US Perspective on Organizing in Your Countries
Jeff Blum, at Citizen Participation University, July 8, 2014
Two basic points I want to leave you with –
1) Democracy is always hard work and always a work in progress. The pendulum swings. Be patient.
2) Democracy doesn’t exist in a vacuum. In the US we generally believe we are for 3 outcomes – liberty,
justice, opportunity. We get there through the mechanisms of democracy – fair elections in which
people feel they have choices and exercise them, transparency, citizen activism, maximizing the
power of people and minimizing the power of money, etc. Since a more prosperous and hopeful
society will be more democratic, if we want democracy, we have to want economic and social and
racial and environmental progress. This point, in my opinion, American politicians and US foreign
policy often get wrong, with very serious consequences – just look at Iraq or Afghanistan. I’m
presuming it’s true in your countries also – and I hope we can discuss the nuances of this during this
week.
A story from the US to show the process:
Social Security – by which we in the US mean only public retirement security and income security for
people with disabilities.
1. Pres. FDR proposed it.
2. Original proposal was to include health security but he was afraid he couldn’t pass it.
3. When it passed in 1935, it did NOT include most women and minorities – they did that by only
covering job categories that were traditionally white and male. So, no domestic workers, farm
workers, government workers, teachers, etc. Half the working population not covered.
4. Expansion – 7 times between 1939 & 1972. Including benefits for people with disabilities and
creating of 2 big health security programs in 1965.
5. Mostly, since the 1980’s, the fights have been to maintain it and make it financially more sound,
not to expand it. It’s now about 20% of the entire Federal spending. It is ONLY a national
program – unlike most social safety net programs in the US.
Here are some major issue debates going on in the US right now:
1. Immigration reform
 US is unusual – almost exclusively a nation of immigrants. Except for Native Americans –
mostly slaughtered from 1600s – 1900s
 A major fight to include minorities in access to opportunity and justice that America offers (at
our best)
 Reaction is very hard. Why?
o Racism
o 40 years of decline in prosperity of white working and middle class
 Smart Republicans understand they can never have a political majority unless they can get on
the right side of this and win votes of Latinos, Asian and Arab Americans
 Our movement:
o Moral leadership from the “Dreamers,’’ who are willing to expose their own
immigration status – and risk deportation – for the greater good
o Labor movement is now a strong supporter – wasn’t true a decade ago
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o
Community organizing networks are playing a huge role, esp. CCC, also PICO,
USAction
 Are reaching out to normally conservative groups like small business and
evangelical churches
2. Gay rights:
 Another major fight about inclusion
 Change came far faster than anyone expected, after a long slow period.
o When it came, the organized movement often had to race to catch up – it had been
focused on smaller demands because gay marriage seemed too ‘’radical.’’
 In US, cultural change generally comes more readily than economic
o Corporations & the rich accept, even encourage it, including Republicans
 Some of them are gay
 They often live in a social world with gays – this may be one reason why the
Supreme Court, including a conservative justice, ruled at least partially in
favor of gay marriage.
 In general, WE organize people who are poor, excluded, discriminated against, powerless
o When such people are in motion, WINNING usually takes an alliance with some
group of the powerful and/or rich
o The gay movement in the US has many wealthy members and supporters, such as
might be in the organizations “Parents and Family of Lesbians and Gays.”
3. Health care:
Health care as a right: Health care is a poor market commodity anywhere!
A little history:
 First proposed by President Theodore Roosevelt over 100 years ago!
 As we saw, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) was afraid to propose it as a bill.
 Pres. Johnson made the most dramatic expansion of health care coverage in US in 1965 – but
was also unwilling to propose one comprehensive national system.
 Pres. Obama let Congress propose a lot of the details, which tended to create a more watered
down plan than if he’d pushed one on his own – but he believed he had to do that to pass it.
 What we accomplished in 2010, which I was intimately involved with, was really not great policy,
but set the new floor – it’s a national right.
 Even after that, the Supreme Court interpreted the law, under Right-wing challenge, in such a
way as to allow states to opt out of big chunks of it. And half have.

To win Obamacare, we had to split our opponents:
a. We demonized private insurance companies – examples:
i. Going to the homes of insurance CEO’s – led by people who had been refused
coverage or dropped from coverage by their company – never forget the power
of personal stories
ii. Going to insurance company conferences – sometimes getting a few people
inside while hundreds or more were demonstrating outside
1. We got professional theater people to do skits and sing songs inside,
disrupting the conference until they were thrown out – others of their
colleagues recorded it and we could immediately distribute it.
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
b. But at that time we did not fight against pharmaceutical companies, even though they
were also very much to blame; in some ways, we were even able to work together with
them. We didn’t believe, and the Obama White House didn’t believe, that we would be
strong enough to defeat by the insurance and pharmaceutical industry at the same time.
Now:
a. The first job is to defend the new law from attacks in Congress, the courts, by right-wing
political forces, etc.
b. Then, we have to turn it into an electoral benefit in 2014 and 2016 – as we were unable
to do in 2010, giving the Tea Party an opening before most people had gotten the
benefits of the new law.
c. We have to help make it work, state by state, through working with state governments
d. We are fighting to expand the law
i. States that at first refused to fully participate – some of them are vulnerable to
expanding it now that people see what benefits it has to offer.
ii. Now, we can go after pharmaceutical companies to keep drug costs down – and
in this, we can have alliances with insurance companies which also want cheaper
costs.
4. Economic inequality:
a. The hardest issue in the US
b. The ideology of freedom and opportunity makes it hard for people to understand that it
just doesn’t always work – you know this problem, I assume?
c. From World War II until the 1970’s, the US economy grew, and almost everyone got
some benefits (though blacks in the South, farmworkers who were generally Latino, and
Native Americans got far less).
i. Large expansion of veterans’ benefits – they are seen as “the deserving poor”
and there is political agreement that they should get help becoming middle class.
d. The rise of the global economy, free movement of capital since the 1970’s has led to:
i. Worst inequality in US since 1920’s
ii. New challenges to American prosperity from the rise of China, India, Brazil
iii. Further economic disruptions from the end of Communism
e. The US and Europe need a new strategy for this new economy.
f. Occupy named the problem but couldn’t sustain an organization.
g. Current fights:
iii. Wages: often fought city by city (the US is a very federal system, unlike most of
Europe). Different variations:
1. Fight for increasing the minimum wage
2. Fight to set a new minimum wage floor, a “living wage,” of $15.00/hour
iv. Other economic costs: Fights for other costs beyond wages themselves
1. Paid sick leave
2. Paid family leave, such as when children are born
3. Equal pay for women
v. Housing: the single largest part of the family budget – helping low income
homeowners caught in the 2008 crash – people whose mortgages are now
greater than the value of their homes (“being underwater”) – demand that the
banks absorb much, or at least some, of the losses.
h. These fights could play a major role in reviving the US labor movement, or help new prolabor or quasi-labor organizations come into being (a whole other topic here)
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5. Environment:
Key to the new world economy – which must be sustainable
 Transition from oil and coal
 Short run, in many places, they are going to natural gas through expansion of fracking:
a. Rapidly destroying many small communities – a huge local organizing opportunity.
Similar to reaction to coal mining 50-100 years ago.
b. Governments want the jobs and the revenue, no matter how short-sighted.
 Need to go to truly sustainable policies:
a. It creates many more jobs – which makes it expensive but more useful to communities
over the long run.
i. But many of the lost jobs are unionized or at least highly paid, and the gained
jobs start out lower-paid and non-union.
ii. Creates terrific opportunity to join environmental and labor fights.
 Climate change used to be only an elite fight – no more
a. One of fastest growing US organizations is 350.org – esp. among young people.
6. Foreign & military policy:
a. US still has over half the world military spending – perhaps $1 trillion total. Greater than
the next 13 countries combined, many of which are US allies.
b. 20% of entire US government budget
c. And yet, much of it is ineffective and counter-productive – ex.:
i. Iraq
ii. Afghanistan
iii. Nuclear weapons
d. Very weak US peace movement – peace movements tend to grow in the run-up to a war,
and then die down, and then grow again as the dead and wounded come home – and
then fade rapidly when a war ends.
e. I am working to build this movement especially by getting other groups – labor,
environment, womens groups – to integrate foreign policy into their work
i. We want a world of peace AND justice
ii. Focusing on the younger generation – the world will be yours!
The moral of these stories:
1) Change in a democracy tends to be incremental. It RARELY satisfies the most ardent activists. As
leaders and organizers, our job is partly to push for the outer limit of the possible – to think big
enough to inspire and at the same time concrete enough to win real victories for people.
2) The need to defend victories against assaults and push for the next victories is ongoing.
3) Therefore, you have to be careful to build organizations that can wield power while you are
campaigning for victories. Because the organizations can carry on, remember the past and think
strategically. You may be brilliant but you cannot do it alone.
What are then some key things you need to think about doing?
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First, let me be clear: you live in your countries. I don’t. So please take my words as an aid to your
own thinking, NOT some wisdom brought down from Heaven. Change is the only constant, as they
say. Beware of historical certainty. Nothing “ends” history. Not the fall of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire or Nazism or Communism. Not a given electoral victory or defeat. Viktor Orban is not
forever! History moves on, always responding to what came before and to what is happening now –
and through your work you can and will change it.
But I think some general truths of making democracy and civil society work do exist. To me, they
include:
1. Organizers organize organizations. Which means, all organizations have people who lead them.
Be explicit about your intention to make the organizations work. Don’t pretend that organization
“just happens.” Someone is almost always pushing an agenda and trying to move things in his or
her direction.
2. A key thing organizers do is develop leaders – volunteer members who live in the community
where you are working. They will be there after you move on, and they will have credibility that
comes from their lifelong relationships. I ran a national organization for 15 years, but the best
work developing leaders was happening locally – by people like Joe Szakos and Lew Finfer. If
local organizers are effective, national organizations and positive national change is possible.
3. There’s a triad – elections. Issues. Organizations. (Draw circle on board with these 3 concepts the arrows go all ways. So:
a. Issues are key to how people vote in elections, and you can energize your base of people
to go out and vote because they care enough about the issues.
b. Elections are the most evident place where citizens can exert power to win on their
issues.
c. And organizations can carry the ball on the issue and can get volunteers out for the
election.
4. Power. Frederick Douglas was a free black American while black slavery still was legal in much of
the US. Surely as tough a situation as what we are likely to face.
Frederick Douglass, Letter to an abolitionist, 1849
Let me give you a word on the philosophy of reform. If there is no struggle there is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops
without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the
ocean without the awful roar of its many waters…. Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never did and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the
exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them… The limits of tyrants are
prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
5. Here’s a rough way I’ve come to see how we organize ourselves for action:
a. We need to have a vision. What moves people to action is usually an appeal to their
values more than a specific issue.
b. We need to have a narrative that explains the vision in easy to follow and compelling
terms. Tell stories, not facts. People can follow stories. Here’s a fact: two facts are LESS
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effective than one fact in motivating people. (Of course, this might be different if you are
talking with a government official or a judge.)
c. We need a plan to communicate with people.
d. We need a plan to organize people into action.
You’ve asked me to share an American perspective, and I hope I’ve done that adequately. But I
want to conclude with thoughts adapted from the late British historian Tony Judt:
It was a tremendous achievement for Europe to recover from the two World Wars fought on
your soil in 30 years and have nations with distinctive national cultures and institutions re-emerge.
The success of those nations will depend in large part on how the powerful groups treat the
immigrants and outsiders in their midst – those who newly come seeking a better life and those who
have lived there for a long time and yet are still “outsiders” in their own national home. This is
absolutely an American challenge also, as we see from the harsh debate in the US about immigration
and the still-deep needs to redress the impact of black slavery and near-genocide toward Native
Americans. And we organizers and civic leaders will be critical in determining how that process goes.
In the 20th century – America’s Century – Europe plunged into the abyss and turned
world leadership over to the US and, for a time, the Soviet Union. Europe’s recovery has been a slow
and uncertain process, vastly different by country. You are unlikely ever to recover some aspects of
that leadership. But neither America with its overwhelming wealth and giant military nor China with
its authoritarian government and vast ability to produce cheap goods is a useful model for the rest of
the world. In spite of the horrors of your recent past – and in large measure because of them – it is
Europeans who are now uniquely placed to offer the world some modest advice on how to avoid
repeating your own mistakes. Few would have predicted it in 1945, but the 21st century might yet
belong to Europe.
Tony Judt, Postwar, pp.799- 800
Actual quote:
…the re-emergence of Europe’s battered peoples and their distinctive national cultures and
institutions from the wreckage of the continent’s 30 years’ war might well be thought an even
greater achievement than their collective success in forging a transnational Union…. Whether
Europe’s burnished new image, scrubbed clean of its past sins and vicissitudes, would survive the
challenges of the coming century… would depend a lot on how Europeans responded to the nonEuropeans in their midst and at their borders. Even less predictable…was Europe’s emergence in the
dawn of the 21st century as a paragon of the international virtues: a community of values and a
system of interstate relations held up by Europeans and non-Europeans alike as an exemplar for all
to emulate.
The 20th century – America’s Century – has seen Europe plunge into the abyss. The old
continent’s recovery had been a slow and uncertain process. In some ways it would never be
complete: America would have the biggest army and China would make more, and cheaper, goods.
But neither America not China had a serviceable mode to propose for universal emulation. In spite of
the horrors of their recent pasts – and in large measure because of them – it was Europeans who
were now uniquely placed to offer the world some modest advice on how to avoid repeating their
own mistakes. Few would have predicted it sixty years before, but the 21st century might yet belong
to Europe.
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