How to Create a Campaign

Introduction

How do you start a campaign for social change? Learn how to create a campaign using tools such as the Spectrum of Allies.

This article has been sourced from Daniel Hunter’s book published by 350.org called The Climate Resistance Handbook. Read below or see pages 25 – 33.

Creating a Campaign

Some of us find campaigns because they are parts of a national movement. But when there’s no national campaign to plug into, it’s up to local groups to experiment and try stuff out. How to start?

Let’s take a campaign from Jordan. It started with two young people: Omar and Hiba. While they had a few ideas, they weren’t certain how two people could influence an issue as big as climate change. They wanted to create a climate campaign that would feel relevant to other people. So they thought about what was important to people where they lived. They decided to target a sector of the economy that is one of the biggest causes of greenhouse gas emissions: transportation.

Jordan lacks a lot of public transportation infrastructure. That means many Jordanians purchase their own private cars. As a result, cities are congested and bursting at the seams. That wastes people’s time, money and energy. And it causes massive environmental and health problems, with all the dirty air. This is about climate change. But they could also get others involved because of the social, health, and economic dimensions. They picked a campaign with widely shared values to attract new people.

They had a sense of a campaign goal (better infrastructure for all of Jordan), but it wasn’t detailed. So they began researching. They read everything they could find about public transportation. And they began talking to friends and anyone they met about it.

Slowly, they built a campaign group, We Get Together: We are all entitled to public transport ( لقنلا – لصن ً ً معا معا اًجميع انقح ماعلا). They were no longer just one or two people. Their weekly meetings had about a dozen people meeting over tea and coffee. They spent time outside bus stops and other public spaces listen ing to people’s experiences. They recruited frustrated bus riders into the campaigning. And something they heard again and again was the need for a map to see how bus lines intersected and a schedule to have a realistic sense of when buses might arrive.

This helped them sharpen their goals. They decided to focus their campaign initially on Amman, the capital city. And among their goals was the creation of a map, app, and regular schedule for bus routes. In their case, they found out which were the government agencies that should have been creating these. Those were their targets. It was not clear if they could win.

But in every campaign, there comes a moment when you don’t have all the information, but you take the risk and boldly tell people your plan, even when everything is not figured out.

Picking a campaign goal is also a tricky time. It can seem easier to “keep everyone in the group happy” by trying to work on everything and talk about everything. In my experience, groups that do this may hold people together for the short-term. But over time, people get frustrated that they don’t see anything getting accomplished. They leave. And soon it becomes a tiny, irrelevant group. They launched the campaign in a fun way. They held a public press conference, cleverly organized with people cycling towards the city’s municipal building, symbolizing the goals.

It took many more tactics for them to get any wins (they held public events and outreach activities, co-launched a research institute, created their own maps…). But recently they won some victories: The city is adding money to public transportation, creating bus maps and apps to show bus routes, and improving coordination in public transportation. The group is still going, fighting for even more.

Their steps to build a campaign fit most I’ve been part of:

1. Gather a few people to meet
2. Decide on a problem you want to try to solve (and recruit more people)
3. Research the problem
4. Create a campaign goal, and figure out who is the target and how you want to move them (and recruit more people)
5. Launch the campaign (preferably in a fun way)

Use the Spectrum of Allies

None of us have figured out how to avoid and halt the devastating impacts of climate change. But we can learn from campaigns that have scored some key victories.

In Brazil, they were up against a corrupt government. The government was pushing hard to open the Amazon rainforest to oil drilling, using a technique called “fracking.”Let’s just pause for a moment. Te Amazon is our Earth’s lungs. More than 20% of the globe’s oxygen is produced in the Amazon rainforest. So fracking the Amazon is a very, very bad idea. But it makes money for corporations. And it makes money for government officials in bed with them. And they can buy of lots of the public with that money, too. So in 2015, the national government made plans to auction of rights to frack parts of the Amazon.

Activists resisting had only small groups of people ready to do something — mostly indigenous leaders. They needed a campaign strategy. Organisers formed a coalition of parties, Não Fracking Brasil. They would organise across the country.

They knew education was key. But education without action doesn’t build a movement’s power.

So along with every educational action was their campaign goal: getting local municipalities (cities, towns, states) to pass bans to stop fracking.

Their target: local city councils, which can pass the resolutions. The activists did not have enough power to win on the national level.But they could win on the local level. And they believed that people hearing about other people’s wins creates momentum.

Their goal: to stop fracking by making it illegal, too expensive, and too unwelcome in Brazil. The bans were creative and legally enforceable. They made rules like, “No trucks carrying fracked oil, fracked water, fracked waste, or any fracking equipment can be on our city’s roads.” The bans increased the cost for fracking companies — and quickly.

This campaign approach increased capacity. It personalised the issue for people. It made local residents ask themselves, “Do you want fracking in your neighbourhood?” They accumulated dozens of local wins. After a city won, activists there would organise to move to the state level.  But some cities were very tough.

The city of Umuarama was one of those. Nearby cities had already passed the bans. But one local congressman was very pro-fracking. Two council members wrote a fracking ban. But the bill never moved forward.

Months went by, and they couldn’t gain an inch. Then it got worse. One of the supportive council members was exposed as part of a (separate) corruption scandal. Campaigners felt stuck. They kept meeting with the opposition council members.

Nothing changed. And they kept rallying their base of supporters. Nothing changed.

In this local ban fight, how do we win? They had a breakthrough. It’s a lesson shown by the spectrum of allies.

The spectrum of allies starts with a simple idea. There are people who are actively with you. They are your people (your base, your crew, your group, your active allies). Then there are the people who are actively opposed to you.

For Não Fracking Brasil, it was the most reluctant council members, fracking industry, and national government.

Campaigns make a mistake when they focus only on their active allies and active opposition. Because most people aren’t in either of those categories!

The rest of the people might be broadly thought of as “the public.” This tool is about breaking down the idea of “the public” and really seeing where our support lives.

On the left side, we have our active allies. Active opponents are on the right. In between might be passive allies or passive opponents — folks who might agree or disagree with you but aren’t doing anything about it. Or they may be neutrals — truly undecided, completely uninformed, or truly apathetic. The tool brings with it some good news. Campaigns don’t succeed by getting everyone to agree with us!

Most successful campaigns never get their active opposition to change their minds. So let them go. Instead, support for their position is pulled away by shifting the passives and neutrals one step in our direction (for example, moving neutrals so that they become passive allies). What a relief! We don’t have to do it all.

The campaigners had to look outside of who was active on this issue. It became clear what needed to happen. The campaigners saw that lots of religious leaders had been sitting on the sidelines. They hadn’t done anything.

So Não Fracking Brasil encouraged those neutrals by giving presentations and inviting them to public hearings. They also went to schools and community events. The activists had some relationships with a few passive allies — some aldermen, archbishops, priests, the Rural Union president, and a well-respected Catholic bishop. They met with them one-on-one and said, “This is your time to get active!”

They moved people who had been neutrals and passive allies. Then they gave a public way for those people to show their support. They organised a march from the Praça da Bíblia to City Hall. They timed it with the day the ban could be voted on. Thousands filled City Hall. The numbers mattered. So did the optics of having a Catholic bishop lead the march. So did seeing members who had never shown up before.

The council was overwhelmed. Every council member voted for the ban — unanimously! Nobody wanted to be left out.

This campaign reaffirms the power of seeing the spectrum of allies.

Groups often waste a huge amount of time obsessing over the active opposition, even though they rarely move.

The spectrum of allies tool can be used in meetings to think about where people and groups stand on an issue. Healthy debates can emerge during this process, and it can expose our need for research. For example, “Where does that union local stand on this issue?” Debates may emerge about who to reach out to in order to help persuade other groups.

When using this tool, it’s important to remind people to be specific. Instead of naming broad groups like “labor” or “children support groups,” it’s best to name specific groups or organisations. That’s because the spectrum of allies is an organising tool — it’s useful in figuring out who you are going to reach. That means the groups should be listed with names of people who can be contacted so you can reach out and engage with them.

The good news mentioned before is worth repeating. We don’t need to convince everyone to become active allies to achieve our goals. Take the abolitionist movement against slavery in the United States, as an example. If you add up every petition signed, every
meeting, every public action — not even 1% of the population were active allies. Yet the movement was successful.

We therefore don’t have to become hyper-focused on moving our active opponents. Our work is to steadily move passive allies, neutrals, and passive opponents in our direction. We keep our active allies engaged.

As of this writing, the Brazilian coalition has managed to get 400 municipalities to enact some ban to halt fracking.States are now passing bans. And support for fracking at the national level is cracking.

Move the Rock

Sometimes when groups decide to pick governments as their target, they fall into the trap of thinking like lobbyists. Lobbyists don’t focus on what the public wants. They have private meetings, expensive dinners, and fancy events to persuade government officials. If that fails, they’ll just line officials’ pockets. Fossil fuel companies have spent millions on lobbying. They’re very experienced at that. That is their domain.

So what’s the movement’s way of changing governments’ minds? It’s by seeing politicians as a balloon. A balloon floats in the wind. If you blow on it, it can be pushed one way or the other. It follows the wind, like politicians who can change their opinions and stances easily.

But politicians are tied to a rock. If we swat at them, they may sway to the left or the right. But, tied down, they can only go so far.

Instead of batting at them, we should move the rock: people’s activated social values. Depending on our government, the string might be longer or shorter. But politicians know they can only be pushed so far one way or the other.

If they absolutely violate social norms, they are in trouble. This is critical. For example, I didn’t think very much about climate change a number of years ago. I cared about the environment. And if you asked me, I’d tell you I cared about climate change. So I had the value — but it wasn’t activated. I didn’t really need someone to teach me about the issue. I needed someone to get me active, so that I was engaging politicians, my neighbours, colleagues, friends. When a friend asked me if I wanted to help them join a campaign on climate change — I said yes. I became activated.

Our goal in moving the rock is to build campaigns that encourage people to act on their values. When we move the rock, it pulls all the politicians towards us — without having to pressure each one separately.

If you think about politicians this way, two things change. The first is that you realise they are not, under even the most autocratic system, all-powerful. They have a constituency they have to keep in place — people whose support they need. (That’s a reminder about the pillars of support.)

The second is that we could spend all our energy swatting at the politicians. But the lesson from Umuarama is this: The activists stopped trying to just swat the politicians, the balloon. They needed to move the rock — and that means activating the values that people have.

People can believe something. But if they don’t act on it, politicians won’t care.

The point is this: If your target is a politician, don’t spend all your time just trying to convince them to change their minds. Feel free to try for a short while. But if you’re still stuck, then recall that the more efficient way to move them — and other politicians, too — is to use the campaign to change what politicians think the political risks and possibilities are for them. You do that by moving the rock.

This is how movements win. We move more and more people onto our side. As we run successful campaigns, we grow the energy of the whole movement — getting more interest, more excitement.

About Book

This article is from the Climate Resistance Handbook which brings together a wealth of learnings from the climate justice movement. It starts with breaking social myths about how social movements win. Then dives into campaign tools and frameworks you can use. It closes with how to grow your group and use creative, impactful actions and tactics. This book is full of stories of climate warriors from around the globe and historical movements. It’s filled with practical wisdom and inspiration to make you more effective, more active, and ready for what’s next.

Book Excerpts

The Commons Library has featured parts of the book as separate articles.

• How to Create a Campaign
• Social Change Myths
• Pillars of Support: The Upside down Triangle
• Replace Endless Actions with Campaigns
• Building Movement Capacity and Structure: Ella Baker and SNCC
• Building Leadership Capacity: The Ladder of Engagement
• Campaign Tactics
• Authoritarianism to Democracy: The Story of Mongolia

Other Languages

This article can be read in different languages. See pages 12 – 18 from the book links below. Please Note: With different translations these page numbers may vary slightly.

• Handboek voor Klimaatverzet Dutch – Nederlands
• Manuel de résistance climatique French – Français
• Handbuch für Klima-Retter:innen German – Deutsch
• Iklim Perlawanan Panduan Indonesian – Bahasa Indonesia
• クライメート・レジスタンス・ハンドブック Japanese – 日本
• Manual de Resistência Climática Portuguese – Português
• Руководство климатического сопротивления Russian – Pусский

Explore Further

• Campaign Planning: How to Get Started
• Campaign Accelerator Toolkit
• Elements of Campaign Strategy
• Time to Move the Rock: Activating Social Values to Bring About Change
• Moving the rock: Shifting power for sustained change
• Spectrum of Allies
• Know your allies, your opponents and everyone in between: The Spectrum of Allies
• Easy Read Guides by the Commons Library for How to start a campaign and Spectrum of Allies