UAEM National Conference CAMPUS ACTIVISM TRAINING

1. UAEM National ConferenceCAMPUS ACTIVISM TRAINING November 14-15, 2009 Sarah Frazer, Americans for Informed Democracy

2. Objective of workshop • Develop a strategic framework for successful direct action campaigns. • Familiarize ourselves with the range of tactics at our disposal, when, why and how to use them.

3. Four Ways to Solve Social Problems • Direct Service • Advocacy • Mobilization • Organizing -Marshall Ganz, Harvard Kennedy School of Government

4. 1. Direct Service • Improves the lives of people by directly linking them to resources that stabilize daily life. Direct service alleviates immediate crises by but often leaves the root causes of problems untouched.

5. 2. Advocacy • Interprets institutional processes for the poor and disadvantaged. It does not address nor change the basic power relationships between people and the institutions that control their lives.

6. 3. Mobilization • Engages people in short-term, direct action to create immediate results

7. 4. Organizing • Is people working together to get things done. It serves as a tool, a weapon, and a means of getting people to learn, to think, to act and to reflect about theirs lives in a new way. By doing so, the poor and disadvantaged are able to reclaim their strengths, roots and heritage.

8. 3 Principles of Direct Action Organizing • Win concrete improvements in people’s lives • Give people a sense of their own power • Alter the relations of power -Midwest Academy

9. Strategic Campaign Planning • Campaign: • Strategic series of coordinated and escalating activities designed to achieve a specific goal • Strategy: • A plan to organize your Folks and your Friends to force the Man to give you the Goods. -Ruckus Society

10. 6 Stages of a Campaign • Investigate/gather information • Educate • Increase motivation and personal commitment for the struggle ahead • Negotiate with target • Direct action • Create new relationship with opponent that reflects new power reality -Ruckus Society, derived from MLK’s essay “Letter from Birmingham Jail”

11. What is Direct Action? • People organizing ourselves to make the changes we want to see in the world

12. 3 Arguments Against Direct Action • It’s ineffective • It’s un-American • It’s illegal

13. Martin Luther King, Jr. • “We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.”

14. Good NVDA Can: • Be fun! • Alert folks to a problem, issue or idea. • Assert or defend a human or ecological right. • Directly stop bad things from happening. • Amplify our voices, magnify our visibility. • Create & envision solutions. • Inspire, recruit and energize. • Lead us to the achievement of our goals.

15. Types of NVDA • Protest • Registering your dissent • Non-cooperation • Withdrawing something from the system • Intervention • Directly intervening in the functioning of the system • Creative solutions • Developing alternative, community-based solutions

16. Points of Intervention • Point of production • Point of destruction • Point of consumption • Point of decision • Point of assumption

17. Point of Production

18. Point of Destruction

19. Point of Consumption

20. Point of Decision

21. Point of Assumption

22. Georgetown Living Wage Coalition • Hunger Strike

23. UVA Living Wage Campaign • Sit-in

24. MIT STAND Divestment Campaign • Die-in

25. MIT STAND Divestment Campaign • Demonstration

26. United Students Against Sweatshops • Banner drop

27. Let’s Talk Tactics • What other tactics have you seen, heard or or participated in that have successfully escalated or won a campaign?

28. Break Out Session! • Move quickly to your letter • 15-20 minutes to complete scenario • Consider your tactics carefully • Appoint someone to report back

29. 6 Stages of a Campaign • Investigate/gather information • Educate • Increase motivation and personal commitment for the struggle ahead • Negotiate with target • Direct action • Create new relationship with opponent that reflects new power reality -Ruckus Society, derived from MLK’s essay “Letter from Birmingham Jail”

30. The Tactic Star

31. Action Development • Develop a Sense of Timing • Be Creative • KISS Rule

32. What Kind of Power We Got? • End of formal slavery • Outlawed child labor/The right to go to school • Voting rights for women, youth (over 18), African Americans • The 40 hour work week (and weekends) • Civil Rights • Maternity leave • The rights of people with disabilities to hold jobs and access businesses

33. People POWER

34. Food for Thought • “Power concedes nothing without demand [...] The limits of tyranny are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” • Frederick Douglass, American abolitionist and women’s suffragist • “Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” • Martin Luther King, Jr., Americans civil rights leader • “Walk the street with us into history. Get off the sidewalk.” • Dolores Huerta, United Farm Workers of America co-founder and organizer • "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist.” • Dom Helder Camara, Brazilian Archbishop and liberation theologist • If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention.

35. Super Hero Shout Out

36. Sarah Frazer, Americans for Informed Democracy • Sarah@aidemocracy.org • www.aidemocracy.org • US Social Forum • June 22-26, 2010, Detroit, MI • www.ussf2010.org

37. Workshop Evaluation • Rate the workshop1-5 (5 = highest; 1 = lowest) • What you liked or befitted from the most? • What you liked the least and could stand to be improved?