Issue: Organizational Development

Movement organizations can run multiple types of campaigns—and momentum is a key factor to harness for campaign victories. This report from the movement training organization Momentum describes what a campaign is, types of campaigns, ways movements run campaigns, and the necessary role of campaign momentum and trigger events. This report provides detailed examples of different types of campaigns (e.g., structure-based organizing, mass protest, hybrid) and their strengths and weaknesses. It also describes the differences between distributed versus decentralized national campaigns. Lastly, it prepares movement organizations for how to react to trigger events that can be harnessed for campaign momentum.

It’s key for organizations to ensure they’re practicing disability justice in their work. “Disability Justice: An Audit Tool” is aimed at helping Black, Indigenous and POC-led organizations (that are not primarily focused around disability) examine how well they’re practicing disability justice, and where they want to learn and grow. It includes questions for self-assessment, links to access tools, organizational stories and more. You can download a PDF of the tool.

The first chapter of the Washington State Environmental Justice Task Force (EJTF)’s Fall 2020 report provides context for what environmental justice (EJ) is, how to build on existing EJ work in Washington, and why state government must prioritize addressing EJ issues and environmental health disparities. The second chapter focuses on the EJTF’s process for developing recommendations, a statewide EJ definition, and EJ principles. The final chapter of the report includes all EJTF recommendations. The report appendices include additional resources, including guidance developed by the EJTF’s Community Engagement Subcommittee for how state agencies can develop their own community engagement plans. 

Multiracial organizing (MRO) can easily be siloed in culture, but it needs to be integrated in all parts of your DNA: story, strategy, structure and culture. MRO is hard work, and if your movement or organization is struggling to navigate how to do it well, you are in the majority. Representation and tokenization are easy traps to fall into. If your movement cannot clearly articulate why building multi-racial movement is important for winning, you may find it hard to organize with integrity, and conflicts will arise in your organization about who is leading and who is in your base. “Ideological grounding” is an important first step. Different kinds of MRO will be best in different kinds of contexts: majority white spaces, majority Black spaces, versus majority POC, non-Black spaces. Historic organizational memory matters, and there are different “levels of intervention” that can help strengthen MRO organizing. This report details those kinds of interventions and other aspects of successful MRO.

American’s external political efficacy – the belief that one can influence government decisions – has been on the decline over the last several decades. Greater involvement in civic associations may help to reverse this. Analyzing a panel dataset of several hundred environmental association members, this study found that as members got to know their association’s chapter leaders, external efficacy increased.