[This post is part of a series on 1-on-1 organizing conversations. Check out the intro post here to see how agitation is defined. The below post is an exploration of ideas based on that definition and framework.]
Agitation in organizing is the spark that creates the wildfire. Like in all parts of life, our emotions lead, our thoughts agree, and then our behavior follows. In part AEIOU is about channeling this natural progression of human action.
[This post is part of a series on 1-on-1 organizing conversations.]
There are many different kinds of 1-on-1 organizing conversations.
In the previous and first post in this series, I introduced the AEIOU (agitate-educate-inoculate-organize-uplift) framework and showed how to use it in the context of meeting up with a coworker for the first time who has a grievance that they may want to take action on. In many ways, that’s the most important kind of 1-on-1 because it’s where we first connect our social relationship with someone to a shared political project based on shared circumstances. I’ll call it the “initial coworker 1-on-1”.
When someone finishes an organizer training for the first time they learn how to do that kind of 1-on-1 but such trainings typically include little guidance about how to apply AEIOU and 1-on-1s in other ways. However, organizing involves an unlimited variety of circumstances and as the primary tool of relating deeply to people (and thus of organizing) we need to be able to respond with an unlimited variety of 1-on-1s to meet our needs as organizers. I submit that AEIOU still applies in part or in whole to most of these kinds of 1-on-1s but you do have to be keenly aware of the needs of the moment to know how to use AEIOU in a wide range of situations.
[This is the central post in a blog series about 1-on-1 conversations. A pamphlet version of this post is available for download here.]
The 1-on-1 organizing conversation between coworkers is at the heart of grassroots union organizing. Because capitalist society in general and capitalist workplaces especially are conditioned so that people don’t feel empowered to stand up to the status quo and make demands around their needs and wants, workers often feel helpless in the face of serious grievances at work. Union organizing techniques exist precisely to bridge this gap between widespread passive worker agitation and the need for collective action. 1-on-1 organizing conversations are the main tool that unionists have to pierce through the fear of authority and learned helplessness imposed by capitalism.
How 1-on-1s are done varies somewhat across different organizing traditions, but the core elements of 1-on-1s in each tradition are largely the same. Most of the these ideas also apply directly to student and tenant organizing, but the presentation here will be framed around labor organizing. As a basic definition, a 1-on-1 organizing conversation is a talk you have with a fellow worker to 1) build a relationship of trust, 2) identify common grievances and shared interests, and 3) move together from a place of inaction to one of action.
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[This post is part of my series on union organizational structures.]
Much of organizing is about getting the right information to the right people at the right time. The right information at the wrong time or for the wrong person is one of the most prevalent missteps rookie organizers make. Trying to explain what socialism is to your coworker before you’ve had the chance to talk about your working conditions and grievances is a mistake because often they’re more worried about paying their rent or avoiding their micro-managing boss and they’ll wonder why you’re talking about all this abstract stuff. Learning when to say what and how is about organizing the abstract ideas and information in your head and then putting those into the practice of organizing with real people.
Nowhere is the delicacy of information more important than in meetings. A meeting is getting people together to discuss and plan, essentially putting information together in useful combinations to move the group towards its goals. Novice organizers treat meetings as places where people get together and slap information together by putting together an agenda at the last minute, taking half-assed notes, wrongly assuming that everyone in the meeting has the proper context for what’s being talked about, and getting pulled into tangential debates. I’ve participated in and facilitated my fair share of these kinds of meetings. Bad meetings are a volcanic mess, with information splashing and exploding all around the room without any coherent logic to it. Good meetings are intricate fountains of highly structured information cascading through people’s heads, maximizing everyone’s participation, and moving the organization forward.
This blog post is as much a nuts-and-bolts guide for how to plan and run organizing meetings (thus it can be very detail-oriented in places) as it is an analysis of what makes organizing meetings good.
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When I was in college my small radical book club was organizing a screening of The Take, a documentary about the Argentinian reclaimed factory movement where workers began seizing factories that companies had abandoned and running them as their own. The book club was hoping to find other radicals or radical-curious people on campus who would want to check us out. I spent a few hours designing a flyer and an entire afternoon posting them on every dorm building, department, and office event board on campus (it was a big school). I was new to radical politics at the time and thought the ideas described in the flyer would bring people out because how could anyone not be as excited about this stuff as I was?
It turns out I was wrong. Only one person not already in the book club showed up, and he left about 20 minutes into the screening. I learned a hard lesson about reaching people and getting them out to an event, and I’ve seen the same thing happen to myself and others dozens of times.
Most effective event turnout, as with organizing in general, happens beneath the surface. As a novice, I would just see an email about an event and then see 100 people show up and assume outreach was as easy as pie. What took me a long time to figure out is that good event outreach requires an immense amount of intention, effort, and learned skills.
Fire with Fire 