How to do an Audience Analysis

Şubat 7, 2020

This article was curated from COMPASS

An audience analysis is a process used to identify and understand the priority and influencing audiences for a SBCC strategy. The priority and influencing audiences are those people whose behavior must change in order to improve the health situation. A complete audience analysis looks at:

Socio-demographic characteristics such as sex, age, language and religion.
Geographic characteristics like where the audience lives and how that might impact behavior.
Psychographic characteristics such as needs, hopes, concerns and aspirations.
Audience thoughts, beliefs, knowledge and current actions related to the health or social issue.
Barriers and facilitators that prevent or encourage audience members to adopt the desired behavior change.
Gender and how it impacts audience members’ behavior and ability to change.
Effective communication channels for reaching the audience.

Why Conduct an Audience Analysis?

An audience analysis informs the design of materials, messages, media selection and activities of a SBCC strategy. It establishes a clear, detailed and realistic picture of the audience. As a result, messages and activities are more likely to resonate with the audience and lead to the desired change in behaviors.

Who Should Conduct an Audience Analysis?

A small, focused team should conduct the audience analysis. Members should include communication staff, health/social service staff and, when available, research staff.

Stakeholders should also be involved throughout the process. Consider effective ways to engage stakeholders to gain feedback and input, including: in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, community dialogue, small group meetings, taskforce engagement and participatory stakeholder workshops.

When Should Audience Analysis Be Conducted?

An audience analysis should be conducted at the beginning of a program or project, in conjunction with a situation analysis and program analysis. The team should start thinking about the audience during the desk review and fill in any gaps during the stakeholder workshop. It is part of the Inquiry phase of the P Process.

Estimated Time Needed

Completing an audience analysis can take up to three to four weeks. When estimating time, consider the existing audience-related data, what gaps need to be filled and whether additional stakeholder or audience input is needed. Allow for additional time if formative research is needed to fill in any gaps that may exist in the literature.

Learning Objectives

After completing the activities in the audience analysis guide, the team will:

Determine the priority audience.
Determine the influencing audience(s).
Describe the priority and influencing audience(s).
Develop an audience profile for each priority and influencing audience(s).

Prerequisites

Situation Analysis

Steps

Step 1: Identify Potential Audience(s)

To address the problem statement and achieve the vision decided upon during the situation analysis, brainstorm and list all potential audiences that are affected by or have control over the health or social problem. For example, if the problem is high unmet need for family planning, potential audiences may be:

Step 2: Select the Priority Audience

An effective SBCC strategy must focus on the most important audience. The priority audience is not always the most affected audience, but is the group of people whose behavior must change in order to improve the health situation. The number of priority audiences depends mainly on the number of audiences whose practice of the behavior will significantly impact the problem. For example, priority audiences may be:

To identify the priority audience(s), keep in mind the vision and health or social problem. Then consider:

Who is most affected
How many people are in the audience
How important it is that the audience change their behavior
How likely it is that the audience will change their behavior
Who controls the behavior or the resources required for a behavior change

Step 3: Identify Priority Audience Characteristics

Identify the socio-demographic, geographic and psychographic characteristics of each priority audience. Include their communication preferences and other opportunities to reach them.

Organize priority audience information in a table (see Audience Characteristics and Behavioral Factors Template under templates).

Step 4: Identify Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices

Understand what the priority audience knows, thinks, feels and does about the problem in order to determine the audiences’ stage of behavior change. This allows the program to tailor messages and activities based on the audience’s knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors.

There are a number of ideational factors that commonly influence individual behavior and should be considered when examining the audience’s knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors.

The situation analysis, stakeholder workshop and any additional quantitative or qualitative research will indicate what the priority audience currently does in reference to the problem and what the audience knows, thinks and feels about the problem or desired behavior. Keeping in mind the ideational factors, examine that research to understand each priority audience. Ask questions such as:

What does the priority audience already know (knowledge) about the problem?
How does the priority audience feel about the problem (attitude)?
How does the priority audience see their role with respect to the problem (self-image)?
Does the priority audience feel at risk of having the problem? How at risk do they feel (risk perception)?
What are the community’s beliefs and attitudes toward the health problem (social norms)?
How capable does the priority audience feel about being able to take action to address the problem (self-efficacy)?
What emotional reaction does the priority audience have towards the health problem (emotions)?
What level of support does the priority audience believe they would receive from family members or the community (social support and influence)?
How capable does the priority audience feel about discussing how to reduce the problem (personal advocacy)?

Add this information to the table (see Audience Characteristics and Behavioral Factors Template under templates).

Step 5: Identify Barriers and Facilitators

It is crucial to know what prevents or encourages the priority audience to practice the desired behavior. Identify barriers and facilitators of change in the literature and list them in the table (see Audience Characteristics and Behavioral Factors Template under templates).If the desk review does not adequately identify behavioral factors, conduct additional qualitative research (interviews, focus groups) with members of the priority audience. Some important barriers to consider include:

Habit: People are comfortable doing things the same way they have always done them.
Fear: People expect change to bring negative consequences.
Negative experience: Some audiences may have had a bad experience, such as with the health care system, and thus may be cynical or resistant to change.

If the desired behavior requires adopting/utilizing products or services, consider issues of availability, accessibility, affordability and acceptability.

Step 6: Consider Audience Segmentation

Audience segmentation is the process of dividing the priority audience into sub groups according to at least one similar characteristic that will affect the success of the SBCC effort. Look at the selected priority audience and decide if it is similar enough that it can be effectively reached by the same set of channels, messages and interventions. Ask the following questions about the priority audience to decide if segmentation is necessary:

Are any audience members particularly difficult to reach, requiring a different set of channels?
Do any audience members have distinct views or concerns about the problem?
Do any audience members require a different message to reach them effectively?
Are any audience members at greater risk?

If yes, the audience may need to be segmented further. See the audience segmentation guide for more information on how to identify and prioritize audiences so that messages and interventions can be most effectively targeted.

Some urban women of reproductive age may have different concerns or views about family planning. One group might be afraid of side effects while another group does not use family planning because they do not know where family planning services are available. These groups would require different messages and interventions and should be segmented if resources allow.

Step 7: Identify Key Influencers

Based on the priority or segmented audience, identify the key influencers. Search the situation analysis, stakeholder workshop and any qualitative research findings for indications of who strongly influences the priority audience’s behavior (see Audience Focused Literature Review Chart Template under templates). Influencers can be individuals or groups. Their different roles – as friends, family, leaders, teachers, health providers and of course, the media – often determine their level of influence. Consider the following factors to help identify influencing audiences:

Who has the most impact on the priority audience’s health-related behavior and what is their relationship to the priority audience?
Who makes or shapes the priority audience’s decisions in the problem area?
Who influences the priority audience’s behavior positively and who influences it negatively?

Step 8: Organize Influencing Audience Information

For each influencing audience identified, search the literature to identify information about them and their relationship to the priority audience. Look for:

How strongly the group influences the priority audience
What behaviors they encourage the priority audience to practice
Why they would encourage or discourage the desired behavior
How to reach them

Organize information on influencing audiences in another table for later use in the SBCC strategy (see Influencing Audiences Template under templates):

Step 9: Develop Audience Profiles

Review the notes about each audience and try to tell the story of that person. Audience profiles bring audience segments to life by telling the story of an imagined individual from the audience.

The audience profile consists of a paragraph with details on current behaviors, motivation, emotions, values and attitudes, as well as information such as age, income level, religion, sex and where they live. The profile should reflect the primary barriers the audience faces in adopting the desired behavior. Include a name and photo to help the creative team visualize who the person is. Answers to the following questions can lead to insightful profiles that help the team understand and reach audiences more effectively:

The audience profiles will feed directly into the creative brief process and will be an integral part of the SBCC strategy. See the Samples section for an example of an audience profile.

Templates

Audience Characteristics and Behavioral Factors Template

Audience-Focused Literature Review Template

Influencing Audience Template

Samples

Sample Audience Profile

Tips & Recommendations

Talk to audience members. Do not rely solely on the project team’s beliefs or what program staff and health workers say or assume about the audiences.
Put yourself in the audience’s shoes. To truly understand what audiences know, think and feel, set aside assumptions and preconceived notions.
Work in teams. The collaboration among team members (four or five people recommended) will provide richer and deeper insights into the issues. If possible, include people who have direct experience working or living in the community.
Find other ways to gather information. It is important to recognize that some documents may have information gaps that will require additional inquiries (formative research) to fully understand the potential audience. Interviews with local experts (e.g. medical and public health staff) can help explain the issue and identify those most at risk or affected by it.
Incorporate the communication channels prioritized during the stakeholder workshop. Also consider other opportunities to reach audiences, such as places (e.g., schools, clinics) and events (e.g., health fairs, community events). SBCC strategies can take advantage of such opportunities to connect with audience members about the topic.
The priority audience’s perception about how the community views an issue may differ from how the community actually views the issue. The perception of what the family/community thinks often will be the deciding factor when it comes to taking a health action. This can prevent the individual from taking the best action. Addressing the misperceptions with your program or campaign could lead to a more successful behavior change intervention than one that does not address misperceptions.
Audience profiles should represent the experience of real people. This will help the program team better understand the audiences they are trying to reach and ensure that audience members see themselves in the messages developed for them.
No two audience profiles should look the same; the best profiles use qualitative research as a source. Profiles are living documents that should be updated when new information becomes available.

Lessons Learned

Designing messages and activities with shared characteristics in mind increases the likelihood of audience members identifying with the issue and feeling able to address it.

Glossary & Concepts

Priority audience refers to a group of people whose behavior must change in order to improve the health situation. It is the most important group to address because they have the power to make changes the SBCC campaign calls for. Sometimes this is also referred to as the intended audience.
An influencing audience is made up of those people who have the most significant and direct influence (positive or negative) over the priority audience. The influencing audience can exist at different levels: at the family level, community level (e.g. peers, relatives, teachers, community or faith-based leaders) or national or regional level (e.g. policy makers, media personnel, government leaders).
Demographic information is statistical data (e.g. age, sex, education level, income level, geographic location) relating to a population and specific sub-groups of that population.
Psychographics are the attributes that describe personality, attitudes, beliefs, values, emotions and opinions. Psychographic characteristics or factors relate to the psychology or behavior of the audience.
Ideation refers to how new ways of thinking (or new behaviors) are diffused through a community by means of communication and social interaction among individuals and groups. Behavior is influenced by multiple social and psychological factors, as well as skills and environmental conditions that facilitate behavior.
Ideational factors are grouped into three categories: cognitive, emotional and social. Cognitive factors address an individual’s beliefs, values and attitudes (such as risk perceptions), as well as how an individual perceives what others think should be done (subjective norms), what the individual thinks others are actually doing (social norms) and how the individual thinks about him/herself (self-image). Emotional factors include how an individual feels about the new behavior (positive or negative) as well as how confident a person feels that they can perform the behavior (self-efficacy). Social factors consist of interpersonal interactions (such as support or pressure from friends) that convince someone to behave in a certain way, as well as the effect on an individual’s behavior from trying to persuade others to adopt the behavior as well (personal advocacy).
Gender refers to the socially and culturally constructed roles and responsibilities deemed appropriate for men and women. Such constructions influence how males and females behave. In many cases, the way a community defines gender roles and expectations disadvantages women and girls. For example, if community norms dictate that boys should eat meat and vegetables while girls get rice and porridge, mothers will have difficulty ensuring that girls get enough of the right foods to be healthy.
Barriers to change prevent or make it difficult to adopt a behavior. Barriers come in many forms – emotional, societal, structural, educational, familial, etc.
Facilitators of change make it easier to adopt a behavior. As with barriers, they can take many forms.

Resources and References

Resources

A Field Guide to Designing a Health Communication Strategy

Conducting a Social Marketing Campaign

Leadership in Strategic Communication: Making a Difference in Infectious Disease and Reproductive Health

Ideation

The Transtheoretical Model

Theories of Behavior Change

References

O’Sullivan, G.A., Yonkler, J.A., Morgan, W., and Merritt, A.P. A Field Guide to Designing a Health Communication Strategy, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health/Center for Communication Programs, March 2003.
The Market Pro. Knowing Your Audience – Demographics and Psychographics.
UNICEF (2008). Writing a Communication Strategy for Development Programmes: A Guideline for Programme Managers and Communication Officers.
The Health Communication Unit, Centre for Health Promotion. Online Health Program Planner. University of Toronto.

Haziran 5, 2018

Article first published on IPS journal

The globalisation of anti-gender campaigns

Transnational anti-gender movements in Europe and Latin America create unlikely alliances

By Sonia Corrêa, David Paternotte, Roman Kuhar | 31.05.2018

EPA — Hundreds of people take part during a demonstration in front of the Paraguayan Congress in Asuncion to claim a public education system based on traditional family values.

In 2012 and 2013, thousands of people demonstrated against same-sex marriage in Paris and other French cities. The success of these protests came as a surprise in a country often associated with secularism and sexual freedom.

The organisation La Manif pour Tous led some of the demonstrations, taking to the streets with pink and blue flags. It urged activists abroad to emulate the French with slogans, posters and strategies travelling across borders. While similar mobilisations happened earlier in Spain, Italy, Croatia and Slovenia, 2012 appears to have been a turning point.

Spectacular mobilisations have also taken place in Latin America, which is both a key target and a production hub of anti-gender campaigns. A first flare was registered in 2011 in Paraguay, when the term ‘gender’ was contested by the Catholic right during discussions on the national education plan. In 2013, in one of his weekly TV programmes, Ecuador’s leftist president Rafael Corrêa similarly denounced ‘gender ideology’ as an instrument aimed at destroying the family. Since 2014, these attacks have intensified, with massive demonstrations in numerous countries, and they decisively impacted the Colombian peace agreement referendum in 2016.

It culminated in November 2017, when American philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler was viciously attacked in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Although the attack received global attention, it is only the tip of the iceberg in Latin America.

Transnational campaigns

In both regions, these movements contest what they call gender ideology. Sometimes referred to as gender theory or genderism, it is presented as the matrix of the combatted policy reforms, and should therefore not be confused with gender studies or specific equality policies. No less importantly, gender ideology is seen by some as the cover for a totalitarian plan by radical feminists, LGBTQI activists and gender scholars to seize political power.

Numerous scholars have traced the origins of gender ideology back to the Vatican and their political allies.

Crucially, this discourse recaptures and reframes Cold War Catholic discourses against Marxism and stirs anti-communist sentiments in Eastern Europe as well as in Latin America. There, the ‘evils of gender’ are entangled by right-wing activists with the ‘spectres of Venezuela’ or calls for a military intervention. Although national triggers vary (abortion and reproductive rights, same-sex marriage, LGBTI parental rights, gender mainstreaming, gender violence, sex education, anti-discrimination policies and so on), the explanation given by anti-gender campaigners is always the same: all this is due to gender ideology.

These movements not only share a common enemy, they display similar discourses and strategies as well as a distinctive style of action. We label them transnational anti-gender campaigns to emphasise their global scope and underline their particular profile in the wider landscape of opposition to feminism and LGBTI rights.

A Catholic cradle

Numerous scholars have traced the origins of gender ideology back to the Vatican and their political allies. Building on previous projects such as Pope John-Paul II’s Theology of the Body lectures or the New Evangelization, it was designed in response to the 1994 Conference on Population and Development in Cairo and the 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing, when the term ‘gender’ entered the United Nations vocabulary, surrounded by demands for rights relating to reproduction and sexuality.

This discourse, which relies on ideas espoused by Cardinal Ratzinger in the early 1980s, was developed in Europe and Latin America in the late 1990s and early 2000s, leading to the Lexicon: Ambiguous and Debatable Terms Regarding Family Life and Ethical Questions (2003) and the Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and World (2004).

Gender ideology is not only a lens through which to analyse what happened at the UN, but also a Catholic strategy of action. Based on philosopher and politician Antonio Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony, it propagates its alternative interpretation of gender through means that subvert the notions it opposes. While John-Paul II and Benedict XVI designed this project, Pope Francis has repeatedly expressed his support, describing gender as a form of ‘ideological colonisation’.

Campaigns on the ground

Contemporary mobilisations, however, cannot be reduced to a Catholic enterprise, but intersect with other political projects and wider sets of actors. First, present strategies are reminiscent of the US Christian Right, and US organisations are active across continents, propelling transnational networks such as the World Congress of Families.

Since evangelical voices, which are new in Latin America, are more strident, the intellectual role of the Catholic hierarchy is often overlooked.

Second, while the Vatican has been instrumental in elaborating a frame of action, actors on the ground are more diverse. They include other religious groups as well as secular voices, and form coalitions that vary considerably according to local contexts.

The European situation cannot not be understood without looking at intersections with right-wing populisms. Both rely on attacks against corrupt elites and pretend to defend ‘innocent children’. They invoke common sense against decadent ideas and claim that things have ‘gone too far’, depicting themselves as the defenders of a majority silenced by powerful lobbies. These encounters explain why, in several European countries, right-wing populists have joined anti-gender campaigns without being particularly religious. This overlap offers a springboard to anti-genderists while fuelling anti-liberal discourses and sentiments.

Campaigns in Russia and the parts of Europe under Russian influence have been directly engineered from the Kremlin with the support of the Russian Orthodox church. As part of the state machinery, they are instrumentalised to restore the international status of Russia through a global defence of national sovereignty and ‘traditional values’. Poland and Hungary are currently following this path, with Hungary’s prime minister, Victor Orban, increasingly vocal on the issue.

Latin America campaigns displays distinctive features. First, more than anywhere else, the criticism of gender ideology is no monopoly of the right, even though right-wingers are usually on the front lines. Second, these campaigns involve both conservative Catholics and evangelicals (mostly neo-Pentecostals). Since evangelical voices, which are new in the region, are more strident, the intellectual role of the Catholic hierarchy is often overlooked. However, Latin American Catholics have significantly contributed to the development of the anti-gender discourse and current anti-gender formations rely on older Catholic anti-abortion structures.

Third, anti-gender political formations are not exclusively religious but encompass secular actors whose profile differs substantially across countries. In Brazil, they include politicians playing electoral games, extreme-right actors, centre-liberals articulating anti-state arguments alongside anti-gender arguments, middle-class activists longing for social order and transnationally connected Jewish right-wing activists.

Indeed, if anti-gender campaigns are so efficient, it is precisely because they amalgamate actors who would not usually work together.

Despite this unexpected diversity, however, the populist analytical frame, so common in Europe and the US, is inappropriate. Indeed, populist practices have long been deeply ingrained in the regional political culture. As a result, populism has no side and cannot be easily mapped on to the left-right divide in the region.

A complex constellation

Anti-gender movements include a complex constellation of actors that goes far beyond specific religious affiliations. Research has shown that ‘gender ideology’ is an empty signifier, which can tap into different fears and anxieties in specific contexts and therefore be shaped to fit distinct political projects. Furthermore, as stressed by Andrea Peto, Eszter Kováts, Maari Põim and Weronika Grzebalska, the vague notion of gender ideology operates as a ‘symbolic glue’ that facilitates cooperation between actors despite their divergences.

This is precisely what must be understood: what are the specific constellations of actors in each context and how can different sorts of actors, who usually do not work together and can even compete with each other, find a common ground on which to collaborate?

In brief, how to explain joint ventures between believers and atheists, Catholic and Russian Orthodox or Latin American evangelical, or opposed strands within contemporary Roman Catholicism? It must also be reiterated that the debate is not about faith against atheism, and that not all believers of a specific denomination are involved in these campaigns.

A more sophisticated analytical frame would allow us to move away from simplistic grids such as populism, the global right or a global backlash, and pay more attention to the specific political formations at play on the ground. It would also avoid narrow binary frames opposing ‘us’ to ‘them’ that unduly homogenise distinctive contextual conditions and a complex array of forces and actors.

Finally, contextualisation and complexification are not only needed analytically, but are politically essential. Indeed, if anti-gender campaigns are so efficient, it is precisely because they amalgamate actors who would not usually work together. Today, it is crucial to further understand how these mysterious coalitions are forged and sustained.

Campaigns shouldn’t be easy!

Mart 2, 2018

Campaigns shouldn’t be easy! Why difficulty and motivation matter so much in campaign design

Thoughts on Dan Ariely’s book “Payoff”

“Knowing what drives us and others is an essential step toward enhancing the inherent joy, and minimizing the confusion, in our lives” – Dan Ariely

The work of Psychology and Behavioral Economics Professor Dan Ariely focusses on the distinction between the concepts of ‘meaning’ and ‘happiness’. His work illustrates that the things in life that might give us a sense of ‘meaning’ don’t necessarily give us a sense of ‘happiness’. And yet, for so many of us, the pursuit of ‘meaning’ and ‘happiness’ is our motivation. Similarly, any successful campaign should be seeking to find the ‘bliss point’ that allies these two motivations.

The key drivers to human motivation are

Our sense of identity;
The need for recognition;
A sense of accomplishment;
A feeling of creation; and
Most importantly, a connection to others.

For Ariely, a sense of ownership greatly influences our motivation. As most of us would intuitively recognize, the more that a person feels a sense of ownership over something, a cause, the more likely they are to be motivated to achieve it. When considered in the context of campaigning, the consequences of a sense of ownership over an issue is compelling. It suggests that in order for people to be feel motivated to influence change, those who are targeted by the given campaign should be the owners of that change. This means that traditional approaches to campaign design, those that have long told us that it is important to tell people they need to change and then show them the ‘right’ model of change, might not be the most effective strategies to evoke change. So, how do we get people to feel a sense of ownership over change?

According to Ariely, campaigns should not be easy. Instead, the effort that is required for a campaign actually inspires a sense of ownership in the participants. Meaning that this effort required to cause change also, at the same time, is the very reward that people are seeking. For example, the hugely successful Ice Bucket Challenge is a good illustration of this. The Challenge asked people to set up a fundraising circle, film themselves pouring ice cold waters over themselves, and then distribute the video to their networks. Beyond the innovative and hilarious nature of the action, its sheer difficulty , when compare to changing an avatar or posting yet another selfie, for example, might have been a major driver of the campaign’s success.

So, going against traditional campaign wisdom, he argues that successful campaigns should not be easy. Instead, campaigners need to reflect on having the right balance of difficulty in a campaign, where the action stays difficult enough to be meaningful, but easy enough that people do not feel put off from participating.

In addition to this, the change at the center of the campaign needs to be meaningful so that people are prepared to engage in the ‘difficult’ asks that the campaign makes. To be meaningful, the change should be clear and long term. Nobody wants to invest in a change that will not be sustained. For example, no one wants to quit smoking for just one month. And so campaigns should not shy away from engaging people with a long term process of change, one what has multiple and complex effects. Ultimately, easy and short term asks will not result in change that is meaningful enough for people to engage or invest in supporting that change.

Another key piece of advice that Ariely’s book offers is that campaigns must acknowledge and be thankful for the effort required to participate in them. If campaigns request something that is difficult, they then need to be prepared to guide and support people through the journey, and regularly show gratitude for the road participants have travelled. Last, but not least, is the issue of ‘creation bias’ which refers to the fact that people only feel ownership over things they feel they created themselves. Successful campaigns need to target people in a way that allows for them to creatively participate. Simply liking and sharing campaign content will not be enough.

To summarize, a successful campaign requires three key actions:

1. Making participation difficult and meaningful enough for people to value the change;

2. Allowing people to participate creatively in the change journey; and

3. Acknowledging participants’ effort!

Break the law!

Ekim 18, 2016

The article below, reproduce from Wagingnonviolence.org opens interesting discussions on how to use legal breach for campaigning purposes.

Applied to LGBTI, this tactics of explicitly and visibly transgressing the law you want to see abolished has been used quite extensively in times and places where anti-LGBTI laws were still on the books but not enforced. This is somewhat different to strategic litigation cases,where you challenge a law in a legal battle, but can be combined.

This issue is certainly worth opening a chapter on.

—————

About 100 Danes, young and old, stood outside Copenhagen City Court in the chilly seaside winds last Tuesday to show their solidarity with four activists alleged to have illegally assisted refugees in their trek across the waters from Denmark to Sweden.

While only two of the accused are Danish citizens, all are members of MedMenneskeSmuglerne, or “Those who smuggle thy neighbor” — an outgrowth of the more broad-based initiative Welcome to Denmark, which welcomes migrants and refugees into the country.

Last year, over one million migrants and refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea and other unstable nations endured the risks of exodus to Denmark and other parts of Europe. Many died during the journey or ended up in refugee camps for prolonged periods. This migration wave correlates directly to the growing xenophobia and shift to the right in many European countries, including Denmark.

“Pretty much all leftist organizations in Europe neglected to consider the refugee influx on their agendas,” said Mimoza Murati, one of the non-Danish activists facing criminal charges that day. “We should have been prepared because we know the political landscape.”

While Danish prosecutors may not have agreed, their case was ultimately dismissed for lack of substantial evidence. The four members of MedMenneskeSmuglerne were met with victorious applause by their Welcome to Denmark cohorts outside the court building.

Providing hospitality for asylum seekers

When Trine Simmel, a young Danish activist from Aarhus, saw the masses of migrants on television pouring across the German border into Denmark’s Jylland peninsula around September 2015, she connected with her friends to figure out what they could do to provide basic needs to the newcomers.

The migrants were being escorted by policemen into Jylland, so the youth initially planned to wait at an overpass, where they could drop care packages full of warm clothes, hygiene products and other essentials. The migrants, however, had become suspicious of being escorted by state authorities and dispersed themselves into the forests, which made tracking them much more difficult.

“The young people residing in Jylland called their parents to convene four or five cars, so shoes and related items could be distributed,” Simmel explained. “When drivers would come across migrants, they would offer the care package and ask them where they wanted to go within Denmark.”

A good number of the refugees decided to go to Copenhagen, just across the sea from Sweden, where some already had family members.

“Many apolitical people stepped up to help drive those walking on the railways,” Simmel said. “Many of these people had family backgrounds as immigrants and felt empathetic, but were not usually active in political issues.” An informal hospitality network known as Venligboerne, which includes over 150,000 members across Denmark, helped facilitate the volunteer effort.

Activists like Simmel felt this crisis presented an opportunity to get away from the typical activist duties of meetings and demonstration, and provide a direct service. The influx of refugees tugged at their consciences.

“Just like my grandfather, I had to decide which side of history I wanted to be on,” Simmel said. “Politicians demonized us for posting pictures on Facebook of immigrants being helped, but even [Danes] during World War II were demonized and in violation of the law [for helping Jews].”

Reviving a tradition of refugee smuggling

Denmark was the only country in Europe to reduce the size of its armed forces at the beginning of WWII, yet it was undoubtedly among the most effective in resisting German occupation.

Shortly after an overnight invasion of Denmark on April 9, 1940, 17-year-old Slagelse schoolboy Arne Sejr became frustrated at Danish passivity toward foreign rule. He returned home from school and used his typewriter to print 25 copies of his“Ten Commandments for Danes.” The last of these commandments read, “You shall protect anyone chased by the Germans.”

Danish youth discretely produced fliers of this kind over the course of the German occupation. Groups like the Danish Youth Association under the guidance of theology professor Hal Koch and the Churchill Club in Alborg sabotaged German authorities on a regular basis, sometimes destroying vehicles carrying weapons and munitions.

Christian communities circulated messages against the German occupation through their homilies. This led to the murder of Kaj Munk, who was among the most outspoken clerics advocating for Danish self-rule.

Among all of the tactics employed, the WWII-era Danes are perhaps most remembered for their effective smuggling of refugee Jews across the border into Sweden. During the course of a few months in 1943, 7,220 Jews — almost the entire Jewish population in Denmark — managed to escape to Sweden with the help of their Danish comrades. Only 472 were captured in early October during raids by the Nazis.

“Early on, we used this history of direct service to refugees as our inspiration,” said Welcome to Denmark organizer Søren Warburg.

Providing a warm bed, an underground route to Sweden, warm clothes and a key to one’s house: These are tactics literally cut from WWII memory and pasted upon today’s context of migration in Europe. Even while Denmark’s present government has intentionally made itself unattractive to asylum seekers, Danes themselves — strengthened by a history of unions and community organizing — are providing the services their elected representatives in the welfare state are refusing to provide.

Reflecting on the history of Danish aid to Jewish refugees, Welcome to Denmark spokesperson Line Søgaard said, “We had a sense that something historical was happening again.” According to her, 500 Danes initially responded to the call to action and formed working groups, focusing both on a political campaign and direct services.

Sailing in solidarity

Since Copenhagen is situated about 20 miles across the Öresund Strait from Malmö, Sweden, members of the sailing community who wanted to help refugees find family members or friends in Sweden decided to take action. In October of 2015, they gathered a list of nearly 20 names of allied boat owners and organized the transport of migrants as a public act of defiance.

“At the beginning, we did not think anyone was going to get prosecuted,” Søgaard said. “There are real human traffickers they could go after, but instead leaders are saying that we are the ones betraying the nation.”

Getting in a boat again is no easy task for refugees who have survived the crossing of the Mediterranean Sea. “Many of the migrants we helped to reach Sweden would send us audio messages once they were relieved to have reached their family members,” Søgaard said. “There was this sense that we were continuing the [WWII] legacy of assisting refugees, which some of our family members had started. We had stuck to our sense of morals and ethics even when the [anti-smuggling] law is wrong.”

Crossing by sea, however, wasn’t the only way to reach Sweden. Calle Vangstrup, one of the other four activists who faced criminal charges, worked with his movement members to provide around-the-clock assistance at Rødby, Padborg and Central stations — three major meeting points where migrants who are usually not conversant in Danish or able to understand the transportation system could depart for Sweden by train.

“There were groups of people who were willing to help within the law and those willing to break the law [prohibiting transportation assistance across the border],” Vangstrup said. “Thankfully, the Swedes are more receptive these days, unlike during WWII when they would often send the smuggled Jews back and put them at risk again.”

Vangstrup believes members of Danish Nazi groups and the populist Danish Peoples’ Party were the ones who saw MedMenneskeSmuglerne on the news and reported them to the police.

“As a socialist and as a human being, I feel I should not enjoy so many rights when the refugees have none,” Vangstrup said.

Although the police carried out investigations leading to the charges against Vangstrup and his fellow activists last spring, police have not always perpetuated the xenophobia that characterizes the growing right-wing political ideology of Denmark.

During WWII, thousands of police officers were arrested by German authorities. Danish cops had developed a reputation for being unreliable, often deliberately overlooking the acts of sabotage committed by Danish youth against the occupiers.

This kind of humanity among the police resurfaced during the recent migrant influx in Denmark. “Many people were asking police what they could do to help the refugees,” Søgaard said. “The police did not even know how to advise people, so some looked the other way as the transporters continued their work.”

After the four activists accused of human trafficking were relieved of their charges, they spoke at a press conference, encouraging those directly aiding migrants and refugees to continue their work.

“We are not even a radical group,” Søgaard said. “We are just saying the same things that groups like the United Nations are saying [about the migration crisis]. Yet, there is still resistance to our efforts.” At the end of the day, these so-called human traffickers were just helping others in need with a lift to wherever they were going.

“We all have a right to security and a safe place for us and our children,” she continued. “We can’t just close up our borders and live comfortable lives.”

Campaign strategy analysis: direct networked action

Eylül 8, 2016

Fight for $15: Directed-network campaigning in action

A well coordinated campaign is opening up grassroots power and crossing movement boundaries

by Tom Liacas on September 8, 2016

American unions have been losing members and influence for over 30 years so it’s notable when a labor campaign changes wage policies across the U.S. and forces corporate giants such as Walmart and McDonald’sto bend to its demands. Using directed-network campaigning, the Fight for $15 is shifting power in the direction of America’s workers.

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU)-supported Fight for $15 seeks a $15 per hour minimum wage across the United States. The campaign is being fought at the federal level, where the minimum wage is currently a paltry $7.25, while also targeting big retail employers with demands for higher worker pay. So far, the campaign’s greatest successes have been at the state and local level. Fight for $15 has secured wage increases in over 20 states and several major American cities including Los Angeles, Seattle and San Francisco.

Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary during Bill Clinton’s presidency, noted that the movement’s organising strategy and tactics are fundamentally different than other recent labor campaigns.

“It’s more decentralized, for one thing, with lots of people getting involved in all sorts of ways,” Reich told us. Traditional labor campaigns focus on one employer at a time while this movement crosses boundaries to involve workers from sectors as diverse as fast food, giant retailers, major hotels and hospitals.

Fight for $15 is also breaking ground using directed-network campaign strategies similar to those used by other breakthrough campaigns including Bernie Sanders’ primary race and various fronts of the global climate movement.

The Networked Change Report: A blueprint for 21st century campaigning

Together with Jason Mogus and colleagues at NetChange Consulting, I recently completed a deep dive into the modern advocacy landscape with the intention of uncovering the common patterns behind today’s winning campaigns. Our study focused on 47 campaigns achieving some degree of policy or cultural change and especially those that punched above their weight.

While we looked at big institutional campaigns like those of the American Association of Retired People and grassroots upstart movements like Occupy Wall Street, we were most interested in newer campaigns that had run on a mix of grassroots power and central strategic control, a model that we call “directed-network campaigning.”

In a nutshell, directed-network campaigning is a hybrid form of top-down and bottom-up mobilization exemplified by the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, 350.org and the Fight for $15. All of the above married old power and new while enabling extensive grassroots-led initiatives. They also powerfully framed their causes and directed campaign momentum towards shared goals and milestones. As a result, these campaigns were able to rapidly scale participation and resources while scoring impressive national victories.

Fight for $15 brings directed-network campaigning principles to life

The strategic and tactical approaches common to all directed-network campaigns may be grouped into four principles. Collectively, these four principles map out how campaigners are running efficient blends of people-power and central control. These include opening to grassroots power, building cross-movement network hubs, framing a compelling cause and running with focus and discipline. Fight for $15 roots itself firmly in each one of these areas.

Opening to grassroots power, the Fight for $15 uses a distributed model to spark local worker-led protests and strikes all across the country. These self-starting events are supported by resources such as “how to start a local strike” guides and support staff who train local leaders. The result is a vast constellation of city and state-based Fight for $15 groups across the U.S. and several other countries, each with its own local branding and messaging. The voices of local organisers and worker-activists are heavily favored over those of union bosses in movement communications and press work.

From the beginning, Fight for $15 was configured to make wider adoption by cross-movement networkspossible and probable. Whereas traditional union drives focus on rank and file members, Fight for $15 opened up to workers of all sectors on the low end of the pay scale, including many not affiliated with the SEIU. Campaign organisers made conscious efforts to reach out to Occupy Wall Street sympathizers and the Movement for Black Lives (Black Lives Matter), lending their support on the streets after racial justice protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri. In this way, they brought a diverse and powerful alliance of outside groups to support the workers during strikes and marches.

Fight for $15’s approach to issue framing also helps explain its appeal beyond labor circles. By lining up with larger issues of social and racial inequality as well as economic injustice, Fight for $15 plugged into deeper social currents already active in the U.S. The campaign chose as villains big corporations that could afford to pay higher wages (Walmart and McDonalds). These companies became focal points for organising actions. Using clever storytelling, the campaign exposed scandalous corporate worker policies, such as McDonalds encouraging its workers to use food stamps, to help underline the basic injustices that low-paid workers regularly face in America.

While clearly open to local leadership and wider cross-movement input, the Fight for $15 also runs a tight ship internally. Along with the financial and staff resources SEIU provides, Fight for $15 partners closely with experienced campaign consulting and public relations firms. Together, leaders centralise planning to guide local groups towards shared moments and milestones such as their April 15th cross-country strike actions. This coordination helps ensure that the Fight for $15’s impact is felt at the local, state and national levels as all play crucial roles in American wage policy decisions.

Big risk, big rewards

Unlike traditional union campaigns that focus on improving benefits and/or wages only for members, Fight for $15 took a big risk by expanding its scope of workers – and targets. Union executives would have been under fire if big investments in funding and staff time did not lead to clear impact. The risk has paid off for both union and wider constituencies.

A Fight for $15 leader we spoke with off the record reports that the campaign has led to unprecedented gains in union negotiations with major employers nationwide. Wage justice has become a national conversation as cities and states across the country have raised the minimum wage and Hillary Clinton has supported the movement throughout her presidential campaign. During a recent international SEIU conference, a large majority of union members expressed their satisfaction with this progress and voted to renew their support for the campaign.

Hopefully, the Fight for $15 will inspire others to open up campaign tactics and to reach for greater impact. Many organisations today rely on a traditional top-down campaigning model that struggles to integrate people’s contributions and build power. Fight for $15 shows how a sizeable organisation, in this case a union, can experiment with new hybrid campaigning models that maintain some controls over strategy, timing and framing while unleashing the energy of self-starting grassroots supporters. The results have been encouraging. With wide cross-sector support and an engaged grassroots base of affected workers, the campaign is finding ways to scale up power to match the scope of the problems facing American workers.

How to be SMART while Building your Campaign

Ekim 27, 2015

Your campaign objectives should be:

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant

Time-Bound

This will help you set clear targets that can become a reality, focus your campaign team around agreed upon goals and objectives, remain on target throughout your work, stick to set deadlines, continuously assess your progress, and utilize all your resources.

Specific

Your campaign must have clear and specific objectives to guide your actions and goals to your ultimate campaign vision. Establishing SMART objectives involves creating a campaign timeline and stating particular steps needed to keep on track.

Unspecific Objectives	Specific Objectives
Help LGBTQ homeless youth.	Raising awareness of the amount of LGBTQ youth made homeless every year. Open/collaborate with shelters willing to deal directly with LGBTQ youth. Contact stakeholders who would be willing to support and advance the cause. Create a support center/community center for LGBTQ youth to receive medical advice, counselling, career advice, etc.
Improve working conditions for LGBTQ individuals	Lobby for anti-discriminatory legislation. Contact relevant stakeholders for collaboration opportunities or letters of support Establish anti-discriminatory policies in the workplace. Organize mandatory anti-discrimination/anti-harassment training for employees and employers.

Whatever you decide to focus on, knowing what advocacy groups are already working on similar initiatives and what key pieces of legislations may affect your cause will help inform your timeline for your campaign objectives and ultimate vision. This will also provide an opportunity for you to form collaborations with other organizations and get statements of support from members of the community, medical professionals, or politicians to advance your cause to overturn or resolve particular social, political, or legal issues.

Measurable & Achievable

Making sure your campaign objectives can be accomplished allows you to measure your successes and analyze your campaign advancements. Whether your campaign is ambitious or relatively straightforward, it is important for you and your team to be able to recognize and work clearly on achievable objectives.

The victories or milestones throughout your campaign will be indicative of the success of your campaign. This requires keeping track of the WHAT, WHY, WHERE, WHO, and HOW. It is important to not only know WHO the stakeholders are, but WHY they are for/against your cause, WHAT the pressing issues advancing/delaying your successes are, WHERE to focus your strategies, and HOW to target pressure points/people that will help you get one step closer to your campaign objectives or ultimate vision . To achieve this it is a good idea to review your SWOT and the internal/external factors influencing your campaign (see SWOT).

Relevant

Now that you have set your campaign objectives, it is important to remain on track. At times social or political opportunities present themselves. While it may seem necessary or even natural to capitalize on these moments (through a direct action), this opportunity may also derail you from your original campaign objectives. In these situations, it is advisable to review your campaign objectives. This will help determine if any planned actions for to the opportunity that has presented itself will be relevant to the course of action/objectives you had originally anticipated.

Time-Bound

Both your campaign objectives and plan need to be time-bound. This means a specific target date must be set for each of your actions, specific objectives, and overall plan will be achieved.

For example: If your campaign is meant to span over a period or 1, 2, or 5+ years, then you’ll need to set dates for when each of your objectives will be accomplished within this time frame. By updating, reassessing, and following the procedures for monitoring and evaluating your internal and external factors that arise during your campaign, you will be able to assess whether your anticipated timeframe is feasible.

Setting Campaign Objectives

Ekim 26, 2015

Identify the Problem – Be Specific!

While organizing, it’s easy to get lost in all the ways varying aspects intersect with the broader cause we are trying to work for and change. An essential process before implementing any action is identifying an issue or problem that can be tied to the broader frameworks of our cause. The purpose of this is to help you, as facilitator, and your group/organization narrow down your focus, allows members to understand each other’s different opinions and priorities, and make room for effective actions that will lead towards substantial gains in achieving your overall goal.

For example: If your group or action’s objectives are focused on LGBTQ rights, then identify the specific problem you would like to tackle such as: LGBTQ homeless youths, Anti-bullying campaigns, or AIDS awareness. Once that’s decided you can go on to identify your goals, vision, stakeholders, and overall campaign strategy!

Identify Goals and Ultimate Vision

After you have identified the specific issue your group/organization would like to focus on, it is time to establish the key indicators that mark your group’s progress. These can be considered the victories along the way that demonstrate important milestones passed in reaching the ultimate vision that you have been working towards.

Questions to Ask Yourself while Identifying your Goals and Vision

What problem(s) are you trying to solve?
How do you imagine the world after you have resolved the problem? tangible , outcomes, expected outcomes of the campaign, (policy change? win court case?)
What are the changes needed to resolve this issue?
(developing key strategies)

Identify a Target Audience

Every cause will have particular stakeholders, targets, and audiences that need to be considered before you can move forward with your actions. Stakeholders can be anyone (people, groups, organizations, and institutions) that are involved in or affected by the problem you are trying to solve. These people may be supporters of your campaign, be affected by the issue in one way or another, be responsible for the problem, or be in a position of power to change the situation. Either way, when creating your campaign, you need to know everything about your stakeholders, their relationship to each other and the problem at hand, and identify their willingness or unwillingness to help you advance your cause in order to come up with an effective strategy to resolve the problem.

Here are some examples of questions that will help you identify and map out your stakeholders provided by the Tactical Technology Collective:

Discuss the interaction that is at the root of the problem your campaign wants to address. Who creates the problem? Who is affected by it? How and why are these entities connected to one another?
Continue, taking notes as you go along, until you can identify the interaction between entities (nodes) that most represents what you seek to change.
Identify all of the nodes between which this kind of interaction is happening.
Place these nodes at the center of your map.
Identify the relationships of these central nodes with others nodes on your map. Start locally and move outward regionally, nationally, internationally and globally, if relevant. Depending on your problem, expand your map with two or more levels of nodes (marking these in a clear way):
First level: entities with direct contact to the central nodes (family / local)
Second level: entities with contact to the first level (regional / national)
Third level: nodes with general influence on the issue (international / institutional)
Next, draw lines representing relationships between these nodes and identify the kind of relationship they have; for example:
Power
Mutual benefit
Conflict
Potential

Building your Overarching Strategic Frameworks

Now that you have decided what to campaign on, what your goals and ultimate vision are, and who your key stakeholders are, you are ready to create your campaign strategy. The first step is identifying what would need to change for the problem to be resolved. This is a good time to assess your organization, the work you have done so far, and the cause you are working for.

Identify where you will have the most impact.
Asses which objectives and goals you can achieve.
Identify who will help you achieve these goals.

One of the simplest ways to assess this information is to create a SWOT (Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Threats) analysis. This is a popular and effective way to measure your campaign strengths, weaknesses, and everything in between:

Set Campaign Objectives

Your campaign objectives should help you map out, plan, and design the actions and events that will achieve the desired outcomes. This will also be vital in monitoring and assessing the effectiveness of your campaign. It is important to do this in order to be able to assess if your campaign actions are yielding the necessary results to get you closer to your ultimate vision.

Campaign objectives need to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, & Time-Bound).

Check out this mechanism of change worksheet provided by The Change Agency.

Storming the Stage: A History of Disruptions to Advance Our Rights

Ekim 26, 2015

Excellent article from the Advocate

Storming the Stage: A History of Disruptions to Advance Our Rights

The protester who interrupted President Obama in June was part of a long history of direct action in the LGBT movement.

Jennicet Gutiérrez, a transgender woman and undocumented immigrant, received both praise and condemnation for interrupting President Obama’s speech at a White House LGBT Pride reception in June to call for an end to deportations. But whatever you think of her action, it’s inarguable that it’s part of a long tradition in our movement.

For more than 40 years, LGBT activists have been interrupting speakers, forcing their way into events or significant spaces, and sometimes even throwing pies to either challenge our adversaries or push our allies. Here we look at some of these instances we call “storming the stage.” We’re avoiding sanctioned protest marches, like the various marches on Washington, or spontaneous reactions to injustice, such as the Stonewall rebellion, the Compton’s Cafeteria uprising, or the White Night riots — they have all been important in our history, but this article focuses on a specific kind of action

Above: Barbara Gittings, Frank Kameny, and John E. Fryer in disguise as Dr. H. Anonymous at an APA panel discussing psychiatry and homosexuality. Photo by Kay Tobin Lahusen (Wikimedia Commons)Gay Activists Disrupt Psychiatrists’ Conference, 1970
The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1973, but the process began when gay activists invaded and disrupted the APA’s conference in San Francisco in 1970. Outside the convention center, some formed a human chain; inside, some greeted psychiatrist Irving Bieber with “shouting matches and derisive laughter,” according to Hannah S. Decker’s 2013 book The Making of DSM-III: A Diagnostic Manual’s Conquest of American Psychiatry. “Pandemonium broke out,” Decker writes, and speakers and activists exchanged heated language. Gay advocates disrupted the APA convention again in 1971, but in 1972 the event included an officially sanctioned gay panel, featuring legendary activists Barbara Gittings, Frank Kameny, and John E. Fryer in disguise as Dr. H. Anonymous — he was a psychiatrist who could have lost his license if his homosexuality became known. And the next year, the APA decided it would no longer consider homosexuality a mental illness. “The gay activists were the catalyst,” New York City–based psychiatrist Jack Drescher told Reuters this year.

A Pie in the Face for Anita Bryant, 1977
Bryant, a popular singer turned spokeswoman for the Florida citrus industry, added “antigay crusader” to her résumé in 1977. A conservative Christian, she became enraged when the Miami–Dade County government enacted a gay rights ordinance that year. Her activism led to a voter repeal of the ordinance and a statewide ban on adoption by gay people, repealed just this year (it had been unenforceable since a 2010 court decision). Not satisfied with campaigning for antigay discrimination in Florida alone, she took her crusade national. At a press conference in Des Moines on October 14, 1977, gay rights activist Tom Higgins threw a pie in Bryant’s face.She commented, “At least it was a fruit pie,” then prayed for Higgins and burst into tears. Her antigay activism did serious harm in the short run but was counterproductive in the long run, providing an opportunity to educate the public about gay people. “In the weeks before and after Dade County, more was written about homosexuality than during the total history of mankind,” Harvey Milk said later.

Above: Bowen (second from left); Reagan (far right).Boos for Reagan AIDS Policies, 1987
AIDS activists were incensed by Ronald Reagan’s long silence about the disease and lack of action on it, as well as the wrongheaded proposals of his administration, such as a call for routine voluntary HIV testing for all and mandatory testing for some. At the 1987 International Conference on AIDS, held in Washington, D.C., President Reagan, Vice President George H.W. Bush, and Health and Human Services Secretary Otis R. Bowen were heckled, booed, and hissed by activists. Hundreds stood in protest during a speech by Bowen and attempted to shout him down; a group called the Lavender Hill Mob was behind the action. Fortunately, routine/mandatory testing did not become the law of the land, although some other harmful policies were enacted in the Reagan years — for instance, a ban on the entry of HIV-positive immigrants and visitors into the U.S., finally lifted under President Obama in 2009.

ACT UP Shuts Down the FDA, 1988
The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, founded in 1987, took direct action to new levels. One of its highest-profile efforts came October 11, 1988, when hundreds of protesters tried to enter the Food and Drug Administration’s headquarters in Rockville, Md., in a call for reforming the drug approval process to speed up the availability of AIDS medications. They did not manage to enter the building, but they did block access to it, and the FDA shut down for a day. And the agency soon began seeking input from AIDS activists and adopted many of their ideas.

ACT UP Confronts Catholicism and Capitalism, 1989
ACT UP continued driving home its points in 1989. In December of that year, dozens of ACT UP members and allies disrupted a Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, condemning Cardinal John O’Connor’s statements against gay sex and condom use; he urged sexual abstinence to fight AIDS, saying, “Good morality is good medicine.” Some protesters chained themselves to pews, and others lay down in the cathedral’s aisles, while thousands more demonstrated outside. “O’Connor says get back, we say fight back,” they chanted. More than 100 people were arrested. Just two months earlier, ACT UP activists had infiltrated the New York Stock Exchange, chained themselves to a balcony, and halted trading in protest of the cost of AIDS drugs. Shortly thereafter, drugmaker Burroughs Wellcome lowered the price of AZT, the first AIDS med approved by the FDA.

Above: A cartoon by Danny SotomayorDanny Sotomayor Speaks Truth to Power, 1989
Sotomayor, a Chicago-based nationally syndicated cartoonist, was a thorn in the side of many,including President George H.W. Bush, commentators Andy Rooney and Mike Royko, and most especially Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley (son of another famous Chicago mayor, Richard J. Daley). Eventually, the second Mayor Daley became known as an ally of LGBT people and those with HIV or AIDS, but his first few years in office were rocky. Sotomayor, a founder of the Chicago chapter of ACT UP, often criticized Daley’s response to the AIDS crisis in the city; at a 1989 press conference where the recently elected mayor announced an AIDS action plan, Sotomayor shouted him down, calling the mayor’s words “garbage.” It was one of many confrontations the cartoonist had with the mayor and other powerful types, making a major mark in his brief life. Sotomayor died of AIDS complications in 1992 at the age of 33.

Queer Nation on the Oscars Red Carpet, 1992
They didn’t quite disrupt the Academy Awards, but activists with Queer Nation managed to take their cause to the red carpet prior to the ceremony on March 30, 1992. The group was objecting to the portrayal of LGBT people as villains in high-profile films. Two had been released the previous year and were Oscar-nominated: The Silence of the Lambs, which would go on to sweep the major awards that night, featured a transgender serial killer, and JFK, a largely fictional “historical” film, had a gay cabal plotting the president’s assassination. Another was about to be released — Basic Instinct, starring Sharon Stone as a bisexual serial murderer. Hundreds of demonstrators clashed with police in riot gear outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown Los Angeles, resulting in punches being thrown, arrests made, and “Fag” stickers slapped on 24-foot-tall Oscar statues. “We were told that we would be given room on the sidewalk,” protester Annette Gaudino told The Advocate in 1992. “The next thing I know, the police just came out swinging.”

Lesbian Avengers Invade the U.N., 1994
Direct action groups proliferated in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Lesbian Avengers, founded in 1992 in New York City, stormed the stage at a United Nations Development Fund for Women conference in 1994. Members of the group grabbed the mike and told attendees, “You can’t raise chickens in jail,” making the point that economic development wasn’t a sufficient solution when in some nations, lesbians were persecuted and prosecuted simply because of their identity.

A Christmas Surprise for N.Y. State Senator, 2009
As states began considering marriage equality bills, it looked like New York would join the equality column in 2009, but the legislation failed to pass. State Sen. Hiram Monserrate of Queens had initially voiced support for the bill but then voted against it, being one of a handful of Democrats who did so, and in reaction an ACT UP-style LGBT group called the Power crashed his Christmas party in December of that year. It happened to be the one-year anniversary of Monserrate’s attack on his girlfriend Karla Giraldo, dragging her through his apartment building’s lobby, resulting in his conviction on misdemeanor assault charges. “Hiram believes marriage should be between one man, one woman, and a broken bottle,” screamed one protester, referring to the accusation that Monserrate had slashed his girlfriend’s face with broken glass, something the senator claimed was an accident. “It’s the one-year anniversary of Hiram slashing his girlfriend! Hiram’s a wife beater! He can get married and we can’t!” screamed the same unidentified protester before throwing the event into chaos and being tossed out of the party. Members of the Power also called out Monserrate’s gay chief of staff, Wayne Mahlke. Monserrate was subsequently expelled from the Senate, and New York legislators approved a marriage equality bill in 2011.

Activists Interrupt Bill Clinton at AIDS Conference, 2014
LGBT and AIDS activists had high hopes when Bill Clinton became president in 1993, but they held his feet to the fire after he dashed those hopes with legislation such as “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the Defense of Marriage Act. Advocates continued confronting him post-presidency as he worked on global concerns. At the International AIDS Conference in Melbourne, Australia, in 2014, he was speaking on the state of HIV prevention and treatment in Asia and Africa when activists marched to the front of the auditorium chanting, “Clinton end AIDS with the Robin Hood tax,” a proposed tax on stock trades to help fund AIDS services. The former president ended up being a textbook example of how to respond; he kept his cool and let the protesters have their say, Australia’s Star Observer reported. As they continued chanting, he asked the audience, “Have you got the message?” then said, “Give them a hand and ask them to let the rest of us talk,” upon which the demonstrators took their seats.

Queer People of Color Occupy Gay Bars in Castro, 2015
In reaction to violence against people of color and transgender Americans, 150 activists with Queer Trans People of Color marched into two bars in San Francisco’s Castro District that serve a largely white clientele. In support of #BlackLivesMatter and #TransLivesMatter, “they chose to interrupt business-as-usual over the Martin Luther King Day weekend at two bars, Toad Hall and Badlands, regarded as sites of middle-class white privilege,” S.F. Weekly reported. As the decried what they saw as the larger LGBT movement’s half-hearted response to the killings of marginalized people, they temporarily shut down Toad Hall and drew reactions “ranging from tearful embraces to rudeness and physical encounters,” according to the paper.

Trans Activists Storm the Stage at Creating Change, 2015
This year has continued to be marked by direct action. At the National LGBTQ Task Force’s Creating Change conference in Denver in February, about 100 transgender activists and allies,led by Bamby Salcedo, stormed the stage and interrupted emcee Kate Clinton, carrying handmade signs and chanting “Jessie Presente!” in reference to 17-year-old queer Latina Jessie Hernandez, who was shot to death by Denver police the previous week. Salcedo demanded better accountability on the part of police and the criminal justice system, and called for LGBTQ organizations to include transgender people on their boards and staffs as decision-makers. “If you serve us, you need to include us,” Salcedo said to a crowd cheering and raising their fists in solidarity. Task Force deputy executive director Russell Roybal thanked the demonstrators for their input and announced that Denver Mayor Michael Hancock would not speak as planned.

#BlackOutPride Protesters Disrupt Chicago LGBT Parade, 2015
The LGBT Pride parades held in many cities on July 28 of this year had a particularly festive atmosphere, as the U.S. Supreme court had ruled in favor of nationwide marriage equality two days earlier. But a group called #BlackOutPride called out racism among white gays and drew attention to the situation of trans people and people of color. Eight people interrupted the Chicago parade with a die-in, lying on the pavement, as others with the group stood around them carrying signs. A statement was read explaining “why, as more than one sign declared, ‘Marriage is not enough,’” TruthOut reported. The statement was this: “Queer youth experiencing homelessness, and the plight of trans and queer communities of color, is not merely an issue of transphobia and homophobia in Black and Brown communities; it is equally about classism, racism and gentrification. It is about the draconian measures of austerity that push our people onto the street, refuse us reentrance into real estate and the job market, and the police and prison systems which work together to ensure we stay locked out. Young, Black, Brown, Native, trans, poor, working, immigrant and disabled people are suffering because every system of governance in this country is geared to destroy us.”

When is a “big tent” really useful ?

Ekim 26, 2015

An important contribution to strategizing movement building! We’re talking more and more about creating a “big tent”, intersectional organizing or building a “movement of movements”. But how useful is it?

From the always excellent wagingnonviolence.org

Earlier this summer I helped to organize the March for Jobs, Justice & the Climate — an action that brought more than 10,000 people to the streets of Toronto in one of the largest and most diverse climate mobilizations in Canadian history. More than 100 organizations supported the march — from national environmental groups to labor unions to the indigenous rights’ movement Idle No More to Toronto-based groups tackling poverty, food justice and migration. It was, as Naomi Klein put it, the “first steps of a new kind of climate movement” that reached beyond the traditional boundaries of the environmental movement.

The march was a “big tent” approach to climate organizing being put to practice, the same approach that helped the People’s Climate March bring over 400,000 people to the streets of New York City last September. It’s also an approach that we’re seeing gain more momentum in the lead-up to the Paris climate talks this December. In fact, another round of People’s Climate actions are already being planned for later this year.

Whether it’s called a big tent, intersectional organizing or building a “movement of movements,” this approach is key to the kind of transformative change required for solving the climate crisis. It’s also clear that it’s not an approach that’s going away any time soon.

During the organizing of the March for Jobs, Justice & the Climate, I learned a lot of hard lessons about the strengths and limitations of the big tent. In so doing, it became clear to me that the climate movement is struggling with this style of organizing, and that if we hope to build transformative power across and beyond social movements it’s going to take a lot more than just one big tent.

Big tents get crowded, quickly

Organizing in a big tent is a lot like hanging out in a crowded bar. It’s packed with people, everyone is talking and it’s next to impossible to get from one side to the other — especially if you’re trying to move with a group.

When you’re throwing a big party, you want a crowded bar. When you’re organizing a big mobilization, a massive tent can bring in a lot of people, but it’s going to be crowded and loud. People will struggle to be heard and those people who prefer a quiet night in may just stay home. As with the problem of trying to cross a packed bar with your friends, moving people in a big tent is also an ordeal.

When we started organizing the Toronto march, a big tent approach helped to open a lot of doors. Instead of starting with the same climate groups we always turn to, we worked with partners to create a frame that other movement sectors could see their struggles reflected in. By inviting a wide range of partners into the organizing space with a big, broad framework, we were successful in shifting the discourse around climate in Canada and including more voices in the conversation. At the same time, however, the sheer scale and breadth of groups involved also limited the depth of conversation that could take place.

For a single march, and the first one of it’s kind, this crowded tent wasn’t an insurmountable issue. Yet, as a movement strategy, the big tent approach needs space for people to move around and to be moved in. There needs to be enough room to move that the tent itself can be relocated through conflict, disagreement, negotiation and shared strategizing. Without this, the big tent will stagnate rapidly, accepting the lowest common denominator of agreement among the groups in the tent rather than unifying around demands that are in line with the scale of change that we really need.

There are rooms inside the tent

A lot of the value ascribed to big tent climate organizing is the idea that it’s a more inclusive approach to tackling the climate crisis, and it’s true that this approach is miles ahead of the environmental movement of the past. Unfortunately, a lot of the time the big tent feels a little too much like it’s just throwing a big sheet over already existing divisions and inequality across and within movements.

During our organizing, we started to observe that our big tent had developed a series of rooms. In the middle was a big central room that was the “official” center of the tent. It was the main organizing listserv and the weekly meetings where formal decisions were made and where everyone was welcomed. As the organizing moved forward though, smaller rooms started to pop-up.

Some of these rooms played a pivotal role in the organizing. For example, a meeting of local Toronto-based environmental and social justice groups gathered to talk about the march and how or if they would engage with the march. This meeting and the room it built within the tent helped to build alignment among groups. It also helped to clarify what kind of resources groups required to participate in the march, and created alignment among enough groups to shift the political orientation of the march to give a voice to groups typically sidelined by the climate movement like migrant justice groups, anti-poverty organizations and groups working to end police violence. A similar space was created and held by faith groups that used it to successfully mobilize a large and broad interfaith contingent for the march. In these instances, when the room held the work of a kind of caucus, it created space that helped to improve the dynamics in the big tent.

At the same time, rooms also emerged that hampered the organizing effort and threatened to undermine the goal of the big tent approach. Rooms emerged as exclusive spaces where groups with certain relationships, budgets or approaches talked to each other and made decisions that would impact the entire big tent strategy.

Most of these rooms replicated the same movement divisions that the big tent was intended to dismantle. It makes sense that these rooms would emerge and that people and groups would find themselves working with natural allies, but for a big tent climate organizing strategy to really be transformational, it has to be more than just putting a big sheet over our movements.

A coalition is not the same as a base

We started organizing the March for Jobs, Justice & the Climate by bringing together representatives from a range of groups to form some kind of a coalition to make the march happen. We had an idea for the action, a rough vision of what it could achieve and a sense — from consulting with a wide range of groups — that a massive cross-movement project might be possible. Following this strategy, we build a coalition of over a hundred groups by the day of the march. Yet, while the coalition was big and broad, it was also weak and, as I’ve outlined above, most of the alignment was on a surface level.

We lost track of the fact that in a cross-movement organizing space there are two sets of people, those people in the meetings, and those people who the people in the meetings have to explain things to. For some people that meant a collective, for others a staff team or board of directors. For most people it also meant a base, the broader community or movement that group organizes with and within. Or, put another way, every person in the room had to not only come to agreement in the room, but figured out how to translate the decisions in the room into a language that their people could speak.

This challenge played out in countless ways during the organizing process. One example was during conversations about the intersection of climate and migration. As someone who has worked between climate and social justice spaces for a lot of my adult life, I feel like I understand the links between climate change and forced migration. It’s pretty easy for me to rationalize why creating more open and just immigration policies is a fundamental part of a justice-based adaptation policy in a warming world. The problem is that I’m not representative of most of the people who make up the base of the traditional climate movement. So, when it came to working with a migrant justice group to make the case for connecting the dots between a super-storm in the Philippines and Canada’s immigration policies, we were confronted with an environmental movement that, for decades, has been obsessed with polar bears and parts per million.

In our big tent, it’s not just me and a migrant justice group. We also have a labor union that has a mandate to represent and be accountable to its members. Some of these members might hold views that stem from fears around migrant workers and job security. Others — and frankly some people in the climate movement at large — may even hold racist, anti-immigrant beliefs. At the same time, the migrant justice group may have its own well-placed concerns or ambivalence about this big tent, as a result of those racist views. With that, comes another series of challenges, and that’s with only three groups in the big tent. We haven’t even started to scratch the surface of the vast majority of people not already connected to the groups we invite into our coalitions.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that bringing diverse groups together is a key first step to building a movement for climate justice, and in organizing the March for Jobs, Justice & the Climate we managed to reach farther outside the box than any mobilization of it’s kind in Canada. Nevertheless, we fell into the same big tent trap of “uniting the left” on climate and believing that an intersectional approach to climate stops when we check enough movement diversity boxes in our coalition. We lost track of the fact that behind each group is a base of people with their own opinions, views and beliefs. Even if the groups in the room agree on something, the people we email, call and try to turn out in the streets might not.

The ground beneath our feet, not the tent above our heads

In the end, the biggest lesson I learned in this process was that it may actually be the term “big tent” that’s our biggest problem. A big tent invokes the idea of one big idea or issue that sits above the rest, leaving us to unify underneath it. While it’s true that climate change connects issues like few crises our society has ever faced, it’s problematic to view it as an issue “above” the rest. Instead of looking up to the tent, we need to start thinking about the ground beneath our feet – about how we can share fault lines that connect our movements.

In geology, a fault line is the space where tectonic plates meet. Movement fault lines could be defined by the points or issues where our struggles interact. The point where things actually meet is narrow compared to the size of the mass itself, but it’s also the place where the most dynamic changes occur.

If we think about the intersection of movements like this, we can see that the kind of power that has often been ascribed to a big tent is actually found in the narrow fault line where struggles intersect and where the friction between movements already exists. This means that in these places, like the intersection of migration and climate change, there is profound potential. It also means the points where our movements intersect are only a small piece of the work that movements and the people that make them up do. Movements are like massive tectonic plates that exist behind each fault line, their seemingly subtle movement the result of the constant day-to-day work of campaigning, educating and organizing. This work makes it possible for our movements to intersect along fault lines, and we need to consider the impact of the fault line on the movement as a whole. We also need to consider that sometimes the potential for intersectional organizing is not between everyone on everything — in other words, sometimes a specific fault line may only involve two movements interacting.

If you think about the example of the intersection of migration and climate change as a fault line, it’s easier to understand how we could overcome the challenge I outlined. Rather than try to find a way to agree on a high-level demand that ties together migration and climate change, we can look at the challenge and realize that the first step to this is the need to educate the climate movement about migrant justice and to build a deeper sense of trust across movements. From here, we can develop a strategy that starts with the fault line between climate and migrant justice movements — for example, a series of webinars as part of a joint campaign with support from movement leaders. In executing it, we could bring the climate movement and migrant justice movement together along a shared fault-line, and as trust is built and understanding developed, be in a better place to engage the labor movement along a new fault line. Step by step, we could build across movements in a way that respects where different sectors are, meets them where they are at and grows in a way that builds power from the bottom-up.

In the end, if we are constantly building alignment along fault lines, any big tent will be stronger and more valuable in the long run. After all, fault lines are the points that have raised mountains, carved shorelines and shaken the earth with powerful quakes. If we can take the time to go beyond the big tent, our movements can too. In order for this to happen the goal cannot simply be to hold up the big tent, but rather to forge a commitment to build movements together between the big tent moments. As the Paris climate talks draw near, these lessons can help us deepen our work for the long haul ahead and to truly tackle the climate crisis.

Category: Strategic Framework

Why Conduct an Audience Analysis?

Who Should Conduct an Audience Analysis?

When Should Audience Analysis Be Conducted?

Estimated Time Needed

Learning Objectives

Prerequisites

Steps

Step 1: Identify Potential Audience(s)

Step 2: Select the Priority Audience

Step 3: Identify Priority Audience Characteristics

Step 4: Identify Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices

Step 5: Identify Barriers and Facilitators

Step 6: Consider Audience Segmentation

Step 7: Identify Key Influencers

Step 8: Organize Influencing Audience Information

Step 9: Develop Audience Profiles

Templates

Samples

Tips & Recommendations

Lessons Learned

Glossary & Concepts

Resources and References

Resources

References

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A Catholic cradle

Campaigns on the ground

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Campaigns shouldn’t be easy! Why difficulty and motivation matter so much in campaign design

Fight for $15: Directed-network campaigning in action

A well coordinated campaign is opening up grassroots power and crossing movement boundaries

The Networked Change Report: A blueprint for 21st century campaigning

Fight for $15 brings directed-network campaigning principles to life

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