This month at the America Votes State Summit, I attended a panel about the 2026 Midterms, where there was some talk about “investments.”
All of the panel members were from organizations that exist to win elections. To be fair, the whole conference is about winning elections.
Several panel members talked about making “investments” in races and states. Hearing campaign people say “investment” usually makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
So, I raised my hand to ask a question. I didn’t have it together enough at the time to record the question, so I recreated the moment in this video.
The point of the question was to drill down on what they meant by “investment.”
Because we have very different definitions.
There was only time for one person to answer the question. A woman from the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee had a good answer – for what her job is. She talked about getting a jump on opposition research and staffing up early in battleground states, which I was glad to hear. If there were some organizers on the panel, I bet the answers would have been different.
Take a listen to the video and tell me what your answer would be.
When I posted this essay to LinkedIn, it generated more discussion than anything I’ve ever posted before. So, I’m reprinting it here to see what you think. Reply here or add your voice to the Comments on the LinkedIn Post.
It was a tough post to write because it’s about questioning a campaign tactic that we think is a fundamental truth – canvassing.
Maybe we’re wrong. Or maybe we’re not.
When I was having dinner witha campaign friend shortly after the election last year, we did what all of us did – a lot of sad staring off into the distance, what ifs and “if they had only . . . “
We also asked ourselves some hard questions.
He and I both are experts in field campaigns – the direct voter contact part of any political campaign. That’s door-to-door canvassing, phonebanks, peer-to-peer texting, crowd events, relational organizing.
We’re both pretty good at it. But we both failed last cycle.
Sure, there are lots of reasons. In my case, my clients drowned in a Republican wave. In my friend’s case, his main client struggled to raise adequate funds.
But it’s not just us.
We both know dozens of friends who dropped everything to knock on doors or make phone calls in swing states and districts.
And we see how that worked out.
So, I started asking “what if we’re wrong?” What if the answer to tough political campaign questions isn’t more and better canvassing?
I hardly want to say it out loud because what evokes an authentic campaign more than the image of a smiling volunteer at a voter’s door?
The truth is that we both know what wins political campaigns – relationships with voters.
Most Democrats aren’t investing in building relationships with voters. Many of the Democratic campaign institutions think that investment means starting the canvassing in August instead of September.
Investment means building relationships with voters who share our values, but maybe not positions on issues. It also means repairing relationships with voters who share our values and positions on issues, but feel taken for granted. Because we take them for granted.
It doesn’t mean throwing an army of canvassers at low-turnout neighborhoods at the last minute and thinking it makes up for broken relationships.
On the other hand, a lot of canvassers worked their butts off to successfully elect US House candidates like Derek Tran, Dave Min and Adam Gray. A good friend who knocked on thousands of those doors believes it was the canvassing operation that ultimately brought Tran over the finish line.
If you’ve been involved in campaigns or if you haven’t, I’m curious about your opinion – are we wrong about canvassing?
Hit reply or add your thoughts to the Comments on the LinkedIn post.
Recently a very good friend and political campaign ally said that sometimes she doesn’t know what I’m talking about:
“I have to admit, sometimes, even I don’t see it. I mean, how does bringing people together build power the way you talk about it?”
That’s the thing – organizing isn’t visible.
The rallies, voter turnout, lobby days at the Capitol, marches, civil disobedience – that’s all mobilizing.
When I meet with leaders of social justice organizations, unions and other nonprofits to talk about working together, I usually hear about one or more of these situations:
A pivot from advocating, lobbying or canvassing to a long-term organizing plan.
Frustration that their work to engage members and community leaders has not been successful.
A vision of member leadership structures like an organizing committee or regional action teams.
Organizers and organizing directors who need support building skills, confidence and strategic vision.
The Organizing Cycle
To address these situations, I develop a strategic organizing plan based on the organizing cycle. (The image above comes from a traditional cycle that many organizers use to plan their campaigns; credit for this version goes to NEKO.)
The rest of the cycle is where the organizing happens –
Building relationships
Surfacing the most important issues
Finding the strategic leverage to win
Taking public action together
Reflection and evaluation
Building Power
How do we know when we’ve built power? It’s a hot topic for social scientists, campaign analysts and pundits these days. Here are a few signs that your organization is building power:
Decision-makers come to you to discuss big ideas.
Decision-makers meet with member leaders and activists.
Your opponents get less oxygen for their terrible, no-good, very bad ideas.
Your members get shout-outs at public event
Your members get a nickname (for better or worse).*
Candidates come to you for endorsement and volunteers.
Will all of this transformation happen in one campaign? No. A member leader of an education justice organization recently said it took a year and a half to get to their first victory.
If we’re going to transform our communities, we have to invest in them. In addition to money, that means time, brainspace and maybe even internal political capital.
When my friend asked that question, I wasn’t surprised. It helped me think of better ways to talk about organizing strategy.
If you’ve ever organized or participated in a rapid response action, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
TL;DR
Skip to the bottom for five tips on turning mobilizing into organizing.
Responding to a Crisis
We’ve all thrown bodies at a problem because it was a crisis.
The legislature was about to kill our most important bill.
Our favorite candidate was about to lose.
That giant corporation was about to get its climate-killing wish.
Anti-abortion zealots threatened the only abortion care provider in town.
The police killed another unarmed person.
A resident shot another teenager for breathing while Black.
An employer fired yet another worker for organizing a union
Not to mention daily gun violence.
A crisis means we drop everything to mobilize.
We can’t ignore a crisis, even if we don’t have our organizing house in perfect order.
But we can do more than mobilize. Who said never let a good crisis go to waste?
Organizing is bringing people together to build power.
That power grows from relationships. So, use the opportunity of that rapid response to build and strengthen relationships.
Here are five suggestions for turning a mobilization moment into an organizing moment.
One-on-ones. Ask each organizer to identify five people who came out to the protest, picket or canvas to invite to a one-on-one meeting.
After-action debrief. Plan an evaluation meeting for immediately afterwards. Activists and leaders should know the debrief date at the same time they know the action date.
Keep track of who brings someone else to the action. They might be your newest leader.
Review social media posts, reactions and comments for potential one-on-one prospects. Same with sign-in sheets.
Here’s where it gets tricky. . .
Number 5 will be controversial –
Prioritize. Ask yourself if this action is strategic for the organization at this time. We’re so accustomed to jumping into action that sometimes it becomes automatic. If the action doesn’t help grow the organization’s power, you might not want to do it.
How do you turn mobilizing into organizing? Reply here or in the Comments on my LinkedIn post on this topic.
In the 2024 election cycle, every race will have larger implications. Those candidates for tiny school board districts in your community? Their potential votes on policy will reverberate nationally. Think book bans, restrictions on access and misrepresentations of US history.
And don’t get me started on what’s at stake in state capitols and Washington DC.
Powerful Elections
Instead of telling voters, volunteers and activists – again – that THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION, let’s make it the most powerful election.
Let’s make it the year we organize in addition to mobilize.
Let’s build power in addition to winning.
Let’s plan the campaigns with the goal of bringing people together to build power, using the opportunity of the election to do it. Not the other way around.
What’s that I hear?
“We have a million doors to knock!”
“I don’t get what you mean by ‘build relationships.’ How does that get us to power?”
“Winning is the best demonstration of power.”
“We don’t have time to hold everyone’s hand. We have a campaign to win.”
All true. It’s hard to think long-term with an election-day deadline looming.
But would we be in this movement if we couldn’t do hard things?
Mobilizing ===> Organizing
Here are some ideas for introducing organizing tactics into a mobilization (election) campaign:
A script that includes some deep canvassing elements. Sure a canvasser might spend more than 3 minutes at a door. The voter is more likely to remember the conversation and more importantly, the volunteer will feel less like a turnout machine and more like a community organizer.
Plan some one-on-ones between organizers or campaign leaders and top volunteers. These convos can be recognition for super volunteers. More importantly, they can also help organizers identify new leaders. When a super volunteer starts bringing other people to shifts, you’ve found a new leader.
A campaign debrief that brings everyone together to process the results of the election, their role and the implications. Win or lose, the more people can share their experiences, the closer they become. More importantly, they are more likely to remain involved if they develop relationships with other activists, organizers or leaders.
We want to transform our communities and win after election day too.
In 2023, I continue to recognize all the blessings and just plain good luck in my lives.
❤️ An endlessly supportive family.
💙Good friends I can always count on.
✊🏻Organizing co-conspirators with vision, talent and unwavering commitments to justice.
Here are a few highlights from 2023 at Organizing to Win:
Stephanie Wade’s ground-breaking campaign for city council. As a trans woman, Stephanie built relationships and showed Seal Beach a campaign like they’d never seen before. The city will better for it.
Organizing education with the team at Virginia Interfaith Power and Light. This team is ready to build power for climate justice in Virginia! After our final workshop, one of the organizers wrote “Mira was enlightening and encouraging. I understand better what is expected of me as an organizer. The strategies Mira showed us how to develop for organizing will help us build our power structures and bases!”
Sasha Ritzie-Hernandez’s campaign to improve parent engagement at OUSD. And oh yeah, for the school board. Sasha became a US citizen in November and filed to run for the school board in January.
Facilitating a workshop called “Someone Always Calls the Cops: When Karen or Chad Dials 911 on Your Canvassers” at Netroots in Chicago.
Facilitating organizing education workshops at Raise Up Utah as part of the Innovate Public Schools team. The parents, teachers, students and community members who participated in the weekend-long organizing intensive are on their way to impactful campaigns for education justice in Utah.
That awesome Hawaii trip with my best friend. (Where sadly, I still had a signal at the bottom of a cliff at the beach. ) The fiery red light in this photo is flowing lava!
What will the new year bring?
Well, for starters. . .
👍🏻A refreshed Disrupting White Supremacy Culture program
👍🏻A series of union jargon explainers
👍🏻Building power in Kern County with members and staff of SEIU 521.
If we believe Kern County’s current elected officials and corporate power, it’s one of the most conservative places in California. (Yes, there are some.)
It’s the heart of California’s petroleum industry.
Big Ag reigns supreme.
And it’s the home of Kevin McCarthy. Yes. *that* Kevin McCarthy.
Like many communities, the people who currently hold power are not always aligned with the people.
Kern is full of working people, immigrants, and others who struggle under systemic burdens of corporate domination, racism, classism, and other impositions of dominant power.
That’s why I am so excited to work with leaders, members and staff of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 521 to lay the foundation for relational power in Kern County.
In an earlier exploratory meeting, members identified three problems we need to solve in order for their families to thrive: healthcare, education and training for good jobs.
Over the next year, we’ll bring people together, build relationships, identify new leaders and learn about power in the region.
We’ll refine the problems into the issues that are most widely and deeply felt and create a strategy to win for working people, their families and their communities.
But we’ll do more than win.
We’ll build power.
Last week, we kicked off the campaign with a strategy meeting of long-time member leaders, new leaders and staff.
We know that a transformation won’t happen overnight. We know that it doesn’t happen in one year. But we’re laying the foundation.
For updates, follow @OrganizingtoWin on social media.
If you want to learn more about this campaign – and how it might apply to your organization’s impact next year – use the contact form to get in touch!
When you’re an organizing leader, these frustrations come up a lot:
“We can’t get people to come out to a meeting.”
“Why don’t members vote? It’s their own jobs at stake!”
“It’s always the same people who do everything.”
“Why are members so apathetic?”
“Do they just want someone else to do it all?”
And worst of all, “are the current leaders going to burn out?”
The reality is, they’re not apathetic and they don’t want someone else to do it all.
A lot of organizing directors tell me that members or workers are reluctant to engage. But maybe there’s a reason: they don’t see their self-interest represented in the campaigns. Self-interest is more than how much money they make, their position on an issue or who to vote for.
Self-interest is also about values, experiences and relationships.
Self-Interest
Several years ago, I organized with teachers and former teachers who were trying to build momentum for education justice in their communities. They were having trouble engaging community members and parents in a campaign about the district’s school assignment system. (TL;DR – incredibly complicated, record segregation, inequitable distribution of resources.)
To better understand parents’ and students’ experiences, we began a series of canvas weekends. Leaders knocked on doors, prepared with a script that would launch conversations about what came to mind when residents thought about the education system in their city.
What did they learn?
Almost no one mentioned the school assignment system. Parents wanted high quality schools in their neighborhood. It didn’t matter if their kids got into the highest rated school in the city if it was all the way across town.
When leaders started to talk about how to fight for higher quality schools in their neighborhoods, more parents and other teachers engaged.
When leaders create opportunities for members, activists and volunteers to build relationships and take action based on their values and experiences, more leaders surface. More members join. More volunteers engage for longer.
Space to Build Relationships and Power
If we’re deliberate and intentional about creating space to build relationships, grow leadership and surface the issues that are most widely and deeply felt, then we can build power.
Do you ever get this question? “What’s your favorite movie about [your work]?”
When people ask me about my favorite movie about organizing, they’ll often also say “I bet you love that movie Norma Rae!” (Depending on the questioner’s age. Norma Rae came out in 1979.)
Norma Rae
In case you haven’t seen it, the movie “Norma Rae” is about textile organizing in the south in the 1970s. It’s a true story, if a bit Hollywood-ized. In one of the most dramatic scenes, Norma, played by Sally Field, climbs onto a table in the factory and holds up a big sign reading “UNION!” All by herself.
She’s subsequently fired, walked out of the building and shunned by much of the community. That’s not organizing.
Erin Brockovich
Organizing campaigns are more like “Erin Brockovich,” also a true story and also glamorized for the big screen. In the movie and in real life, the residents of Hinkley, CA are poisoned by a toxic substance called chromium 6, which leaks into the water supply from a nearby PG&E installation. (Californians’ motto for PG&E: the utility we love to hate.) Erin, played by Julia Roberts, goes door-to-door to build relationships with people affected by PG&E’s carelessness. She brings them together to share their stories and create trust among themselves.
Only then do they take action. Together. They file a class action lawsuit, but the real movement comes from pressure they put on the company to force a settlement.
Organizing is Bringing People Together to Build Power
No one person could exert enough pressure on PG&E all by themself. It took the collective power of the residents of Hinkley to bring the company to the settlement table.
Just imagine what would be different if everyone at the plant stood on those tables with Norma.
The most effective organizing campaigns are about building relationships and taking action together. We build power by building relationships.
What could your community do with more relational power?
Trigger warning: there is some graphic language about the violence of slavery and the treatment of Indigenous people.
The bedrock of the American economy is the belief that everyone can be rich if we just work hard enough. For example, if you’re poor, you must be doing something wrong. Are you too lazy to get a better job? (See also: health care.)
Why? Because. . . slavery.
Not Just the South
As Matthew Desmond writes in the 1619 Project, American capitalism is based on the plantation economy. His essay is titled “In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation.” In it, he details the unholy alliance between enslavers, creditors, northern textile factories and the US government. This alliance developed the US cotton market, on the backs of indigenous people whose land and culture were stolen and enslaved Black people who were brutalized, all in the name of profit.
How did these people live with themselves? How did they sleep at night, knowing that they’d exploited millions of people for their own gain? Where was their conscience?
That’s where American capitalism collides head-on with humanity. If we can deny the humanity of people, then we can do whatever we want to them. Kidnap them, ship them across oceans in horrid conditions, sell them like livestock, torture, rape and kill them. We can spread disease and violence across thousands of miles, uproot people from their ancestral homes and rip children from their families.
Aren’t We Done With Slavery Though?
This capitalist denial of humanity is the root of oppression in the United States. It continues today in the form of police murder of people of color, denial of health care, the school-to-prison pipeline, the emotional labor we expect from people of color, dangerous border camps and so much more.
To believe in brutal American capitalism is to deny the humanity of people. For example, if we truly respected the humanity of immigrants, we could never force them into dangerous limbo in tent camps in Mexico. If we truly respected the humanity of Black people, the police wouldn’t shoot first and ask questions later (if they ask questions at all). If we respected the humanity of Indigenous people, thousands of Indigenous women wouldn’t go missing every year. (Talking about women, if we respected the humanity of women, there would be no rape.) Here’s one I bet you didn’t expect: If we believed in the humanity of rural, conservative people, we wouldn’t categorically dismiss them as ignorant and write them off.
Capitalism with Guardrails
Our capitalism needs guardrails precisely because we don’t respect fundamental humanity.
(Hint: a federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour and laws that permit employers to fire workers for organizing a union are not guardrails.)
I suspect that if you read this far, you were hoping for some neat resolution. For a happy ending where there’s an intersection between American capitalism and humanity.
But there isn’t. The two are incompatible.
If we believe in the humanity of all people, we couldn’t possibly exploit them enough to maintain our capitalism without guardrails. Guardrails can look like unions, restrictions on the greed of giant corporations, a living wage, universal health care, student loan forgiveness, an end to subsidies for planet-killing industries and more.
I prefer to deny American capitalism (which is a difficult position for a small business owner). I don’t really know what the alternative is, but I know that when workers and working families have power, things get better.
So let’s get busy building guardrails and building power.
