The first rule of community organizing is to meet people where they Not where you are or where you want them to be. Where they are.

And most people are completely overwhelmed with the world they live in.

Every brain cell is overwhelmed with getting the kids to soccer practice, worrying about retirement, wondering about dinner, feeling guilty over not exercising, trying to remember to take the car in for an oil change, hoping their mother doesn’t move in with them, looking forward to a weekend off and an endless stream of other thoughts.

They don’t have time to think.

At least, not about something that seems extraneous to them. It’s not that their stupid. Their brains are just full.

And this 24/7 always-on, media-overload, hyper-connected world just exacerbates that.

You can’t solve this problem for people, so you have to work with it.

As a community organizer, that means you need to:

• Stop being condescending. I’m not going to demean anybody for not thinking about the SOA/WHINSEC, Complex Transformation, or dry versus liquid malt extract. After all, I don’t want them to criticize me for not thinking about developments in auto industry or the plight of abandoned rabbits.
• Give people bite-sized pieces of information. Now that we’re not beating each-other up over not thinking about everything, our next job is to make it easy for people to approach the issue. Yes, this requires some oversimplifications. No, we don’t get to prove how smart we are by going into all the intricacies. Yes, it will make it easier for someone else to listen to us.
• Be agonizingly clear what you want people to think and to do. We can organize people without overwhelming them. I ask you to write a letter to promote human rights in Latin America by closing the SOA/WHINSEC without subjecting you to a lecture on the last 60 years of U.S. intervention in Latin America, that doesn’t mean
• Look for long-term relationships. In gardening, a slow drip of water is more effective than dumping a pail of water on your plants all at once. Likewise, in organizing, we’re asking people to take a series of steps to learn more and do more about an issue. Look at the big picture. In this long walk we will take together, there will be time for the in-depth discussion of why Kissinger has changed his perspective on nuclear disarmament. We’ll get there. Today, let’s just start with “Tell Senator Levin not to build new nukes. These could blow up the world, and it’s not worth the risk.”

Lately I’ve started listening to famous speeches on my MP3 player as I work out.

While I’m running, I’ll listen to A Time to Break the Silence or Eisenhower’s farewell address. And if I’m not running too hard, I’ll even try to talk along with the speech.

It’s amazing how slow many of them are.

Of course, one of the most common mistake people make in public speaking is to talk too fast. We get nervous. We confuse speed with enthusiasm. Or maybe we just want to get it over with.

What’s the result? Our audience never has time to let our words sink in, and our mile-a-minute talk fest leaves them slightly dazed.

Listening to, and especially speaking along with, famous speeches has helped me become a better speaker. It has taught me just how much I can slow down in my delivery. It has helped me learn how to vary my cadence, my volume, and my tone for dramatic affect.

Try it. You not only get to hear some of the most powerful words of our day, you also get to become a better communicator yourself.

(Bonus hint: If you’re looking for speeches to listen to, check out American Rhetoric and their Top 100 Speeches.) 

The second asset that Patrick Hanlon describes in creating a Primal Brand is a creed.

What is it you believe in? What are you about?

The focus of Primal Branding, after all, it to get people to believe in you. How can they believe in you if you don’t believe in anything yourself.

Hanlon lists some effective creeds:

• All men are created equal [and women!]
• Save the whales
• It’s the real thing

A creed is the thought that lies behind a mission statement, though your creed may not be a long, formal, or stuffy as most mission statements are. It may tie in with your tagline or motto. Whatever it you call it, it’s how you and your audience know what you are about. It ties in with Guy Kawasaki’s call to “make mantra” in The Art of the Start.

At the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice, I think there are two elements to our creed, and hashing them out is something we need to work on.

One part of our creed is that we believe that we make peace by bringing people from different faiths and backgrounds together around our shared concern for justice. We are stronger together, and ICPJ brings us together.

The other part of our creed is that we believe that peacemaking is a spiritual act, so we offer “social change with spirit.”

When I speak, I do speak about our origin story, which ties in to our creed of being stronger together. It does help people know where we came from and what we’re about.

What do you believe in? How do you communicate that to your audience?

(For more of my thoughts on primal branding, visit the table of contexts post)

Here’s what I’ve learned listening to The Splendid Table…feed people’s dreams.

Every Week Lynn Rossetto Kasper encourages cooks to make amazing food and feeds their dreams that they can make outstanding dishes. It’s a great show, and Lynn’s enthusiasm is the reason for it.

Recently, a caller phoned in wanting to copyright or patent a recipe he had come up with.

Lynn could have easily smothered his dream under a thousand and four wet blankets. Recipes can’t be patented. Food companies only want to deal with professionals with credentials. It’s a fiercely competitive industry.

And if that’s how Lynn would answer her callers, she wouldn’t be on the air.

Instead, Lynn fed his dream. She told him that he should look at the lines of food that major companies put out and try to pitch it to companies where it fits in with their existing products. She told him to get non-disclosure agreements and not to let them taste it too soon lest they reverse-engineer the recipe.

It was positive. It was encouraging. It was up-beat. It makes you want to listen. It makes you want to cook. It makes you want to be daring.

And it’s how you, as an organizer, should work with your constituents.

If you want to open a Subway franchise, the company will walk you through the whole process from marketing plans to HR policies.

When community organizers plan campaigns, we often are making it up as we go.

For example, right now at ICPJ  mobilizes a Washtenaw County coalition for the Health Care for Michigan Campaign, we’re on our own for creating a campaign plan that includes outreach methods, coordination, media, volunteer, and funding.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Why can’t we have access to sample campaign plans from other campaigns like the Massachusetts health care campaign or the Florida minimum wage campaign?

One of the exciting developments in the human services sector is an effort to learn from effective programs and standardize their lessons. For example, the DC Central Kitchen has developed a kick-ass program for training formerly homeless people kitchen skills so that they can become competitive workers and have a sense of accomplishment when they finish the program. Now, they have standardized this program so that other communities can copy it.

Consider it open-source social services.

Why can’t community organizers go open source? Why can’t we post our campaign plans (after-the-fact of course) as well as an analysis of what worked and what didn’t?

I would love to see as many successful grassroots campaigns as there are successful Subway franchises, but we won’t get there if we always have to make  up our campaigns from scratch.

Osocio points us to an interesting information campaign, “I’m an asshole and I park wherever I please.”

The idea is that members of Streetpanthers would stick these stickers on cars parked illegally so that they block pedestrian access.

I can say from experience that these stickers would be quite satisfying. I can see that dark, vindictive side of me really enjoying putting them on cars that are parked on sidewalks, blocking access for folks in wheelchairs, with strollers, or who just don’t want to walk in the street.

The question is, do they work?

Do they change the behavior of the offending parke

The Friends Committee on National Legislation just issued a top-notch action alert. Let’s take a look at what makes it great.

Subject Line: Action:  Cluster Bomb Senate Call in Day Nov. 5

Clear, to the point. There’s no doubt what your getting into and when you need to act.

Paragraph 1: You really can’t imagine the effect of a cluster bomb until you’re sitting across the table from Raed Mokaled. “I am sure Ahmed was not a criminal. He was not a terrorist,” Raed told us last week at a briefing in our building here in Washington, DC. He then described how his 5-year-old son Ahmed was killed by a U.S-made cluster munition that he picked up while playing at his own 5th birthday party in southern Lebanon.

This is  a great lead paragraph! I get dozens of action alerts a day, most of which I don’t read. This one got my attention.

Why? It does what few action alerts does. It tells a story and makes the issue real. It moves cluster bombs from being some distant and amorphous policy issue to a real concern about real people–including 5-year old Ahmed.

Paragraph 2: The U.S. has a stockpile of nearly 1 billion cluster “bombies,” the sub-munitions that a cluster bomb contains. You can help keep these bombs out of the hands of children. On November 5, tens of thousands of people around the world will be urging their governments to ban cluster bombs. FCNL is joining with the US Fund for UNICEF, Amnesty International USA, Adopt-A-Minefield, UNA-USA, and many other groups to call on senators to cosponsor the Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act (S. 594). You can help. Ask five friends to make a call , and put a note in your calendar to call Monday. FCNL has set up a toll-free number for you to make your calls – see more details below.

Okay, I actually think this is a bit too fact-filled for a 2nd paragraph, I would have put the co-sponsors lower down in the alert, but their clear and powerful ask is great. What I really like is that it is more than just asking you to call, it invites you to organize and recruit more people. And they make it easy to do that–the link is to a “tell a friend” page.

Paragraph 3: The Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act would prevent the U.S. military from using cluster bombs in areas where civilians are known to be present. But the Bush administration says the military benefits outweigh the civilian costs. The bill currently has 12 cosponsors. We need many more—from both parties—to move this bill to a vote in the coming year.

This does a good job of creating context for why the call-in day is important and how it can make a difference.

Call to action: Encourage your friends and families to participate in the national call-in day, and remember to call yourself on Monday. Urge your senators to cosponsor the Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act (S.594) and ensure its passage in the coming year.

Spread the word in your community – download a flyer or print out the background in this email. Let people know that this day of action is a first step in a campaign over the next year to build support for a cluster bomb ban.

 These 2 short paragraphs reiterate the main action (invite your friends) and give you more tools to do just that. They also repeat the link to the “tell a friend” page. Good move, I didn’t click on it until this second link.

The action alert follows with a link to Raed’s story and background information of the issue.