PODCAST: James Mumm, Stephanie Luce, and Bill Fletcher on knowing your target, learning from successful failures, and building a united front
Craft of Campaigns Podcast: Special Episode Part 1
This episode is part one of a two-part special episode from the Craft of Campaigns Podcast. You can listen to them here in any order. Unlike their standard episodes that zoom in on one particular campaign, in this two-part series they are zooming out around broader strategy themes. To help us zoom out, they invited five insightful thought leaders, who each recently wrote vital resources for campaign organizers, to talk with the podcast host Andrew.
In part one, Andrew Willis Garcés talks with three guests. First James Mumm grounds us in ‘what is organizing’ anyway, the importance of thinking like a target in power analysis, and why campaigns must contest for mainstream values, pulling from his co-written report The Antidote To Authoritarianism. Then we hear from Stephanie Luce about her co-written book, Practical Radicals, how campaigns relate to her Seven Strategies framework, and learning from “successful failures.” Finally, Bill Fletcher differentiates between ‘campaigns’ and ‘movements’ and makes the case for broad united fronts, from his article in Convergence Magazine, “Campaigns and Movements: How Are They Connected, How Do They Differ?”
In part two of two (coming soon), Andrew talks with two guests. First Lauren Jacobs of Power Switch Action highlights the role of corporate targeting campaigns in resisting authoritarianism, pulling from her co-written article Reining in Amazon to Build Up People-Powered Democracy in The Forge. Then, we hear from Harmony Goldberg of Grassroots Power Project, about interventions from her co-authored guide Governing Power. Beyond cutting issues for easy wins given a terrain of power, she invites campaigners to orient toward the long term project of winning durable governing power, to transform the terrain of power itself. The episode touches themes of effective allies, building enforcement into demands, narrative struggle, and the importance of base building fundamentals.
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