A Reading List for the Resistance

As we take a deep breath before the would-be dictator Trump and his plutocratic appointees take office in January, one way we can prepare is by reading and thinking. Here are some books I am finding helpful right now.

For some inspirational examples from the past--

The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It, by Cory Brettschneider. Emphasis on the words "people" and "citizens." That's us!

Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts, by Rebecca Hall, Hugo Martínez (Illustrations). Listen to Black women.

Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968, by Thomas E. Ricks. It wasn't just a dream: it was strategy, training, and discipline.

For how to apply those lessons to the present-- 

This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century, by Mark and Paul Engler. How to make our long-term community organizing support the protest movements of the moment, and vice versa. Read this to be prepared for highs and lows and periods when it feels like nothing's happening and we might have wasted our time--but if we use the quiet times wisely, we come back stronger.

For some tools we can use--

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip and Dan Heath. Because we've got to get better at getting our message across!

I'll be adding to this list as I go along. Your suggestions would be welcome!

I also have reading lists on prison and incarceration (which more of us may face in the years ahead), and on the way people have been deprived of decent housing, and on racism, antisemitism, sexism and homophobia, and on the history of capitalism (which may be giving way to fascism in the U.S. but has always been a fertile ground for repressive actions). If any of those are your particular interest, let me know.

Give yourself time and space to learn and to think...but please, do not think that learning and thinking will be enough by themselves. The ancient rabbis posed the question, "Which is more important, thought or action?" Their answer: "Thought is more important, when it leads to action." Be ready, please, to move between the two.

Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard (review)

Can you get families to eat healthier food, delinquent students to start showing up on time, businesses and governments to save millions of dollars by buying smarter, all by learning one set of concepts?  Chip & Dan Heath think so.  In Switch, they lay out a basic framework for all kinds of change, from the individual to the social level--and they tell stories to show how to make the changes.

The framework: Each of us is a Rider (rational mind) trying to direct an Elephant (emotional side) along a Path (the environment we're operating in).  To make a change, all three have to pull together.  Why don't they?

"What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity." The Heaths show how you can help the Rider in yourself, your colleagues, or your fellow citizens by making it clearer exactly what they need to do.  If you can find a few bright, shining examples of what works, for instance, you can get other people to adopt that approach.  Not everyone will go along, but if enough people buy in, a little change in behavior can lead to a big change in the result.

"What looks like laziness is often exhaustion." We have a limited amount of self-control. A small rational Rider can only tug on the reins of a big emotional Elephant for so long!  And the rational side of us may plan forever and not get around to acting--I've heard this called "analysis paralysis."  The trick is to get motivated to do what we know would make a difference.  The authors show us how to take changes in small steps and aim for early victories.  They also show how we can cultivate the belief that we are capable of change...which is key to being able to make the change we seek.

"What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem."  If we can make it easier for people to do something different, more of them will.  If we can encourage new habits, those habits will take a lot of the stress and strain out of change.  "Behavior is contagious," so show that a lot of other people are doing the right thing and you will get even more people to join them.  (This is a concept I've heard people call "social marketing," and it's one of the big reasons that fewer people smoke tobacco today.)

The Heaths illustrate all these concepts with stories that are "made to stick" in your mind (to use the title of one of their previous books).  Here's one that pulls all three together:

In 2004, 1 out of every 10 patients in the U.S. received defective medical care.  For instance, they "did not receive their antibiotics in the specified time."  So, "thousands of patients were dying every year, unnecessarily.  Dr. Donald Berwick set out to change that.

• He proposed that the medical industry save 100,000 lives in 18 months, and he gave them six specific ways to do it.  (Clarity, for the Rider.)  
• He brought in a mom whose little girl had been killed by a medical error.  She told the hospitals, "I know that if this campaign had been in place four or five years ago, that Josie would be fine." (Motivation, for the Elephant.  What greater motivation is there for a healthcare professional than saving the life of a child?)
• He made it easy for hospitals to join the campaign (by signing a one-page form) and brought them together in conferences where they could see how others just like them were succeeding.  (Smoothing the Path)

As a result. by the set date, the campaign had saved 122,300 lives, "the equivalent of throwing a life preserver to every man, woman, and child in Ann Arbor, Michigan."

Now, I am not convinced that this formula for change will always work.  I agree with the Heaths that even a marginal improvement is better than none, and their techniques will work when there is no entrenched and powerful opposition to the change you have in mind.  You can probably lose weight this way.  You can very likely get more people where you work to respond to their email. 

If you are trying to raise the minimum wage, or end global warming, or stop a war, you are going to need more.  As Frederick Douglass famously said, "Power concedes nothing without a struggle."  For struggle, you need a movement.  You cannot throw a behavioral switch. 

Even a social movement would have something to learn by reading this book, however, and for most of us, most of the time, this framework will be a powerful set of tools.  I strongly recommend reading this book and then going to work on making change where you live.

Planning for the Impossible

 Could thinking about the impossible be useful for nonprofit organizations?

I'm enjoying reading Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku.  Will we ever have Star Wars-style light swords?  What about a Harry Potter-style invisibility cloak?  Discussing these questions, he manages to teach me a lot about electromagnetism and optics and the state of technology that I didn't know, and make it fun.

Kaku says there are three orders of impossibility.  Class I impossibilities are impossible today but "might be possible in this century, or perhaps the next, in modified form."   Class II impossibilities "sit at the very edge of our understanding of the physical world" and might be possible in "millennia to millions of years in the future."  Class III impossibilities are "technologies that violate the known laws of physics...If they do turn out to be possible, they would represent a fundamental shift in our understanding...."

What if we applied this framework to the challenges we face in running our organizations and achieving our missions?  (Of course the time scales wold have to be very different!)

Ask yourself: if what we want to do seems impossible now, what would it take to make it real?  If it's just funding, or a change in regulations, that might be a Class I impossibility--meaning not impossible at all for people as hopeful as people who work in nonprofits tend to be.  Figuring out the steps to get there and setting ourselves an attainable deadline might  embolden us to change what's possible, financially or politically.

If it's a change in society, it's a Class II impossibility: it might take the rest of our lives and then some.  But historically speaking, that's a very small time.  Ask yourself: Is the mission worth that kind of concentrated, persistent effort?  What will make that kind of effort possible?  What will sustain it for the time it takes?

And as for Class III impossibilities, it's good to be reminded that even things Einstein once thought impossible have been proven to be true.  Don't bet the organization on changes that violate the way you believe things are at a fundamental level.  But be hopeful, and be prepared.

"Cautious is the New Risky"

A final thought about changing Obama, for now:

The editor of The Nation, Katrina vanden Heuvel, has written, "I think that we progressives need to be as clear-eyed, tough and pragmatic about Obama as he is about us." She recommends "that progressives must avoid falling into either of two extremes--reflexively defensive or reflexively critical." Please see her cogent strategic advice at The Nation website.

Organizing to End Poverty, 21st-Century Style

Wednesday was National Blog Action Day on poverty. Since I work at an anti-poverty agency, I had a lot to say about the topic, and I've been writing about how to end poverty all week. Here's the conclusion: It's necessary. It's possible. But it will take more than my agency can do, and more than politicians will do on their own.

Strategy 3: A New Social Movement

Even well-meaning liberal politicians consistently put other issues over poverty. Just a week ago, we saw the majority of Congress vote to give $700 billion to banks--with hardly a thought about the new wave of homeless people that are about to created, as banks evict people from houses on which the mortgages have been foreclosed.

Poor people and their allies don't have the money to buy politicians' attention. What we do have is numbers. Especially in an election year, elected officials run scared when they hear a large number of people all clamoring for the same thing. This election is almost over--but your Representative in Congress and most of your state and local officials face elections again in 2010. For them, the election never stops. That gives us an opportunity.

We have a long history of social movements for change in this country. In my lifetime alone, we have the Civil Rights Movement and antiwar movement , the women's and gay liberation movements, the antinuclear movement, movements to abolish nuclear weapons and to support people's movements in Central America, and the movement against global corporatism and for global democracy. We can learn lessons from them about how to get large numbers of people organized: not just for a rally or demonstration, but for the long haul.

We can combine those lessons with 21st century techniques. Meetups, viral messaging, DIY video, databases, Facebook pages, other online social networks, and yes, blogging: we can take advantage all of these techniques to get people to act as one. Technology does not replace face-to-face organizing: it empowers organizers. MoveOn does it. The Obama campaign has done it. We need to learn how to do it, too, but not to get candidates elected and then to forget about them. We get them elected, and then we hold their feet to the fire of public outrage.

It's not only the politicians who need to feel the heat. Banks that evict good tenants just because the owner of the house where they rent is in foreclosure need crowds on their doorsteps, at their stockholder meetings, writing Wikipedia articles about them, doing Michael Moore-style exposes...you name it. Employers that keep wages down and squash unions, media that spend endless inches of print or minutes of air time on the lifestyles of the rich and famous but haven't a moment to spare all week for the poor...the possibilities are endless.

There's a lot of work to be done. If you want to join in but you don't know where to start, write me for suggestions. As a rabbinic saying states, "It is not incumbent on you to finish the task, but neither are you free to abstain from it."