livingston
20×102mm Vulcan
Here’s The Playbook Organizers Are Using As They Scheme To Take Down The NRA
Organizing isn't magic. The political campaign against the NRA is the result of a massive amount of hard work and planning.
By David Hines
By David Hines
March 5, 2018
If you’re not an organizer, and you’re not the kind of weirdo who reads Lefty organizing manuals so you can write book reports on Twitter, it’s easy to get the impression that the current campaign against the NRA and gun manufacturers came together on the fly. But it didn’t. These campaigns never do.
The strategy has been carefully researched, and it’s being executed now because the political moment is favorable. But the tendency of the press to write about activism as if it’s magic doesn’t help the public understand what’s happening. It’s as if a Bizarro edition of THE GALLIC WARS didn’t mention Caesar much and just noted Gauls dropping dead for apparently no reason at all.
Organizing isn’t magic, but it doesn’t work the way conspiracy theorists think it does, either. The decisions of Delta Airlines and other companies to drop their NRA discounts, and of REI to part ways with Vista Outdoor, is the result of a planned campaign that was designed using a tool called spectrum of allies analysis. You can best understand it by looking at an image; the diagram looks a little like a speedometer, and it’s divided into five categories: active opponents, passive opponents, neutrals, passive allies, and active allies. The illustration shown here is Joshua Kahn Russell’s, from the excellent Lefty organizing toolkit “Beautiful Trouble” (available in book form or online).
Activists have been researching firearms companies, finding ones vulnerable to pressure, finding out who their parent companies are. The research is careful and takes time. That’s how this stuff is done: preparation, preparation, PREPARATION, then carefully staged release, usually on a calendar. (Literally: in planning an action, activists typically pick out a date and then work backwards.) Or, as we’re seeing here, you can develop plans and hold them in reserve, for use when the political moment is favorable.
The recent announcement that Lyft will provide free rides to the March For Our Lives is the outcome of another use of spectrum of allies analysis. Lyft didn’t just decide to do that on their own. They were asked, and asked carefully, and the people asking knew the people they asked were, on this particular issue, passive allies needing only a push — or an opportunity.
More at ...
Here's The Playbook Organizers Are Using To Take Down The NRA
Organizing isn't magic. The political campaign against the NRA is the result of a massive amount of hard work and planning.
By David Hines
By David Hines
March 5, 2018
If you’re not an organizer, and you’re not the kind of weirdo who reads Lefty organizing manuals so you can write book reports on Twitter, it’s easy to get the impression that the current campaign against the NRA and gun manufacturers came together on the fly. But it didn’t. These campaigns never do.
The strategy has been carefully researched, and it’s being executed now because the political moment is favorable. But the tendency of the press to write about activism as if it’s magic doesn’t help the public understand what’s happening. It’s as if a Bizarro edition of THE GALLIC WARS didn’t mention Caesar much and just noted Gauls dropping dead for apparently no reason at all.
Organizing isn’t magic, but it doesn’t work the way conspiracy theorists think it does, either. The decisions of Delta Airlines and other companies to drop their NRA discounts, and of REI to part ways with Vista Outdoor, is the result of a planned campaign that was designed using a tool called spectrum of allies analysis. You can best understand it by looking at an image; the diagram looks a little like a speedometer, and it’s divided into five categories: active opponents, passive opponents, neutrals, passive allies, and active allies. The illustration shown here is Joshua Kahn Russell’s, from the excellent Lefty organizing toolkit “Beautiful Trouble” (available in book form or online).
Activists have been researching firearms companies, finding ones vulnerable to pressure, finding out who their parent companies are. The research is careful and takes time. That’s how this stuff is done: preparation, preparation, PREPARATION, then carefully staged release, usually on a calendar. (Literally: in planning an action, activists typically pick out a date and then work backwards.) Or, as we’re seeing here, you can develop plans and hold them in reserve, for use when the political moment is favorable.
The recent announcement that Lyft will provide free rides to the March For Our Lives is the outcome of another use of spectrum of allies analysis. Lyft didn’t just decide to do that on their own. They were asked, and asked carefully, and the people asking knew the people they asked were, on this particular issue, passive allies needing only a push — or an opportunity.
More at ...
Here's The Playbook Organizers Are Using To Take Down The NRA
