Launching a Campaign
A good campaign isn’t just a series of unconnected events and rallies. It must be based on a coherent idea of what is going to be achieved and how to achieve it. For a campaign to succeed there must be set goals, an examination of its impact upon your organization, constituents and allies, knowledge of the opponents, targets, tactics and timelines.
The Midwest Academy’s Strategy Chart is an excellent guide to developing a strategy that will ensure a good campaign or project, and this chapter is based on their organizing model. For a major campaign, your group should set aside a weekend afternoon (naturally followed by a weekend party) to flesh out all the details using this approach. The time will prove well worth it.
Power
Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
Before you can develop a good campaign, you must understand power. Many of us think power is nasty, especially if we’ve been brought up in a liberal background. We think it must be bad, since the bad people have it and use it to oppress others. But power is “value-neutral”: it’s good if we have it and bad if we don’t. Organizing is about spreading the power around; giving it to the students, to the community, to the public. Organizing is about democracy.
There are many different forms of power. Students have people power, whereas our targets are generally rich and control institutions. Thus students will often want to mobilize people (like in a rally) and work outside of the institutions, which are often so controlled by our targets (and undemocratic) that relying upon them would be foolish. Occasionally students can use institutions, like the courts (or the political system) to achieve good (ex.: suing a corporation for its pollution or increasing the minimum wage). Elites might use their institutional power to remove decisions from the public realm by making them behind closed doors, arrest demonstrators, or even kill dissenters (particularly in the Third World). To summarize, in your campaign, you should look at what kind of power your members and allies have, compare it to your opponent’s, and then pick an area where you can over-power them and win. For instance, instead of trying to outspend corporate political action committees to influence politicians in government, you should use mobilize your people power by doing a letter campaign.