Issue: Principles & Processes

In November 2018, residents of Portland, Oregon, made history by passing The Portland Clean Energy Fund (PCEF), a breakthrough initiative that will raise an estimated $44-$61 million annually to support local clean energy and economic justice initiatives. The fund passed with 65 percent of the vote and support from a long list of local businesses and community organizations, including faith leaders, labor unions, and more. This Executive Summary captures toplines on what the campaign learned about what it takes to win.

Successful movements must be able to analyze the political conditions and determine a course of action—all while balancing the pull of “inside game” electoral politics with “outside game” movement building. Organizers often jump into this in moments of crisis and are given few tools to understand what they are doing and how to best do it. This is why Momentum asked the organizing veteran Alexandra Flores-Quilty—former president of the U.S. Student Association and cofounder of By the People—to craft this report packed with tools and concrete advice to address all of these complexities. In the early stages of a movement, where the public and base need to align on the problem and popular demand. As the movement progresses into the stages of institutionalizing wins and consolidating political hegemony, then there will be more need for the other parts of the ecology to be built out including in particular inside game, organizing within political parties, and even structure-based organizing. These and other lessons are broken down in this 50-page report. This report quotes other experienced organizers.

The environmental movement must find ways of representing the hopes and aspirations not only of our traditional base, not only of our actual, quite diverse electoral base, but also of Indigenous and Black diaspora communities and communities of color already on our side, whom we have so far been unable to serve effectively.  In this spirit, the Green Leadership Trust offers the following guidance to align the performance of our leader towards equity and inclusion aimed at building the power we need to win.

Vote Solar’s “Just Partnership Principles were established in 2020 and will be used by staff and partners to hold Vote Solar accountable to our values. We aspire to grow as an organization in our ability to not only challenge injustice and advance just energy for all, but also to contribute meaningfully to the broad movement working to dismantle systems of oppression and build a regenerative future.”

Defines a “Regenerative Economy” in terms of the values, processes, and policies it entails.