Five Ways to Mobilize a Social Movement for Change
In just the last few years, the country has seen several social movements take shape. When thousands of people take to the streets or when a large group of people assemble in support of an issue, an opportunity arises to mobilize that response towards reaching tangible and long-term goals.
Unite and welcome
When a large group of people come together in opposition or support of something, it’s an opportunity to truly engender significant change. Make sure that everyone who supports your cause is met with open arms. Creating a uniting and welcoming environment should be the top priority, even if there are some differences in opinion.
Uniting is far more effective for the overall effort than dividing or gatekeeping, even if some people have varying viewpoints. As you grow, you are likely to welcome in new members who use different tactics or who have a different perspective. This can sometimes cause conflict, but make sure to stay focused on your larger goal and emphasize the importance of building a large coalition – highlight how it gives your movement power.
The larger your network, the better and more effective you will be at accomplishing your goals. And the larger a group, the more you can emphasize the groundswell of support for change. If a critical mass of people wants something, it can be labeled as the public demanding action, which can in turn be leveraged into pressure on lawmakers or other decision makers.
Make sure you prioritize unity over division. If you share a common goal or interest, use that common ground to unite and move forward together to accomplish your goals.
Identify your desired outcome
Often, social movements are born somewhat organically. It requires some leadership and organization to take them from spontaneous activism to fully formed policy efforts. This requires planning and agreement on an ultimate desired outcome.
Protests against or a rally in support of something work for a period of time – they help call attention to the issue. The media and decision makers take notice and highlight the dynamic. But transforming that support into policy action requires planning and organization. Instead of simply being for or against something, make sure you work with your team to outline what you want to achieve.
Working with fellow organizers and protesters to identify your ideal outcome is important to create a sustained movement that will outlast public attention or media narratives, which may dominate airwaves for a period of time, but will likely fade.
Leverage your size and megaphone
If you have the rare opportunity to have hundreds or thousands of people gathering in one place or assembled in support of a movement, it’s critical that you use the moment to turn this show of strength into something more.
Create a proverbial megaphone to amplify your goal and mission. If you know there are people in cities all over your state or the country, plan a day of action. Show dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of people in each city turning out in support of your shared goal or issue.
Have representatives in each region contact the media to ensure they document this broad show of support and work to ensure you are all calling for the same outcome to help your message reverberate across the state or country. Highlight the turnout on social media to further amplify and reinforce the large public support for your cause.
In addition to public shows of support, work to create a plan for contacting decision makers or leaders in each community to further cement your effort as a policy-minded one. When leaders are contacted by the movement, they’ll see the groundswell on TV or on social media and be more likely to take your requests seriously. You can use the window of opportunity created by a public rally and turn it into sustained leadership and organization toward a shared goal.
Replicate
As you do this work, create a playbook that can be distributed to others in the movement. As you experience success at rallies, events, discussions, and lobby days it’s important to document how you did it.
Creating a playbook that others can replicate in their communities will give your work lasting impact. It will duplicate your efforts, creating sustained groundswells that people in power can’t ignore.
The ability to replicate your actions is a sign of a sustainable movement – you are able to capture attention not just once, but repeatedly. It also helps take one-off protests and turns them into a movement. This is how your effort can go from the streets into the halls of Congress. It establishes legitimacy and power.
Define success or victory
Finally, it’s critical that you outline what success or victory looks like. Similar to identifying your outcome, defining what “winning’ looks like will allow you to reverse engineer a strategy. It will also help you with your message when the opposition attempts to label your efforts a failure. Be clear on what success means to you so that you define victory not others.
Defining success will also help you avoid working on things that don’t serve your higher purpose. As you build a broad coalition, you will likely be pulled in many different directions by groups with differing priorities. By clarifying your movement’s definition of a successful outcome, you more efficiently prioritize action that delivers the best results and allows you to achieve your goals.
Conclusion
This article outlined five steps to mobilize a social movement to create lasting change. By creating a united and welcoming community you can grow faster and illustrate a true groundswell for your cause. Identifying your goals or outcomes is critical to ensuring sustained success — as is leveraging your size to serve as a megaphone to highlight growing demands and illustrate to leaders and decision makers that they cannot ignore the issue.
Creating a replicable playbook that can be used all over the state or country helps sustain your movement in the long-term. Defining victory or success allows you to control the narrative and better prioritize as your movement grows.
