21. Agency Part Four: How Groups Create Agency, and Checklist

Post Number Twenty-One of The Movement We Need

(This series of writings is an experiment—I’m writing a book and releasing it a chapter at a time on Substack, accompanied with podcasts available on Substack, Apple, Spotify, etc. This is the fourth post in the section on Agency, and the twenty-first post in the series. New posts now appear in their own section. Earlier chapters can be found in my archives, numbered to make them easier to find.)

We've seen how important it is for us as human beings to feel a sense of agency, to feel that we have an impact on our world, that our choices, decisions and actions affect what goes on around us and what happens to us. We've looked at the different types of power that might be exercised in our groups and organizations.

Power-over, command and control power, is the form of we're generally opposing, especially when it becomes tyrannical. But there are situations, particularly emergencies, when having someone in control can be a benefit to the entire group.

Power-from-within, moral courage, spiritual power, our sense of integrity, our skill to make and mend, our ability to create, we often call ‘empowerment’. When we combine our power together, we have solidarity, the people power that can transform unjust systems. Finally, we've touched on those complex questions of rank, prestige and influence that we might call social power.

Political activism is frustrating, and we rarely see immediate impacts from our work. We're likely to suffer as many setbacks as we do advances. So how do we build movements that can truly empower people, that can create conditions in which people can develop and strengthen their power-from-within, combine it together with others to have people power and solidarity and allow people fair opportunities to earn social power within our groups? And do it all in the context in which the rewards for our laborers are often far, far removed from our periods of effort?

I often think that building a political movement is a lot like throwing a party. First you need to know what the party is about. Is it just for fun? Is it to celebrate a birthday or an achievement? Does it have a theme? It’s the same for a movement, a campaign, an action or a protest: first, you need to know the intention. What do you hope to accomplish, and how does it fit into a larger vision of how you want the world to be? We need a vision, and some smaller, hopefully winnable foals we can reach along the way. Every time we achieve a goal we bolster everyone's sense of agency.

When you throw a party you need to invite people. A movement for social change needs to reach out and bring people in. How do we make our movement welcoming? Who might be our natural allies around a particular issue, and how do we meet them? Can we offer them support, show up at their meetings and actions rather than just asking them to support us? How do we offer hope and vision, not just opposition to the awful things going on, terrible though they are? After all, no one throws a party saying “Let's all get together Friday night and whine and complain!” People want to dance! So where are we dancing, creating events and actions that involve creativity and joy as well as righteous anger?

Building a movement involves building coalitions, doing outreach, meeting new people, listening to people who may or may not agree with you 100%, finding those areas of common ground and creating alliances that can together garner the power needed to make real changes.

And when you throw a party, you need to provide activities, things for people to do, whether that's dancing or pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey or simply standing around the snack table sipping drinks. Building change is a process of getting people to do things—and that’s good, because in providing things for people to do we have many opportunities for people to gain a sense of agency. Whether that's in organizing their friends to come to the protest, painting signs, providing peacekeeping, providing childcare, or blocking a doorway to a Tesla dealer, every action provides many roles.

In the latest non-violent direct action training I did, one of our students announced proudly, “I think I’ve found my role in the movement!” She has health issues that prevent her from marching or risking arrest, but she went down to support a group blocking ICE vans at a transfer site. “People were driving up and delivering pizzas and boxes of food. I come from a catering background, and so I took over the food, set it all out, put it in order and made it available for people to come and get it easily. I realized that this is what I can do in the movement! I can feed people!”

The more varied roles we provide for people, the more people we can involve who have their own varied needs and talents. When people can exercise their gifts, can make an impact directly on those around them and can feel that they are needed and valued, they feel a sense of agency that can help them tolerate the frustrations involved in long term organizing.

Providing these multiple roles for people also creates opportunities to heal some of the helplessness and powerlessness involved with trauma. And creating a governance system for a group that finds a balance between the desire for everyone to have a voice in everything and to actually get stuff done will increase the effectiveness of the group and the sense of agency of all involved.

It might be most accurate to say that a movement is comprised of many parties—and by that I mean celebratory events, not political parties although they may also factor in. Movements wage campaigns: orchestrated sequences of actions in pursuit of a goal. Goals may be long term or short term, visionary or mundane, or ideally, include all of the above.

Much of the time, activism involves saying ‘no’, protesting injustices. That type of activism can be especially frustrating, because rarely are we able to immediately stop bad things from happening. But activism that's successful also holds a vision and advocates for what we want, not just what we're against. When we know what we want, when we hold a vision of the world we want to create, we inspire people. We may not realize our ultimate, utopian vision in one lifetime, but we can exercise agency immediately to build models of those systems, provide actual care for people, and build the new world in the vacant lots of the old, as the saying goes.

That's why I have balanced the activism of protest with other forms of activism that let me feel an immediate sense of agency: healing practices, spirit and ritual, and permaculture, a system of regenerative design that I teach and practice, getting my hands in the earth, and growing gardens and teaching students how to create sustainable systems. We need to do those things that sustain our spirit, that allow us to build, create and see an immediate result for our efforts.

Gandhi led many protests against the British occupation of India, but he also led positive programs to teach people skills such as spinning and weaving, to break their dependence on the colonial system and to increase their sense of agency. The Black Panthers protested racism; they also started breakfast programs at school to feed hungry children. In the ‘90s, I was part of a group called Prevention Point that started an unauthorized needle exchange program in San Francisco to help slow the spread of AIDS among drug users and the larger community. The program gave us an immediate sense of impact: with every clean needle we exchanged for a dirty one, we might be literally saving a life. Because many of the people involved in the group worked in public health, they kept careful records, did surveys and were able to document that we did indeed slow the spread of AIDS, and that program then inspired many others around the world. Eventually it was legalized and taken over by the state. Of all the forms of activism I've engaged in, this was one of the most satisfying.

As well as having short-term winnable goals, it's vital that we celebrate our victories, even partial ones. Did you end racism with your protest? Probably not, but were you able to protect a few people who might otherwise have been assaulted and deported by ICE? That's a victory! Did you undo climate change? I doubt it, but were you able to teach a group how to compost and sequester some carbon by building soil? That too is a victory! When we celebrate our victories, we increase our sense of agency and our incentive to do more. When we feel empowered and impactful, we can be more effective in making a world of greater justice.

Below is a short checklist for your group around Agency:

Agency Checklist:

What type of power operates within your group? Power over? Power from within? Power with: solidarity?

Does your group have an awareness of the difference between earned and unearned social power, i.e. privilege?

How do people gain social power, prestige and influence in your organization? Are there opportunities to fairly earn social power? Are there multiple pathways for people with varying gifts and talents?

When people take on a responsibility in your group, do you grant them the authority—the license to use power—needed to carry it out?

Does your group have an awareness of trauma and its impact?

Do you have systems of support within the group?

Do you have referrals to trusted agencies, counselors, and, if needed, psychologists or psychiatrists for those times when more help is needed than the group can provide?

What is your system of governance? Who makes which decisions about what?

What decision-making method or methods do you use? Do you fit the method to the issue?

Do you have multiple types of meetings for different needs?

Do you have training in consensus decision making or whichever system you use?

Do you have training and development opportunities for facilitators?

Do you acknowledge that activism can be frustrating, and the time lag between action and impact can be long?

Do you provide a variety of ways people can contribute? Are there multiple things people can do, that make use of varying talents and skills?

Do you have smaller, winnable goals that the group can achieve?

Do you celebrate victories, even partial ones?

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