Reset Reading Group resources for discussion curated and introduced by Amanda Tattersall. Groups are encouraged to hold discussions of these readings during the week starting 6 July.
Please note we encourage all participants in RRG to read the introduction and listen to the main-discussion starter ChangeMakers podcast: How We Win. There are a number of further resources on the theme but we don’t expect everyone to get through all of these prior to meeting for discussion.
A special training session on Building Relationships & Power for Transformation was held as part of the Organising in a Pandemic series hosted by ChangeMakers, Tipping Point and School Strike 4 Climate. It was held on Thursday 2 July and featured Annie Kia from Gasfield Free Northern Rivers, Adam Knobel from the Marriage Equality campaign and a leader from the Kangaroo Point Refugee campaign in Brisbane. You can watch a recording of the session, or view the whole Organising in a Pandemic series.
Reset 6: Centring Justice and Care readings will be available 13 July. If you haven’t signed up to receive the fortnightly emails yet you can do so at Welcome to Reset Reading Group. The readings for each theme will be available in the Reset collection on an ongoing basis.
Introduction
The power for transformation is not just about having the right ideas or analysis. If we haven’t built sufficient forms of people power – then we will not win the world we need.
This Reset theme session is all about how we can better understand the power of relationships and coalitions in making transformative change.
This is not a small topic. I’ve been working on the question of relationships, coalition building and how they contribute to people power for over 20 years. I’ve built stuff – some of which has worked and plenty that hasn’t, and I’ve also studied how other people have done it – writing a book on coalitions and hosting a podcast that shares some of the stories I have encountered.
There is a lot to say that adds up to way more than a week in a reading group! So what I have done is narrow the scope to focus on relationship building and coalitions. Then, for the enthusiasts amongst you, I’ve included a substantial reading list that includes more materials on relationships and coalitions, while also including a video and blog on a new topic that I have been unpacking for the last 3 years – people power strategies. For the die hard enthusiasts, the ChangeMakers Podcast has heaps of useful stories and interviews on all of this stuff, you are invited and encouraged to come and check out our free weekly organising training on these questions (this week has a Reset Flavor), and next year (hopefully) I will co-author a book on the people power question.
The main discussion starter is ChangeMakers Podcast Episode 2” How we win”. It’s a story about coalitions in two parts – one is the story of the Brexit campaign (and its two very different coalitions), then the story of the magnificent Gasfield Free Northern Rivers campaign. Below I unpack some core concepts about relationship building and coalitions that I developed in Power in Coalition : strategies for strong unions and social change. Because we don’t all have time/money to go buy books I include below the Book Chapter that summarises the findings below for you to read. But if you are keen, the book does run through some dramatic case studies from Chicago, Toronto and Sydney – you can get it hardcover (out of print 21March2022) or electronic.
Relationships and Coalition Building
Not all coalitions are made equal. Their power and success varies greatly depending on the strategic choices of those involved. The most successful coalitions are ones that seek to achieve social change goals at the same time as they strengthen the organizations and networks that participate in them. Yet these goals can be somewhat illusive.
All coalitions, whether short-term or long-term, have three characteristics. Coalitions develop when:
- Two or more organizations come together (organizational relationships)
- To do something in common (common concern)
- To make an impact on these concerns (scale)
These elements are important, because coalitions may be strong or weak depending on how they work. They help identify questions about how coalitions operate, for instance:
- How many organisations are involved? How do the organizations work together, do they share decision making or does one organizations dominate?
- What kinds of issues are being worked on – is it a long term agenda or short term concern? Are their shared values too?
- Where are the organizations trying to make an impact? Locally? Nationally?
Through exploring three long term coalitions, Power in Coalition identifies five lessons about when coalitions were likely to be successful.
1. Less is more
Coalitions are more successful when organizational membership is restricted and there are fewer groups making decisions and sharing resources. Bigger is not always better. A narrower agenda makes it easier to more deeply engage the commitment of organisational members. A “less is more” approach helps avoid lowest common denominator positions where coalitions end up a “mile wide and an inch deep” and tend to only be able to agree on what they are against rather than what they are for.
To see this lesson come alive – listen to the podcast and compare the Brexit coalition with the Remain coalition. With fewer people around the table there was then an incentive to do “more” together – like building strong public relationships that understand personal and organizational interests. Yet long lasting trusting relationships can allow you to expand the team. Just like in the Gasfields Free coalition, or in the Sydney Alliance which is diverse but also cultivates deep trust. In these places relationships could overcome narrowness, but they took extensive skill and practice – breadth of network requires a depth of skill.
2. Individuals matter
Despite coalitions being defined as an alignment of organizations, they are all about the people making them work! There are lots of types of people in alliance building. These include organizational leaders, champions inside of organizations and coalition coordinators and staff. The success of their coalitions relies of their capacity to be sophisticated relationship builders.
Their most important qualities are the ability to build bridges across different kinds of organizations and to act as campaign strategists. Coalitions are more effective when leaders directly participate in coalition decision-making. Coalition coordinators held together organizational relationships. Coordinators smoothed over differences between organizations, and sought to mitigate union dominance when it arose.
3. Set an agenda
Coalitions are most successful at generating an agenda for social change when they work on issues that feed the direct strategic needs of their organizational partners and simultaneously connect to the public interest or common good.
Organizational self-interest is necessary but not sufficient to build a strong coalition. Self-interest opens up to public interest when a coalition can negotiate a shared set of demands that connect to diverse organizations. Mutual self-interest can be very creative, where new agendas and demands can be developed. Coalitions are also most able to shift the political climate when their issues are positively framed demands.
4. Plan
Sustained coalitions have long-term plans about how they will build and exercise their strengths. Disciplined planning ensures coalitions can deliver political pressure rather than just reacting to the media cycle.
5. Take multi-scaled action
Most issues cannot be resolved at a single scale. Political and economic power is multi-scaled – traversing the local, regional, state, national and international, and to be most effective coalitions frequently need to act at multiple scales.
Multi-scaled coalitions need to be well managed. There is a need for a feedback loop between the different scales. It is not just about setting people up locally to run a state or national agenda, there needs to be local control. Second, there is a need for local coalitions to have some relative autonomy – to pursue local demands in conjunction with national/state demands.
Finally, Power in Coalition argues that coalition success is more complex than just winning ‘stuff.’ Coalitions need to be measured by how they build community power and strengthen the relationships between organisations and develop the leadership skills of the people involved. It argues success looks a little like this:
- Social Change: Wins + Shifts in the political climate
- Movement Power: Strength of relationships between organisations/networks + Leadership development
It is not easy to achieve all four forms of success at the same time. In practice, different elements are traded off to achieve other goals. However the four prongs provide a clear measure of the possibile power that can be achieved by working in coalition.
If you want to know more about these lessons, then take a look at Chapter Five of Power in Coalition below.
Amanda Tattersall
Main discussion-starter: How We Win, ChangeMakers Podcast
You can also listen to the podcast episode on the app or platform of your choice.
Further resources
One to One Meetings
This is a video of me running a zoom training about how to do a one-to-one meeting (it’s the sort of thing you can just listen to like a podcast). There’s also a few articles here about how to do relational meetings. This skill is better learnt in person. The Sydney Alliance and Queensland Community Alliance train relational meetings. Post-pandemic, they will run face to face trainings and promote them on their website.
Power in Coalition
Chapter 5 – This is where the book takes a deeper dive into the findings from across the case studies and explains the five principles outlined in brief above. The whole book can be bought here.
Community Organising
This is an article about community organising in Australia. Mike Gecan’s Going Public and Ed Chamber’s Roots for Radicals are also great for the background. Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals is the original text. There are many materials on organising on the Commons – start here.
Research on Organising
Hahrie Han is a tremendous researcher who has written about organising and mobilising. Her key book is How Organisations Develops Activists. I also interviewed her at ChangeMakers for a ChangeMakers Chat.
Organising in a Pandemic
You can watch all the recordings from this series here including Understanding People Power, which outlines different approaches to change. A special training session on Building Relationships & Power for Transformation was held on Thursday 2 July and featured Annie Kia from Gasfield Free Northern Rivers, Adam Knobel from the Marriage Equality campaign and a leader from the Kangaroo Point Refugee campaign in Brisbane. You can watch a recording of the session 21March2022] [Video no longer available, or view the whole Organising in a Pandemic series.
Prompts for discussion
- Opening activity: Share an example of how you have worked with others (if you’ve been involved in a coalition share that). What went well? What was hard?
- Thinking about the Podcast, what were the features of the different coalitions? The kinds of relationships between the leaders, their breadth, the skills of those present, the focus of their agenda, the time period of their work, other elements? What impact did these features have on the outcomes? What do you think were most important?
- What does it mean to build a powerful coalition? What does success look like? Where do you see potential for powerful coalitions?
- Who in the group has read or watched further resources? Share particular insights from each resource with others in the group.
- Action: What will you do next to build relationships and power for transformation?
About Amanda Tattersall, Reset 5 curator
Amanda Tattersall is a community organiser and academic. She is the host of the ChangeMakers Podcast that features social change stories from around the world. She was the founder and former Executive Director of the Sydney Alliance, bringing Saul Alinsky style community organising to Australia and building a diverse coalition of community organisations, unions, religious organisations and schools. She also co-founded GetUp and was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Unions NSW.She wrote the globally focused “go to” book on coalition strategy (Power in Coalition, Cornell University Press), and has been involved in many social movements including the student, union, peace, refugee movement and climate movements. She has a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Sydney on people power in cities and is based at the Sydney Policy Lab. You can find many more articles and podcasts from Amanda Tattersall via the ChangeMakers collection on the Commons.
What’s next?
Reset 6: Centring Justice and Care readings will be available 13 July. If you haven’t signed up to receive the fortnightly emails yet you can do so at Welcome to Reset Reading Group. The readings for each theme will be available in the Reset collection on an ongoing basis.
