We’re all eager to act, and protests can be an incredibly powerful and emotionally satisfying outlet. We’re out there shaking our witty signs and having our say with a group of people who are just as fired up as we are. Protest actions also have the potential to break an authoritarian regime (like the Trumpublican administration). To reach the critical mass we need for protest actions to be truly impactful, we must first build a strong foundation through strategic organizing. I fear this crucial groundwork is being glossed over or skipped entirely by far too many of us.
To create powerful protests, we need organization
To free America from our wannabe king and to free the world from the American Broligarchy, we must be willing to do the necessary groundwork. To create the massive mobilization to protest actions that would effectively challenge the Trumpublican regime and challenge the political climate, we must first organize.
Certain types of protest actions can be incredibly effective. To be effective, protests must have specific goals and be designed specifically toward reaching those goals.
For example, the Tesla Takedown protests discourage shoppers from buying Tesla cars by educating them on what Elon Musk is doing to our government, and they don’t require massive numbers of people.
However, our most critical goals will require massive mobilization. Massive protest actions have toppled entire authoritarian regimes. We should make no mistake about our current situation: We have an authoritarian regime.
Small, uncoordinated actions have limited impact
Right now, many small, independent protests are happening across Arizona (and America) every day. While the enthusiasm is inspiring and uplifting, small protests make us feel good, but they have limited impact on building a movement or changing hearts and minds. For example, small, isolated protests can inadvertently create the false impression of a lack of widespread support, which can discourage others from joining. This ‘anti-social-proof’ effect can hinder our efforts to build a larger movement.
As Democrats, we have been moving away from organizing for more than a decade. We've become too top-down with the people at the top continuously asking us to mobilize but few people doing real organizing. Fewer and fewer resources have been put into organizing efforts on the left while the right has invested more and more into organizing.
To break our authoritarian regime, we must reach critical mass. To reach critical mass, we must build a movement. To build a movement, we must organize. Organizing is about relationships.
This work is urgent and critical. We have an unprecedented opportunity to build strong, local communities that when coordinated at scale will amplify our collective voice and create massive mobilization opportunities. To do this, we must focus on the necessary strategic steps of organizing and movement building.
In an authoritarian regime, the dam will eventually break, and when it does, we need to be ready with massive numbers of people who can be mobilized. This requires relationships built on trust.
Community building cures the effects of isolation and fear
The building blocks of a large, unified movement are strong neighborhood and community organizing networks. Organizing is based on relationships—I repeat this a lot because it’s the most important tenet of movement building.
Across Arizona, we have not done the groundwork to create the connections and emotional and mental headspace necessary for our people to feel safe engaging. Most Arizona Democrats feel alone because we’ve neglected our duties as a party to connect them. Asking our supporters who feel alone to join in protest actions will continue to be futile until we step up together and do the necessary groundwork.
When people feel alone, they feel lost. They are more fearful. Hope can be fleeting. What’s worse than feeling alone at home? Feeling lost and alone in a crowd. People who feel alone are less likely to engage in any action at all and least likely to engage in protest action. The most likely people to join a protest action are the people who can depend on other people to be there with them and look out for them.
If we want to build a movement with massive mobilization capabilities, then we have to build communities based on trust. By organizing hyperlocally, in our neighborhoods and across our towns and communities, we can create spaces for genuine connection. When we come together, we find strength and courage. We are more likely to fight for our convictions when others we trust are fighting alongside us.
Together, we can transform feelings of isolation into a powerful sense of solidarity and strength.
The urgency and need for rapid mobilization
We must build this quickly. Once people get to know like-minded people nearby who will have their backs in a crowd, who will make sure they get home, then we can mobilize them. They’ll carpool together. They’ll learn how to use Telegram together. They’ll keep an eye on each other. And no one will get left behind.
This is how movements build to create the critical mass needed for major protest actions—by creating thousands of safe and supportive environments where supporters feel empowered to participate in unified collective actions.
Together, we can build this, and we must build it quickly. We must prioritize accelerated organizing tactics now so that we will be ready when that moment comes.
Allies must start coordinating at scale
Allied organizations must also coordinate.No single organization can do this on their own. It’s going to take all of us organizing our own and then bringing everyone together. Let’s start reaching out to each other to build the coalitions we need. Reach out to your allies. You may not share all the same strategies or tactics, and that’s ok! We can all find ways to collaborate. Even sharing information, training, and tactics can be incredibly valuable.
What you can do right now
If you are ready to help build the movement we need, reach out to your local Democratic Party and ask how you can help organize a neighborhood meetup. If you live in Queen Creek, San Tan Valley, or Southeast Mesa, that’s us.
Here in the Southeast Valley, we connect our active volunteers by neighborhood and provide them with a list of strong Democrats in their neighborhood along with training and textbanking to help reach them. We have them start by hosting a casual meetup for their neighborhood’s strongest Democrats. This is a crucial first step in building the connections and trust needed to mobilize our community.
As we bring in volunteers, we emphasize the need to find a task or role that’s just right for each person’s personality, skills, and interests. As Simon Rosenberg often reminds us, when people enjoy what they are doing, they do more of it and do it for a longer period of time.
Together, we can build the connections and trust necessary to mobilize Arizona Democrats for effective action, which is the only path to building a powerful and aggressive Democratic Party that wins elections.
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