UAEM National ConferenceCAMPUS ACTIVISM

TRAININGNovember 14-15, 2009

Sarah Frazer, Americans for Informed Democracy

Objective of workshop

Develop a strategic framework for successful direct action campaigns.

Familiarize ourselves with the range of tactics at our disposal, when, why and how to use them.

Four Ways to Solve Social Problems

Direct Service

Advocacy

-Marshall Ganz, Harvard Kennedy School of Government

Mobilization

Organizing

1. Direct Service

Improves the lives of people by directly linking them to resources that stabilize daily life. Direct service alleviates immediate crises by but often leaves the root causes of problems untouched.

2. AdvocacyInterprets institutional processes for the poor and disadvantaged. It does not address nor change the basic power relationships between people and the institutions that control their lives.

3. Mobilization

Engages people in short-term, direct action to create immediate results

4. OrganizingIs people working together to get things done. It serves as a tool, a weapon, and a means of getting people to learn, to think, to act and to reflect about theirs lives in a new way. By doing so, the poor and disadvantaged areable to reclaim their strengths, roots and heritage.

3 Principles of Direct Action Organizing

Win concrete improvements in people’s lives

Give people a sense of their own power

Alter the relations of power

-Midwest Academy

Strategic Campaign Planning

Campaign:– Strategic series of coordinated and

escalating activities designed to achieve a specific goal

Strategy:– A plan to organize your Folks and your

Friends to force the Man to give you the Goods.

-Ruckus Society

6 Stages of a CampaignInvestigate/gather informationEducateIncrease motivation and personal commitment for the struggle aheadNegotiate with targetDirect actionCreate new relationship with opponent that reflects new power reality

-Ruckus Society, derived from MLK’s essay “Letter from Birmingham Jail”

What is Direct Action?

People organizing ourselves to make the changes we want to see in the world

3 Arguments Against Direct Action

It’s ineffective

It’s un-American

It’s illegal

Martin Luther King, Jr.

“We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.”

Good NVDA Can:Be fun!Alert folks to a problem, issue or idea.Assert or defend a human or ecological right. Directly stop bad things from happening.Amplify our voices, magnify our visibility.Create & envision solutions.Inspire, recruit and energize.Lead us to the achievement of our goals.

Types of NVDAProtest– Registering your dissent

Non-cooperation– Withdrawing something from the system

Intervention– Directly intervening in the functioning of the system

Creative solutions– Developing alternative, community-based solutions

Points of Intervention

Point of productionPoint of destruction

Point of consumptionPoint of decision

Point of assumption

Point of Production

Point of Destruction

Point of Consumption

Point of Decision

Point of Assumption

Georgetown Living Wage Coalition

Hunger Strike

UVA Living Wage Campaign

Sit-in

MIT STAND Divestment Campaign

Die-in

MIT STAND Divestment Campaign

Demonstration

United Students Against Sweatshops

Banner drop

Let’s Talk Tactics

What other tactics have you seen, heard or or participated in that have successfully escalated or won a campaign?

Break Out Session!

Move quickly to your letter15-20 minutes to complete scenarioConsider your tactics carefullyAppoint someone to report back

6 Stages of a CampaignInvestigate/gather informationEducateIncrease motivation and personal commitment for the struggle aheadNegotiate with targetDirect actionCreate new relationship with opponent that reflects new power reality

-Ruckus Society, derived from MLK’s essay “Letter from Birmingham Jail”

The Tactic Star

Action Development

Develop a Sense of TimingBe CreativeKISS Rule

What Kind of Power We Got?

End of formal slavery Outlawed child labor/The right to go to schoolVoting rights for women, youth (over 18), African Americans The 40 hour work week (and weekends)Civil RightsMaternity leaveThe rights of people with disabilities to hold jobs and access businesses

People POWER

“Power concedes nothing without demand [...] The limits of tyranny are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

– Frederick Douglass, American abolitionist and women’s suffragist

“Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

– Martin Luther King, Jr., Americans civil rights leader

“Walk the street with us into history. Get off the sidewalk.”– Dolores Huerta, United Farm Workers of America co-founder and organizer

"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist.”

– Dom Helder Camara, Brazilian Archbishop and liberation theologist

If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention.

Food for Thought

Super Hero Shout Out

Sarah Frazer, Americans for Informed Democracy– Sarah@aidemocracy.org– www.aidemocracy.org

US Social Forum– June 22-26, 2010, Detroit, MI– www.ussf2010.org

Workshop Evaluation

Rate the workshop1-5 (5 = highest; 1 = lowest)What you liked or befitted from the most?What you liked the least and could stand to be improved?