COVID College for Idaho Movement Building

If you can’t mobilize now, research for future success

My first “movement experience” came from Cole Valley Speaks. I caught the bug, and I knew I needed to continue being a part of these powerful expressions of injustice and demands for change. Later, I built on that foundation as a core member of Reclaim Idaho, and dabbled in climate activism with Sunrise Boise.

I’ve known for a long time that Idaho needs transformation political change, but I didn’t know how it could happen. I explored ideas in electoral politics and delved into different theories of change. I came to realize one of the biggest avenues for change, sustained movements, are largely absent from Idaho’s socio-political environment. This is a gaping hole, and without it, I don’t think positive changes will happen quickly (and maybe not at all).

Below is a list of my personal educational materials on movement building, in categories of Movies/Documentaries, Webinars, Books, and Newsletters.

Movies / Documentaries

Selma (Amazon Prime Video)

Incredibly powerful. Illustrates the movement theory of change. Created unbearable pressure on policy makers, and the Civil Rights Act was passed.

Pride (Amazon Prime Video)

Shows an incredibly heart-warming success story of bridging divides and creating a powerful, diverse coalition for change.

Cesar Chavez (Google Play Movies)

Highlights the visionary campaign of the United Farm Workers and Cesar’s intense dedication to non-violence.

Bread and Roses (Youtube)

A great story about the Justice For Janitors movement in LA. Highlights the challenges of political organizing among impoverished communities and undocumented immigrants.

Iron-Jawed Angels (HBO)

Awe-inspiring story of the Women’s Suffrage movement in the United States and Alice Paul’s incredible strategy.

Suffragette (Netflix)

The story of Women’s Suffrage in the UK, happening about the same time as the US movement. They had a different strategy that included property destruction.

Freedom Song (Youtube)

Story of SNCC and black voter registration campaigns in the South. Countering violent repression with courage and sacrifice.

A Force More Powerful (Youtube)

Shows success-stories of using nonviolent movements all over the world, including ending Apartheid in South Africa. So freaking good.

99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film (Google Play Movies)

A very cool documentary, created by dozens of film makers, explaining what the Occupy Wall Street movement meant.

Bringing Down A Dictator (Youtube)

Powerful and inspiring documentary of how a youth-led movement toppled a brutal dictator in Serbia.

Gandhi (Amazon Prime)

A biographical film of the life of Mohandas K Gandhi, the legendary leader of nonviolent noncooperation with the British Raj in India. Extremely inspirational.

Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years 1954–1965 (DVD)

Award-winning, very through, 6 hour documentary series of the Civil Rights movement. Filled with video footage.

Books — Movement Theory

This Is An Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt is Shaping the Twenty-First Century (Mark Engler and Paul Engler)

If you read one book about building movements, make it this one. It’s from one of the founders of Momentum Community.

How We Win: A Guide to Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning (George Lakey)

A very approachable, practical, helpful read with great recent examples. It helped me understand a lot of the considerations of starting and running a campaign.

Shut It Down: Stories from a Fierce, Loving Resistance (Lisa Fithian)

This is the ultimate anecdotal resource. Lisa Fithian is a legend, and has been a huge part of all the biggest US movements in the last few decades. She retells her experience in an exciting, edge-of-your-seat way.

Hegemony, How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals (Jonathan Matthew Smucker)

This is a must-read book about messaging. It’s main thesis is the need to go beyond the “usual subjects” and gain broad support.

Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals (Saul Alinsky)

This is an old classic. It was the first book I read in this area, and it set my mind afire with ideas and inspiration.

Rules for Revolutionaries: How Big Organizing Can Change Everything (Becky Bond and Zack Exley)

This was written by some Bernie 2016 campaign managers, and they had some incredible breakthroughs with using “big organizing” to change the game. Also, they both used to work at CREDO Mobile. That’s how I heard about the company, and now I work there.

Blueprint for Revolution: How to use rice pudding, lego men, and other nonviolent techniques to galvanize communities, overthrow dictators, or simply change the world (Sroja Popovic)

Lessons from a movement leader of Otpor! in Serbia that overthrew their dictator in the 90s. He shares his lessons learned from helping liberation movements across the globe in the decades since.

Winning the Green New Deal: Why We Must, How We Can (Sunrise Movement)

The Sunrise Movement is a group to emulate. They’re one of the most exciting movements in the US right now, focused on the climate crisis.

Books — Movement History

Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63 (Taylor Branch)

An in-depth analysis of the formations of the Civil Rights era.

Pillar of fire : America in the King years, 1963–65 (Taylor Branch)

At Canaan’s edge : America in the King years, 1965–68 (Taylor Branch)

Alice Paul: Claiming Power (J.D. Zahniser, Amelia R. Fry)

A biography of Alice Paul, the genius behind the nonviolent direct action strategies that propelled women’s suffrage to victory in the United States, making major movement gains despite WWI. She pushed the envelope and made thousands of activists believe in a vision for change that they couldn’t see before.

The Third Reconstruction: How a Moral Movement Is Overcoming the Politics of Division and Fear (Dr. William J. Barber II and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove)

About the “Moral Mondays” movement in North Carolina that opposed historically aggressive austerity measures to cut social services. The biggest single-state direct action mobilization in US history.

Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Lisa McGirr)

Talks about how the conservative right went from fringe and irrelevant to putting a president in the White House (Reagan).

Viking Economics: How The Scandinavians Got it Right — And How We Can, Too (George Lakey)

Sometimes it’s hard to imagine real progressive systems in place in the US. It feels futile, and it’s hard to imagine what they’d actually look like. The good news is that Scandinavia has already implemented these systems. They’re excellent case studies for how they work (in short, better in every way), and how they got them. They used to look a lot like the US (corporate control), before change happened.

The Story of My Experiments with Truth (Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi)

The guru of nonviolent confrontation as a strategy for social and political change. A grandmaster of movement strategy.

The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism (Thomas Frank)

Debunking the common parlance that populism something to be feared and warned against. Populism has a remarkable, noble tradition, and is widely misunderstood — sometimes because of ignorance, sometimes through strategic intention.

Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America’s First Civil Rights Movement (Fergus Bordewich)

The incredible inspiration of the Underground Railroad. How it started with small groups of radicals and won mainstream public opinion and government support.

Books —Rural Politics

The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker (Kathy Cramer)

Talks about why rural voters sided with a services-cutting governor as he slashed benefits for public employees and hurt collective bargaining in Wisconsin.

Heartland: a memoir of working hard and being broke in the richest country on earth (Sarah Smarsh)

A heart-wrenching story illustrating how laziness and effort-levels have almost nothing to do with whether you defy the odds and escape poverty that’s passed on through family generations. The deck is stacked against poor families, and there’s almost nothing you can do to get out.

Webinars

Momentum Training Videos, Youtube Playlist (Momentum Community)

This was my initial introduction to the momentum cycle of political organizing. Extremely eye-opening and inspirational!

Fighting for Democracy: Learning from the Umbrella Movement [in Hong Kong] (Momentum Community)

Made me think about “movement ecology” and how important it is to have different groups playing different roles in creating the conditions for a social movement to emerge, even in a public culture that’s naturally resistant to it.

What Makes Nonviolent Movements Succeed? An Interview with Dr. Erica Chenoweth (Momentum Community)

Discusses how nonviolence is so much more effective than violence, from the ultimate guru of nonviolent political movements.

Sunrise Movement, Momentum, and Political Alignments (Momentum Community)

I’m so impressed by the Sunrise Movement. This is where I first learned about political alignments.

Mass Training Webinar with Dani Moscovitch of IfNotNow (Momentum Community)

This one was mind-blowing. It demystified “frontloading” and “mass training” for me — both are focused on the “DNA” of your organization, and ensuring you can have a decentralized movement that is has high levels of both autonomy and unity.

How to build the movement in a moment of the whirlwind [about #DefundThePolice] (Momentum Community)

This was incredible to watch (and participate in!), at the height of the #DefundThe Police movement, following the murder of George Floyd. Also, Momentum provided a companion Medium post and spreadsheet that are awesome.

Newsletters

WagingNonviolence.org

This is the can’t miss it newsletter for movements and direct action. Most of the biggest names write for it, and I find it the most valuable source of current events information, by far.

MomentumCommunity.org

As you probably noticed in the Webinars section, above, this is a gold mine of case studies and strategy from all the leading movements of our day.

TrainingForChange.org

This one is focused on training, and it’s chock full of resources, best practices, and tools that campaigns have used with success.

Other Websites

I’ve found some other good stuff at The Ruckus Society and a smorgasbord of others that are routinely promoted in WagingNonviolence.org newsletters.

I also highly recommend subscribing to big, powerful movements like Sunrise Movement, Movimiento Cosecha, and Black Visions Collective.