Rules of Activism, by Charles Euchner, outlines 15 critical elements of political and social movements.
Part I: Insight and Outreach
Rule 1: Connect, Listen, and Share
Politics begins with conversations.
Before launching campaigns for any cause, activists must listen to the needs and desires of the people in their community. They must press beyond obvious questions and answers and listen with a “beginner’s mind.”
To understand a community, it’s often best to start by talking with its invisible and forgotten people. What do they want and need? How have they tried to get it? What barriers have they faced?
The challenge in these conversations is to be deliberate. Ask short questions. Stop long enough to hear whole answers. Be unafraid of silence. Allow enough time for people to formulate and express their ideas.
Rule 2: Identify Gaps and Contradictions
Activism begins when people discover gaps in their satisfaction and wellbeing. The organizer’s challenge is to identify those gaps, understand how they give rise to grievances, and then arouse action to address those gaps.
Discovering gaps takes time. Initially, people see only the most superficial gaps: I want/need X, and I cannot get it. Over time, they can develop a deeper, more complex understanding of the problem. Then, they can join others to demand reform.
So why does any problem exist in the first place? The organizer and teacher Marshall Ganz is fond of quoting Pope Francis: “If one person lacks what is necessary to live with dignity, it is because another person is detaining it.” The activists’ challenge, then, is not just to understand their problem but to identify the source of the problem—and then fight for something better.
Rule 3: Master the Big Idea
Every issue worthy of activism is a complex blending of interests, passions, values, and dilemmas.
Movements need to embrace a variety of issues and partners. But to succeed, they need to focus on one overarching purpose. To coordinate their diverse constituencies, they need to understand the essence of the issue.
Ideally, activists articulate one Big Idea that captures the many aspects of their cause. That Big Idea is clear enough to orient people’s speech and actions, but also broad enough to accommodate people with different interests and agendas.
Rule 4: Map the Sources of Problems
Power is everywhere. From the mandatory shots for newborns to the regulations guiding end-of-life procedures, no aspect of life escapes systems of power.
Modern society is a world of corporate and government power, sprawling bureaucracies, mass media and propaganda, and Big Data. In this society, power exists everywhere—not just in goal-seeking actions of politicians and interest groups, but also in the countless “micro” processes of everyday life.
The activist’s first impulse is to identify and confront some singular cause of injustice. But to succeed, activists need to confront the countless “sites” of power: the institutions, practices, ideologies, rules, and data that shape people’s lives.
Part II: Building Capacity
Rule 5: Recruit Allies, Near and Far
People live in many different circles: households, neighborhoods, workplaces, churches, sports clubs, schools, and more. To succeed, organizers need to fan out to explore and engage all these circles. To do that, they need to practice retail activism.
Modern activists sometimes assume that modern communications—social media sites like Facebook and Instagram, email blasts, and constant updates—can rally enough people to create a powerful movement. But organizing requires face-to-face relationships with a wide range of groups. To create a winning coalition, activists must meet and work with people throughout their community.
Activism is hard work. It requires engaging people where they live their lives.
Rule 6: Build a Strong Organization
Activists need resources, skills, and direction. So they need to develop structures that allow them to coordinate their work.
An organization provides both the chassis, the engine, and the styling for a group’s activities. First, it creates a container for the movement. Second, it generates the energy for the cause to move forward. Third, it embodies the group’s values, strategies, and tactics.
Activists need enough structure to coordinate their activities—but not so much that the structure limits their imaginations and freedom of movement. They must be strong enough to fight but mobile enough to respond to new needs.
Organization evolves according to the needs and mission of the movement. Often, in the beginning, activists work improvisationally, without much structure or guidance. But to sustain their work, they need to create an ongoing organization. That, of course, carries the dangers of bureaucratization.
Rule 7: Nurture Servant Leadership
Two kinds of people run organizations and movements. A manager performs clearly specified tasks—and supervises others to do their tasks—but does not work to create a new vision. A leader sets high standards, expresses the movement’s purpose, oversees management and logistics, and nurtures new generations. In short, while managers transact business, leaders transform lives.
The true leader acts as a servant, not a master. Leadership does not mean just “taking charge” and directing others. It also means helping others to realize their own potential.
Part III: Strategy and Tactics
Rule 8: Create a Multi-Dimensional Strategy
To win, activists need a strategy—a coordinated sequence of actions, used to exert leverage against opponents and to influence the larger community to embrace and implement change.
To create that strategy, activists must work within four dimensions: time, space, force, and mind. These dimensions provide a framework for action: where and how to engage the opposition, how to pace the action, what kinds of force to apply, and how to appeal to the targets and bystanders.
Think of strategy as a hypothesis—a working theory about how things might go if activists coordinate their actions in certain ways. That hypothesis takes the form of an equation: If we do X, Y, and Z, in this particular place against that particular target, we will prevail.
Rule 9: Work off the Grid
If they work in a hostile environment, activists often begin outside of public view. Small-scale resistance can give activists confidence and new understandings while resisting repression.
Training centers, utopian communities, cooperatives and retreats, free clinics, encounter groups, and alternative media give activists a place where they can be themselves, without outside pressures. Activists can engage each other honestly and develop secret strategies and tactics. Then, when the conditions become ripe for a more public form of action, they will be prepared.
By living and working in the shadows, communities foster mindsets and relationships and create new vehicles for political and social action. They test strategies and tactics. They get ready for the long fight ahead.
Rule 10: Rally for Solidarity and Attention
Activists aim to transform the minds of people, both inside and outside the movement. To do so, they need to gain visibility and speak with a clear moral voice. People gain power and courage when they state their demands, in public view and with the support of others.
By marching, demonstrating, and rallying, activists push the community to move beyond its everyday activities and taken-for-granted values. They seek to change the discourse about what is possible.
If public rallies offer a central element of strategy and tactics, what about disembodied gatherings in cyberspace? Online organizers—working on online platforms like Twitter and Facebook—can reach an ever-expanding pool of supporters online. But online organizing also undermines the human connections needed for longterm activism.
Rule 11: Withdraw Consent
No source of authority can endure without the consent of its members. Even the most brutal dictatorships need the acquiescence of their people. The challenge of activists, then, is to coordinate a withdrawal of consent from authorities.
Consent takes two forms. Explicit consent requires a formal agreement between two or more parties: formal declarations of obligation, with contracts, oaths, and other formal and verifiable statements. Tacit consent implies obligations when people follow existing rules and practices.
Withdrawing consent can create a crisis for the government, corporations, churches, and other institutions. Without support to carry out their agenda, they collapse. They transform from political powerhouses to political eunuchs. All because people organize themselves to say “no.”
Rule 12: Block, Occupy, and Subvert
To make an impact, activists need to make life difficult—impossible, even—for their opponents. They need to create aggravation. They need to prevent meetings from happening, products from being shipped, traffic from flowing. And they need to do it in a bold, challenging way.
Controlling space has always been a primary element of power. Beyond expressing themselves, activists also need to confront their opponents and make life inconvenient. Such direct confrontations raise a fundamental question: How much force is enough—and how much is too much?
Rule 13: Create Enduring Symbols and Identity
People understand the world with symbols. Communities foster emotional attachments with flags, anthems, holidays, parades, celebrations of historic figures, civic places, and insignias and icons. Activists embrace the symbols that express their ideals. Then they undermine the symbols that undermine their interests and values, Finally, they develop their own symbols to unite their people.
Symbols perform two functions. First, symbols reassure people about their values, status, and belonging. Second, symbols arouse people to demand change. Both reassurance and arousal speak to people’s deepest values.
Activists use music, displays of subversive art, performances, and provocation to rally their people and develop emotional commitments to their cause.
Part IV: Win Some, Lose Some
Rule 14: Evolve Multi-Stage Campaigns
Activism constantly change to meet the needs of the moment. Each stage of activism needs its own approach for setting goals, organizing, leadership, and action.
Think of an activist campaign as a great drama.
In Act I, people discover a problem, which has been festering but unaddressed for a long time. People decide to act and gather a wide range of allies and confront a wide range of foes.
In Act II, a long struggle ensues. If they are diligent, activists can confront deeper and deeper aspects of problems. Then they can act, individually and collectively, with greater skill and creativity.
In Act III, the whole drama reaches a moment of resolution. The activists may win or lose. Either way, they assess their successes and failures, fortify the organization, devise the next steps, and, eventually, begin a new round of action.
Rule 15: Pivot from Protest to Policy
The purpose of activism is to form a more perfect community. At their best, activists challenge everyone in a community—from the lowest custodian to the mightiest corporate titan—to acknowledge and respond to their grievances.
Where activism ends, policymaking begins. Somehow, “outsider” ideas need to be mainstreamed. They need to transform radical ideas into a “new normal.” They need to foster new attitudes, policies, institutions, and consensus.
Activists must play both an inside and an outside game. As protest shifts the debate in government, business, and community life, they need to embrace the politics of bargaining and compromise. At the same time, they need to maintain an independent base. Too often, as soon as activists cease their protests, they lose their leverage. So they need to find some way to maintain their agenda, strategy, and followers to fight toward victory.