How to Manage a Movement

I’m sure I don’t need to explain to you why a massive political movement is needed. No branch of the government is going to save us. No superhero is going to fly in at the last minute. The movement has to come from we the people.

We need to design a movement that is both strategic and tactical, and it has to put immense political power back into the hands of the people in order to protect our democracy.

The problem is—there doesn’t seem to be a plan. Now, I’m not saying there isn’t a plan, but from our perspective at the grass roots, there is no plan. Whose job is it down here at our level to come up with a plan? There are experts in this kind of thing and I am not one of them. But I am familiar with launching large programs, so I’m going to take a stab at what a plan might look like, then explain what you and I should be doing to prepare for it.

I’ve divided this into five phases. I’m stating them in order, but each phase needs to keep going even after the next phase has started.

1. Threat Assessment

2. Coalition Building

3. Strategy

4. Program Management

5. Mobilization

Threat Assessment

Right now we have a wealth of output from the Threat Assessment phase of the movement. It is carved into our brains how terrible Trump is and how dire our situation is. This shouldn’t stop, but threat assessment alone is simply admiration of the problem. It falls flat if there is no call to action, and the message I’m hearing from the liberal community FEELS like it is falling flat.

But is it?

Coalition Building

Before we can get to a call to action, we need to establish our coalition. A coalition is better than a single, massive group movement because each member of the coalition knows its audience and has a honed method of successfully persuading that group. Spokespersons from each group need to be given a seat at the virtual table where the strategy is determined, and the net needs to be thrown wide. The secular community will need to form coalitions with people it wouldn’t normally agree with: religious progressives and other issue-oriented groups. Our philosophical, political, and spiritual differences are not as important as the authoritarian threat we face … which has been addressed ad nauseam. The network should also extend beyond U.S. borders, because we might need friends in other countries.

It appears we are getting bogged down at this step. Are we bogged down? I don’t know because no one who has a seat at that virtual table is saying anything … probably for good reasons. I spoke with a relative insider at last weekend’s American Atheist conference who said that yes, conversations at that level are happening. I hope he is correct because we need to get our shit together quickly. This is why our spinning record appears to be skipping on threat assessment.

My request to the coalition leaders—if you exist—is to say something. Say that progress is being made toward a goal. Say that you are rehearsing what the steps will be on that magic day when MAGA people realize they’ve been lied to. We will need instructions. At least for now, the primary message should explain what groups are in the coalition, so we can get plugged into one of those groups.

Strategy

Remember the Occupy Wall Street movement? It failed for several reasons, and one of them was that it had too many causes, and made ambiguous and impossible demands. This needs to be kept in mind by the coalition leaders when forming a strategy.

Each subgroup in the coalition is going to have a distinct pet cause. Like the Occupy Wallstreet Movement, this movement will fail if it tries to appease everyone. In desperate times like this, coalition members need to set aside their distinct goals in order to meet the shared goal. The spokespeople need to pick one achievable demand, then decide how to best rain hell on the appropriate people and organizations until that demand is met.

We need to do everything legally possible to apply pressure, and it’s not that hard. No violence. No destruction, but it cannot simply be holding signs, honking horns, and shouting slogans. It needs to result in financial devastation to whoever is targeted. It should be extremely not nice. Once the name of this movement is invoked, it should strike fear into whoever is targeted. For this reason, it is better to pick a small, decisive victory to win first.

Let’s say the goal is to release Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The movement should creatively target everyone involved in the decision, the contractors involved in the transfer of prisoners, and the prison itself, people who funded the prison, the leadership of El Salvador, wherever they are vulnerable, should be targeted. The movement will be deemed terrorism, but it won’t be because every action taken will be legal.

I recommend that strategists expand their expectations of the general public, within reason. Marketers will tell you that a call to action must be small, easy, and have a perceived benefit to the individual. I take a huge risk in saying that this time things might be different. A good portion of the general public—due to our tsunami of threat assessment information—is aware of the peril we are in.

Remember the recent escapades with the Game Stop stock? Rank and file individuals all over the country joined in—at great financial risk—and purchased a stock that appeared to be failing. Why? Because it was fun to fuck over a despised element of our society. There is a lesson to be learned there. The American spirit might not be altruistic, but we will band together and take risks if it means we can screw over someone we hate. This is the part of the American psych that the movement should tap into.

Program Management

This is where the rubber meets the road. Program Management is roughly the same as Project Management, except a project has a fixed end and a program does not. The goal of this program is to get the message out to as many people as possible, and persuade them to take a coordinated action that will help the movement apply pinpointed pressure to meet the demand. Rinse and Repeat. A myriad of disciplines will be required. Data Analysis, Data Security, Communications, Marketing, Logistics, and a long list of others.

We’ve very recently done it with Tesla. In a relatively short span of time, and without being very organized, activists were able to reduce Elon Musk's net worth by $134 billion so far this year. Take note, however, that the value of TSLA on the NYSE is still higher than what it was a year ago, so the net loss came from imaginary gains proffered after Trump’s election. But still, the recent actions show what we are capable of, and it doesn’t even have a name yet. Imagine if we had the time to actually strategize, market, communicate, and organize. We can do much more than we did to TSLA if we begin soon, and have specific actions planned and rehearsed in advance. The program managers will be coordinating communications, timing protests, dealing with the press, permits etc. They will also be doing research on the chosen objective with specific tasks to be assigned through Mobilization. They will be writing instructions for people on how to access their 401ks on various platforms and divest from specific funds that carry whatever group is being targeted.

Mobilization

This is where most of us get involved. We will be communicated to through whatever group we are aligned with. We will hopefully be given specific instructions. While the effort may seem national in scope (and it is) many of the actions will take place locally. In order for that to work, you are going to have to be plugged into a group that is plugged into the coalition.

What Shall We Then Do?

So, we need to do the thing that feels strangely awkward to many of us: we need to get involved locally. We have to get to know our neighbors. We have to go to local meetings. We have to form bonds with hyper-local people who are within walking distance from our homes. We need to understand our 401k and how to divest from a specific fund. We need to get off social media that is operated by an oligarch. (Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos would be the top three.)

And those of you leaders who are talking amongst yourselves, please establish a neutral channel of communication, and give us hints as to what is going on.

We need inspiration.