Hi all, my name is Sidd, a senior studying environmental science and geography! A lot of my time at IU has been spent organizing around environmental and social justice, such as with the Graduate Workers Union and Students for a New Green World (SNGW). Throughout my years here, I’ve gradually learned a few strategies for successful organizing, and I’d like to share these here for anyone to pull from! One of the first actions that any successful movement I’ve been a part of has done is to establish some form of structure. This ranged from creating a clear hierarchy of leadership positions to committing to a non-hierarchical structure with tasks delegated to members to complete. No matter what structure was decided on, we always clearly delegated tasks to people or groups to ensure that everyone knew who to communicate with about each action. Consistent meeting schedules and decision-making processes also made our organizing more effective. There was never one specific structure that worked for every movement; instead, we would create it depending on the goal, size, and other factors of the movement. The next element that allowed us to grow and maintain our movements was a commitment to values or goals. Throughout my experience, the more specific and tangible the goals were, the more committed we were to them. For example, SNGW listed out demands in response to the community being uncertain what our goals were; after writing demands such as the need for “a climate action plan crafted collaboratively between students, staff, and faculty” that includes “a plan to reach carbon neutrality by 2040” at IU, the movement brought in more support from a broader community. Other examples of the effectiveness of shared goals can be seen with the collaboration between students with the Respect Workers group and other labor groups on campus to push IU to provide relief checks to all university workers during the COVID-19 pandemic; the shared tangible goals facilitated those partnerships between student workers and other labor groups on campus to make their success possible. Tangible goals gave us something specific to work towards, maintaining our movements over long periods of time. The last suggestion that I’d like to share is the importance of a sense of place. I never realized the significance of this until my last year of organizing with Students for a New Green World. The Food Institute provided us with a space for our weekly meetings that we could all consistently return to. This built familiarity and comfort with our location during our meetings, resulting in members returning more consistently than before. A shared space can be extremely helpful for maintaining movements and facilitating healthy activism by providing organizers a comfortable place to discuss their movements as needed. My experience as an organizer on campus has been extremely fulfilling, but it was difficult to retain knowledge from previous organizers as they left Bloomington over time. I hope that this post can serve to fill that gap as my peers and I graduate and phase out of IU.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorSThis blog features the current work of CFS Lab researchers in their own words. Archives
October 2021
Categories |