By Lonnie Douglas
Thousands of people in Lane County have shown up at rallies over the past year because they are worried about what is happening in their workplaces, schools, communities and country. They have carried signs, marched through our streets, stood beside their neighbors and demonstrated that there are a lot of people here who care deeply about what happens next.
That’s something worth celebrating.
But as an organizer, I keep coming back to another question: What happens after everyone goes home?
A successful rally can demonstrate that people care. Building enough power to change things requires turning some of those people into organizers, volunteers, leaders and members of organizations that continue working together after the rally is over.
That’s the challenge the Eugene-Springfield Solidarity Network is trying to address.
ESSN is a network of unions, community organizations and individuals working to build long-term solidarity and organizing capacity in Lane County. You don’t have to belong to a union or an activist organization to participate. Our goal is to connect working people and organizations so that when workers go on strike, schools are threatened, a community comes under attack or another major fight emerges, we aren’t meeting one another for the first time.
We already know that labor and community organizations can accomplish remarkable things together. Earlier this year, unions and community organizations worked together on the Labor Says ICE Out action, which brought approximately 300 to 400 people into the streets.
But successful mobilizations also raise an important question: Are we stronger after the event than we were before it?
Did we identify new leaders? Did people join organizations? Did unions develop stronger relationships with community groups? Did community organizations build relationships with workers and unions? Did we learn who can mobilize people, which communication methods work and where our organizing gaps are?
If the answer to those questions is no, we may have organized a successful event without necessarily building lasting power.
That is why ESSN has begun treating the work we do as a series of what organizers call “structure tests.”
The idea is actually pretty simple: Organize something, make specific asks of people and organizations, see what happens, learn from the results, adjust and try again.
Our recent Money for Workers, Not War rallies offered a useful comparison. Both rallies drew far fewer people than the 300 to 400 who participated in the Labor Says ICE Out action. That difference does not mean that people care less about workers or standing against endless wars that damage our communities. It does show that the way an action is organized matters.
The Labor Says ICE Out rally was organized through collaboration between unions and community groups. That broader partnership helped connect workplace networks with relationships in the wider community, producing a much stronger turnout than the Money for Workers, Not War rallies, which relied more heavily on a narrower organizing approach.
The lesson is that collaboration between labor and the community gets better results. When unions and community organizations plan together, make shared commitments and reach people through multiple networks, they are better able to turn concern into participation.
That’s the point of testing our structure. The purpose is to discover what we need to build.
And some of the answers are surprisingly old-fashioned.
We need more one-on-one conversations. We need organizers making direct asks instead of relying primarily on emails and social media. We need people accepting responsibility for reaching particular groups of people and then following up. We need unions and community organizations learning what each other actually needs rather than only showing up when an issue happens to overlap with their own immediate priorities.
In other words, we need to move from transactional solidarity to organized solidarity.
Transactional solidarity says: We’ll support your event when it fits what we’re already doing, and hopefully you’ll support ours.
Organized solidarity asks something harder: How do we build relationships and infrastructure now so that when one part of our community needs help, the rest of us already know how to respond?
Neither unions nor community organizations can build that kind of power alone.
Unions bring resources, trained leaders, organizing experience, workplace relationships and the collective power of organized workers. Community organizations bring relationships with students, families, activists, retirees and the overwhelming majority of working people who aren’t union members. Individual community members bring something equally important: themselves, their time, relationships, skills and willingness to show up.
ESSN’s role is to help connect those pieces.
That means our meetings and rallies aren’t only events. They are opportunities to build relationships, identify leaders, train organizers and learn what our network can actually accomplish together.
It also means we need people who have never thought of themselves as organizers or activists.
If you’ve attended a rally, carried a sign and gone home wondering what comes next, there is a next step.
Come help organize.
You don’t need experience. You don’t need to belong to a union. You don’t need to already be part of an activist organization. Organizing is something people learn by doing with other people.
Our immediate opportunity is the noon-time Money for Schools, Not War rally on Sept. 26 at the Eugene City Hall, where unions and community organizations are working together around investment in our schools and communities. But one rally isn’t the destination.
The larger goal is building something that remains after Sept. 26.
We want a Lane County where hundreds and eventually thousands of working people can be mobilized when workers walk a picket line, when a community needs support or when our schools and public institutions are threatened.
That won’t be built by one organization, one union or one big rally.
It will be built by people deciding that showing up is important, but showing up is only the beginning.
Lonnie Douglas is co-chair of the Eugene-Springfield Solidarity Network and a community and labor organizer in Eugene. He has been doing community and labor organizing for over a decade in Lane County. The views expressed are his own. Get more info at Essn@SolidarityNetwork.org and SolidarityNetwork.org.