Organizing students in the age of Trump isn’t about Trump at all

How to build a new kind of campus political club from the ground up

jeff migliozzi
Sep 5, 2018 · 16 min read

“There are more of us than there are of them” is a common rallying cry. The story of Pitt Progressives is how college students attempted to actually act on this vaguely optimistic platitude.

If there’s a silver lining to the 2016 election, it’s that millions of Americans — young college-aged people like myself, in particular — realized that the complacency and fake comfort afforded by the Obama years (yes, he really did deport all those people) is partially responsible for the election of Trump. More and more young people now realize that the way forward is not a return to Obama’s politics of calculated civility and technocratic liberalism that ultimately lead to colossal failures — of capitalizing on the political capital and mandate of 2008; of signature achievements like Obamacare; and of retaining majorities of elected Democrats at the federal and local levels of government all across the country. Instead, we can move forward by organizing an unabashedly leftist movement, powered by young people, to fill the void left by the confusion that these failures have created.

Less than two years after its founding, Pitt Progressives has grown to become one of the largest student organizations operating at the grassroots level of political activism at the University of Pittsburgh and in the greater Pittsburgh region. While no two campuses are exactly alike, the success of Pitt Progressives offers some insight, if not a partial blueprint, to students across the country who also seek to organize a new type of political club that can contribute opposition that not only counters Trump’s agenda, but more importantly, advocates for worthy alternatives that can be acted on when Trump is gone.

Background

Pitt Progressives began with two strangers agreeing to meet in person just a couple months following Trump’s victory. After moping around during winter break, I returned to Pitt disillusioned, confused, and most of all, angry. I knew I couldn’t be alone, and, if there was any place to turn my anger into some form of productive political expression, it would be on a college campus in the middle of a big city.

I soon found someone who was willing to meet in person to try and outline a simple constitution that would hopefully give life to a new club. From that first meeting, the goal of the club was clear: Organize students to not only resist the Trump agenda, but to fight for a better future, where someone like Trump wouldn’t be able to become president in the first place. Free of the burdens of any official party affiliation or larger national organization, Pitt Progressives was born in that first meeting in Pitt’s student union. Neither of us had much (or any) experience organizing before and we weren’t exactly sure what we were doing. But we believed it was still better than doing nothing — and if it would eventually fizzle out, at least we had tried.

The next few months were equally challenging and rewarding. With the bare bones of the constitution completed after the initial meeting, we soon found two more students interested in joining. Now with four of us, we had enough people to fill the required leadership roles necessary to register a new club on campus. We spent the next few weeks outlining what we wanted the club to stand for, making flyers, and figuring out how to reserve a room on campus for our first meeting.

We weren’t sure what to expect at the first meeting, but we were pleasantly surprised when 10 or so students actually showed up. That first meeting was admittedly awkward and a little rough, but it showed us that students were indeed interested in building something beyond the traditional mold of a College Democrats type club. The next couple months included a lot of highs and a lot of lows. One week 10 students would show up, and the next week only 1. In hindsight, our problems were probably due to unavoidable growing pains. But I would lose nights of sleep wondering why nobody showed up. Were students not taking us seriously? Did people’s outrage on Facebook ever actually translate to real life action?

Just two semesters later, the club now organizes with about 30–40 students on a weekly basis. Membership-wise, this puts the club on par with the other political clubs at Pitt, most of which have been around for over a decade. This fall semester will be just the fourth semester of the club’s existence, and Pitt Progressives has already taken on a wide variety of meaningful work and even helped three local electoral campaigns pull off upset victories against long-standing Pittsburgh political dynasties. I could explain the success of the club that quickly snowballed after those first few months with some cliché platitudes that go something like “when the going gets tough” or “just stick with it.” Instead, I want to share some of the lessons I learned and some of the organizing methods that helped the club grow to what it is today.

Building community

A strong sense of community and a welcoming atmosphere is crucial to building a group of activists that will eventually become friends who trust each other and work together.

  • A simple handshake, smile, and introduction go a lot further than I would have ever thought. Once more new students began showing up to the first meetings of our second semester, I made a point to get to know each and every new face I saw. After the meeting I’d run around to make sure I got all the new faces, even if it was just a simple hello, name introduction, and the all important “oh and by the way, did you sign in with your email up in the front there?” I was truly surprised when multiple people would later tell me that my simple introduction had made a huge difference; they had actually felt welcomed, a feeling I myself would often want while navigating the many clubs and social circles at such a dauntingly large school.
  • In seeking feedback about why people had stuck with the club after their first meeting, one remark that really stuck with me came from someone comparing our first meeting of that semester with that of the College Democrats’. At the top of the meeting, the other leaders and myself briefly introduced ourselves and our involvement with the club. The College Democrats leaders had not, and that had really left an impact on how comfortable or welcomed newcomers felt.
  • Although icebreakers can quickly grow tiresome, a quick run around the room where everybody introduces themselves simply by their name and pronouns can help people feel more welcome and comfortable with using their voice in the room.
  • Off campus social events are also important for building friendships and getting to know new members. Just remember that club parties should still be accessible to freshmen or those who don’t live close to campus, and that everyone should always have a safe way home from the party.
  • Always give people the opportunity to voice their ideas or concerns. In meetings, club leaders should talk less than anyone; instead, they should make sure everyone has a fair chance to have the floor.

Keep it action-oriented

It’s easy for political clubs to lose sight of the reasons they organized in the first place, especially in today’s hyper-normalized, always-online political culture. And it’s even easier for political clubs on the left to quickly unravel over ideological differences and the inclination to outflank each other on the left with purity tests. Clubs seeking to get as many students in the streets as possible — whether that be for direct action responses, organized marches, or electoral canvassing — should largely avoid spending club time and energy on reading or analyzing Marx.

Students interested in issues like tuition-free college or Medicare for All may range from liberal to communist. And Democrats who find themselves increasingly interested in proposals like abolishing ICE may actually be far more to the left than they currently realize. But if they care enough about the issues your club is involved in to show up, they should not be ostracized for not being “left enough.”

This is not to say that ideological and theoretical discussions are not important. Clubs can and should create reading circles to talk about theory if the interest is there. But political clubs who want to grow their membership and get the most amount of students civically engaged and in the streets should not create tough idealogical litmus tests, either spoken or unspoken, for new members. Create a space for students to fight for socialist ideas, even if they’re not all ready to call themselves a socialist.

  • Practice a bottom-up structure when choosing which issues and campaigns to work on. I’ll never forget how unengaged and unimportant I felt after leaving the College Democrats meetings I attended freshman and sophomore year. A few people would talk in the front of the room about what they had planned, and that was basically it. But any student passionate enough to take even an hour out of their often-chaotic schedules and volunteer their time to political engagement deserve to have a say in your organizing process, from campaign selection to the final strategy development. Encourage members to express their ideas at the top of the meetings. Let club planning be organic and democratic; the more the organizing reflects the actual interests of the members, the more engaged they will be, and the more successful the club will function as a whole.
  • Actions include more than just protests; canvassing for local campaigns, tabling, or any creative activity or event that attracts attention to the causes you’ve undertaken may not be as exciting as marching in the street, but a lot of organizing is tedious, gritty, and unglamorous.
  • Pitt Progressives first got students in the streets by helping organize Pittsburgh’s satellite March for Science right in the middle of Pitt’s campus. Then, the club started to get more involved with local elections, helping to elect Mik Pappas, Summer Lee, and Sara Innamorato. Seek out the local elections that aren’t being worked on by the mainstream political clubs on campus, because they’re often the ones that need students’ help the most.
  • Table for ideas and pressing matters. Yes, registering students to vote is always important. But there’s probably far more urgent matters that need student support; surrounding communities and students right on your campus are probably marginalized and under attack every day. Pitt Progressives has tabled to pressure Pitt to become a sanctuary campus, to collect hygiene products for SisTers PGH, and even for broader issues like Medicare for All. In your actions, center the needs of the most vulnerable people in your community. Confront passerby students with the realities of these issues, and give them the option to join you.
  • Build solidarity and strong relationships with existing activist groups on campus. From the start, Pitt Progressives started to build relationships with organizations like the Fossil Free Pitt Coalition and United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS #31 at Pitt) because we share many of the same goals. Invite these groups to come to your meetings and provide updates on their happenings. Ultimately, clubs like ours are only stronger when we support one another and collaborate. Reach out to grad students too — Pitt Progressives invited the Graduate Student Organizing Committee to a meeting in order to brief us on their progress in unionizing and to train our members how to sign up their TA’s. Always look for new opportunities to build solidarity across campus, and off campus in your local community too.
  • Prioritize your initiatives and don’t take on the whole world at once. When the world is on fire, it’s natural to feel like every single issue needs to be taken head on. But often times, I’d notice the club lose focus on the different campaigns when we tried to take on too much at once. Pick your battles, and keep your expectations rooted to the reality of what the club actually has the time and energy for.
  • Related to the previous point, creating focused working groups (or committees, teams, whatever) to organize specific campaigns or actions helped Pitt Progressives become more organized and productive as it continued to steadily grow in its second and third semester. Members can plug in to the specific issues they care most about. Group of 5–10 are also way more productive planners than a group of 30.
  • Meetings should be active and geared towards real organizing. Bringing in guests can be interesting, but students are typically not interested in being lectured after a full day of classes. (I have felt the mortification of watching a room of 30 people’s eyes glaze over during a dry speech from a guest I invited.) Instead, break the room up by the different working groups, and coordinate the timing so that members have time to visit all the different working groups should they want to. It’s also way easier for shy people to speak up in smaller groups. Finally, don’t be afraid to think outside the box. When I think about all the meetings I planned, my favorite was a panel of doctors and nurses talking about their experiences in the health care industry — it presented students with a perspective not typically presented in the health care debate and leaving time for questions still allowed for some engagement.

Don’t underestimate the value of a solid communications plan

Growing a club from the ground up will not happen overnight. And it’s helpful to keep in perspective just how lazy most students are in seeking out new information that is not constantly flashed across their phone. Even clubs that have been around for years should assume that most students will not actively seek out new opportunities to get involved on campus, especially if they do not know you exist.

A communications plan is only as good as it is consistent. Every club will find what specific methods work best for them, but consistency in your messaging and delivery matters most. Pitt Progressives found the highest email open rate (free platforms like MailChimp easily provide metrics like this) to be Sunday night. This email would summarize all of the week’s events and opportunities for actions in an easy to read and digestible bullet point fashion (nobody wants to read long paragraphs!) We then sent a simple one or two line email that served as a reminder for the weekly meeting about 3–4 hours before it took place. Some other observations of communications strategies that worked for Pitt Progressives:

  • Students need to be constantly reminded of your upcoming meetings and actions. For any event, aim to reach out to members across a minimum of 3 different platforms. While emails feel the most boring, their messages are received in a far less cluttered environment than Twitter or Facebook, comparatively (especially true if emails are sent regularly at the same time of day and its delivery becomes expected).
  • Your social media channels are the face of your club. While it’s tempting to share memes and jokes about your political opposition, ask yourself what types of posts will allow people to differentiate you from the other 900 accounts in their Facebook feed sharing different iterations of the same memes.
  • Write every post promoting a meeting or event as if you are convincing someone who is on the fence about joining the club. Or as if it’s to the student who’s lounging on the couch playing FIFA with their roommates at home, wondering if your meeting will be worth the long walk from their apartment to campus. WIIFM (What’s in it for me?) is a good rule of thumb to follow when drafting your posts — “in what way will attending this meeting provide an opportunity for me to directly contribute to this cause that I care about?”
  • Make your posts short and succinct. Provide a link to click on, and end your posts with simple calls to action. Keep in mind the recipient of your messages, and what followers (the members who come every week, the casual Facebook-only member, or both?) you are targeting with each post.
  • As your club grows, you may find some combination of Facebook groups and platforms like Slack will help keep communications specific to your different campaigns and projects much more organized. Remember to always collect emails at meetings and routinely invite the new people to join whatever platforms, email lists, or groups you use right away.
  • Share lots of photos and videos of your club in the streets and even at meetings — and when you win (like en electoral or petition campaign) make sure the world knows it.

Organizational growth and recruitment are too often forgotten

Your club can quickly become consumed by the multitude of campaigns and projects your club takes on and completely forget about active recruitment. An assigned outreach director could help make sure the club is always attracting new members and not missing out on all your campus’s opportunities to meet prospective members. Schools typically have one major activities fair at the start of each semester, but there are so many other ways to reach students who may not know your club exists (especially a problem for brand new clubs with zero name recognition). While activity fairs are certainly a great way to get the word out about your club, they’re extremely busy— students will often walk out with 25 half sheet flyers and will probably forget that they even talked to you. Other ways to reach out to students:

  • Contact political science and social work departments to ask professors if you can quickly plug your club before their classes.
  • Reach out to freshmen seminar courses — sometimes these types of classes will even actively seek out club representatives to come to their classroom and encourage freshmen to get involved.
  • Find the closest thing your school has to a community engagement department. At Pitt, this was sort of hidden within the Honors College, but still provided a large network of potential members and allies.
  • Check all the options with your student government board. Do they have a public calendar of events online? Will they give you free advertising space on university building TV screens?
  • Utilize campus media to your advantage. Invite journalists from the student paper (or even local city paper; students organizing at the grassroots is interesting to political journalists) to come cover your meeting or organized action; write a guest column or op-ed on a current campus issue for the student paper on behalf of the club; try to get a shoutout or an ad on your campus’s radio station. Or simply chalk the sidewalks. Creativity and art go a long way here.
  • Bring your friends! As simple as this sounds, I don’t remember explicitly telling members to try and bring their friends until our third semester. But once we did, many new faces started showing up. For those of us on the shyer side, showing up alone to a new club as a complete stranger is a terrifying thing to do. But with a friend, it becomes much easier. Club leadership should also not be afraid of having frank conversations about the state of the club and its membership. Part of growing pains is being honest and open with the club; short of begging, let people know when the meetings start thinning out (although this will probably be obvious) and when it is time for everyone to pitch in and recruit new members.

Leadership should be horizontal, transparent, and eager to listen

Political clubs, even those on the left, often fall in to a pattern of being led by white, cisgender men. New clubs — and existing ones — should create constitutional language and procedures that does not allow this to happen. Pitt Progressives doesn’t allow for more than 50% of its leadership to be self-identified cisgender men or less than 50% of its leadership to be POC. Successful leadership structures are also horizontal; while everyone’s specific responsibilities may be different, anyone putting in the time to help lead the club should have an equal say in how things are done.

  • The campaigns and goals of the club should reflect the interests of its members and be democratically chosen. This should be a no-brainer.
  • The board (or steering committee, or officers, or whatever semantics your club lands on) should conduct their meetings as transparently as possible. Open these meetings to general members who wish to sit in. Make the minutes shareable and accessible to members in a way that doesn’t even require them to ask where to find them.
  • As Pitt Progressives grew, we added more positions to the leadership board to reflect the larger number of members. Creating working groups also provided the opportunity for more students to step up their involvement. While the number of people in a leadership position needs to be cut off at some point, always encourage people who are interested to get more involved. This was especially important for Pitt Progressives as the inaugural group of leaders were getting ready to graduate. It’s natural for a few hiccups to occur in the first transition of leadership (for a while I was worried there wouldn’t even be enough people interested in leading the club to keep it going). Offer new members the chance to shadow current leadership, and create mentor-mentee type relationships.
  • Anticipate burnout as a real and normal response to the stress of organizing. Practice self care, and reach out to anyone in the club (not just other board members) who seems overloaded and stressed out. This goes back to creating a strong community; look out for one another, and let your friends know it’s ok for them to take a break when they need it.
  • In sum, the leadership structure of organizations that are truly democratic and activist-centered in nature are really only there to keep the lights on, so to speak. It’s unpractical to divide the weekly tasks of reserving rooms, writing emails, or coordinating communication with a local campaign among a 400 person club roster. But the people elected to do these tasks can’t begin to assume their own ideas are always best for or representative of the club — which is why major decisions like deciding which campaigns to canvass for should be made democratically.

Conclusion

Grassroots organizing in its truest form can flourish without established parties or national political organizations, all of which have agendas that will never perfectly align with the specific issues affecting students and their surrounding communities. The standard top-down model of campus political clubs — from the local major party leaders, to a select few student leaders, and then to the club as a whole — is simply outdated, undemocratic, and incapable of mobilizing students in a meaningful way. Rather, students can organize independently by localizing their efforts; focusing on specific local campaigns, big local polluters, or even the systemic biases present in their own school’s administration. This allows students’ own energy and personal passions to lead their club’s agenda.

All across the country, many of us share a similar vision of what a more fair and just society could look like. To get there, we’ll need to look beyond the traditional mold of campus organizing and be willing to do the hard work of building solidarity and community first.

Disclaimer: I co-founded Pitt Progressives in January 2017 and served as President and later Co-chair in the following year. Of course, the following views do not represent those of Pitt Progressives in any official capacity. I’m writing these ideas if for nothing else but my personal need to reflect on what I have learned as an organizer over the past two years.

jeff migliozzi

Written by

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreymigliozzi/ @jmigs95

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