I was scrolling around on Substack the other day, something I do far too much of, when something came across my feed that really pissed me off. But I was too busy to respond at the time, and it zipped by so quickly that I couldn’t find it again.
It was a post from someone I’m going to assume was a young activist, (from my perspective almost everyone else is young), rightfully angry at the state of our country, but even more angry at everybody else for not doing enough. Why aren’t we all out on the streets every day like people in Serbia? Why aren’t we burning Parliament like Gen Z in Nepal, or at least shutting down the country with a general strike like people in Italy? I’m paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it and it’s a sentiment I have sympathy for. But they then went on to berate everyone for being a bunch of apathetic cowards.
That’s already antithetical to everything fifty years of activism have taught me about how to build a movement. Reader, I ask you—how often has someone shaming you and calling you names inspired you to join their cause? But it got worse.
An older woman responded in the comments. “I have trouble walking”, she said. “I want to go to the demonstrations, but I just can’t get there.”
“That’s no excuse!” the writer thundered back. “If you really cared about democracy, you’d get there! If I were you, and I couldn’t walk, I’d crawl!”
No, you would not. As an older person myself with difficulties walking, I’m here to tell you that when walking gets hard, crawling becomes impossible. Just getting that close to the ground and getting back up again becomes a project requiring planning and strategy.
That’s why I’m presuming this writer is young and has yet to experience all the annoying and debilitating ways our bodies wear out with age. But youth and inexperience do not excuse lack of empathy—not sympathy, not saying “Oh you poor old lady, I feel sorry for you.” But empathy—the ability to imagine how the world looks through someone else’s perspective. As a nation, as a world, we’re in the throes of a massive empathy-deficiency. We even have tech-billionaires pontificating that empathy is somehow a weakness that will undermine our tough, masculine, hard-nosed and heartless ability to rule the world.
But empathy is actually a form of intelligence. If you can imagine how someone else sees the world, you can anticipate how they might respond to your actions or your words. If you are a MAGA operative, you might avoid prancing about onstage with a chainsaw while ruining people’s livelihoods. If you are on the left, you might avoid trumpeting your own virtues while berating your elders.
Empathy is a basic requirement for good organizing, and movement building needs organizers. Organizing is not complaining, shaming, blaming, and name-calling. Organizing is about listening to people’s needs and strategizing about how to fill them, setting goals and working to meet them.
Here’s how an organizer might respond to that woman’s comment: “How can I get you a ride?” A more experienced and skillful organizer might say “Hmn, if there’s one woman who wants to get out and can’t because of mobility issues, there’s probably a lot more. Can we organize a buddy system? Or pair up folks with mobility challenges with helpers? Or can we organize a rolling chair brigade of motorized wheelchairs and scooters? Could we mark out a special section where those who have trouble marching might sit and cheer the procession and still be part of the action?”
Organizing requires good communication, and every communication has both text and subtext. The text is the actual words, spoken or written. The subtext is everything else: the context, the tone, the implicit meaning. The subtext of our post-writer’s scornful response is “You are a bad and worthless person. You should feel guilty and ashamed!”
Guilt and shame are unlikely to inspire a person to make more effort—rather, they’re likely to drive that person away, if not into the arms of the extreme right, at least into apathy and depression. It’s highly likely our older comment-writer already feels bad about her mobility problems, maybe even ashamed and depressed as we often do when we lose functions that represent our agency and independence. But when an organizer responds by saying, “How can we work together to make it possible and easy for you to participate?” the subtext is “You are a person of value. You’re worth my time and thought and effort, because your participation is important.” That is a message we need to be sending, over and over and over again, to people we agree with and admire and to people with whom we may disagree on many issues but can still ally with to preserve and improve our democracy.
So what does it mean to be an organizer? It’s a lot like throwing a party. You create events, invite people, anticipate barriers to participation and do your best to remove them. You issue calls to action—and also rent porta-potties. You may make the occasional rousing speech—but you probably spend more of your time doing all the unglamorous things that make the rally possible, like arranging rideshares for those who need them.
A really good organizer also knows why you are throwing the party: how does this fit into your ideas about how change happens? How does it further your long-term strategy? A good party has a theme—is it a baby shower? A funeral wake? An action or political event needs a clear intention that can interrupt a wrong directly, as when neighbors turn out to contest ICE raids, or tell a clear story of what’s wrong with the world, who’s responsible, and how we can create a world of greater justice. When Elon Musk defunded vital programs, literally taking food out of the mouths of starving children, activists shut down Tesla. A political story doesn’t need fancy language or complex nuanced characters, it simply needs to tell us who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, and above all, how each person who hears it has value and has a vital role to play in making this world more fair and just.
So pick a target that makes your story clear. If you have a choice between blocking a random road or shutting down Palantir to highlight its role in expanding government surveillance, choose Palantir. Make sure everyone involved in your action knows how to tell the story: how to talk to the media and how to become the media by writing, posting, and sharing their experiences on social media. And oh yeah—humor and good visuals help! The brilliant people of Portland are an inspiration—when Trump and Noem spread lies that Portland is a war-torn, burnt-out hell-hole, they respond with a brigade of inflatable frogs, cartoon animals, and a naked bike-ride. Noem ends up on a sniper rooftop facing off with a giant chicken, and we’re laughing at the fascists instead of trembling with fear.
A good organizer does their homework. Who else is working on this issue? What’s already being done? What are the facts? Far better to find out what work is already being done and support the groups doing it rather than reproduce it. We can make alliances with other groups by showing up for their events, going to their meetings, talking with their organizers, asking what we can do to help rather than trying to recruit them to help us. We can build alliances with groups who are doing work similar but possibly tangential to ours, whose ultimate goals might be the same but whose priorities may differ. And we can make friends, actually throw parties or go out for lunch or take a walk and get to know organizers and other activists as full, rounded people, not just worker bees, building the connections and trust that we will need to work together into the future.
Organizers research the facts of the issues. Just because MAGA folks lie nonstop does not mean we should. Facts are often not as persuasive as a good story: but the best stories are rooted in truth which then gets personalized. Know the statistics: how many people in your town have lost jobs because of Trump’s policies? Then tell the story of one, struggling single mother. How many farms are Trump’s tariffs bankrupting? Interview one family whose farm is about to go on the auction block.
Doing your research also means scouting the locations for your events–even if you think you know them. I’ll never forget, at the start of the second Gulf War, the impromptu press conference I helped call with Code Pink for the west steps of the Capital Building. It was a location our Washington DC folks knew well, so we didn’t bother to scout it beforehand. When we got there, and we discovered the whole west side was fenced off due to some renovations that were taking place.
When you throw a party you need to invite people as an organizer. A big part of your task is bringing people into the movement, which often starts by bringing them to an event, a talk, a workshop, a rally, a press conference or an action. Whatever the event, you need to do outreach: publicize your event and persuade people to come. In the old days, that meant physically printing out flyers and putting them up on lampposts and store windows, still a good idea! Today it’s far more likely to involve massive posting on social media, but going to events and other group’s meetings and personally inviting people is probably still the most effective form of outreach. However you do it, it must be done.
If you’re going to invite people, you need to also provide for their needs. This might mean anything from getting a permit for your march, if you desire to do it legally, renting those porta-potties, feeding people, potentially housing people, and also providing media support, legal support, jail support for civil disobedience, training, meetings, facilitation, technical platforms, etc.—essentially, making sure that everything you need for what you have planned is there where you need it and when you need it.
This is why few people ever organize actions alone. There is simply too much work to do. So being an organizer often means recruiting fellow organizers as well as general participants. Finally, organizers think about how to extend the impact of the action, through writing about it, through social media, through pictures, videos, reels, and any form of communication. They also plan follow-up gatherings and opportunities for people who want to get further involved to do so.
This is just a rough outline of what organizing mean. None of it involves berating people for their lack of involvement: all of it focuses on how to invite, encourage and bring people in.
We’re swimming in a stew of anxiety and rage these days, as Trump ramps up his authoritarian takeover. We need organizers as catalysts to crystallize discontent into action. Maybe you’ve never organized a political event in your life, but I’ll bet you’ve thrown a party or two! You know how to do this. You can start small, maybe just by inviting a few friends to march with you this coming Saturday, October 18th, for No Kings Day.
Maybe you’re already doing that, and can organize those friends into an affinity group that can plan ongoing actions. Maybe together you’ll create the next campaign, or the Rapid Response Network for your neighborhood. Even small actions can make a big difference! Listen to comedian David Nihill tell the story of the grapefruit ladies: ten women who began a tiny boycott in their Irish grocery store against South African apartheid that eventually gained momentum and helped to end that unjust regime.
Ultimately, organizing is about taking our power to make happen what we want and create the world of greater justice that we can envision. It’s work, but it’s also immensely more satisfying then just stewing in frustration and resentment. You’ll feel good about yourself, you’ll make great friends, and you might just save democracy while you’re at it.
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This post has been syndicated from Starhawk’s Substack, where it was published under this address.