Introduction
Remember the power and importance of one on one meetings when organizing to help your groups grow and invite people to step into leadership. This is an excerpt from Daniel Hunter’s book, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow: An Organizing Guide.
Organizing One on One Meetings
Ask most people how they got started with a group, and they’ll tell you that someone talked to them and asked them to get involved. That simple one-on-one encounter is too often overlooked once we’re in a group. We forget the power of reaching out to others.
The basics of one-on-ones are straightforward:
- Find a time to talk with someone;
- Listen to that person to understand where they’re coming from; and
- Make a specific ask tailored to who and where they are (for example sign a petition, bring juice to the next meeting, or speak at an upcoming event).
One-on-ones enable a group to grow. Groups wanting to attract new members or participants need to continually meet with new people one-on-one, whether by knocking on doors in a neighborhood, talking on the phone, or shouting through cell walls.
They are also helpful in strengthening groups. Groups are only as strong as the relationships binding them together.
Some groups spend too much time in meetings or events, while overlooking the importance of one-on-one and small group time among their members. During one-on-ones, we can make “asks” of people, inviting them to take on a little more leadership than they have shown before.
Southern organizer Si Kahn writes about the difference between general requests (“please help us in whatever way you can”) and specific requests, which are more likely to actually recruit someone. During a campaign to close an immigrant family detention center, Si’s group made specific asks to specific people.
Grassroots Leadership invites artists, musicians, and poets to help spread the word about immigrant family detention.
What YOU can do:
- Make a brief announcement about the Campaign at your concerts and, where appropriate, pass the hat and send contributions to the Campaign;
- Write and/or record a song about immigrant family detention;
- Put information about the Campaign to End Immigrant Family Detention on your website and in your newsletters;
- Mention the Campaign when you are interviewed on the radio or in other media.
You need to have a good sense of what tasks people can help with— otherwise, you’ll lose the energy of potential volunteers who think you’re great but don’t know how to plug in.
Notice how Si’s group didn’t just ask folks to come to a meeting, but customized their asks to the people they were asking (musicians/artists/poets). Their requests were specific, tangible, doable, and tailored to their audience.
Gail Tyree is an experienced organizer who uses powerful one-on-ones in her organizing. While sponsored by Grassroots Leadership, she worked on a campaign against a proposed immigrant detention center in Southwest Ranches, Florida.
They were against huge forces: a massive explosion of rounding up undocumented immigrants (in 2011, over 420,000 people were placed in detention centers) and the powerful private prison lobby that locks up half of them.
“Most people when they’re dealing with a situation want to vent about it but they’re not really ready to take action,” Gail explained.
“They need support to really get involved—and that’s not easy to do.” One young woman, Ryan Greenberg, lived right across the street from the proposed detention center site. Ryan was reluctant to get involved in the campaign. She told Gail, “I know it’s wrong, but I don’t have time for this fight. They’re gonna win anyway. And I have other things to do.”
Gail sat down with Ryan at a sandwich shop. She listened for a long time about Ryan’s life, her concerns, her priorities, and all the reasons she felt she couldn’t get involved in the campaign. After a while, Gail said, “You don’t have to help with this campaign. I can’t make you do it. But where your house is located, you’re going to be able to see the prison, right down the hill from your back yard. Now imagine your daughter sees some of the immigrant girls down the hill playing and she says, ‘There are some girls down the hill mama, Can I play with them?’ You tell me, what are you going to tell your daughter? How are you going to explain that these little girls are in prison and did not do anything illegal to be there, in addition you did nothing to stop this place from being built?”
Ryan opened her eyes and immediately broke into tears. Gail joined her, recalling that they cried for ten minutes together. Gail then asked Ryan to join the campaign and come to meetings regularly—which she readily did. Ryan soon became a leader in the campaign and continues to be a voice in her community against immigrant detention centers and for-profit private prisons.
“Whenever she was ready to quit,” Gail recalls, “all I had to do was remind her about this conversation and the pain she felt. She was convicted to the cause.” Gail knew that getting people motivated is crucial. “When you’re working as an organizer, you’re almost like a neighborhood psychologist. You have to help people through their pain. You should spend most of the time listening to the pain.”
Getting to that point requires listening patiently and closely to people and connecting to their deeper motivations, hopes, and dreams.
Access Full Book
This booklet is for people who want to act for change. It offers tools and activities you can use in groups. It’s filled with practical tips and strategic principles, with real-life examples of campaigns around the country. Each section ends with guiding questions to help think about next steps.
- Chapter 1: Roles in Movement-Building
Looks at different roles played in movements, examining our own strengths and those of others. - Chapter 2: Building Strong Groups
Focusses on building strong groups. Groups generate social power and are a building block of movement work. - Chapter 3: Creating Effective Campaigns
Examines creating change through campaigns.
The book also comes with a Study Guide – The New Jim Crow Study Guide and Call to Action. This study guide provides a launching pad for groups wishing to engage in deep, meaningful dialogue about race, racism, and structural inequality in the age of mass incarceration.
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About the Author
Daniel Hunter is an organizer and strategist with Training for Change, an activist training organization. He’s sought all over the globe for his expertise at organizing and direct action, having trained tens of thousands of activists in over a dozen countries.
He has previously authored a compelling narrative bringing to life the vibrancy of direct action campaigning in Strategy and Soul. He is also a contributor to the books Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution and We Have Not Been Moved: Resisting Racism and Militarism in 21st Century America. More about the author at: www.DanielHunter.org.
Explore Further
- Organizing: People, Power and Change – The One on One 1:1 Meeting
Learn how to run a one on one meeting with these tips & best practices from the Leading Change Network and the New Organizing Institute. - Leaderful Organizing Tool: Flipping the Script
Flipping the Script is a tool for building confidence in one on one conversations in community organizing. - How to Build Relationships: One on One Conversations Resistance School Course (Videos) –
A video course by the Resistance School about how to identify leaders through one on one conversations, building capacity within groups, and achieving effective action over time. - Relationships are the glue of organising
An article about the importance of one on ones. - Organizing: Start here
Organising builds people power for change. Here is a list of resources to get you started including different approaches, manuals & tactics. - Relational Organizing, Climate Advocacy Lab
Webinar, tips, articles and worksheets that will help you develop a relational organizing strategy, think about how to use your existing network to build power, and provide a few tactics you can use to push people up your ladder of engagement. - Creative Community Organizing: A Guide for Rabble-Rousers, Activists, and Quiet Lovers of Justice by Si Kahn
This book will help established organizers become more innovative and encourage them to question established principles and decide whether or not they still work. Aspiring organizers will discover a whole new way of looking at the world – they’ll gain a sense of empowerment, understand that they can live and work in ways that help make the world more just and humane.
