I’ve posted a few times on Jane McAlevey’s book No Shortcuts. Readers looking to catch up can read the most important of those posts here and here. But I find one other big lesson that McAlevey gives to us. That concerns the limit of mobilizing as a method and basis for an org.
Let’s explore that a bit.
Mobilizing
The notion of mobilizing plays a key role for McAlevey. At its core, it’s about bringing activists together to win some demand or fight. Typically a core group of staff or volunteers leads the way, selects the issue and strategy, and then puts the pieces in place to win.
McAlevey distinguishes mobilizing from advocacy and organizing. In contrast to advocacy, it’s not merely about a small group engaged in lobbying, lawsuits, or back room deals. It involves real appeal to popular support. And it nods at the idea that people can come together to make change.
In contrast to organizing, however, it still depends on an elite theory of power. That is to say, it takes power to be in the hands of elite actors. The goal is to achieve a win that changes the mind of those actors. In addition, staff or key volunteers set the strategy. It may involve the use of ‘authentic messengers’ – i.e., people directly affected by the issue. But they’re really only spokespeople, formal leaders without real power, or members of some spin-off org. They don’t set the strategy. Finally, they mobilize core activists – the people who show up to most events – rather than the community itself.
It’s also worth noting that this is a bit of an abstract model. In practice, many orgs do a combination of advocacy, mobilizing, and organizing (especially the first two).
Saul Alinsky
McAlevey goes into a bit of history, which I find helpful. She traces the basic mobilizing model to Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. Alinsky took the CIO organizing model of the 1930s and adapted it to community organizing. He wanted to organize, in particular, the most marginalized communities. But he changed a lot along the way, turning it away from full organizing.
For Alinsky – on McAlevey’s reading – the organizer is someone outside of the community in question. They (in fact, he, for Alinsky) recruit ‘leaders’ who make key decisions. In practice, however, the shadow organizer makes most decisions and sets most of the strategy. The formal leader, by contrast, functions more like a spokesperson. In their role, they draw attention away from how the org really operates.
This doesn’t have to be sinister, though McAlevey at times seems to think it is. The larger point is that the model has its uses, but it also has sharp limits.
Excluded Workers Fund
There’s nothing wrong with keeping mobilizing as a tool in our tool kit. Sometimes it works. It especially works when a deeper, democratic org uses it as a specific tactic. But it works in other cases, too.
One such ‘other case’ came up recently in Iowa City. We’ve had a months long local political fight over an Excluded Workers Fund. The basic idea here? The county (and city) would dedicate ARPA funds to people who did not receive a stimulus check from the US government in 2020 or 2021. Stimulus funds excluded lots of people, but many were immigrant workers who lack citizenship.
Iowa City Catholic Worker – a local org that houses immigrants – put together a coalition to promote the Fund. The basic form follows a loosely Alinskyite mobilizing model that traces to Dorothy Day. And the Catholic Worker spun off a group of local community members that served in a sort of spokesperson and ‘leader’ role – Escucha Mi Voz.
The Worker House didn’t get all it wanted, but it came pretty close. Close enough to call it a ‘win’ of some kind. The Johnson County (Iowa) Board of Supervisors created a general fund for lower income people hit by the pandemic. Again, not exactly what the Worker House wanted. But not all that far away. Many of the people who see funds will be excluded workers.
Johnson County vs. Iowa
But I have to qualify the ‘win’ in at least one way. The result here looks a lot like the result of the other Catholic Worker campaign I wrote about awhile ago. In both cases, they got a win because Iowa City is deep blue. Not due to any strategic or tactical decision of the campaign. That is to say, Iowa City stands out as a bastion of ‘progressivism’ in an otherwise fairly conservative state.
So, that’s the main reason the county voted funds to lower income pandemic victims. All 5 County Supervisors in Johnson County are Democrats. And 4 of them carry some degree of links to the ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ end of the Democratic Party.
The Worker House – via Escucha Mi Voz – took the campaign to many other places in Iowa. We’ve seen some level of activity in Louisa County, Muscatine, Columbus Junction, even Des Moines. Each of these places is less liberal and less Democratic than Iowa City – some far less so. And though advocates used the same basic tactics – media outlets, filling the comments sections of public meetings, mobilizing the usual crew of activists – it all met with far less success in those places. All this even though most of those places actually received the campaign with less overt hostility than Johnson County.
One other city – West Liberty – is still considering the measure. But it seems to have struck out everywhere else.
Why? Because the win came from Iowa City’s politics, not from the campaign strategy or tactics.
The Limits of Mobilizing
Here’s the lesson as I see it. Mobilizing can be a great way to put engaged activists together for a purpose in a short time frame. But using it for this purpose relies on background community agreement. It’s not going to persuade anyone not already half (or more) on board. And it’s not going to build or win power in any deeper or longer term way. It’s merely a useful tool in specific situations.
If there’s a down side to this, it’s that orgs tend to learn the wrong lessons from winning. Many people think specific acts taken as a part of a campaign (e.g., public comments at meetings, calling out public officials on social media) ‘get the goods.’ They may even think that’s why they won.
That’s rarely the case, and it wasn’t the case with the excluded worker campaign in Iowa City. If anything, those actions – when they’re not part of a deeper effort to build power – can block short term goals. At least 2 County Supervisors in Johnson County are notoriously thin skinned, and one of those two voted against a stronger version of the Excluded Workers Fund (note: this was Royceann Porter, who also ‘supported’ her vote with a bizarre rant against the Catholic Worker House – go to about the 2:20:00 mark of the meeting video). As we can see, tactics not backed up by deeper organizing might have even cost the Fund a third (and decisive) vote.
And so, mobilizing will remain very limited in what it can do. It can win in deep blue Iowa City. But getting beyond that requires deeper organizing. It requires strategies, tactics, and proposals that speak to a broader community and its interests.
