Introduction
The Campaign Strategy Guide is the first instalment of the People Power Manual, a resource created for organisers, activist educators and facilitators. The Campaign Strategy Guide is available for purchase, in hard copy or download, from the Change Agency.
Campaign strategy needn’t be mystifying, lonely or stressful. Social movements become more powerful as more people are equipped to analyse their political context, consider paths to change and mindfully plan tactics. This Campaign Strategy Guide equips activist educators to facilitate a range of participatory exercises with activists, organisers and citizens. It can also be used as a do-it-yourself guide for campaigners. The guide incorporates 16 handouts, several workshop schedules and process guides for 24 strategising processes that have been tried and tested by thousands of campaigners.
The People Power Manual
The People Power Manual is a resource for activist educators. It is a collection of participatory and experiential processes and handouts organised around six themes:
- Campaign Strategy (released late 2015, 3rd edition 2020)
- Community Organising (October 2016)
- Civil Resistance
- Working with Groups
- Returning to Strength: Movement Resilience in the Face of Repression
- Educating the Activist Educator (Ed²)
The People Power Manual has been created to support facilitators and educators working to help local action groups and social movements win environmental and social justice goals. The manual is published electronically as a series of guides. Hard copies of each guide are also available. All funds generated by the sale of the manual go back into supporting grassroots social movement education projects.The manual has been written primarily for educators, trainers and facilitators who are looking for processes to use in their activist education work. We don’t expect people will read the guides cover to cover like a book. Instead, we imagine most people will dip in and out of these pages. We’ve written the guides for readers who already understand the concepts and theory that the processes and handouts are based on. For those interested in further reading, each guide recommends our favourite books, manuals and online resources.The People Power Manual is not a cookbook; it is a menu of options. Even so, the processes and handouts contained the Manual’s six guides are no substitute for experience and the skill of listening, creating a sense of safety and trust in a group, and creatively responding to the needs of participants by adapting and designing new processes in situ. Having said all that, we hope the People Power Manual will enable transformative education and dialogue. Purchase sections of the People Power Manual as a download or in hard copy here.Outline of the Campaign Strategy Guide
We start with an introduction to our thinking about strategy and its importance in social change work. Before this you’ll find a glossary of expressions that are used throughout the guide. This is not gospel, and words will always be used differently in different contexts. But we feel it’s important to say what we mean and the manual uses some concepts and language in quite specific ways. This glossary could be a useful workshop resource too.
The manual follows a sequence that reflects how we think about (and teach) strategy. Often, we’ll describe this logic using the metaphor of a funnel. We encourage campaigners to begin their strategizing processes by thinking as broadly as possible about their visions, their social and political context, and about power. Step by step, we move through ‘cutting’ problems to issues, considering the steps involved in resolving the problem you’re focused on, who you might work with and how you expect to influence power-holders. After progressing through these analytical processes, we then shift our focus to the narrow end of the funnel; what tactics will you use
At each step along the way, we provide some of our favourite process guides and resources. There’s an extensive and searchable collection of resources on The Change Agency website.
The manual ends with a list of useful online resources, books and sample workshop schedules.
Contents
Acknowledgements…………..………………………………………………………………………………….. 7
The People Power Manual……………………………………………………………………………………. 8
Glossary………………….………………………………………………………………………………………….. 10
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 12
Elements of Strategy………………….…………………………………………………………………….…. 14
Handout | Short term campaign strategy template………………….…………………………..29
Process Guide | Strategy as a house…………………….……………………………………………….31
Handout | Strategy as a house…………………….……………………………………………………….34
Process Guide | The blanket game……………………..………………………………………………..35
Handout | The importance of strategic planning in nonviolent struggle……………..…36
A Vision for Tomorrow………………….……………………………………………………………………… 41
Handout | The vision for tomorrow………………….…………………………………………………..42
Process Guide | Listening to the people………………………………………………………………..44
Process Guide | Vision gallery…………………..…………………………………………………………..47
Process Guide | What is your political vision?…………………..…………………………..……….49
Handout | Shared vision: A powerful tool for change…………………………………………….51
Process Guide | Cutting the issue…………………….……………………………………………………53
Handout | Checklist for choosing a problem and issue…………………….……………………56
Process Guide | Problem tree analysis………………….……………………………………………….57
Situational Analysis………………….…………………………………………………………………………… 59
Process Guide | Forcefield analysis………………….…………………………………………………….60
Process Guide | Macro strategy tug of war………………………………………………….…………61
Process Guide | Assessing and opening policy windows………………………………………. 62
Handout | Assessing and opening policy windows…………………..…………………………… 64
Process Guide | The Wave……………………..……………………………………………………….……..68
Handout | The Wave……………………..……………………………………………………….………………70
Process Guide | Critical path analysis………………….………………………………………………….71
Process Guide | Creating a theory of change #1……………………….…………………………….75
Process Guide | Creating a theory of change #2……………………….…………………………….79
Handout | Theories of change………………………………………………………………………………..81
Process Guide | Naming political assumptions……………….………………………………………83
Process Guide | Mattress Game (pillars of support)………………….…………………………….85
Organisational considerations…………….………………………………………………………………… 88
Process Guide | The SWOT in practice………………….………………………….…………………….89
Allies, constituents and targets…………………..………………………………………………………… 92
Process Guide | Power mapping…………………..………………………………………………….93
Process Guide | Spectrum of allies…………………………………………………………………..96
Process Guide | Creating a tactical timeline………………….………………………..………..98
Handout | Spectrum of allies…………………………………………………………………………100
Campaign objectives………………..…………………………………………………………………… 101
Process Guide | SMART Objective writing…………………..…………………………………..102
Handout | SMART Objectives………………..………………………………………………………..103
Handout | Key questions for developing your objectives………………..………………104
Tactics and movement stages……………………………………………………………………….. 107
Process Guide | Tactics analysis………………….………………………………………………….108
Handout | Tactics analysis………………….…………………………………………………………..109
Process Guide | From tactics to strategy………………….……………………………………..110
Handout | George Lakey’s stages of movement development……………….………..112
Handout | Mahatma Gandhi: Six stages in a large campaign………………….……….115
Handout | Martin Luther King Jr’s six stage campaign planning framework………..116
Handout | Four roles in successful social movements (Bill Moyer 1990)………….117
Handout | Eight Stages of Social Movement Success (Bill Moyer 1990)…………….118
Process Guide | Template for a one-day MAP workshop………………….………………120
Handout | Clamshell Alliance: Picnic Table Democracy…………………………………….122
Handout | Bill Moyer’s reflections on his participation in the Clamshell Alliance occupation of Seabrook nuclear power plant…………………….……………………………..125
Evaluation and success indicators………………..…………………………………………………. 127
Other exercises for thinking holistically about strategy………………….………………… 128
Process Guide | Stepping stones………………………………………………………………………128
Process Guide | Playing for Life: The game of strategy………………….………………….131
Process Guide | People-sized strategy board game……………………..…………………..137
Useful resources and links…………………….……………………………………………………….. 139
Workshop schedules………………………………………………………………………………………. 142
Strategising for Change…………………………………………………………………………………….142
Sample strategy workshop schedule………………….……………………………………………. 143
Two-day Campaign Strategy workshop schedule………………….…………………………..144
Three-day Campaign Strategy workshop schedule………………….………………………..150
Download / Access Resource
The Campaign Strategy Guide is available for purchase, in hard copy or download, from the Change Agency.
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