The Strategy Chart
The Midwest Strategy Chart provides a handy step-by-step checklist for planning these things. It is located at the end of this chapter. Let’s go through the chart in detail with the following example:
The Issue
Energy Conservation in student and low-income housing apartments in Gummi Gucci.
Power
Mr. Pinkerton owns most of the apartments in town, so he basically has a monopoly. Students are the consumers. This means that both Mr. Pinkerton and the students have some economic power. The problem is that Mr. Pinkerton (a.k.a. “Pinko”) makes his tenants, the students, pay the utility bills. Therefore he has no incentive to invest in energy-saving measures like insulation.
Pinko is certainly a wealthy and “honored” citizen in Gummi Gucci, so he has a lot of clout on the town council. Then again, about 40% of the population are students, so the students have some electoral power too. Pinko can spend money advertising to get good public relation, but the students can counter that with leafleting, postering, and media events.
Goals
Long-range: reduce the town’s energy consumption by 20% by the year 2005.
Short-range: get Pinko to insulate his apartments.
Your Organization
You have about 10 steady members with maybe 20 more who come to meetings occasionally. You have about $200 to spend this year on copying, mailing, phones, and so on.
Constituency
Low-income people, students, and some students’ parents are paying high bills for heating in the winter and air conditioning in the summer. They could sure use a break. Local workers could also use the temporary jobs that would come from insulating all of Pinko’s apartments. This means you could appeal to local labor groups. The Black and Latino student groups would probably be interested since minorities have even less economic entitlement to good housing. Service organizations like Habitat for Humanity might also be interested in this campaign.