Friday Notes, November 4, 2022
Dear Friends -
This week, you almost got a Friday note on Wednesday. I heard something that afternoon at the Global Philanthropy Forum in San Francisco that I could barely wait to tell you about. Carlos Saavedra, a leader in the “dreamer” movement for immigrant rights, offered thoughts about the structure and dynamics of social movements. And his ideas made so much sense to me that I wanted to share them right away.
Here’s my try at capturing what Carlos had to say (with a little elaboration).
He said that five theories of change interact to make a social movement. They are:
Personal transformation: As individuals, people develop a deep and personal understanding about the source and consequences of injustice, and about their own role in advancing social progress. This happens one by one, but stimulated by outside influences, particularly by people close by and/or with whom you identify. Each person becomes a powerful agent of change.
Development of alternatives: In both formal and informal collaborations, people come together to work on alternative models. Maybe it’s a cooperative to test and demonstrate non-exploitive modes of production; maybe it’s a pedagogy oriented toward critical thinking instead of rote learning; maybe it’s a community committed to a full circular economy; or maybe it’s the application of principles of restorative justice. This work demonstrates what is possible and serves as inspiration. It responds to calls for overthrowing a harmful system with a vision of what might take its place.
Inside game: There are many forms of an inside game and inside gamers. For example, insiders may be think tanks and other researchers who create descriptions of and explanations for problems in a way that is seen as legitimate, objective, and connected to familiar policy frameworks. Insiders may be social reformers within government, who know how to write the rules and fill up the right budget lines. They may be people in courts, on one side of the bench or the other, using legal institutions to shift power. They may also be reformist politicians and their backers, seeking to get or stay in power so they can move forward legislative or executive actions. The logic of the inside game is often that large change can be achieved by tipping big towers just a little bit.
Community organizing: This part of an outside game involves organizing people who are experiencing a failing system so that they show and feel their collective power, and can speak with one voice, one set of demands. The impact of community organizing rests with the influence that a unified group can have via political processes.
Mass protests: The most visible manifestation of a social movement is another part of the outside game. Mass protests depend on engagement of people who may not be directly or acutely affected by a problem, but who come to care enough that they will get out in the streets. In so doing, they create pressure for a political response.
In Carlos’s telling, each of these theories of change can be implemented through craft: a set of specific and unique skills are required for each one, and those skills can be learned through a combination of training and experience. What’s important, he argued, is to know which one you’re working on or supporting, so you can orient your energies appropriately. There is room for a whole lot of different kinds of people and skills in this conceptualization, but clarity about who you are and what role you’re playing is vital.
The other insight that Carlos offered was about the rhythm of a social movement, which he characterized as seasons. Here, I don’t have to improvise and I can just cut-and-paste from an article Carlos wrote earlier this year:
Winters are a time to be internally focused and are defined as periods of time for regeneration and re-evaluation. This is a time for processing the previous leadership cycles and developing insights and revelations about our own leadership (how we’ve tried to respond and how we want to respond). Winters oversee the process of recommitting to our own leadership cycles, and thus birth the new cycle. They are the space where the old is dying and the new is just beginning to emerge.
Spring is about opening up, taking on new personal responsibilities and experimenting. In many ways, spring is about the start of a new cycle, the birth that comes out from the depths and darkness of winter. It is a time of excitement and openness, and recommitting to the task at hand. It is important to note that no season exists in isolation from the rest, meaning that there is an inextricable connection between the seasons in the leadership cycle. The degree of excitement and openness that one is able to feel as part of their spring depends on how deep and intentional the winter was. Ideally, spring is characterized by finding less resistance within ourselves to try new things or re-emerge, more willingness to take on responsibility again, take risks, meet new people and to approach things with curiosity, with a new sense of humility.
Just like every season, there are risks that come along with not having a successful spring; this can result in rushing to do too much in an effort to head into the summer too soon, causing one to feel overwhelmed by the newfound intensity. Moreover, by not having successful springs, we don’t take the time to experiment and take risks, to take advantage of the openness we are feeling, to ask ourselves different questions. If we don’t take the time necessary to have a good spring, we can miss out on innovation and new ways of thinking that our movements and organizations desperately need.
The summer is externally focused and is primarily about giving as much as we can to fulfill our different missions. It is a time of high energy, characterized by movement and intensity. Summers are the time for maximum activity, for a clear sense of purpose and direction that is full of determination. However, we need to find balance during the summer. This means that we must be moved by our energy, but not let it burn us out as we try to do too much. In order to have an understanding of this balance, we must understand that summers end and they can’t be prolonged, no matter how much we wish for them to be eternal. To have successful summers for our leadership requires us to dedicate the time to focus on a limited number of projects or areas. This necessitates saying no to things that could pull our focus and attention in different directions. We must view it as a marathon not a sprint, which means we must know when to bring consistent high energy in punctuated forms and at the right moments, and to rest in others.
Lastly there is fall, which is the season of harvesting the fruits from work during the summer and also starting to slow and break down certain elements to prepare for the winter. The fall is a time to reap the rewards of summer, it is the culmination of the advances and victories that may have been gained during the last season. Typically when leaders are in a fall season, they feel that their energy isn’t the same as it was during summer — this dip is of course natural and should be respected. You do not want to attempt to just push through, which can result in burnout. Just as summers should be understood as a marathon, we can think of fall as a type of relay race, meaning that we see the end of our role or work on particular projects and need to transition some of those roles or pass the baton to others, so to speak. The wisdom of fall is about knowing and understanding that cycles come to an end and about actually sustaining the fall to give ourselves time to prepare for winter because we know that it is around the corner.
This view of how social movements unfold over years or even decades helps motivate investment of time, energy, brainpower, and money in each season, but toward distinct ends. Knowing which season you’re in — like knowing which role you’re playing — is essential to success.
As you can tell, I loved hearing what Carlos had to say. If this has whetted your appetite for more, here are a few resources rom Carlos or his organization, the Ayni Institute.
A talk about the dreamer movement
A guide for social movement funders
An article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review with recommendations for social movement funders
And this is one of my all-time favorite (and very short) Ted Talks with a slightly different take on the same topic.
Five days before the midterm elections in the U.S., I’ll leave you with this.
Have a good weekend,
-Ruth