The conceptual framework that explains the PHP’s new theory of change is articulated by Jane McAlevey in her book No Shortcuts. She describes three principal strategies used to pursue political change—advocacy, mobilizing, and organizing. She writes: “Here is the major difference among the three approaches… Advocacy doesn’t involve ordinary people in any real way; lawyers, pollsters, researchers, and communications firms are engaged to wage the battle…Advocacy fails to use the only concrete advantage ordinary people have over elites: large numbers.” Then: “Mobilizing is a substantial improvement over advocacy, because it brings large numbers of people to the fight. However, they are too often the same people: dedicated activists who show up over and over at every meeting and rally for good causes, but without the full mass of their coworkers or community behind them.” And finally: “The third approach, organizing, places the agency for success with a continually expanding base of ordinary people, a mass of people never previously involved, who don’t consider themselves activists at all—that’s the point of organizing. In the organizing approach, specific injustice and outrage are the immediate motivation, but the primary goal is to transfer power from the elite to the majority…” The table below helps explain the differences.
| Advocacy | Mobilizing | Organizing | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Theory of Power | Advocacy groups tend to seek one-time wins or narrow policy changes, often do not permanently alter the relations of power. | Staff or activists set goals with low to medium concession costs or, more typically, set an ambitious goal and declare a win, even when the “win” has no, or only weak, enforcement provisions. | Mass, inclusive, and collective. Organizing groups transform the power structure to favor constituents and diminish the power of their opposition. Specific campaigns fit into a larger power-building strategy. They prioritize power analysis, involve ordinary people in it, and decipher the often hidden relationship between economic, social, and political power. |
| Strategy | Litigation; heavy spending on polling, advertising, and other paid media. | Campaigns, run by professional staff, or volunteer activists with no base of actual, measurable supporters, that prioritize messaging over base power. Staff-selected “authentic messengers” represent the constituency to the media and policy makers, but they have little or no real say in strategy or running the campaign. | Recruitment and involvement of specific, large numbers of people whose power is derived from their ability to withdraw labor or other cooperation from those who rely on them. Sustained and strategic nonviolent direct action. Messages matter, but the numbers involved are sufficiently compelling to create a significant earned media strategy. Mobilizing is seen as a tactic, not a strategy. |
| People Focus | None. | Grassroots activists. People already committed to the cause, who show up over and over. When they burn out, new, also previously committed activists are recruited. And so on. Social media are over relied on. | Organic leaders. The base is expanded through developing the skills of organic leaders who are key influencers of the constituency, and who can then, independent of staff, recruit new people never before involved. Individual, face-to-face interactions are key. |
Options for Change from No Shortcuts, Jane McAlevey
We believe, as laid out in our Guiding Philosophy that the root cause of our affordable housing crisis is an imbalance of power between the elites—in this case represented by developers, landlords, and wealthy homeowners—and working people, such as renters, low-income homeowners, and the unhoused, so our approach to solving it must focus primarily on the only of the three options for change with the potential to build the power of working class people: organizing.
As outlined above, organizing is inherently structure-based, which takes place within existing social structures that people belong to because of life circumstances rather than political ideology or identity. Examples of structures include workplaces, houses of worship, schools, and neighborhoods. Structures are, crucially, bounded constituencies, meaning it is clear who belongs to them and who doesn’t. We believe it is important to organize within structures because it forces us to build supermajority unity among people who initially might not agree on much politically or even see themselves as political, ensuring we actually expand the base of support for systems change. By working within structures, we help people accurately diagnose the root causes of the problems in their lives and understand that taking action in solidarity with their neighbors/coworkers/etc. is the only way to address them.
For affordable housing-focused organizing, there are four relevant structures: neighborhoods, apartment buildings, mobile-home parks, and the unhoused community. Our strategy is to conduct campaigns in specific structures with goals identified by residents that relate directly to their immediate circumstances. Examples would be organizing: 1) the Mill Street neighborhood to win a Community Benefit Agreement that staves off gentrification-induced displacement, 2) an apartment building to bargain for better living conditions or fight rent increases, or 3) mobile home park residents to come together to buy their park when it goes up for sale. As our organizing work grows, we will bring people from all campaigns together to form a coalition that can share tips, lend support to each other’s efforts, and eventually leverage the power built through their specific campaigns to fight for structural change at the city-level.
Colorado Springs Pro-Housing Partnership 