What is an Organizer? Power Analysis, Strategy, Tactics

Only in that order

This post is part of a series: What is an Organizer? Where I will seek define what makes a real community organizer, and what are the traits necessary for someone to become one.

The goal of the community organizer is not to simply build power but to wield it. Our ultimate end is to win. By winning we mean forcing changes that directly benefit our people, their families and neighbors. Clawing back some meager portion of the human dignity stolen from us by the powers that be. Winning a better community, a better society. Power is the tool we build to win with, the weapon we assemble on the way to (hopefully) victory; but once assembled it must be deployed effectively and efficiently.

We must, in other words, create a strategy. The word strategy calls to mind wordy documents, graphs, a “strategic plan”, generals gathered around a map in a tent on the battle lines, maybe at Gettysburg. The idea is that a good strategy springs forth unbidden from the mind of a singular genius, in all its complex glory. But in our world strategy need not be so complicated. And its creation certainly shouldn’t be an intellectual exercise. Strategy is, to us, answering a simple question: how do we use what we have to get what we need?

The North Dorr General Store. North Dorr, MI

Of course we need to have some preexisting knowledge to answer this question. If we are to decide on a strategy and tactics, we need to base the decision on something, and here we return to our old friend power. Who has the power to make the changes we want, to give us what we need? Who, in other words, are the decision makers? And how can they best be influenced? The process of answering these questions is what we call a “power analysis”. A power analysis can be done a number of different ways, but the most important thing is that it not be done alone. As organizers, we don’t believe in the idea of sitting alone, thinking hard, and coming up with a brilliant analysis. We do it, rather, in a group of trusted leaders and allies. And these leaders and allies, importantly, must have done the listening, done hundreds of 1-1’s, be deeply ensconced in their community.

The simplest and quickest way to do a power analysis is with a graph. On the y axis is power. On the x axis is “with us or against us”. A group of leaders gathers together and places various community leaders, institutions and power players, including elected officials, on the graph. In this exercise we are searching for people oof institutions that a) have significant power and b) are not already with us, or completely opposed, but rather are “swayable”. In other words, high up on the y axis, close to the middle on the x axis. Through some combination of tactics we believe they can be brought to exert their influence in our favor. The question of what strategy can be used to influence them in this direction naturally follows, but it can only be answered after a thorough power analysis is done, and this is what I want to emphasize. Our strategy and tactics must stem from a power analysis, not from thin air. When we are not grounded in a deep understanding of the power dynamics in our neighborhoods, cities, counties, and states, we end up chasing ghosts.

A Y and X axis. In this case, the red dot would be someone that is relatively powerful, and basically “with us” but not super committed.

Too often I see organizing efforts that make the mistake of determining their strategy before they conduct a power analysis. The temptation to do so is understandable, and it can be great. Various parasites will always try to sell an effective organizer on “new tools” for his or her campaign. Social media has proven to be a particularly dangerous trap in this respect. I constantly see organizations launching social media “campaigns”, with all their attended trappings of hashtags, selfies, and video statements. There are even people who’s whole job it is to orchestrate these. And far too often these organizations have failed to first ask who, specifically are we trying to influence with this? And is social media the most efficient and effective way of influencing them?

A more old school mistake that organizers make is to think that packing as many people in a room as possible to “demonstrate power” is always an effective tactic. This is a way of thinking that I was trained with and is still my default mindset. I believe there is great importance in this form of power demonstration, I always will: you can’t be a good organizer if you can’t get people in a room. But, to be truly effective a mass public rally should be the end point of a campaign grounded in a solid, and constantly evolving, power analysis. Otherwise we are just trying to impress each other and ourselves.

About a decade ago, when I was just starting my organizing career, I felt the need to organize just such a mass public rally (probably because my boss told me: “you need to organize a mass public rally”). I was young and ambitious and I rightly wanted the clergy and lay people I organized to feel that they could wield their power. So we packed 350 people in to a beautiful Catholic church right on eight mile (the road the divides Detroit from it’s suburbs). There were black urban churches, white suburban churches, Catholics and Protestants, Jewish and Muslim people there. A row of nuns sat near the front. We got a sitting US Senator to attend as a target, in addition to a county sheriff and others. It was, in every way, a massive success. I left feeling like a real organizer and all of our leaders left with a sense of their growing power. The next day we were even on the cover of the Detroit Free Press, a real coup.

Our top issue, however, was foreclosures, which were, at the time, ravaging Detroit’s working class suburbs. And none of the power players we invited admitted any ability to do anything about it. Further research meetings illuminated the fact that the head of the housing authority in Michigan should have been our target. She had a budget specifically for foreclosure prevention and wasn’t spending it. More importantly, she was a sitting duck, unused to public pressure. We, of course, regrouped and targeted her. After a longer than necessary campaign we won significant reforms from her office that prevented thousands of foreclosures across the state. It was my first big win as an organizer. But it could have come much sooner, if we had done our due diligence with a power analysis, this woman would have been at our public meeting, and would even have met with us beforehand.

Is it wrong to demonstrate power by getting people in a room? Of course not and I don’t regret that rally for a minute. My point here is that before we hold such a rally we must first develop a core group of leaders and walk through a power analysis with them. This allows the tactic of public rallies to be their most effective. So why do we so often rush in to large public meetings? Seemingly demonstrating power just for the sack of demonstrating it, putting the cart before the horse? I fear that as usual, it has to do with funding. Our funders are typically on shorter timelines than we want to be, and if we need to prove to ourselves that we are doing real organizing we REALLY need to prove it to them. The simplest way to show and prove, to meet their metrics, is a public meeting where we can count heads and brag about it. It’s also, of course, fun to feel powerful, elbow to elbow with friends and neighbors, standing up for what you believe in. All good, all powerful, as long as it is done right.

Basic Organizing Cycle

Organizing is a cycle. The action we take should be informed by our power analysis which should be informed by our relationship base formed through our power building and listening. Importantly, however, our base building, listening, power building should be informed by reflection after our actions as well. This is the second mistake I see too many organizations make.

There certain places, people and institutions that it is sexy to tell people you are organizing and easy get funding to organize. In Michigan, there will always be funding for organizing in Detroit. It’s sexy to funders for the obvious reasons: massive and obvious problems, a majority POC population, cultural and governmental institutions with immense import. The unfortunate truth is, however, that if all 700,000 residents of Detroit (600,000? 500,000?) marched in the street for some cause or another, they wouldn’t necessarily win. This is where power analysis comes in again: it must inform our base building strategy.

For one, Detroit is 100 percent represented by Democrats, at every level of government. In a divided government or even a Republican controlled one (November 2024 is coming!), that makes it pretty easy to ignore. For another, the attention market, in a major city like Detroit, is saturated. It’s very hard to rise above the noise. To do so requires coalition building with people elsewhere, people in places where it’s easier to get attention. People in places, often, represented by Republicans.

Here is something else I want to emphasize. When we conduct a clear headed power analysis we can find so much low hanging fruit. There are power players in communities all over our country, elected or otherwise, that can be much more easily influenced than we realize, if only we are a) willing to organize in their backyards and b) willing to base our strategies on what we find to be the most effective in influencing them.

Just last week, a group of pastors I work with in my rural county had a “research action” with the chair of our county commission. It was a casual meeting, much more casual than I would have cared for, but I have come to grips with this fact of rural organizing. We met in the church of one of the co chairs of our organization, a powerful pastor. The commissioner walked in, shook hands, made jokes, talked with me about a good local fishing spot down the road (he lives in the same small town as me), invited another Pastor fishing with him. Then we got down to business. We wanted to talk to him about finding a long term funding stream for building affordable housing in our county. Being a regular guy, pretty practical and not at all ideological, he recognized the need. He just didn’t know where to find the money for it. Well…we did. It’s going to take some time and some strategy, but we will eventually win long term funding for what we want here. I’m confident of it. This man just needs a practical plan put in front of him, and we can do that.

This commissioner, like I said, was a regular, blue collar dude. He drives a snowplow for a living. It would be easy to dismiss him as unimportant, except for the fact that, as chair of the county commission, he oversees a budget in the tens of millions of dollars, even in our small rural county. And he is just waiting for someone to influence him, someone with power and a plan (even if he wasn’t, how many additional votes would it take to beat him and get someone in there that was? 50? 100?)

For this guy, our strategy is to leverage existing relationships (of course, a couple of our pastors are friends with him) and to offer him a simple, concrete plan that can help both of us. There may come a time where another tactic is needed, perhaps even a public demonstration of power. But the way we will determine that tactic is through an ongoing power analysis. More importantly, a power analysis is what drove us to target him in the first place (what with the counties financial resources and all). If you step back further, a power analysis is what drove me to begin organizing in this county in the first place, as I came to understand the value of building a base in a “purple” area with a less than saturated attention economy.

None of this is work that others, all over the US, couldn’t do. People like that county commissioner exist in every community, waiting to be influenced. And communities all over the country are sitting unorganized. People isolated, feeling powerless and not knowing what to do about it. These are massive opportunities for us, real organizers who want real power and meaningful, concrete change for our people. We can win things like affordable housing, fixed infrastructure, better schools, and safer neighborhoods. Things that really matter to all of us in our daily lives. But to do so, we must be clear headed about power, where it resides and how it can be won and influenced. We must stop throwing tactics at the wall and seeing what sticks, or engaging in tactics that feel good but are ineffective. We must let a power analysis drive our organizing, and be vigilant in returning to it, over and over.

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