Building coalitions, building momentum

Decision-making, building your coalition and recruitment

A diverse coalition of liberals and conservatives, Christians, Jews, and Muslims, the documented and the undocumented, black, white, and brown sisters and brothers were learning that we could trust one another.

--Reverend William Barber II[1]

Every organization, every coalition, develops its own decision-making style. Doing this early is exceedingly helpful and making it less vulnerable to frequent reversals is highly desirable. 

There should be early major decisions that are firmly made and are not open for any revisiting. The most robust civil resistance campaigns decide on an immutable code of conduct and a robust decision-making process before inviting large numbers to join. 

Deciding how to decide can be challenging and is often best done with fixed yet flexible parameters.[2]A coordinating council, for example, may be empowered to determine that a particular decision lends itself to council consensus while another decision is best made using some agreed upon form of direct democracy. Often in national campaigns the national leadership can be expected to frame these options and thus give state organizers rails that can identify areas of great freedom and areas which require strict adherence. 

If love does not drive out the fears that so easily divide us, we will never gather together in coalitions strong enough to challenge those who benefit from injustice…Only a fusion coalition representing all the people in any place could push a moral agenda over and against the interests of the powerful.

--Reverend William Barber II[3]

In the American struggle for justice and freedom, moral dissent has always seemed impractical when it began.

Reverend William Barber II[4]

Nothing succeeds like success, to borrow what may sound like redundancy. In social movements, it has long been noted that every victory generates raised expectations—hope—and that this is one of the strongest factors in recruitment.[5]

The power of creating new relationships and the coalitions that can emerge sparks small victories in the long struggle toward the big goals—ending poverty, eliminating racism, transforming militarism and living without destroying our environment. These small early victories are critical to developing momentum.

Coalition-building is the art of recognizing and reifying shared interests and shared objectives. Marcus Braybrooke asserts that “the survival of life on this planet depends upon humanity realizing its oneness.”[6]To the extent we can find that oneness we can create unstoppable coalitions. It is the heart of John Lewis’s memoir, that even children holding hands can create power in unity that can resist the winds of oppression.[7]Rabbi Everett Gendler of the Jewish Peace Fellowship wrote, “Direct communication must not cease among men, however greatly they may differ in outlook.”[8]Unity is tough but doable.

Recruitment can be viewed as changing or evoking the social norm of duty. How do we help others to evoke and activate that sense of obligation? 

Sometimes a serious challenge from someone who has demonstrated leadership, dedication, and accomplishment can ignite the next ones. Congresswoman Barbara Lee, the voice of peace and courage in the US Congress, the only US Representative to vote against going to war in Afghanistan in the highly charged xenophobic atmosphere immediately after 9/11/2001, wrote of being a young single African American mother in college in 1972 and feeling like social activism was hopeless because white men controlled everything. Then she met Shirley Chisholm, the African American Congresswoman running for US President as a peace and justice candidate. Lee wrote that Chisholm convinced her “if you don’t like ‘the system,’ then you have to work to change it.”[9]

The wish to emulate strong committed resisters can indeed attract the next ones—and when they are oppressed with others for that good cause it can seal their commitment. When the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee helped lead the voter registration drives they inspired younger and younger volunteers. Roychester Patterson was a 17-year-old black student in Carver High School in Georgia. SNCC came to his county in 1962 and asked for volunteers. Patterson was struck by their commitment and made his—only to be arrested for his efforts and expelled from school. So he “went to work for SNCC on Voter Registration,” becoming a young leader “because I am deeply attached to my people and I want them to know freedom.”[10]

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[1] Barber (p. 66) Barber later goes on to assert that, “our intersectionality creates the opportunity to fundamentally redirect America” (p. 122).

[2]Dressler, Larry (2006). Consensus through conversation: How to achieve high-commitment decisions. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.

[3] Barber (p. 26, 28)

[4] Barber (p. 22)

[5]Alinsky, Saul D. (1971). Rules for radicals. New York: Random House.

Kriesberg, Louis, & Dayton, Bruce W. (2017). Constructive conflicts: From escalation to resolution. (5^thed.) Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

[6]Braybrooke, Marcus (2002). “The interfaith movement: The present reality,” (pp. 245-251) in Mallick, Krishna & Hunter, Doris (Eds.) (2002). An anthology of nonviolence: Historical and contemporary voices. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press (p. 246).

[7] Lewis, John (1998). Walking with the wind: A memoir of the movement. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace.

[8]Gendler, Everett E. (1981) “¼therefore, choose life” (pp. 7-16) in Schwarzchild, Stephen, et al. Roots of Jewish nonviolence. Nyack, NY: Jewish Peace Fellowship (p. 13). Rather than make modernizing or movement-evolving changes to exclusive language, we simply note in our footnotes that we have moved beyond gender exclusivity now, but the author quoted used his own word choice when he wrote it and each reader can perform her own translation as she wishes.

[9] Lee, Barbara (2007). “Foreword,” pp. xi-xiii in, Stassen, Glen Harold & Wittner, Lawrence S. (Eds.). Peace action: Past, present, and future. Boulder, CO: Paradigm (p. xii).

[10]Patterson, Roychester (1962). “Statement by a high school student,” pp. 247-248, in Lynd, Staughton & Lynd, Alice (1995). Nonviolence in America: A documentary history(2^nded.). Maryknoll NY: Orbis Books (original 1966) (p. 248).