How often do you get the chance to take in wisdom garnered through decades of smart organizing work?
In 1979, from a remote summer camp cabin in the Berkshire mountains, nineteen-year-old Al Giordano started organizing the Rowe Nuclear Conversion Campaign. Thirty-two years later, he's back in the same summer camp to share with us, lucky few, some of his best stories. A rare treat; not many organizers lasted as many seasons, or make the effort to patiently share their crop of battle-tested insights.
I have tried to harvest and store in my own words, with occasional quotes from memory, the two main lessons on organizing that I took away from a recent weekend workshop with Al Giordano. Eight more will follow soon, in a second post on interTactica.
The Yankee Atomic Electric Plant, in Rowe, Massachusetts, was the first commercial nuclear power plant in the US. It was also the first operating nuke to be shut down through a citizen-based campaign. It ceased operation in 1987, and was finally dismantled some twenty years later. Al Giordano was a key organizer of that campaign.
Lesson 1:
There's canvassing and phone banking, or it's not organizing
A formative moment in Al's early activist life was meeting seasoned organizer Bill Moyer (the author of Doing Democracy and the Movement Action Plan, not the other one). Bill asked the young lad how his antinuclear organizing was going. Al said: "We do actions, we have media, it's great."
Moyer wasn't impressed. He cautioned: "That's not how it's done. If you want to win in the long run, you have to organize. And if it doesn't involve canvassing and phone banking, it's not organizing". So together, they worked on a petition, and a little script with talking points. Moyer then dropped Giordano in a little Vermont town called Putney: "Now you go and knock on doors. I'll pick you up in a few hours".
"And that's how," says Al, "I learned to listen and talk to people".
Lesson 2:
Capture the flag
On Christmas Eve, 1982, Al received a phone call from one of his mentors, Abbie Hoffman. "Come with me to Bucks County, Pennsylvania", he said. A citizens group called Del-AWARE was getting desperate. They were trying to stop the Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO) from building a pumping station set to divert 360 million litres a day from the Delaware River, to cool off a nuclear power plant. This would of course seriously damage the river. When Al told Abbie he might like to spend Christmas Eve with his family, Hoffman insisted: "So? Where would we be if George Washington had taken the night off on Christmas Eve?" (*)
So, off they went, met with the group, agreed to work together. With construction to start in a few days, the situation was in its eleventh hour. Marty Jezer tells the story in Abbie Hoffman American Rebel.
[Abbie] and Al decided to visit the Washington Crossing Historical Park, farther down the Delaware River, in order to discuss the situation. They were standing on the bank throwing rocks into the river when Al said, "It's too bad that this site isn't close to Valley Forge, because if it were we could call the occupation a winter encampment." Abbie lit up. "People don't know geography. It's in Pennsylvania. It's close enough." They went into the park store and bought up the thirteen-star American flags, the Don't Tread on Me banners, and all the patriotic souvenirs the concession was selling. They rushed back to the construction site and handed out the flags and banners. Abbie got some poster paper and began scrawling out patriotic messages. He told people to get red, white, and blue ink and make copies. A banner was raised: Valley Forge II, Dump the Pump. A big holly tree was dubbed the "liberty tree." PECO and its contractors became the "Hessians", paid mercenaries brought in to destroy the community's way of life.
By appropriating patriotic symbols and placing the protesters' occupation of the construction site within the American historic tradition, Abbie and Al rallied the community. It was "the American conscience bubbling up," Giordano recalls. The patriotic theme captured everyone's enthusiasm. The protest turned into a permanent encampment. The ground-breaking ceremony was canceled, and at six o'clock on the morning that construction was to begin all access roads to the site were blocked by people and cars. That day all work stopped. In the next two weeks the battle over the pumping station was turned around.
In order to succeed, organizing work should anchor itself firmly into the local culture, and give expression to people's deepest longings and fantasies. If you can use symbols from that foundation, your campaign will resonate deeply. Powerful symbols can drive momentum and make your campaign irresistible.
Next: We draw a few more lessons from Al Giordano, for instance on how to extend a campaign outside of its initial boundaries, to reach a larger audience, and win more space and time for organizing.
(*) For those of us not so familiar with American history, on the night of December 25, 1776, George Washington led a famous attack against the British across the Delaware River.
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Philippe Duhamel
interTactica — a liberation blog
Some of you have been asking: What happened to the Flying Elf? Turns out, charges were dropped earlier this month (more here in French).
We had a fantastic lawyer, someone who understands the political nature of our civil disobedience to challenge Canada's unacceptable Bush-era stance on global warming. Lawyers who choose to donate their time to support the issues of their day are a precious resource. Al Giordano also raves about his long-time pro bono lawyer friend who, he says, "has been keeping me out of jail for over thirty years". Starting May 27, 2009, NewTactics features an online dialogue on Engaging Pro Bono Lawyers. Check it out.
