Imagine this scene: in the Month Python film, Life of Brian, our activist protagonists The People’s Front of Judea are meeting to discuss how much they hated the Romans. In bursts a comrade – Judith – and informs the meeting that one of their members, Brian, has been arrested by the occupying Romans. She demands they stand up, walk out the door, and take action in support of Brian. Instead, the group calls for an urgent meeting! Judith throws her hands in the air in despair and walks out the door.

In organizing, if we are to achieve our goals and create change we must eventually take action. But mobilizing our constituency can be challenging. How do I seek a commitment? How many commitments do I need to hit my goals? What are my goals? How do I plan to hit those goals? 

In the fourth session on our series examining organizing in an electoral landscape, we will discuss how we move a constituency from inaction to action, and how mobilizing resources can lead to more resources. We will also get on the bike and practice the “4C’s” – a way to seek commitment from likely volunteers to an action that is linked to your electoral strategy and enable you to hit those critical recruitment goals. 

Join us on Thursday, October 3rd 8PM Eastern Time / October 4th 10AM Melbourne Time as we practice how to mobilize and deploy resources effectively in political campaigns

Stephen is an Australian based community organizer and founder of Dunn Street – a campaign house driving social change by embracing the Ganz model of community organizing, leadership development and power building. Taking what he learned from volunteering for the Obama campaign in 2008, he founded an unprecedented grassroots movement – the Community Action Network – and organized over 10,000 volunteers to mobilize and hold millions of values-based persuasion conversations with targeted voters that was crucial in the election of Dan Andrews as Premier of Victoria in 2014 and then the re-election of his Labor government in 2018. Stephen has in the past been part of the teaching team for the Harvard Kennedy School online course Leadership, Organizing and Action: Leading Change.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand how commitment enables campaigns to grow resources as they deploy resources in action
• Explore how to set recruitment goals that enable you to strategically build power towards a campaign win
• Practice 4C’s as a method of getting commitments strategically

For more information about this event please contact Sachiko Osawa