S1.E10: Strategy, Tactics, & Direct Action Artwork

Listen, Organize, Act! Organizing & Democratic Politics

The Listen, Organize, Act podcast focuses on the history and contemporary practice of community organizing and democratic politics. Alongside this specific focus are two others: the first is to explore how organizing connects democracy and religion, particularly at a local level; the second is to explore the visions and practices that shape small 'd,' participatory democratic politics. The name of the podcast reflects these concerns. Through a series of conversations with folk who live and breathe the work of organizing, each series looks at democracy as not first and foremost about a system of government, or set of laws, or an ideology but as rooted in three things. The first is a commitment to listen to others different to oneself because their experience, their story, who they are as a person matters. Listening honors fundamental premises of democracy, as it marks a way of respecting the dignity of each individual, the importance of dialogue as against killing and coercion as means of resolving conflicts, and that people should have a say in decisions that affect them. The second is that democracy does not just happen, it needs organizing. And if it is to be democratic, it needs people organizing between themselves to determine their living and working conditions. If ordinary people don’t get organized then they are subject to others acting on them and their living and working conditions being determined by systems and structures controlled by others who either won’t listen to them, don’t have their interests at heart, or are actively hostile, wanting them silenced or disenfranchised. And finally, democracy lives or dies by shared action. Listening and organizing generate the means of coming together, but at a certain point people must act together to move the world as it is towards becoming a more just and generous one in which all may flourish. Each episode is a stand alone discussion, but when listened to together, the episodes build on each other to form an integrated series. Season 1 is a foundational course in the meaning, purpose and mechanics of how to do community organizing and build a more just and generous common life through democratic means. Season 2 is a foundational course in the meaning, purpose, and character of democracy.

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Listen, Organize, Act! Organizing & Democratic Politics

S1.E10: Strategy, Tactics, & Direct Action

April 22, 2021 • Kathleen Patrón, Sanford Horwitt • Season 1 • Episode 10

This episode examines the ways organizing develops a strategy to bring about change, the kinds of tactics used to achieve change, and the different kinds of democratic action involved in moving from the world as it is towards a more just and generous one. To ground the discussion it focuses on the initiation, development, and success of a campaign run by Common Ground in Milwaukee which addressed the foreclosure crisis there in the wake of the 2007-08 financial crisis. This serves as a case study through which to stage a wider reflection on the relationship between strategy, tactics and different forms of shared action in organizing.

Guests

Kathleen Patrón has been an organizer since 2011 and is currently the lead organizer of Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (GBIO) where she has been organizing around issues of police reform and accountability and healthcare. She is also leading a process of reorganizing GBIO. Prior to her work in Boston she worked with Common Ground in Milwaukee which is the focus of the conversation.

Sanford Horwitt has a wide ranging background. A long time reside of Chicago, he began his career teaching at the University of Illinois in Chicago, he was then a legislative aide and press secretary for Congressman Abner Mikva. Later he was an advisor in the national gun control movement and directed the Citizen Participation Project at People for the American Way where he founded the First Vote program. Sandy is also an author, his books include "Let Them Call Me Rebel," the definitive biography of the godfather of community organizing, Saul Alinsky. And alongside that he is also executive producer of a new PBS documentary, "Mikva! Democracy is a Verb" and the founder of the Mikva Challenge, one of the country’s leading youth civic education organizations. Sandy joined the conversation via phone so the sound is a little muffled.

Resources for Going Deeper

Sanford Horwitt, "Alinsky, Foreclosures and Holding Banks Accountable," Huffington Post (2012)

Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971, various editions);

Gene Sharp/The Albert Einstein Institution, “198 Methods of Nonviolent Action” (1973);

Michael Beer, Civil Resistance Tactics in the 21st Century (ICNC Press, 2021);

Lee Staples, Roots to Power: A Manual for Grassroots Organizing, 3rd edn (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2016), Chapters 4 & 5;

Bobo, Kim, Jackie Kendall, and Steve Max, “Part 1: Direct Action Organizing” in Organizing for Social Change: Midwest Academy Manual for Activists, 4th ed. (Santa Ana, CA: Forum Press, 2010), 1-105;

Ed Chambers, “The Practice of Public Life: Research, Action, and Evaluation,” Roots for Radicals, Chapter 5.

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For readings to download relevant to or discussed in an episode visit: https://ormondcenter.com/listen-organize-act-podcast