The Bankhead Monitor was a 1990’s publication from Alabama which waged an all, out -no holds barred unrelenting attack, often personal on the Government agencies and managers who were trying to clear cut the Bankhead National Forest. It set a high bar for media that mobilizes and arouses public opinion in defense of our public …
WHY DOES YOUR TOWN NEED LAND-USE ADVOCACY? In many urban areas today, just driving to the store for milk is a time-consuming hassle; communities nationwide are disfigured by nearly identical vistas of Taco Bells, McDonalds, Dollar Stores and Dairy Queens. This overdevelopment and sprawl has resulted in part from citizens not being involved in community …
– HANDBOOK: HOW TO STOP BAD PROJECTS IN YOUR COMMUNITY Read More »
Every grassroots campaign needs a basic call-to-action that clearly and dramatically summarizes your issue. You cannot have a serious campaign without one. Your alert should be compelling, well-written, accurate, and persuasive; and must contain a wealth of information condensed into one page. Your alert should give a brief background explaining what you want people to …
– EFFECTIVE CAMPAIGNS USE ONE-PAGE ALERTS & SIGN-ON LETTERS Read More »
There are some larger and little discussed issues around the growing trend that seeks to resolve all conflict with partnerships, roundtables, win-win and consensus processes. These approaches have not just suddenly appeared in a vacuum. America’s fundamental assumptions about the political decision-making process itself are being systematically reshaped by a new political theory called neoliberalism, …
– What Al Capone, Saul Alinsky’s Mentor, Taught Him Read More »
When the laws regulating forest practices, endangered species, clean air, and water were put on the books, it was well before the 1990s when our society became enthralled with neoliberalism which elevated economic utility and job creation above all in matters of public policy. Public resource managers now face local political pressure to base every …
All successful environmental campaigns resemble one another. All unsuccessful ones fail in their own unique way. From company personnel officers to politicians, those who attend to official “complaints” say that people who present grievances and complaints almost never state the exact relief they seek. But agencies, legislators, and the entire American political process are organized …
The vast majority of environmental campaigns are businesslike and seldom create personal confrontations, but for some issues and in some areas of the country, public meetings on environmental issues can occasionally subject activists to bullying and personal threats. The overwhelming majority of personal threats, while unnerving, never result in physical harm. Fortunately, there is an …
– Confronting Goons and Bullies In Public Meetings Read More »
Vol. 3 is the last volume in the series Organize To Win. It makes an argument that by any metric such as number of speeches given, letters written, groups mobilized, meetings held, press releases issued, etc., today’s wilderness campaigns are waged with perhaps 1% or less of the vigor and intensity of grassroots campaigns before …
– Organize To Win Vol. 3 now available to download Read More »
All active local environmental groups, urban or rural, encounter situations where they need to turn out large numbers of people for meetings. Creating a volunteer network of people, who have agreed to get involved and specifically have agreed to show up for meetings, can mean the difference between scurrying around to find a handful of …
– USING POLITICAL CAMPAIGN MANAGER’S TOOLS IN ENVIRONMENTAL CAMPAIGNS Read More »
Excerpted from the introduction to the newly published Pacific Northwest Timber Wars I led Kalmiopsis Audubon Society (KAS), a small volunteer environmental group headquartered in a small village on the remote Southwest Oregon coast during a period of great environmental conflict from 1989 to 2002. During this time, the environmental community brought to an end …