the commitment to leadership and other factors that have allowed ISAIAH, a church-based organization, and labor and community partners in Minnesota to transform the state. 

We conclude with some thoughts on our current historical conjuncture. Overdogs have never wanted a true democracy, and right now, they see an opening for autocracy. As Ian Bassin of Protect Democracy explains, by objective scholarly measures, “US democracy has been declining faster [in recent years] than almost any other country on the planet.” Alicia Garza, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter, argues that it’s crucial to form not only a “united front,” which brings together different elements of the left, but also a “popular front,” which unites the left with the center and even pro-democracy elements of the right. As the recent victories in France, India, and Brazil illustrate, there is nothing inevitable about the slide to authoritarianism — if we can achieve the unity and will to fight it.

Links: 

Leadership for Democracy and Social Justice

Alicia Garza, The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart

Lisa Fithian, Shut It Down: Stories from a Fierce, Loving Resistance

Transcript for Ep. 13 (coming soon)

Most famous guides to strategy are written for overdogs. (Think of Machiavelli’s The Prince or Sun Tzu’s Art of War.) And overdogs today invest in strategic education at a scale that dwarfs anything on the left. Their commitment is captured in the slogan of the right-wing Leadership Institute, which has trained over 200,000 people: “You owe it to your philosophy to learn how to win.” 

In researching Practical Radicals, Stephanie and Deepak found that overdogs rely mainly on three strategies to gain and keep power: 1) weakening underdogs’ sources of power; 2) employing what’s known in the military as psychological operations, or PSYOPS; and 3) dividing their opponents to conquer them. 

The good news is that underdogs can use these same strategies against more powerful opponents. In this episode, Deepak and Stephanie discuss some great examples of how to counter corporate power, use PSYOPS against white supremacists, and drive wedges in elite coalitions. They also explore other lessons progressives can take from the overdogs’ playbook: crafting long-term plans, recruiting based on belonging rather than belief, and using data-driven evaluation paired with the lean startup model for organizing. 

Our guest has made a career out of researching overdogs in innovative ways. Munira Lokhandwala is Director of Tech and Training at LittleSis.org, the “nonprofit public interest research organization focused on corporate and government accountability.”  As the answer to Big Brother, LittleSis conducts research on the power elite, offers trainings for social change movements, and provides resources like Oligrapher, a tool that allows organizers to map power networks and pinpoint where to drive wedges. The secretive and overlapping networks of the powerful can seem “daunting” says Lokhandwala, “but actually, every one of those connections is a relationship that has to be maintained for them to maintain their power.” She encourages progressives to “think about[the overdogs’] large networks as an opportunity to come at their power, their reputation, their profits from many different angles. Then we can imagine building long-term, intersectional issue campaigns” that “turn the very source of their power against them.”

Episode 12 transcript

Links: 

LittleSis’s Oligrapher for Beginners

LittleSis 2024 Research Tools for Organizers Training Series

Choose Democracy’s scenario planning tool https://whatiftrumpwins.org/

In the struggle to abolish slavery — the social movement that arguably set the template for all that followed — organizers used all seven strategies we identify in Practical Radicals. According to our guest, historian Manisha Sinha, the abolitionists were “radical in their goals . . . but pragmatic in implementation” — the quintessential practical radicals. Stephanie and Deepak begin this episode by talking about the concepts of movement cycles and movement ecosystems and how conflict within movements can be generative. Then Stephanie and Professor Sinha explore some themes from Sinha’s award-winning 2016 book The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition. As Sinha explains, the conventional wisdom about the abolitionists is wrong in many ways: contrary to depictions of the abolitionists as mostly white, bourgeois, defenders of capitalism, Sinha highlights the crucial role of Black abolitionists (including enslaved people who resisted from the earliest days of the slave trade), and the pervasive and “overlapping radicalisms” of the abolitionists, many of whom were utopian socialists and attended international conferences, not just against slavery but also for peace and women’s rights. Where previous historians have focused on the abolition movement that peaked in the 19th century, Sinha draws attention to an earlier wave of multiracial abolitionism in the late 18th century. And where others have viewed the movement as riven by differences and infighting, Sinha sees the abolitionists’ diversity as a source of strength, applauding their sensitivity to movement cycles and their political acumen in shifting strategies (e.g., at a key juncture, away from boycotts and toward party politics). She contends that the abolitionists served as “a prototype for racial social movements” in America and that radicals have been as “American as apple pie.” Sinha also suggests that the key lesson the abolitionists offer movements today is to “realize who the real enemy is . . . when you have at stake the future of American democracy.” Sinha’s new book, published in March of 2024, is entitled The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic, Reconstruction 1860-1920, and it promises to be no less audacious and groundbreaking than her previous work, framing Reconstruction as a continuation of aspirations born in abolitionism and an attempt to fundamentally reground American democracy.

Underdogs often respond to systemic oppression through collective care – acts of mutual aid and cooperation with the goal of meeting people’s basic survival needs when the state fails to do so. Some people feel collective care is just what we should do as decent human beings, but that it isn’t a strategy for systemic social change. Others are more critical, noting that collective care can turn people away from strategies to change systems through organizing and political action. But when we (Stephanie and Deepak) taught our graduate class on Power & Strategy, one of our students, Walter Barrientos, an experienced organizer in the immigrant rights movement, argued that collective care is a strategy that movements have used effectively for centuries around the world. The more we read and discussed the topic, the more we became convinced, and we included collective care as the 7th of our “Seven Strategies to Change the World” in our book, Practical Radicals.

In this episode, we look at collective care through the lens of the AIDS crisis and the remarkable work of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC). Our guest, Tim Sweeney joined and later ran that essential, underappreciated organization during some of the worst years when AIDS ravaged the LGBTQ+ community. After queer communities gained unprecedented visibility in the 1970s and early ’80s, AIDS brought despair and decimation. (By 1995, one gay man in nine between the ages of twenty-five and forty-four in the United States had been diagnosed with AIDS, and nearly 7 percent had died. By comparison, COVID-19 has killed 0.3 percent of the U.S. population.) GMHC encouraged gay men and their allies to turn their grief and anger into action to help the sick and dying (with their buddy program), fight bigotry and misinformation (with their hotline and safer sex education projects), and advocate for better policies at every level of government. Although the better-known ACT UP is sometimes seen as a more radical alternative to GMHC, Tim explains that the two organizations actually complemented each other — with the care and community building of GMHC providing a ladder of engagement that helped foster self-confidence and led many to take part in ACT UP’s headline-grabbing direct actions. In fact, as we discuss in the book, the first ACT UP meetings were co-facilitated by Tim Sweeney, and GMHC provided financial support to ACT UP at key points.

We conclude that collective care done well is a strategy that can make all other strategies, such as base-building and disruption, more effective. When opportunities for systemic change seem to be foreclosed, collective care provides a path for people to achieve tangible change – and often discover new ways to achieve social transformation.

Episode 10 transcript 

Sometimes social movements can spread like wildfire. From the sit-ins of the Civil Rights movement to the sea change in support for marriage equality, from the divestment campaign to end apartheid in South Africa to the climate justice movement winning the largest climate bill in history (2022’s Inflation Reduction Act) — the strategy model known as Momentum has proven powerful time and time again. Although Momentum has helped movements succeed for centuries, the framework has gained increased attention in recent years as the internet has made it possible to organize action at a larger and larger scale.  In 2014, a new institute called Momentum began training movement leaders in this strategy. And in 2016, Mark and Paul Engler formalized the momentum approach in their valuable book This Is An Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt is Shaping the 21st Century. 

In this episode, Deepak interviews May Boeve, Executive Director of the climate justice group 350.org. Founded in 2008, by Bill McKibben and a small group of college students, including May, 350.org is now active in 26 countries and works with a volunteer network of 500 organizations. May and organizers at 350.org used the model before the framework had been written down. They believe that the breakthrough social transformation promised by Momentum makes it an essential strategy to confront the existential threat posed by global warming. 

May describes how 350.org’s momentum-driven campaign to stop the Keystone XL pipeline in 2011 provided a crucial morale boost after the stinging legislative defeat of climate legislation in the Obama years — and marked, in the words of one observer, “the first time the environmental and climate movement [got] serious about power.” 350.org’s subsequent divestment campaign against fossil fuels illustrated the power of “distributed action” and putting pressure on key institutions like foundations, banks, and local governments. It also provided an onramp for ordinary people to get involved and become leaders. 

Early in her organizing career, May had been a proponent of “horizontalism,” the philosophy that movements should be leaderless, but she now rejects that notion and explains how momentum-driven movements can combine mass engagement with effective leadership. May and Deepak conclude by considering the promise and peril of online organizing, how to deal with pathologies in movement culture, and 350.org’s shift from simply “saying no” to fossil fuels to also “saying yes” to climate change solutions.

Links:
May mentions Maurice Mitchell’s highly influential 2022 essay “Building Resilient Organizations,” a must-read for everyone in progressive politics. And now, there’s a workbook, too.

In the right circumstances, progressive groups can work with progressive insiders in government to win big policy changes. In this episode, we consider “inside-outside campaigns,” including what makes them possible and some of the inevitable tensions that they create, for example about when and how to compromise when a coalition doesn’t have enough power to win all its demands. Stephanie and Deepak reflect on their own experiences with living wage campaigns and federal policy, including the campaign to pass the Affordable Care Act in the Obama years. Deepak then talks to Felicia Wong, who played a key role in making the Biden economic agenda much more progressive than most observers expected. Felicia runs the Roosevelt Institute, which has worked to overturn the dominant neoliberal consensus in Washington. Felicia was also among the most progressive members on the Biden transition team and oversaw the appointment of over a hundred officials in key government positions. In a wide-ranging conversation, she explains how Occupy Wall Street, the Fight for $15, and coalitions pushing for a Green New Deal and expanded investments in childcare and home care reshaped the terrain, and how work at the level of ideas, narrative, and organizing came together to shift the parameters of the possible on economic policy. Deepak and Felicia also explore the concept of “policy feedback loops” – how policy can be a vehicle for altering power relations in society, and why the right has been better at this in recent years than progressives.

Episode 8 transcript

Episode 7: Electoral Strategies with Maurice Mitchell

Many progressives are cynical about electoral politics. But our guest today explains why engaging in electoral politics is crucial for building the kind of society we want. Maurice Mitchell is the National Director of the Working Families Party, a savvy, independent political organization that has given progressives greater voice and leverage in cities and states around the country, most notably by taking advantage of fusion voting. Maurice describes his own trajectory, from being a local organizer to a leader in the Movement for Black Lives, who ultimately came to see movements alone as limited without the organizing force that a political party provides. 

He offers an insightful analysis of our present conjuncture, shaped by a ruthless right committed to minority rule through the courts, decades of neoliberalism, and an information environment that breeds atomization and loneliness. As neoliberalism’s legitimacy crumbles, and the post-neoliberal, authoritarian right speaks to popular concerns, Maurice argues that WFP’s strategy of winning elections to achieve governing power and engaging everyday people in the work of governance offers a hopeful path forward. 

Maurice concludes by reflecting on the questions that fill him with the same excitement he had as a young organizer: “What are you building? Who are you choosing to be? And who are you choosing to be with?”

Links:

Maurice’s 2022 highly influential essay “Building Resilient Organizations” is a must-read for everyone in progressive politics. And now, there’s a workbook, too.

We mentioned Leadership for Democracy and Social Justice, a terrific new training institute at CUNY for early- and mid-career organizers where Maurice has been a regular guest instructor. 

Maurice’s argument about the present conjuncture compliments one made by Shahrzad Shams, Deepak Bhargava, and Harry W. Hanbury in a new report for the Roosevelt Institute: The Cultural Contradictions of Neoliberalism: The Longing for an Alternative Order and the Future of Multiracial Democracy in an Age of Authoritarianism

In the past two decades, progressives have gotten far more savvy at the strategy we call “narrative shift,” learning how to challenge the dominant story and change the common sense on key issues. For example, on same-sex marriage, activists drove a sea change in public sentiment — from 27% support in 1996 to 71% in 2023. And research shows that Occupy Wall Street, which some criticized as a “blip,” was, as one organizer put it, actually a “spark” that ignited mass movements for economic justice, from the Fight for $15 and a Union to the campaigns of Bernie Sanders, and changed how everyday people think about economic inequality. In this episode, we hear from two experts about how to achieve narrative shifts.

As co-founder and former head of United We Dream, the largest immigrant youth-led organization in the country, Cristina Jimenez Moreta, was instrumental in crafting a narrative of immigrant pride, dignity, and belonging that helped bring about Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), providing protection against deportation for hundreds of thousands of young immigrants. Cristina is now a Distinguished Lecturer at CUNY and co-chair of Leadership for Democracy and Social Justice, where she mentors young and emerging leaders and encourages them to think through hard questions like how to make the most of upsurge moments like the Movement for Black Lives, how to harness the power of new technologies like AI, and how to rethink our organizing models to build a bigger “we.”

Our next guest is Alan Jenkins, a civil rights lawyer and co-founder of The Opportunity Agenda, an organization devoted to narrative shift strategies. Now a Harvard Law professor, Alan has co-authored the 1/6 comic book series, which imagines what might have happened if the MAGA insurrection had succeeded. Alan unpacks the differences between messaging, framing, and narrative shifts, and gives examples of how conservatives and progressives have succeeded in changing the terms of debates. In a wide-ranging conversation, he considers how far we’ve come since Ronald Reagan suggested we “open the border both ways,” how grassroots activists at the 2008 Heartland Presidential Forum in Iowa steered candidate Obama toward a rhetoric of “community values,” and how comic books and interventions in popular culture can help foster the kinds of conversations our troubled nation needs.

Did Occupy Wall Street Make a Difference?, by Ruth Milkman, Stephanie Luce, and Penny Lewis, The Nation, October 4/11, 2021

Changing the Subject: A Bottom-Up Account of Occupy Wall Street in New York City, by Ruth Milkman, Stephanie Luce, and Penny Lewis, January 2013

In this episode, we explore the strategy of disruption and talk with one of its leading theorists and practitioners, the legendary scholar and activist Frances Fox Piven. Stephanie and Deepak begin by distinguishing protest from disruption, two types of action that are often confused. They consider famous instances of disruption, like the mass actions on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation that blocked the Dakota Access Pipeline, and lesser-known ones, like the 1975 “Women’s Day Off” that helped win equal rights for women in Iceland. They also reflect on how overdogs use disruption, citing the “Brooks Brothers Riot,” a protest by GOP operatives that may have tipped the 2000 election and presaged the insurrection of January 6th, 2021. Then, in a wide-ranging interview, Frances Fox Piven argues that “the most important achievement of elites is to persuade people that they don’t have power.” But, she explains,  ordinary people in complex societies have enormous “potential power,” the power to disrupt by stopping work, breaking the law, or simply refusing to cooperate. Invoking a chapter of history she and her late husband, Richard Coward, helped write, Piven recalls the Welfare Rights Movement, when poor women of color used their disruptive power to get benefits they had been denied and hugely increased the amount of money spent of welfare in the U.S. Frances, Deepak, and Stephanie also discuss the potential for using disruptive power today, the ways that too much organization can stifle movements, and the essential role of exuberance, ecstasy, and even “sexuality” in movement politics.

In the Spring of 2021, dozens of immigrant New Yorkers, mostly women, launched a hunger strike that lasted 23 days and was the climax of a campaign to win an unprecedented $2.1 billion relief package for workers who had been excluded from unemployment benefits, federal stimulus checks, and rent relief. At the time, many thought the campaign’s demands were out of reach, but as our guests Ángeles Solis and José Lopez of Make the Road New York explain, years of base-building made this seemingly impossible victory a reality — one that spawned similar demands in eleven other states. Founded in 1997, Make the Road New York, as José says, “focuses on the intersecting challenges that working-class and immigrant New Yorkers face every single day” — and with 27,000 members, it has become a powerful force for justice in the state. During the pandemic, a quarter of Make the Road New York members could not afford to pay rent or put food on the table, and ninety lost their lives. But desperation fueled a bold project of relational organizing, recruiting people in food pantries, leveraging mutual aid to build power, and calling out billionaire profiteers and tax cheats. Before the interview with Ángeles and José, Deepak and Stephanie contrast the approach to base-building in the labor movement (as covered in episode 3) with base- building in the community organizing tradition, drawing on four principles from legendary organizer Arnie Graf’s book Lessons Learned: Stories from a Lifetime of Organizing. They also consider how community organizations can find the right balance between radical vision and practical change in the here and now.

Episode 4 transcript