Episode 3: Organizing 101 with MAPLer Julie

Our guest for this episode is Julie Johnson, an organizer with well-over 5 years of organizing experience. She is also in the Master of Advocacy and Political Leadership graduate program at Metro State and shares some of her infinite wisdom regarding the world of political and community organizing. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Metropolitan. My name is Luke Bodwins. I am your host. I am with Julie Johnson. And this art this episode will be Organizing 101. Welcome, Julie.

SPEAKER_02 0:11

Hello, happy to be here. Hi, Luke.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

So this episode will be all about organizing, what organizing is, what organizing is not. And we will both kind of talk about how we both came to organizing and different attitudes towards organizing. But Julie, let's start with your backstory. How did you get into it?

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Yeah. So I studied psychology and environmental studies in undergrad. And then I did a year-long fellowship in environmental organizing. I originally thought I wanted to go into healthcare, like most people in some time in their life, it seems like. And then I ended up wanting to go into psych research, thinking this fellowship would be a gap year, and it ended up just being a launch into my career as an organizer today. So it's it's a really cool way to interact with people and your community.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

So you mentioned previously that you have over five years of experience with organizing.

SPEAKER_02 1:14

Yes. I uh I took up this fellowship, which is they say gives you about two to three years of experience. But then I also did a training cohort in 2023, and I've been working full-time as an organizer on my own now with a nonprofit in town for this summer, it'll be five years.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

So I have about the same timeline, about five years of organizing experience. We were speaking off mic about how we each came to organizing. We each have a kind of a different approach to organizing and how we came to it. I'll get into more of like how I got into organizing. I still think I'm not that much of an organizer. I'm just learning kind of the academic side of it now. But Julie, um, and please feel free to express your opinions about organizing and how you came to organizing along with your personal attitudes towards organizing.

SPEAKER_02 2:31

Okay, yeah. I so I think more organizers than not came to organizing through just starting to do it on their own or with groups and then learning by doing and then getting years and years of experience that way. I took a different path. I've always been really academic focused. I love school, I love learning in a classroom. And so I actually studied organizing through this fellowship, through a training program in my undergraduate degree before I became an organizer. So I came in when I started organizing, I had learned how to organize by reading books about it and discussing it and in sort of a practicum setting where I had a supervisor like going over what I was doing as an organizer. And now I'm now gaining that experience that I think most organizers start with. So I'm eventually we'll meet kind of in the same place as an organizer who's been just on the ground for decades. I just started with a couple years of formal education around organizing, which has been a great path for me. And it also has been a very helpful tool when I teach other people how to volunteer for me and when I teach other people skills on how they can then organize.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

So would you say that that has influenced your perception of organizing?

SPEAKER_02 4:04

Yeah. I I mean, I think learning all the analytical aspects of organizing and how much goes into power building and campaign planning and strategizing about which tactic will move the decision maker that you're working with, all these things I learned in a book. And I think public perception feels a little bit more, at least from what I've heard and thought before I got into it, feels much more like that just happens naturally, that there isn't necessarily all this, all this need of like levers being pulled and specific tactics to pick from. And what happens if you organize incorrectly and then you don't win because you didn't power map or you didn't think strategically about what will actually work. And I also think as someone, so I've volunteered for a lot of campaigns in my before organizing, and that is a fundamentally different skill than organizing a group of volunteers or organizing your community. So there's a an important distinction there between the person organizing the group and the people who are running the group by way of showing up and you know putting their feet on the ground. You know, it's it's different and both are equally important, but not to be confused with one another.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

I agree. I agree to that. And so for context, Julie, you and I are in a master's of advocacy and political leadership. How I got into organizing was the advocacy route. Really, really, I did work on the back end. I viewed myself more as a volunteer, but I suppose I was helping to organize. That's where my perception of organizing is different because I feel like everything I've done was just kind of support, even though I was organizing. Now I'm learning like the textbook side of it. Now I'm learning, oh, that's what you call power mapping, or this is how you organize a campaign, this is how you identify a target. These are things I've seen done and really had no clear understanding. So it's really interesting that I was involved in that. And now like we're in an organizing organizing class right now. And it's really interesting to hear that or hear that you said, you saying, like, oh, power mapping, like it's important to establish a strategy. So that's interesting for me because I'm identifying it from the other side.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

Whereas, you know, when I first learned about how to power map, I had never done it or experienced it. You know, I was I was young and I hadn't gotten into activism as much. And so the difference being now we both have both skills. We just learned them in the opposite order, which I think brings different strengths and both are very valuable. And because I've had that experience with other aspects of our program where I'm like, oh, that's what that's called. And it's it's pretty cool to learn it the other way. So I don't think there's a wrong way to get into it.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

And then you mentioned that there's a clear difference between people organizing and then people actually doing the work. I have that same sentiment. And my experiences, like, again, I don't think I'm the most experienced person. I defer to you because I think that you have more validated experience because you learn from the academic side. I'm not arguing that that's the most important, but you have an understanding of like how to how to organize, how to set a structure and how to identify goals versus uh what is important versus what is urgent, and understanding the difference and having the wisdom to decide to do what is important over what is urgent sometimes. And like having that understanding and having that knowledge of how to create a structure. I don't want to ask a leading question, but based on your experience, what is your attitude about learning that side of it first before before people go in ready to do the work? Understanding that doing the work is extremely important, but that's not organizing.

SPEAKER_02 8:37

Right. I mean, so what I would consider volunteers are people who make organizing possible, they are critical pieces of the infrastructure that organizing is. I would not have a job without volunteers. They are they are so important. However, they are not organizing, they are they are powering the organizing, they are a critical aspect of it. You can't you cannot be an organizer alone. You have to have people to organize. But there's a lot that goes into organizing that does not go into volunteering, whereas organizers are also doing everything the volunteers are doing in most circ circumstances. So the way that I think of it in my role, I lead in my in my job, I lead two different volunteer teams and they're separated by city. And so residents from those communities come with things that are important to them that are in line with the organization that I work for. And I think of myself as like, let me give you the organizing expertise, the structure, the guidance, and then I will organize you as a group based off of what you're telling me is important to you and your community. Where they are coming in ready to be organized, ready to put in their like invaluable experience and time and energy and their own professional expertise is also helpful a lot. But organizing is a job on its own and very different from volunteering. And I hear that distinction be blurred a little when people don't understand what an organizer is and isn't, especially now, I think more than ever, when social, at least in my lifetime, I have seen more and more social justice causes being center focused in in society and in my communities in a way that I didn't see for the first half of my life and plus, which means the word organizing is thrown around more, which is amazing. This is a great thing. But knowing what that is is really important because without understanding everything that goes into it, you can't you can't win a campaign. So whether it's learning how to organize in a formal setting and then practicing it like I did, or getting experience and then learning about it like you did, I'm not saying that you have to go to a formal school and you have to get education. But if you're, if you've never organized before and you don't have the ability or the desire to learn about it in a formal setting, then you need to talk to other people who have organized at length in order to understand all the levers at play in order to make a successful campaign.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

I agree completely. I agree completely. And you've really identified a few things and like I wanted to touch on something. This won't be like controversial, I think, but the the attitudes of social leaders or organic leaders versus the organizers. So the organizers don't necessarily have to be the social leaders. Social leaders can be organized. An organizer, and this is like not a getting into the weeds of Alinsky or who developed the the methodology for organizing, but there's there's different attitudes about organizing, like in the in the labor realm of having an organizer that identifies social leaders or organic leaders within the communities. I have some experience with that. And in the context, so I was working in Colombia. I could not be a social leader. I am not from the community. I am a white man with privilege in in South America and Latin America. And for me, that was very difficult to gain that understanding because I wanted to do what I could to help. And even if it's if it's in an organizing capacity, it's not in a leadership capacity. And I think that is something that gets confused with a lot of different people. So like an organizer may not be the social leader, the leader of the social justice movement or the organic leader within the community. But an organizer has a role and has has to have an understanding of problem-centered problem-centered campaigning or issue-centered campaigning. So you mentioned that having the issue of having ent issue-centered. You have to focus on the issue, not the problem. The issue is the systemic cause. The problem is just a symptom, or the problem is just something that's made apparent, but the the underlying issue is the most important. Could you please go into a little bit more of issue-centered campaigning?

SPEAKER_02 13:56

Yeah. I guess so I first want to respond briefly to something that you said about an organizer's place in a campaign. And the fact is, is oftentimes the organizer is not the person on the microphone. Oftentimes can be. What is that? Okay, now let's fight for that. And in any campaign, if you can fight for something instead of fighting to stop something, you're going to get a lot more momentum from community members. If people are donating their time in a world that's already really challenging, they want it to be exciting and fun and meaningful or one of one of the three.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

And if you're like, let's go be really angry and upset and about stopping this thing, that is a lot less compelling than saying, taking that same issue and instead saying, let's focus on what we want. What is our vision that is the opposite of this problem that we are fighting for? So, for example, if you're fighting for safer streets with more bike infrastructure and better public transit access, instead of saying, let's push back on cars. No cars. If you drive a car, that's wrong. Instead of saying that, say let's build streets that allow people to move how they want to move in a safe and dignified way. And you get to have that choice. That is going to be more compelling than the opposite. So focusing on the problem solving instead of fixating on the issue is kind of it's a good angle to play.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

Yeah. No, I agree completely. And that's very well said. And I think I think with respect to that, I think that's what the confusion. Like I had this confusion, mobilizing versus organizing. Like you mobilize to address an issue or a problem. You mobilize to stop something. You organize to create systemic change. And I think like going back on understanding what the vision should be and speaking with community members, speaking with social leaders, community leaders, to develop that understanding to really assess what the underlying issue is, and then knowing how to organize, or not so much knowing how to organize, but just knowing where to knowing how and where to find the resources that you need to organize. And sometimes like just touching back on like the organizer doesn't have to be in the spotlight. They can be. This goes back to our leadership class last semester. I mean, the idea that a leader has to be in the spotlight making the change, that's just not the reality. That's just a lot of times like the leader is the one in the back. And so we don't have to dive into as an organizer, like a leader, like yes, yes, they are, but it's a different leadership style that it has to have, they have to be strategic. They have to understand who they're working with, what they're fighting for, as you said. And I think that's organizing is in itself like a lot of people already have the skills to organize. It's just understanding that how to utilize those skills. And I think that's that's a perfect example of like what organizing is, what it means to be an organizer. And I mean, that's funny. I just looked back and I made a note about that. And I mean, like going back on like campaigning for issues, like, have you had a lot of experience campaigning, like organizing campaigns or designing campaigns?

SPEAKER_02 20:19

Yes. Yep. So I have organized in a couple different ways. The way that I do it now is the way that I prefer, where you are, you know, you have a topic that you're interested in. For me, my work is around public transit and biking and walking infrastructure. So all the organizing that I'm doing is in that realm. And that's that's really the only piece that I bring as far as ways that I'm swaying the volunteers one way or another. So if they have something that fits within there, the only reason I mean I have to stay within that because I'm being paid to do that. But that way, community members bring the issues in within that topic and they know that that's like the topic that we are focusing on, they get to bring it to me. I've also done campaigns where I, as part of this fellowship program I was in, you get kind of contracted out, and a nonprofit brings you in to help them organize around a specific issue. So I I worked with stopping trying to block oil drilling in the Arctic. And I was working in Tempe, Arizona at the time, which was a wild talking about the Arctic while you're in the actual desert was kind of a funny, funny experience. And then I I have also worked on clean energy legislation work in both South Carolina and in Iowa. But so with those campaigns, you have an issue and you go find people. Who wants to care about that. And to some extent, if you're an organizer as a career, you have to do that because the way that you get funding is to stay within a topic range. So in some ways, that's unavoidable. But the way that you can make it more community focused is by paving the way to so creating and recruiting folks who are who care about the topic at hand, they understand the premise. Then they bring specific ideas on what exactly you're going to campaign around. And that difference is important. But you you touched on organizing versus mobilizing. And I feel like that that would be good to I think I am going to take a crack at defining the difference for folks, but because they overlap. The problem with defining organizing in general is that it's such a large body of work and you can do it in so many different ways that it's tough for people to like wrap their arms around what exactly that means. Mobilizing, the way that I think of it, as an organizer, you need to be able to mobilize people. And as someone who's mobilizing, you need to either be working with an organizer or be an organizer yourself. But they feel they are two distinct activities that take different skill sets. So as an organizer, a lot of what I do is teaching and like guiding and identifying skills in volunteers and pulling them into leading that aspect of it so that we can get more done. But I'm kind of guiding and showing where we need those different expertise levels. And I'm teaching them how we're doing this. And they're kind of part of the organizing with me as the volunteer base. Mobilizing is getting people there, getting people to those big events, getting a visible showing of folks to make a splash, whether it be to get media attention, to wake up decision makers, getting people in the room. What you do with the people once they're in the room is organizing, but getting them there, mobilizing.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

But I want to touch on something you said about organizing. You mentioned finding the traits in people, in community members, and pulling them out and then putting them to use. Would you how do I ask this question? Would you consider that you pursue the avenue of identifying the skills, or do you put the effort into developing the skills?

SPEAKER_02 24:42

Okay. It depends on the skill. So I think there's kind of two different parts of this, at least how I do it. Again, I can't speak to any other organizer, but the way that I've kind of fallen into the work is that when I have capacity, sometimes things move too fast to be able to do this as much as I want. But I try to meet with new people that join our group. Maybe they found us from, you know, word of mouth, from another, from one of our events, from our social media, from Google, whatever it may be. They're brand new. I try and meet with them and try and understand one, why are you here? What do you want out of this? Two, how can I make sure that you understand kind of what we're doing here? And also I want to hear and make sure I do everything I can to get what you want out of it. So what will happen is an example, someone will come in and say, I care about public transit. I'm very passionate about it, but I, you know, and then I'm like, okay, what are you looking for? What are you comfortable with? What do you, what skills do you have that you wish you could put into this movement? Because a lot of people have these incredible talents and they wish that they could combine that with their passion. And so take someone who has a ton of social media and marketing experience, and they say, I would love to be involved in using that skill for this group. How can we do that? And I'm like, okay, great. Well, we can have you make some social media videos and kind of like help us figure out the best way to quote unquote market this issue for our community and kind of building that in. And then on the other side, so that's the taking someone's expertise and using it in a way, of course, only if they want to combine them, but identifying that is really important so that you can use people's strengths as they are only if they're offering them, of course. But that way they get the most out of it. And we get someone who has experience doing something that otherwise we don't have the capacity to pull off.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 26:51

But then on the other side, it's asking like, what are you comfortable doing? And in other words, what can I teach you to do? And you would be willing to try. So people have different varying comfort levels, and I'm never gonna try and push someone to do something that they do not want to do. That's not full stop pass. Nope. So identifying that early is really important and also being resource to them so that they know that if they show up to a new activity for them, I am going to be there. I'm gonna be there with all the materials they need. I'm gonna make sure that they I will teach them the skills, I'll explain why it's important, I'll have them watch me do it, I'll stand next to them while they do it, and then they go off in a pair to try it on their own. And so these kinds of skills include phone banking, canvassing, petitioning, calling their elected officials, testifying in front of a committee. So those kinds of things, a lot of people have a varying level of comfort. And a lot of people have no experience in doing that. And so it's important to kind of meet people where they're at. And so something that I always say to first-time canvers who are nervous about it. Maybe we're just canvassing up and down a street. So passing by walkers and people getting on and off the bus and whatever. We always have a buddy system. And I'm always, I'll look at the newest person. I'm like, we're gonna buddy up. If you try this once and you you're not comfortable continuing, you can just be my support. You you do not have to do it if it if it is not something that's comfortable. So that gives people, hopefully, and I've seen this to be true, is like that gives people the permission and the freedom to try something that they think might be scary, but maybe they can do it. And I've seen people who you would never expect would be comfortable phone banking or canvassing, and they try it once and then they're like, oh, that wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. I'm like, yeah, you can do this. Like, it is, you've got this. And then, and then they like blossom and then they they're better at it than me by the end of the, you know. So just seeing that and kind of guiding it. So it's both to answer your question in a long-winded way. But to summarize, it's like you look for the skills people are offering and you try to incorporate those, and you also look to see where they're comfortable in learning a new skill that will also benefit the the campaign at large.

SPEAKER_00 29:26

That makes perfect sense. And I think uh going back to our leadership class, like you describe yourself as a weaver, and I think that makes perfect sense because you're building a supportive network for your volunteers.

SPEAKER_02 29:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 29:40

Like you're you're the person that they rely on for structure and for guidance and for direction. And I think with with that, like definitely one of my colleagues in Colombia, one of my friends in Colombia, she is very good at that as well. And it's interesting seeing a person that has that capacity to identify traits and then pull people with complementary traits together and then organize them onto a collaborative campaign or a shared goal. That's really that's really fun to see because it works. Like it's it it works. And I think that's why like Minnesota with the recent ice raids in Minnesota. I think that's why communities were able to organize, not just mobilize, but the organization in place for emergency food drives or rent share campaigns or raising money for helping people pay their rent or paying groceries. The mobilizing part of it was there, as you said. That's people showed up. People showed up in a lot of numbers. And the organizing thing on the back half of that, I think mobilizing is what you see, and organizing is what you don't see. Organizing is the effort that goes into making it run so smoothly. So you connecting volunteers together and then encouraging them to learn and try new skills, like you don't really see that. That's not sensationalized as much as people showing up outside of Capitol Hill holding up signs or blocking off highways or taking over intersections.

SPEAKER_02 31:29

My yeah, I mean, let me just add like my theory of change as an organizer is very much centering shared understanding and a sense of community. So I've one of our professors compared my leadership style to dead lasso, which is kind of funny, but it's I I always try my best to open space for people to ask questions in meetings. There is a lot of jargon in the public transit and and in any industry, but so bringing along people and having them be able to ask questions. I ask questions. So I model that because I can't, no one knows everything. That's that would be crazy. And then also the weaving aspect allows people to bring in their expertise, and then those things interact. So, like I learn a lot from, say, an urban planner who's volunteering for me. And we're able to kind of weave in this group and it creates this community of shared learning and understanding. And every meeting, this is this is why I actually do not like acronyms, is because I think it holds people, it just it just isolates people because if you don't know what it means and it's being used, you have no way of joining in that conversation. So in my work, I try to stay away from acronyms. And if I'm using an acronym, I I identify it and define it at least twice throughout the meeting and likely write it down. So that's just an example of just like centering the learning and the shared understanding and the community approach is really critical to building a group that wants to stay, that feels engaged, that cares not only about the issue, but also about the people that they're working with. And you bring up the ice raids in in Minnesota, and I think that's an incredible example. I was not organizing in that, but I was a volunteer. The difference. But it was so cool to see how different people's strengths were tapped into differently. I mean, lawyers were volunteering their time, people with extra rooms in their houses are volunteering that space, people who can drive, offering rides, offering rides, or people who have extra funds donating money, people who just have extra time or want to center that are observing, who maybe are you know, able-bodied, are able to go observe in front of these places and offer physical support to people who are being kidnapped, et cetera. So that was a really I'm so proud of Minnesota as I know the whole world is, just for the demonstration of that. And I think the people who organized those did it in a similar way that I try to do of like shared learning, shared understanding, and weaving. And weaving is a huge part of organizing. And I have never seen a successful organizer who does not weave.

SPEAKER_00 34:21

That makes perfect sense. Yeah. That makes perfect sense. I think that's why I think that's a skill that I would most benefit from is weaving. I guess I learned organizing by just seeing it done. And just my my idea of organizing, not to shift this all about me, but was like organizing is like, hey, we need to do a thing, and we need we need to identify people with the skills to do this thing. Or we need to organize our capacity to accomplish a shared goal. Like that was my understanding. And then like seeing it done, and then like doing a little bit of it myself. It's easy to kind of get lost in the weeds of like what an organizer is, but I think you really made it the point that organizing, like as a as long as you understand your why, like why you're doing it, like I think that's the most important thing. And like that, what closely follows to that is how. And I'm like you as a as a weaver, as someone that connects people to others with to have a shared goal, to pool their efforts into accomplishing their shared goal. I think that's very important as an organizer.

SPEAKER_02 35:44

Yeah. I I think with weaving comes, so of course, creating a community of volunteers and people who are passionate about the work, figuring out what it is that you want to focus on, your why, why is it important? And then figuring out what does it look like when you win?

SPEAKER_00 36:04

Yeah. I think, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:06

What are specifically what are we fighting for? Because without that, what will happen is any victory that you have, your first question out of your mouth is like, did we do it? Is this, did we win? And it's hard to know when to celebrate, when to re-rework it, when to switch paths. And so one of the first things out of the gate, once you've got your people and you know why you're all together, is like, okay, what's our goal? Yeah. And can we can we hold it? Can we identify it? Can we explain and know when we succeeded? For for both structural and like strategic reasons, but also for the ability to celebrate wins. You don't know what what winning is. You can't celebrate yourself.

SPEAKER_00 36:50

I agree to that entirely. And just for context, like organizing doesn't have to be political organizing, it can be social justice organizing, can be labor organizing. It can be organizing to to squash an opponent. Like organizing and just understanding how to allocate resources.

SPEAKER_02 37:11

It's working to change a norm, working to change the way it is.

SPEAKER_00 37:16

For good or bad.

SPEAKER_02 37:17

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:18

And I think I think that ties into like the ethics of organizing, we could go into. Oh yeah. That is a rabbit hole. But I think like you mentioned something like very profound, like just identifying your wins or knowing when you've won. I've been a part of like mobilizing effort that it was like the line was like became blurred. It's like, what are we still doing here? Like, what's what's the goal? Did we accomplish the goal? Like, I wasn't on the organi I wasn't even a part of the effort. I was just just going around along for the I was a participant, let's just say, or a spectator. But it was a mobilization effort to shut down a few lanes of traffic to bring awareness of gender abuse in Colombia, and which is extremely important, but it wasn't organized very well. Like people were mobilized, people were angry, people wanted to take to the streets. But they reached a point where it was like, okay, we've accomplished a goal, we shut down this intersection. Now what? And then people didn't have that understanding. Right. Like we built awareness. Like, I don't know, let's keep going. Let's let's walk down the street and take over another intersection. And it just became like, okay, you went from making a statement to just being a nuisance.

SPEAKER_02 38:53

Yeah. There's that's a great example. One that reminds me of a distinction here of so in any campaign, in any organizing context, you'll have your broader vision, which is your why. That's like in a perfect world, after all of the organizing is successful, what are we looking at? And so an example would be in Colombia, I'm assuming like gender equality or something along, and you can correct me if I'm wrong there, but it seems like the reason for shutting down a highway is to further the movement for gender equality at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 39:33

So then that's your vision. That but no camp, no one campaign is gonna reach that. That's that's it's it's too large, right? So then you pick a campaign goal, which is let's stop this gender violence that's happening through getting some sort of legislation passed that will protect them. That's the goal of this campaign. If we get that legislation passed, then we have one. Did we did we defeat the patriarchy? No. But we're we're one tiny step closer. So then then the question is, okay, what's the next campaign to do the next thing towards our vision? And that way you're kind of you're you're bringing down your your broader vision into these bite-sized pieces. It's the same way if you build a to-do list.

SPEAKER_00 40:21

Right.

SPEAKER_02 40:22

Okay. If you want your successful, successful day is to get everything, all the chores done on your to-do list, all your Sunday prep. If if you know that you've won when you've you're completely prepared, that's great. But there's no one task that's gonna accomplish that. You need to do the whole list. Yep. But it's kind of nice to check the box after each one.

SPEAKER_00 40:45

Well, that too.

SPEAKER_02 40:46

So so kind of identifying into these pieces of like concrete, doable, definable campaigns. And then what within that, there's more tactical uh separation. But that way, when you won, even though you haven't defeated the patriarchy or you've done all your Sunday prep, you've at least taken out the garbage. You've at least, you know, passed the legislation to jam ban this type of gender care. And it was because we shut down the highway and put the decision makers in an uncomfortable spot, et cetera. So I think that's a thing that you either learn from organizing a lot or from learning about it. But that's one thing that I see into your example is like it can leave people feeling lost if you don't have that, or or you you don't have a direction because you're not quite sure when it stops. We're all here, we're all pumped, but like how long are we gonna be here? And what do we what do we do if this doesn't work? Or what what's our next step? So defining that as all kind of the that some of that background work in organizing that I think is really I I agree.

SPEAKER_00 41:56

And I mean, like, I mean, I've definitely been a part of like meetings that establish strategy and like building, building out the capacity. Like we had that organizing class last June, and it was like building pods, like building your capacity to develop leadership in others. Like that's something I I was operating out of like a pod, I suppose, because it's a a mutual aid organization, is like power is shared horizontally. And that's kind of also how I've come to identify organizing. And again, like organizing versus leadership, but organizing as social leadership in a sense of like of shared power or developing power in others, like not having a top-down structure, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 42:50

There's a saying that the best organizers will organize themselves out of a job.

SPEAKER_00 42:55

Yeah. Yeah, actually that's yeah, I heard that just recently, actually. And because that's the goal, it's like do you you want it to be you want the system to be self-sufficient. You want to be su you want to be such good, you want to have the capacity to organize in the sense that it can function without you.

SPEAKER_01 43:17

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 43:18

And like that's a really interesting point to make. And I wanted to ask you about like going back on to like building relationships, having a shared understanding, and developing a sense of community. But in the sense of partnering with other organizers, or there's multiple organizations or advocacy groups or social justice movements with the same goals. And I think what kind of gets in the way a lot of the time is that they don't organize amongst themselves, they don't build coalition power. What are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_02 44:02

Yeah. No, it's a great point. And I think it's a a flaw of the way that our society is structured, is that, you know, nonprofit organizations and community groups have to advocate for so many things that the government should be providing on its own, I think, as a background, but I won't get into that. That that would take a whole nother podcast. But I think what happens is if, or I guess when at all possible, I think it's always better to coordinate and team up so that you're not parallel working on the exact same thing and putting in twice as much work as a group as you could. I think it's always beneficial to collaborate. What comes into play as far as like why they don't always, and what I've at least experienced in at some points in my career with very or heard of or you know, observed or whatnot. One of the biggest reasons for organizations to not work on the same issue is a different theory of change. If you don't share a theory of change, it can be very complicated to agree on a strategy if your vision of how to make that change is completely different. So, one example, I can speak just as an individual organizer. I am not a purist. I think that if you reach a fight, if you're in a in a battle or of a campaign and the opposition wants one thing and you want the opposite, I would rather, if you get, if you do everything you can and you're pushing for the vision and at the last 10 yards of the race, you're realizing that if you do not compromise at all, you will get nothing. You you can you've reached the point where you've done everything you can to reach for your your 100% goal. After that point, there's a critical decision point where you have to decide do I negotiate to get something or do I quit and get nothing? And I am firmly on the side of compromising to get some kind of victory, you know, regrouping and then fighting again for that last 10 yards. I'm not saying we'll never get it. I'm saying we don't want all this work to go to waste and not fight for something. I'd rather have something at the end of the day than nothing. However, that is not how all organizers think. Some organizers think that you should never back down, that you should never compromise. And I so, as you can imagine, with those two opinions, you you can't collaborate very well or very clearly. And so, and that's just one example of many. There's also differences in like tactics that you use, or comfortability being doing things that are illegal, or comfort level in being unprofessional, or amount of time you are expecting your volunteers to put into something. So I have I have personally seen volunteer groups get burnt out because they are being asked to do too many things. And if you want to sustain that, you can't be like, okay, I need six hours a week. I need four nights a week, I need whatever it is. Instead, it's like, okay, we meet at the same time every month. Here are all the options you can plug into if you'd like to give beyond that. So just many examples of reasons why different organizers or different groups of organizers, not butt heads, because at the end of the day, we're all on the same team. We all want the same vision. We're not like at odds. It's just like difficult to collaborate with one another if we see the problem so differently. And there are ways around that. There are ways to work to mitigate that. But I think that at the crux, at least from the organizational standpoint and from like the group standpoint of collaborating with others, I think that comes up and isn't as visible to folks looking at the problem.

SPEAKER_00 48:22

Thank you for that. There's so much I wanted to dive into there.

SPEAKER_02 48:27

Yeah, sorry, I just threw a lot out there.

SPEAKER_00 48:29

No, that's that's perfect. I do want to touch on one thing, kind of steer it back towards theory of change. Is that okay with the idea?

SPEAKER_01 48:35

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:37

This idea, this came out in our leadership class. But I was trying to make a point in that class about being an advocate versus being a leader. And like my opinion is that an advocate cannot compromise. Like, if you call yourself an advocate, I don't think there's a room for compromise. However, that gets in the way of accomplishing goals, or like that gets in the way of having the capacity to identify ways forward. And so like compromise comes in or collaboration comes in as a leader, as someone who approaches it with a different philosophy. And so, I mean, we're in a master's program, we're in a graduate program of advocacy and political leadership. But I think that's aptly named because I think I think one has to, and I have, I suppose, radical ideas of what a leader should be, but I think for like an advocacy, like an advocate, I think that an advocate should be unwilling to compromise, but understand how to utilize that to accomplish shared goals. And if you have a shared goal, you have to know how to compromise. Like ideally collaborate, but you have to be able to compromise. You have to be able to negotiate. I guess like you as would you consider yourself an advocate, uh like an advocate?

SPEAKER_02 50:18

I guess, I mean, how would how are you defining advocate?

SPEAKER_00 50:22

I mean, personally, I think an advocate is someone that is disgruntled or dissatisfied with something in the realm of social justice. I think specifically in the realm of social justice, because speaking about organizing for accomplishing shared goals, this is all in the realm of the betterment betterment of society, however you perceive it to be, just trying to improve society for everyone. But I think an advocate has to be dissatisfied with something. They have to be motivated to change something. So I think like you can be an advocate and be a leader, you can be a volunteer, you can be a social leader, you can be an organizer, you can be a politician. Like at the core of it, I think maybe I'm thinking too much into this, but at the core of it, I feel that people should have like no compromise, like ice out of Minnesota, just for example. No compromise. Like not draw down on ice activity, but like no, absolutely no ice in Minnesota. That's like the core. That's you're advocating for that. You're advocating for the rights of the immigrant communities here in Minnesota. But understanding as an organizer to have the skills to collaborate with other people to have a shared understanding what the the issue is and go after the issue. I think an organizer has to have that ability to compromise. So does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 52:04

Yes. And you're the way that you describe that tells me that I'm curious. So I'm gonna make a distinction because I'm trying to figure out if we're agreeing with each other or not. So bear with me. I'm gonna go off a little bit on this. So, in the way that I think about an advocate, first of all, I think of it as kind of an umbrella term to kind of what you were thinking of is like that includes organizers, that includes volunteers, that includes people working at nonprofits that are doing advocacy work, that includes politicians. I think that an advocate is someone who is like actively working towards the betterment of a specific cause. What you're saying is that what I'm hearing is that advocate cannot compromise. And I think I'm defining compromise differently than you, because the way I see it, as I was think talking about not being a purist and being a realist and an organizer and an advocate at the same time, is that take take the gender example. Let's talk a patriarchy. Okay. So if I'm an advocate who I am a feminist and I believe in equal rights for all genders, full stop, I will not change that goal. I will not stop fighting until that goal is reached, let's say. However, if I'm in a specific campaign and I'm learning that we won't get anywhere unless we compromise, then I think it's strategic to compromise. Does that mean that it's the end goal? No. Does that mean I'm compromising to an end? No. But in process, I am compromising as a scaffolding point in order to get the movement just a little bit farther. So we have less to go. But I'm not gonna stop. I'm gonna get that win, that partial win. I'm gonna celebrate it, and then I'm gonna regroup and get back out on the battlefield. Yep. So to me, that is not compromising my advocacy, but it is using compromise as again a scaffolding as a as a stopping point so that we can get some victory in, you know, however small, as we go through to fight for the full thing in another way. So I'm I'm curious with that distinction, if we're if we're seeing it in the same way.

SPEAKER_00 54:21

That's exactly how I I think you said it better than I did, but that's exactly how I see it. Because at your core, you're an advocate.

SPEAKER_02 54:27

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 54:28

You're not gonna settle for anything less.

SPEAKER_02 54:30

No, and you're not pleased with a compromise, but hey, I'll take anyone I can get.

SPEAKER_00 54:34

You just need to know how to use the compromise.

SPEAKER_02 54:36

Right. It's it's it's not an end game. It's okay, how can we be strategic and how can we use all the work we've done to get a little bit of a victory before we keep fighting?

SPEAKER_00 54:49

That was very well said. No, that's and that's what that's what my attitude about it is too, because at the end it it's like the driving, it's what drive, it's what's driving your organizing. But then knowing how to use that compromise.

SPEAKER_02 55:04

It goes back to that that idea that I mentioned about having like the vision versus having having the campaign goals along the way. Did we win? Well, we won this campaign, but we have not realized our entire vision. So it's similar to that of like building in those those campaign goals as scaffolding to realize your vision eventually. And again, hopefully organize your way out of a job. Yeah. If you if you get to the vision.

SPEAKER_00 55:38

So theory of change. I think this is very important. This is something I am just touching on. Like I have an understanding of it, but this is something I've just begun to learn, I suppose, on the back end. But theory of change. What would you say your theory of change is?

SPEAKER_02 56:00

So I've always had a hard time with the phrase theory of change, not in a negative way, but in a way of understanding because I've and I was talking to one of our professors about this too. It's defined in so many different ways, and it's used in so many different ways. So it's always been hard for me to wrap my arms around a definition that I feel is finite.

SPEAKER_00 56:26

So I'm right there with you.

SPEAKER_02 56:29

So for the sake of our conversation, I'll say in my mind, a theory of change is your theory for what needs to be done in order to have success. How how do you what thing, what way of strategizing, what way of organizing is going to lead to a victory? It's kind of how I think about theory of change. Mine goes back to what we were talking about, leadership. Is I fundamentally think that the relationships in a volunteer group, let's say, or a community group that's working, the strength of that group on its own is going to be what decides whether or not you get victory. If you have a especially a long-term campaign. So my theory of change is to focus on team dynamics, on how the meetings are run and making sure that no one person is taking up too much space or no one is is not able to speak, making sure to continue the center of understanding. Everyone in the room needs to understand why we're here, what we're doing, what we're talking about, why it's important, why it's important to them, why it's important to our community at large, why it's connected to any of the issues that they're specifically interested in. So everyone needs to be in alignment on what the heck we're doing, why we're doing it, why we think the way we're doing it will work, and what we're going to do if it doesn't work. And what that does is it locks in a level of retention that I have never seen without this team dynamic. If you have a group of people who are dedicated not only to the cause, but also are dedicated to commitments they've made to the people in the room, you will have a strength that will outrun a group that does not have that internal vibe. So that's how I center my organizing and obviously bringing in, you know, strategy and power mapping and all those things. But those are kind of the sides. The main course has to be the dynamic between the group and making sure that we are all in this together, especially for a campaign that takes a long time. Because people burn out. This work is exhausting. And if you don't have, if you're not surrounded by people who know how to fill up your cup in some way, if you're not getting that social bonding or that shared interest or those learning opportunities, people will find another, another outlet. And then you're not gonna win.

SPEAKER_00 59:18

So that's very well said, Julie.

SPEAKER_02 59:22

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 59:22

I think about it a lot. I think, well, I think that's what, in a sense, that's what that's the key to good organizing. And I mean, like theory of change, like and understanding like the strategies, like that comes with experience. That comes through an academic background. I never had the thing of like I just learned about identifying a target and learning how to influence a target to create change. Like I had no perception of that. Like, of course, like there has to be a target, but my my whole attitude or understanding of organizing was like for goal, campaign goal, campaign demand, position versus interest. But that part of it of having like a target, is it a legislature? Is it a politician? Is it a senator? Is it a house representative? Is it a particular person within a corporation? Or it's like that's something that I'm like I just learned too.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:35

But I mean, I bet that if you use different vocabulary or talked about it differently, I'm sure you're you were thinking about those things. And I think, you know, organizers are coming to those ideas in in different ways using different words and whatnot. I personally find those terms really helpful because then it gives me kind of I can look at a campaign plan and and see if something is missing because I have all those pieces in my brain so defined in an academic setting. But that's not how everyone's brain works. So I mean, I I think there are, you know, there are so many organizers who do it without learning the exact terms of what and they're doing it in a they're still accomplishing those things, they're still identifying those things. They might just not call it a target. So that is a case of, and whether or not you were doing that, I have no idea. But it's just kind of interesting to see how many different ways you can you can reach that strategic mindset.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:37

Like I reached an understanding of exactly what you said. Like you have to have that core. You have to know why you're there, like who you are, why you are there, what do you want you to change, how are you gonna change it? Like that core, I think is something that is oftentimes overlooked. That's definitely not addressed in mobilizing. It's this happened, how do we confront it? Or this is going to happen, how do we confront it? How do we stop it? And like you said, that like we have a long way to go. If you have a long way to go, you have to do it incrementally.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:18

And you have to think about how you're gonna keep these folks engaged and keep coming back, even if we go through sections where not a lot happens in a couple months, or we're waiting on decision makers to, you know, present something to us, and we just have to idle and wait and, you know, build campaign output and build more community support. But you're it feels like you're kind of running in place at times. And so you need to build a campaign that allows for that and that strength and the the knowing your why and knowing that everyone in the room has that why together is what can get your group through those slower parts of like, no, this work is important. We cannot slow down, you know. And a lot of opposition, especially government decision makers, will bank on the fact that people will get tired. So they'll they will hope, indirectly or directly, will hope that advocates and organizers and volunteers and community groups will will burn out. And so with longer campaigns, the way that you win is to not burn out because then the decision makers realize that they can't silence you, and that is power.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:38

That is very well said. I think that'd be good to have an episode of understanding power. But I think that was very well said, Julie, and I think you have a lot of good points of organizing. I've learned a lot from you. Just being in class with you, understanding like your approach to organizing, your experience with organizing, I've learned a lot from you.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:03

Thank you. Say the same about you.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:05

I I think that like in our program, I think it's perfectly fitting for us. But I've I've learned a lot from you. And I think with organizing and the real capacity that should exist in organizing is just learning from other people, learning how to collaborate with other people, how to compromise. For me, learning how to compromise, that's a huge one for me. But learning how to not utilize, but learning how to cooperate with other people and learning how to identify others, the strengths in others, as well as your own capacity to learn new skills. But yeah, but thank you so much for your time. Is there anything else that you want to touch on? What are your goals in the next couple years?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:00

Ooh, learn as much from other people as as possible before I, you know, start any new adventure. And as I organize, continue to challenge myself to always diversify in every way the types of folks I'm talking to, make sure to center understanding and to model that same learning and understanding in how I practice my own work and not just what I'm expecting from the volunteers who are gracious enough to donate their time.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:40

Cool. Well, thank you so much, Julie. This has been the Metroscope Organizing 101. I very much appreciate your time. And thanks for having me on.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:51

This is a blast.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:51

Yes, of course. And thank you for listening. My goal for future episodes is to have an episode on power and an episode on episode. efficacy. So I hope I hope that you'll stay tuned for that. But thank you so much for listening and thank you, Julie.