Section 4. Social Action

• What is social action?

• Why engage in social action?

• When should you engage in social action?

• Who should be involved in social action?

• How do you engage in social action?

Sometimes, the best way to inspire change is to confront decision makers through organized, collective action. This is called social action, and it can range from organizing a letter-writing campaign to assembling thousands of people at a state or national capital to protest government actions. This section looks at organizing communities to engage in social action - why and how to do it, when it's appropriate, and what it might accomplish.

What is social action?

Social action is the practice of taking action – usually as part of an organized group or community – to create positive change. Sometimes social action can lead to profound social change, as in the case of the Civil Rights Movement; sometimes social action seeks more limited and specific changes – the preservation of an open space, for example, or better pay for a specific group of workers.

Social action, by its nature, is often practiced by people and communities whose perspectives or interests have historically had less influence in political, economic, or social decision-making – including people experiencing poverty, people from underrepresented groups, or people with disabilities – but it may be used by any group that feels its concerns are being ignored. By working together, members of these groups can build and exercise collective power through their numbers, the media, voting, boycotts, and other forms of social, political, and economic pressure to persuade decision makers to reconsider their positions.

A few of the numerous reasons that a group might engage in social action:  

• To ensure that policy considerations include the interests and perspectives of people and communities that have historically been underrepresented in these discussions, including communities with limited economic resources and other underrepresented groups.
• To institute fairer policies and eliminate discrimination.
• To address past wrongs, as in providing apologies and restitution to Japanese Americans who were unjustly and unconstitutionally incarcerated by the U.S. government during World War II.
• To prevent harm to the community. This might mean challenging the siting of an industrial facility because of pollution concerns, for instance.
• To gain particular benefits to the community, or a part of the community, sometimes on quite a small scale.
• To preserve something of historical or social value.
• To include in policy deliberations people whose perspectives have historically been excluded, as in, for example, involving community members from underrepresented groups on a police review board.

These are only a small number of the nearly endless possible reasons for engaging in social action. Just as there are many reasons you might take action, there are many different kinds of action you might take, ranging from explaining your situation to policy makers to confronting force with civil disobedience. Some examples:

• Organizing a group to write letters, make phone calls, or send e-mails to policy makers, particularly legislators, in order to make both your position and the extent of your constituency known.
• Encouraging the media to cover events or publish stories that highlight particular issues, document the positions or actions of public officials and other decision makers, and help the public understand what is at stake. You might also plan events particularly to attract the media.
• Putting together or backing a slate of candidates for public office. This may entail anything from stuffing envelopes to going door to door discussing the issues to driving voters to the polls.
• Attending a public meeting as a group, offering testimony or public comment, and otherwise making visible the number of people concerned about an issue being discussed.
• Performing street theater. Street theater, as its name implies, is theater performed in public that is meant to ridicule the opposition and/or to convey a profound message in a way that is easily understood and  entertaining. It goes back at least to ancient Greece, continued through the Middle Ages in morality plays and puppet shows, and has been used in modern times, particularly since the mid-Twentieth Century, for political protest.

The Bread and Puppet Theater, now based in Vermont, was known particularly during the Vietnam War for its political street productions featuring huge puppets and its custom of sharing bread with the audience.

• Organizing demonstrations, rallies and marches. The “classic” social actions, these often involve signs, speeches, entertainment, and/or elements of street theater.
• Picketing or organizing a strike. These are, of course, time-honored labor tactics, usually applied to a particular plant or corporation or industry. There is also the possibility of a general strike – a situation where everyone in a group, a community, or even a whole country, refuses to work for a day, a few days, or indefinitely until those in power accede to demands.
• Organizing a boycott. Named after Charles Boycott, a British land agent in Ireland who was ostracized (i.e., no Irish would deal or communicate with him) for his policies, a boycott consists of refusing to deal or trade with a company (or a city, state, or country) that the boycotters believe is doing something morally wrong.
• Organizing a sit-in. Sometimes an act of civil disobedience, this involves a group remaining in a public or institutional space – perhaps an official's office, a courtyard, a building, or a park – in order to make a moral or political point, assert a right to use the space, or press decision makers to negotiate. Depending on the location and circumstances, participants should understand applicable rules, legal risks, and possible consequences beforehand.

Civil disobedience is a particular kind of action in which participants intentionally violate a law, rule, or order as an act of conscience. They may do so because they are protesting the law itself or because they believe a deliberate nonviolent violation is necessary to call attention to an injustice. Anyone considering civil disobedience should understand the legal and personal risks, including the possibility of arrest, court proceedings, fines, or other consequences, and should make an informed choice about whether to participate.

Social action is probably what most people think of when they hear the term “community organizing.” It is the type of organizing that Saul Alinsky, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, and other well-known 20th Century organizers primarily engaged in. It is meant to help people who have historically been excluded from political or social decision-making build collective power and greater influence over the conditions that affect their lives. For this reason, the “Iron Rule” of community organizing is never to do for people what they can do for themselves.

One of the most influential figures in modern community organizing was Saul Alinsky, who, in the late 1930s, helped bring together workers and neighborhood institutions in Chicago's Back of the Yards area to form the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council. Alinsky worked through existing organizations – unions, churches, and fraternal organizations – to build a political base among workers and residents who had experienced exploitation and limited influence. The effort contributed to improvements in working conditions, pay, and neighborhood conditions, and the organization continues to operate.

Citizens for New York City (CitizensNYC) supports neighborhood leaders across New York City through grants, capacity-building, and other resources for community-led projects.

Alinsky’s type of organizing is based on building political power and using it to engage, pressure, and when necessary confront decision makers through social action so that community interests cannot easily be ignored. This approach is still widely used, especially in situations where decision-making power has long been concentrated. The larger organization that Alinsky founded to carry his work around the country, the Industrial Areas Foundation, explains its strategy on its website:

"The IAF is non-ideological and strictly non-partisan, but proudly, publicly, and persistently political. The IAF builds a political base within society's rich and complex third sector - the sector of voluntary institutions that includes religious congregations, labor locals, homeowner groups, recovery groups, parents associations, settlement houses, immigrant societies, schools, seminaries, orders of men and women religious, and others. And then the leaders use that base to compete at times, to confront at times, and to cooperate at times with leaders in the public and private sectors."

This is probably as good an explanation as any of what social action is meant to do.

Why engage in social action?

Social action can sometimes be confrontational and contentious. It can also involve real risks, as shown by the violence experienced by Civil Rights marchers and organizers in the 1960s and by striking farm workers in California in the 1960s and '70s. If you choose to practice civil disobedience, you may face arrest, fines, court proceedings, or other consequences. Even lower-risk actions – sending letters to the editor, for instance – may create disagreement or criticism within the community. So why would you choose to use these methods?

There are several reasons why social action is often the appropriate choice:

• It can energize communities and strengthen the collective power of people who have historically had limited influence. The experience of participating in an action – especially if it produces visible progress – can be powerful for people who have rarely seen themselves influence the course of events. It can change what they believe is possible and help prepare and sustain them for a long struggle to achieve far-reaching goals.

This can be true even for people who may not have been part of the original action.  Witnessing what people like themselves can accomplish may inspire others either to join the current effort, or to join – or even start – similar efforts in the future.

• It can unify communities. Collective action brings people together in the way that many collaborative activities do. It creates a spirit of shared effort and shared passion, and binds individuals into a community of shared purpose.
• It can demonstrate to the larger community that the organized group has meaningful support and influence. Decision makers and other community members may have to take its needs and interests seriously, even when they disagree with its position.
• It may be necessary when decision makers repeatedly refuse to address a serious concern. Those targeted by social action may have held power for a long time, may benefit from existing arrangements, or may simply reject the need for change. It may take a sustained campaign to persuade or pressure them to address community concerns.

Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) worked for years in Little Rock and across Arkansas to organize Black and White residents with low and moderate incomes around shared economic interests and to build enough power to achieve increasingly significant victories. In the 1970s, organizers were working in a state still deeply shaped by segregation and racial inequality, and many political and economic institutions were unresponsive to the concerns of people experiencing poverty. ACORN combined legal strategies with social action to press for economic justice when conversation alone had produced little change.

• It may be seen as morally necessary. Social action can be hard and unpopular. People generally engage in it because they believe their cause is right, and may see it as their moral duty to do something about it.

When the writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau was jailed for refusing to pay a tax to support the Mexican War, his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, the philosopher, asked him “Why are you in there?” Thoreau replied with his own question: “Why are you not in here?” He clearly saw his action as a moral issue.

• It can motivate people to take other kinds of positive action. Once people see that collective action can influence what happens in their communities, they may become more willing to take on other kinds of tasks – starting cooperatives, rehabilitating deteriorated housing, cleaning up neighborhoods, or organizing around new issues. They may also develop skills, relationships, and confidence that strengthen future community efforts.
• It can be the beginning of a process that leads to a more collaborative larger community. Once a group has demonstrated that its members are organized and that their concerns cannot simply be ignored, there may be greater opportunity for negotiation, accommodation, and eventual collaboration with people or institutions that were once opponents.
• It can lead to long-term positive social change. Social action, like other forms of community organizing, generally has long-term as well as short-term goals. While the purpose of a particular action might be narrowly defined, the long-term goals of many organizing efforts are greater equity and social and economic justice. A well-managed social action campaign that maintains its momentum over the long haul can broaden participation and help change institutions, policies, and public expectations. A major example is the Civil Rights Movement, whose sustained organizing and action helped build national support for dismantling legally enforced segregation and expanding civil rights.

In another example from ACORN, the association’s initial actions were aimed at obtaining furniture and clothing benefits that people receiving public assistance were entitled to under Arkansas law. As ACORN grew stronger and added more groups to its membership, it advocated for working-class homeowners and helped stop construction of a power plant that organizers believed would seriously harm farming in the area. Over time, ACORN expanded nationally and internationally and worked on affordable housing, fair lending, living-wage jobs, schools, and other economic and social justice issues. The original U.S. national organization later ceased operations, while ACORN International and newer U.S. affiliates continue related organizing today.

Just as there are many reasons to engage in social action, there may be reasons not to. In general, it makes sense to use the least escalatory method that is likely to achieve your goals. If meaningful progress can be made through collaboration, negotiation, persuasion, or compromise, you may preserve relationships and keep more options open for the future. More confrontational forms of social action are usually most useful when lower-key approaches have failed or when circumstances make stronger action necessary. Some times when social action would be unwise:

• When you can achieve your goals through lower-key means – negotiation, acceptable trade-offs, persuasion, compromise, or other collaborative approaches.
• When you don’t yet have the participation, organization, or resources needed for the action to have a reasonable chance of advancing your goals. In that case, you may still have organizing work to do before taking larger public action.
• When you’re operating on rumor rather than fact. Make sure you know that you’re taking action about something real, rather than gossip or fourth-hand reports. You can discredit your whole effort by failing to check your facts.
• When an action, even if successful, could have disastrous social or political consequences. In some instances, you could gain your immediate demand at the cost of creating a backlash that drives your cause back beyond where you started. Social action may still be warranted here – the Civil Rights Movement certainly could be described in these terms, especially at the beginning – but you should be aware of its consequences, both to your cause and to the individuals and groups involved.

When should you engage in social action?

• When negotiation and other lower-key approaches don’t produce satisfactory results. Sometimes, discussion and compromise do not lead to meaningful change. Decision makers may reject the concern, protect existing interests, or offer changes that do not adequately address the issue.
• When time is short. The chainsaws are already running in a threatened old-growth forest; the wrecking ball is moving toward a historic building; legislators are about to make a major cut to food assistance or another essential program. In these cases and many like them, rapid action may be one of the few ways to draw attention to what is about to happen before the decision becomes difficult or impossible to reverse.

The implication here is that time may be short because what’s about to happen can’t be reversed once it’s done. You might be able to change a law, or to challenge it in court; but you can’t bring back an old-growth forest or a historic building.

• When the time is right. The issue may be gaining recognition in the media or public opinion, or public opinion may be changing in your favor. You may have a window of opportunity here. An action at the right time can solidify support, and really put your effort over the top.
• When you have the resources to make action possible. Just having the resources– enough people, money, media contacts, etc. – is hardly an excuse for engaging in action, but it’s a necessary foundation for doing so.
• When you want to make a dramatic statement that will focus public attention. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, but ending legally enforced segregation on the city's buses required a sustained community campaign. The Montgomery bus boycott lasted more than a year, drew national attention, and placed substantial economic pressure on the city's transit system. Ultimately, the federal courts ruled bus segregation unconstitutional, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed that ruling to stand, Montgomery's buses were integrated, and the boycott ended.
• When you want to energize the community, strengthen collective power, and develop community leadership. Social action gets people moving and gives them opportunities to exercise leadership, make decisions, and see the effects of collective effort. It can strengthen people's confidence in their ability to influence the rules, policies, and decisions that affect their lives.
• When you want to catch the attention of the public – and the media – and build public support around an issue or your community's concerns. In a constant stream of news and information, it’s easy for a local issue or community perspective to receive little attention. Social action can make people more aware of your cause and the people affected by it.

The national grape boycott that grew out of the Delano grape strike beginning in 1965, and expanded across North America in the following years, brought widespread attention to the working conditions of farm workers. Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, the United Farm Workers, and thousands of farm workers and supporters used strikes, boycotts, marches, organizing, and negotiation to build public support and win union contracts that improved pay and working conditions.

Who should engage in social action?

Social action is often strongest when people whose interests are directly at stake have meaningful leadership in deciding whether and how to act. This is a case where the Iron Rule definitely applies. Those who may experience the consequences of an action should have a central role in deciding whether it is necessary. They should understand possible consequences – including political backlash, legal risk, harm to relationships, or physical danger – and make informed decisions about whether the potential benefits justify those risks.

There are really two constituencies to organize here. Alinsky approached already-existing organizations in the community – unions, fraternal and service organizations, churches – and enlisted their members through them. But in the efforts of Cesar Chavez and others to organize farm workers and gain concessions from growers, organizing usually had to concentrate on individuals.

Many migrant and seasonal farm workers had few durable organizations they could rely on across the places where they worked. Because workers often followed seasonal agricultural jobs across regions and states, they had limited opportunities to build long-lasting local organizations, and growers could retaliate against workers involved in union organizing. Churches and other community institutions also did not necessarily travel with workers from one location to another. As a result, organizers often approached workers as individuals and small groups in order to build an organization that could plan and coordinate actions across locations.

The answer to who should be involved in social action, then, is both organizations and institutions that include and represent the community in question, and individuals who can form groups where there are none.

How do you engage in social action?

Social action is different from locality development…but not entirely. Both start with some of the most important parts of community organizing – getting to know the community and its members, making direct contact, listening, and building trust and relationships. The steps to getting the community involved are discussed in detail in Section 2 of this chapter, Locality Development. We’ll review them briefly here, and add some details that are specific to organizing for social action.

Once the community is involved and a structure for action has been created – and it’s been determined from that process that social action is what’s needed in this situation – planning is the next step. Plans then have to be turned into action, and your strategy carried out. Finally, you have to follow up, evaluate what you’ve done, and decide what your next step will be.

Preparing for social action

• Get to know the community. Learn community history, priorities, relationships, and culture. Get acquainted with as many people as possible – have conversations not just about politics or social issues, but about everyday life, families, work, interests, and your own reasons for being involved. In other words, build genuine relationships rather than treating people only as potential participants in a campaign.
• Identify the issues that are likely to lead the community to social action. Social action often involves a community whose members believe their concerns have been ignored or whose influence has historically been limited. What is important enough to move people to act?
  
  The answer to this question, if it is to lead to anything, must come from the community itself. In meetings with individuals and groups, especially those in which community members discuss issues with one another, the major community concerns should surface. An organizer can sometimes help clarify or connect concerns that people are already expressing, but should avoid imposing a frame that does not reflect how community members understand the issue. Often, the organizer’s task is to help people see possible paths from concern to collective action.
• Identify and contact key individuals and groups. Starting with trusted and respected individuals and groups can help you build connections throughout the community. If a faith leader, neighborhood leader, or another trusted person introduces you, or if you’re working with a well-known and respected community-based organization or institution, people may be more willing to hear what you have to say. These individuals and groups can also help you avoid damaging mistakes by explaining relationships within the community, past organizing efforts, and other factors that might affect your work.
   
  As we discussed earlier in this section, whether you concentrate on individuals or groups may depend on the situation of the community you’re approaching. Where groups exist – churches, unions, community-based health and human service organizations, fraternal and service organizations, etc. – most organizers would try to use them as a base, since they already have members and structure. Where there are no or few functioning groups, key individuals are much more important, both in gaining access to others in the community, and in bringing people together.
  
  Even where there are many groups in the community, your first contacts will usually be with individuals. How those individuals – clergy persons, organization directors, business owners – view you may well determine whether their organizations will join the effort. Thus, establishing relationships with key individuals is often the first step toward successful community organizing.
• Recruit community members to the effort. This is the heart of any community organizing campaign. It involves direct and personal contact, which may include door-to-door canvassing, meetings in people’s homes or community spaces, public meetings, conversations in everyday gathering places, phone calls, texts, or online communication. Face-to-face contact can be especially valuable for building relationships, but the important principles are honesty about your purposes and goals, openness, accessibility, and respect. Use the communication methods that make sense for the community and make participation possible.

You also can’t build trust based on false premises. Be whoever you are – don’t try to pretend you’ve grown up working class, for instance, if you haven’t. What many would-be organizers often don’t understand is that you don’t have to pretend. Be comfortable with yourself and others will be comfortable with you, regardless of who you are, as long as it’s clear that you respect them for who they are. Be willing to learn, and others will be willing to teach. Never talk down to anyone, but don’t hesitate to use what you know in the service of your effort and the people you’re working with.

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the courtier Polonius is often mocked for his pomposity by both characters in the play and audiences. If you pay careful attention, however, you realize he is both honorable and wise. In his advice to his son, he speaks lines that are remarkably relevant to anyone who wants to engage in community organizing: “This above all: to thine own self be true,/ And it must follow, as the night the day,/ Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

Recruiting community members may take some time. Gaining the trust of a community, especially one that has experienced harm, exclusion, broken promises, or disrespect from outside institutions, is not an overnight task. Organizing often proceeds one relationship at a time. One person introduces you to others, who in turn make additional connections.

This may take a while, but participation can grow as trust and relationships develop, especially when people feel that the effort genuinely belongs to them. For this reason, it’s extremely important not to approach a community with a predetermined plan for what the community should do, but to let priorities and direction emerge from the people themselves.

Saul Alinsky, in organizing the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council (BYNC) in Chicago in 1939, partnered with Joe Meegan, the respected manager of a local park. As individuals and organizations were recruited, it was clear that the people would make the decisions about what direction the organization would take and what it would do. The motto of the BYNC was (and still is), “We the people will work out our own destiny.”

• Build a communication system. As you recruit individuals and groups and start to plan and carry out a social action strategy, it becomes crucial that people be able to contact one another and that information can be shared quickly and reliably. Phone calls, text or messaging groups, e-mail, social media, in-person contact, and other accessible methods can all be part of that system.
• Encourage leadership from the community from the beginning. Some of the key individuals you contact may not be identified as “community leaders,” but may be trusted people whom others listen to. They are already exercising leadership, with or without the title. Others may be ready to take on new leadership roles when given opportunities, support, and experience. The sooner the effort makes space for community members to lead, the more likely the community will be able to “work out its own destiny.”
• Create a structure to help the community accomplish its goals. Once enough individuals and groups are committed to the effort to sustain coordinated work, it may be time to pull them together into an organization or other structure that makes it possible to work through differences and plan and implement a coordinated social action strategy.
  
  The other great advantage of an organization or other structure is that it provides coordination and a focal point for whatever the community does. If there are negotiations with decision makers, for instance, the organization can coordinate representatives and shared priorities rather than having several groups negotiate separately without communication. This can strengthen the community's influence while still allowing members to acknowledge differences in perspective.

Planning for social action

Sometimes, social action arises from circumstance. The Czech opposition had for decades been hoping and planning for the spontaneous demonstrations of the “Velvet Revolution” of 1989 that led to the downfall of the Communist government. Leaders were available, and there were plans for a transition to non-Communist government,but there had been no planning for the huge demonstrations. They were a public reaction to the brutal repression of a student demonstration and to the demise of the Communist stranglehold in much of the Eastern Bloc.

On the other hand, when Wade Rathke arrived in Little Rock to start what became ACORN, he had no illusions about a spontaneous movement arising. He spent time recruiting organizations and individuals, identifying the important issues, forging alliances among groups that had previously been mutually hostile – particularly across racial lines – and planning with the community the ways in which they would approach the goals they had identified as most important and most reachable.

Whether it takes place over a long or a short period, planning is an important part of a social action campaign. Once you’ve laid the groundwork, and the community has organized, it’s time to strategize.

• Develop a strategic plan for social action. A social action campaign is just that. It’s likely that the community’s ultimate goals are long-term, and focus on permanent changes that will lead to social and economic justice. Goals that significant can’t be achieved quickly, or with only limited action. You’ll need a long-term strategy, as well as a strategy and action plan for reaching each of the interim goals that lead to the final outcome.
   
  We recommend the VMOSA process – develop a shared Vision; establish the Mission of your organization or initiative, based on the community vision; choose Objectives that reflect your vision and mission; formulate a Strategy for reaching those objectives; and devise Actions that will implement your strategy. Each element of this process should be carried out with the participation of – and, ideally, under the leadership of – the community, so that all of the plan is theirs. Organizers can play an important role as consultants and facilitators here, using their experience and expertise to help community members envision both short- and long-term goals, as well as what kinds of strategies and actions they might employ to reach those goals.

Some community organizers and community-building organizations concentrate much of their work on training organizers and leaders from within communities. The Highlander Research and Education Center trained many leaders and participants in the Civil Rights Movement and continues to support movement education and organizing. The Direct Action and Research Training Center (DART) and the Midwest Academy continue to provide organizing training, while the Industrial Areas Foundation develops leaders through its network of local organizations. PICO National Network is now known as Faith in Action. ACORN International and affiliated organizations also continue to use and teach member-led organizing approaches.
 

• Decide what kinds of actions will work best in your community, and what kinds of actions the community is and is not willing to take part in. There is a broad range of possible actions that a community can take. At one end are those actions that simply announce that the community exists as a unified force – letter-writing, calls or visits to officials relating to a legislative issue, etc. These actions require coordination and timing, but don’t ask anyone to subject themselves to any risk or public exposure. At the other end are acts of civil disobedience that may subject people to arrest and/or place them in physical danger.
   
  ​As a community, it’s important to know what you’re willing to do at any given time. This will depend on:
  • What is likely to be effective. Property damage or other destructive tactics can create legal and safety risks, shift attention away from the issue, and divide supporters, so groups should think carefully about whether any proposed tactic actually advances their goals.
  • What community members see as ethical or moral.The whole concept of nonviolent resistance, used by Gandhi and emulated by Martin Luther King and his colleagues in the American Civil Rights Movement, is based on the premise that violence against others is simply wrong, and would rob their movement of any moral force if they used it.
  • What community members are willing and prepared to do. This is related to the bullets both above and below, but also has to do with local history, social norms, previous experiences with authority, and personal circumstances. Some people may be uncomfortable with confrontation or public visibility, and others may face greater risks from participating. Strategies should account for those realities rather than assuming everyone can or should take the same role.
  • What kinds of risks people are willing to take. This may change as time goes on (see directly below), and different participants may face very different consequences from the same action. Some may be willing to be publicly identified or risk arrest; others may not. People should not be pressured into risks they have not freely chosen. A community that has experienced retaliation or severe consequences from protest in the past may have especially good reasons for caution, and the effort should respect those experiences.
  • What has already been tried. A community unwilling to engage in civil disobedience at the beginning of a campaign may feel differently after its milder efforts have been ignored. A community that’s staged a successful social action effort and reached its immediate goal may be willing to up the ante the next time. Circumstances and people change, which is why it’s important to revisit this question from time to time.
• Prepare contingency plans for what you will do if your first approach does not work. Sometimes a social action effort works on the first try. Sometimes it takes several attempts, a change in tactics, stronger public pressure, or another adjustment to bring progress. Sometimes the effort doesn’t work well, or at all: that’s when you need to have a Plan B.
   
  Your contingency plans can encompass many possibilities. One is to pause a particular issue and shift effort to a more achievable goal in order to build experience and morale. Another is to change tactics – approaching the issue from another angle or directing attention toward a different decision maker. You might also make clear that stronger public action is being considered while continuing to offer opportunities for negotiation. If escalation is chosen, it should be deliberate, consistent with the group's values, and based on a clear understanding of the likely benefits, risks, and consequences.

Escalation is not automatically the best outcome. If you can accomplish your goals by changing tactics, negotiating, or using another strategy, that may preserve relationships and reduce risk. You should have contingency plans that cover several possibilities so that you have choices when things don’t go as hoped. If stronger action may become necessary, decide in advance what forms the group considers appropriate and what limits it will observe.

The community should be clear about what level of action it is willing to take. Would some participants consider civil disobedience, while others prefer supporting roles? What are the probable and possible consequences of your plans for individuals, families, organizations, and the larger effort? Do participants understand their options and risks? Do you have the resources and commitment needed to sustain a difficult process – a lawsuit, for example – over time?

Whatever your answers to these questions, it’s necessary to plan for as many possibilities as you can. Never assume that just because you’re engaged in an action, it will accomplish your goals. You have to know what your next step is if it doesn’t.

Carrying out a social action strategy

Social action doesn’t always mean marching on City Hall in confrontation. It can include demonstrations when those are appropriate, but it can also mean testifying at a legislative hearing, going door to door to talk to voters about an upcoming election, filing a lawsuit, meeting with a regulatory agency to press for enforcement of existing rules, or visiting an elected representative with a group of community members.

The key difference between social action and individual democratic participation is the collective power created when many people coordinate around a shared concern. Calling an elected official as an individual to object to a government policy is democratic participation. Organizing thousands of people to call, write, meet with officials, demonstrate, or take other coordinated action around that same concern is social action.

Examples of social action abound. News reports regularly include campaigns in which organized communities use public pressure, advocacy, legal strategies, or direct action to influence decisions. The following historical examples show several forms of action ACORN was using in 2005:

• Mobilized voters – through door-to-door canvassing, voter registration, and participation in rallies – around a number of California ballot initiatives.
• Brought hundreds of members to a National Paint and Coatings Association board meeting in Cleveland to press the industry organization to discuss the paint industry's responsibility for lead exposure and its obligations to people harmed by lead paint.
• Co-sponsored a rally in New York City attended by more than 1,000 home childcare workers to highlight low wages and lack of support.
• Held actions around the country to oppose proposed federal budget cuts to programs serving people with low incomes.
• Taken part in actions and court proceedings related to the permit renewal of a smelter in El Paso, Texas, raising concerns about heavy-metal emissions and community health.

Eventually – usually sooner rather than later – you must go from planning to execution. Even in the simplest and least risky of actions, however – sending letters to legislators, for instance – people often need training or other kinds of help. The more complicated and potentially risky the action, the more support those engaged in it are likely to need.

Most of the steps below refer to carrying out an individual action. Remember, however, that carrying out a social action strategy is not the same as engaging in an individual action: it is often a long-term commitment to action of various kinds, usually with the goal of changing the distribution of power toward greater equity.

• Choose the time, place, target(s), and nature of your action based on its purpose, and on how it fits into your overall strategy. If you want to convince legislators to listen to you, or to act in a certain way, it makes no sense to demonstrate at the State House when they’re not in session, or at a place where they’re not likely to be aware of what you’re doing. If you want a bill passed, your action should aim at legislators; if you want a corporation to change its policies, your action should target the offices, or the officers, of that corporation. Think carefully about what you want to accomplish, and who actually has the power to make it happen.
   
  By the same token, consider what kind of action will be most effective for the purpose at hand and for your long-term strategy. In general, it makes sense to begin with the least escalatory action that has a reasonable chance of working, while preserving stronger options if they become necessary. If you can accomplish your goal without unnecessary confrontation, you may preserve relationships and leave room for negotiation. If you begin with your most disruptive tactic, you may have fewer options later and may find that repeated high-intensity actions lose their ability to attract attention.
   
• Provide the training and other support necessary to carry out a successful action before you engage in it. There are a number of different kinds of support that you may be able to provide:
  • Training. If people are writing letters or making phone calls, especially if they’re doing it for the first time, they may need a sample letter, talking points, or a script to use as a model. Participants should be briefed as fully as possible on the nature and extent of the action, their roles, where they’re expected to be, and when. If people are testifying before a legislative committee or a court, they should have a chance to practice what they’re going to say and learn what to expect. If civil disobedience is being considered, participants should receive appropriate nonviolence and safety preparation and understand possible legal consequences. They should also understand that participation is voluntary and that there are different roles – engaging in civil disobedience, supporting those who do, observing, providing logistics, or choosing not to participate in that part of the action. The more participants know beforehand, the better able they are to make informed choices and carry out their roles effectively.
  • Logistics. If you’re planning a march or a picket line, participants may need signs and clear information about where to gather. People may need transportation to a public meeting or polling place. Participants may need maps, accessibility information, water, charging options, or other practical support. For a media event or rally, you may need photographs, sound equipment, printed materials, computers, or a projector or display. Anticipating what organizers and participants need is an important part of organizing an action.

Don’t forget basic necessities. If a group is meeting with officials at City Hall or the State House, what will they do for lunch? Particularly if it’s a warm day, you may have to provide drinking water. Restroom facilities – portable or otherwise – might be needed. An adequate number of trash cans available during a rally will make clean-up after it much easier. The more of these kinds of things you can anticipate, the smoother your action will go.

• Coordination and support. People function better when roles and points of contact are clear. Having designated people provide directions, instructions, information, accessibility support, and other assistance can help an action run more smoothly and help participants know where to turn when questions or problems arise.

This kind of coordination and support is especially important when there is a risk of conflict, violence, harassment, or other safety problems. If the action is intended to be nonviolent, organizers should communicate that expectation clearly and designate trained marshals or safety coordinators who can help de-escalate problems and direct participants if conditions change.

• Plan the action in detail, then follow your plan. Just as with the overall strategy, the planning of an action should be participatory, involving people affected by the issue and representatives of member and affiliated organizations. The more meaningful a role participants have in shaping the strategy and individual actions, the more likely they are to remain engaged over the long term.
   
  The planning of an event should consider as many realistic possibilities as you and others involved can identify. It’s much easier to prevent or prepare for common problems than to respond to them for the first time in the middle of an action.

So what happens when you’ve planned carefully, and the absolutely unexpected happens: the legislative hearing you’d lined up testimony for is canceled; your main speaker is injured in a traffic accident on the way to the rally; the leader of your opposition has a heart attack on the morning of the day you’d planned to confront him?

One answer is, of course, that you should have foreseen the possibility of all of these events, and planned accordingly… and perhaps you did. But it’s simply not realistic to assume that anyone, no matter how clever, can think of everything that could happen. The best you can do is to make general contingency plans for when things go wrong, and to have a backup for everything. A speaker who’s ready to go on if she’s needed, an alternate route, an indoor space in case of bad weather – these and other contingency plans can save your bacon when the unexpected happens. Just as with the data on your computer, back up everything. You won’t be sorry.

• Organize for action. This means activating your communication network, going door to door, calling meetings, and doing whatever else it takes to get the right people to the right place at the right time. Whether you want 20 people to write letters to the Editor, or 2,000 people in front of City Hall at 2:00 on Monday, they need to be contacted and coordinated. Here’s why you have an organization and connections with community organizations and institutions and key individuals.
• Carry out the action. All the planning and philosophizing in the world won’t get you anything unless you translate them to action. Now’s the opportunity – do it!
• Follow up and evaluate. You’re not done when the action itself ends. You still have a number of things to do:

Take care of the logistics: Make sure people who need them have rides home, deliver that petition to the appropriate office, tally up the number of phone calls made, etc.
 
If you’ve staged a large rally or demonstration, someone has to pick up after the crowd, so that your message isn’t lost in complaining over the mess that your action left. There has to be an orderly and reasonable way for a crowd to disperse and get home when the action is over.
 
If you have follow-up activities planned (a State House rally can turn into visits to legislators, for instance), see to it that they take place, and that everyone knows what they’re supposed to do and where they’re supposed to go. At the end of that activity, you still have to get people home in an organized fashion, pickup the trash, etc.

If the action is explicitly nonviolent, marshals or coordinators should remain available through dispersal so that participants have clear information about how to leave safely and what to do if problems arise. Especially if counter-protesters or opponents are present, organizers should do what they reasonably can to reduce unnecessary confrontation and help people leave the area safely.

When everything’s actually all over – the next day or the  next week – the planners should meet to evaluate how things went. Did everything go according to plan? Did the people with responsibilities do a good job? Who was especially effective (or ineffective)? What was most effective? Least effective? What was media coverage like? How would you stage such an action in the future? Overall, did this type of action seem to work toward the purpose you set for it? If not, what might have worked better? Use your evaluation to adjust your next action – or your overall strategy, if necessary – to make it more effective.

As you know if you’ve used the Community Tool Box before, we consider evaluation to be an integral and extremely important part of any health or community development activity. If you evaluate honestly, you’ll have valuable information about what you’re doing, information that will allow you to change and improve your work. Use that opportunity consistently to strengthen future actions and your overall campaign.
 

• Finally, plan your next move based on how what you just did fits into your overall strategy. You’re in this for the long haul; each action should connect to your larger goals and help you decide what comes next. Social action strategies are seldom complete in themselves. They can establish gains that add up to significant change over time, while also revealing what remains to be done. The Civil Rights Movement transformed U.S. law, institutions, and daily life in profound ways, while struggles over racial equity and equal participation continue. Successful organizers learn from each stage, sustain relationships and organizations, and keep working as long as important goals remain unmet.

In Summary

Community organizing, as practiced by Saul Alinsky, Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez, and many others, demonstrates the collective power that people can build by organizing around shared concerns. This is social action, and it can take forms ranging from coordinated letters and public testimony to demonstrations, boycotts, strikes, and civil disobedience.

Social action often means challenging rules, policies, practices, or decisions established by people and institutions with greater formal power, while exercising rights to organize, advocate, protest, and participate in public life. It can help communities that have experienced harm, neglect, exclusion, or unfair treatment build collective influence and make their own priorities harder to ignore. By drawing attention to inequity and injustice, and by using coordinated action to confront, negotiate with, or cooperate with policymakers and other institutions, a social action strategy can contribute to significant social change.