Building Campaigns, Making Activists

 Eleni Zervos

What shapes an activist? What motivates our work? How will others respond to our message in the ways we want them to?

These were some of the questions we tackled throughout the past two days during Senior Fellow and campaign organizer Tara Dickman’s training on successful coalition building. As we created social campaigns and built panels to simulate a televised debate, we kept delving back into the crucial territory of self-reflection to revisit these questions, serving as a reminder that our identities are intimately tied to the work we do and that particularly in the context of activism, taking ownership of our stories is not only powerful but also essential.

the campaign "Stop le contrôle au faciès"

To guide us in our attempts to answer these questions, Tara presented to us the case of “Stop le Controle au Facies,” one of the campaigns she was involved in that aimed to combat stop and frisk policies that disproportionately affected communities of color in France. She started with the simple question: Are you uncomfortable claiming that you want power? This was an immediate departure from how activism is included in public discourse, as we tend to associate social justice with absolute altruism. Having personal motivations, however, is not necessarily antithetical to making a positive impact. In fact, recognizing that there is self-interest involved in the work you do and defining what it is, along with that of those you are trying to reach with your work, can determine which causes will motivate you the most and ultimately lead to more effective campaigning.

Coalition building in action: A protest outside the Royal Palace against plans for banning abortion in Warsaw, Poland, October 2016. source: https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-10-05/warsaw-protests-put-end-proposal-absolute-ban-abortions-poland

After we determine what our motivations are, we must ask: how do we effectively share our message? In response to this, Tara gave us one striking statistic: 7% of communication is its actual content. The message was clear: activism requires strategy and not only intentions. This is not only applicable in cases of campaign organizing and media presentation but also when working within communities that are not your own. Aiming to make a difference does not qualify someone to be in a position of leadership to initiate that change. Amplifying the voices of those we strive to work with should always be a primary concern as they are the ones who understand the challenges they face best. Only through the active inclusion of their stories can any campaign be successful.

One of the final questions we asked ourselves: what made you? As I listened to my peers share their stories, I kept coming back to the idea that the onus is not just on them to own their narrative, but also on us to create a space where they feel empowered to do so. Most aspects of activism, whether someone is conducting informative conversations with the aim to better understand someone else’s story, otherwise known in the HIA sphere as “one-on-ones”, or organizing large-scale campaigns, are collaborative processes, that thrive on environments of mutual trust. The willingness to be vulnerable is a form of resistance all on its own. The commitment to sharing one’s story and relate to someone else’s is one the understated foundations of empathetic and impactful work. It should thus be treated with the necessary care and the recognition that the act of sharing one’s story is a powerful form of activism. Watching as the fellows shared what made them also solidified the idea that one of the most critical aspects to one’s story is the people that have influenced them. The people that related to them. The people that shared their own stories with them. As Tara said, that world will challenge us and will not always be as welcoming as this fellowship has been, but here is as good a place as any to start building resistance and a coalition of empathetic, thoughtful and unafraid activists - one story at a time.