A few lessons from my recent front line organizing experiences, as well as a few thoughts on the larger picture.

1. Mobilizing for Social Change
How to Build Activist
Communities…
Building Community… to Change the World… by
Rebuilding Community!

2. What Do I Want To Accomplish
Today?
Empower and activate participants
Make some friends!
Learn about community projects
Explore collaboration opportunities
Communicate what I have learned through
my diverse range of experience…
START A CONVERSATION…
Mobilize… activate!

3. Three Sections
Community Organizing
Modern Context
How Do We Win?
Where Do I Start?!?... A Few
Initial Questions…

4. A Few Initial Questions…
-What is your passion? What really makes
you tick?
-Who/Whom do you want to work with?
What is your tribe?
-Who will work with you now?
-What resources do you have available to
you?
-What do you want to learn?
-What is your story?... What lead up to this
moment?

5. Suresh’s Story
B. Sc. Physics
7 years at ScotiaMcLeod
– Built $30 million private client wealth
management practice
5 years running Catalyst Capital Partners
3 years studying philosophy at SFU
1. 5 years raising hell!
– Occupy, Maple Spring, DefendOurCoast,
Enbridge Noise Demo, BC Social Forum

6. The Change We Seek is
Coincident with the Process for
Change

7. Community Organizing

8. Components of Overall Strategy
-Develop Founding Documents
-Consensus models
-Key Roles and Organizational
Responsibilities/Structure
-Running Effective Meetings
-Building Your Volunteer Team
-Building Campaigns
-Community Engagement
-Online strategy
-Media and messaging
-List management

9. Challenges… there will be many!
Might as well be aware… anticipate…
Differing perspectives and agendas… different
ways of viewing and talking about the world
People participate for various reasons
Not everyone will be constructive
We will do collaboration
exercise!

10. What Is The Most Important
Realization?

11. Community Organizing…
regardless of the issue focus…
is about building community!
The goal is to structure and organize
communities that have a strong collective
purpose!

12. Building A Volunteer Team
Empower others
Be collaborative!... Co-create…
Ask people what they want to do
Remember that people participate for
a range of different reasons
Build community!
Organize different event types!

13. Key Roles and Responsibilities
‘Organizers’… ‘Facilitators’
Social Media/Web support
Documentation
Focus on tasks and
responsibilities as opposed to
fixed positions… be flexible…
don’t get attached to
particular roles… share
responsibility

14. Develop Founding Documents
Basis of Unity
Decision Making
Operating Structure

15. Consensus Decision Making
Do you want to be precise?
What is the consensus threshold?
– Occupy Vancouver used a 90/10 model
DefendOurCoast… 80/20 was
proposed
Do you use progressive stacking?
Are your facilitators trained properly?

16. Running Effective Meetings
Distribute agenda in advance
Proper facilitation
Take minutes
Distribute and centralize minutes

17. Building Campaigns
Identify theme… ‘we are the 99%!’
Identify symbol
– Red square
– Blue drop
Think about events… actions...
Identify resources
– People
– Money etc…

18. Community Engagement
‘Grassroots’ mobilization
‘Grasstops’ mobilization
– List marketing
Speaking at related events
Participating in community groups
Identify free media/publication
channels

19. Online Strategy
Use Facebook and Youtube to reach
grassroots…
Use Twitter to reach politicians and
media
Facebook represents scale
Ensure that you stay active
Ensure many people participate…
represent whole team!

20. Media and Messaging
Focus on key messages… CLASSE
lesson
Identify spokes people that
understand issues… Enbridge Noise
Demo less
At events, have identified media
contacts and a media desk

21. List Management
Always collect contact info!
Make sure that list is used regularly
Target messaging to match how you
solicited email… no spam!
If possible, segment lists…

22. Key Messages
Dominant Institutional structures
(capitalism and corporations)
reinforce the selfishness and greed

23. Taking Things To The Next
Level

24. What’s the Problem?
Actions are small
Impact is small
Actions are uncoordinated
WHY?

25. Movements versus Campaigns
Not something we organize
A part of the collective consciousness
Unstructured
‘Leaderless’
Non-hierarchical
Momentum driven!... The problem is
that momentum is hard to sustain

26. Principles To Embrace
Transparency
‘Leaderless’… what does this mean?
Decentralized

27. The Modern Context

28. The Story of Capitalism
Capitalism
Social Alienation…
Structural
the destruction
Imbalance
of community
Silos, territorialism
Economic Inequality Systemic Oppression and the inability
to collaborate
Dominant Institutional structures
(capitalism and corporations) reinforce the
selfishness and greed

29. The Way Forward… rebuild
communities…
Eco-villages
Co-operative/communal living
Co-location spaces
Focus on Localization and rebuilding
community solidarity

30. What do we need to do?...
Collaborate
Challenges…
Differing ‘Lens’… way of viewing the
world
Differing ‘Language’… way of talking
about the world
Differing goals and agendas
Prioritizing self interest over
collective interest…

31. The Importance of Physical Space!
The Occupy Lesson…
Trust takes time to build
The challenges of differing
perspectives, goals and agendas can
only be resolved by spending time
together!

32. Problems We Need To Solve
Financing the transition
How we work together

33. What Does the World We Want To
Build Look Like?
Leaders are directly accountable to
people
– Participatory democracy
Sustainable: respect for Mother Earth
Egalitarian: respect all individuals
equally
– Need to recognize structure imbalances

34. Technological Transformation
The Forces at Play
Broadband P
roli feration
Real Time
Infrastructure
Increase in Processing Power
Power at Edge of
Network
t of Memory
Decrease in Cos
High VISIBILITY
and
Connectedness
What Does this lead to?

35. Values Transformation
The Forces at Play
Clima
te C h an
ge
Financial Marke
t Collapse
of Power Discontent!
Shifts in Global Balance
lture
Western Cu
in
tation
a gmen
tion and Fr onte
xt
Aliena rit ual C
/Spi
ol istic
ce of H
n
Abse

36. The Tipping Point
The Forces at Play
Values Trans
fo rmation
The Tipping
Point!!
rmatio n
gical Transfo
Technolo
So What Now?

37. Old Paradigm New Paradigm
Privacy Transparency
Closed Open
Isolated Collaborative
Hierarchical Flat
Centralized Decentralized
Globalization Localization
Self interested Part of Ecosystem
Solely focused on financial Focused on triple bottom
profit (corporations) line
Employees are ‘workers’ Employees are human
Progress quantified by ROI Progress quantified by SROI
Use technology to increase Use technology to build
productivity community
Insular view of world Holistic view

38. Collaboration Exercise
Identify one thing that you
are willing to work on
together… and the next step…

39. How Do We Win?

40. Mass Mobilization… convergence!
Impact policy makers
Build solidarity
Build community

41. Convergence in the Streets…
convergence of Ideology
… embracing… collectively… a new
way of being in the world

42. Decentralization and Federation…
Connect decentralized networks
using technology
Share information, resources, best
practices

43. We need to create the spaces
where…
We can share ideas and perspectives
so that we can ‘converge’ on
something we all agree on…
We can develop trust in each other
These spaces need to be both in the
real world… and virtual…
In doing so…

44. Central Concepts
Solidarity… unity in difference…
Convergence
Dialogue
Shared Space