Go, Ready, Set

If you are part of a group that is stuck and not moving to action, flip the script, take a risk and go. The best strategy in the world is meaningless if we never take action.

There’s plenty of angst about the lack of resistance to the onslaught of attacks on people, institutions, and democratic norms. I share that concern, and I think the action we need is coming, and it could come from you.

In my thirties, I was a new member of a team of organizers that would meet in a tiny, smoke-filled storefront each Monday to report on what we had each done the previous week. We were each zigzagging the country, sparking and supporting new organizing.

We would each share what we had done the previous week: a training on power in Buffalo, leveled-up the campaign strategy in Indianapolis, got folks in Cleveland to commit to an action the following week. At the end, the most senior organizer in the group, Shel Trapp, gave his report. His stories were better than ours.

He would arrive in a city in the early afternoon, meet with a local group in the early evening, and find them coming up with lots of reasons to not take action. “We need a little more information” or “we should send one more letter first.” They were stuck and afraid.

He asked who was responsible for the issue creating so much pain in the community: A payday lender, a redlining banker, the Mayor, a slumlord?

Trapp asked, “How long have you been meeting about this?”

The local group responded, “Six months.”

Trapp again, “How many actions have you done?”

The group, “None, we’re still deciding the best strategy.”

He then said, look, you have a choice, you can meet for another six months, more people will get screwed over, and you’ll live with the fact that you did nothing. Or, we could look up this guys address, load the church bus out back and go to his house right now and deliver your demands. Sure, we might make a mistake tonight, but not near as big as coming up with more excuses to protect a guy who is shitting on the community.

More often than not, people got up, marched out to the parking lot, loaded the bus and were soon outside the house of a payday lender, slumlord, or whoever, delivering their message.

Sometimes the guy was home, and sometimes he agreed to meet with the group, but just as often he didn’t. That was not the point. The point was moving from fear and perfectionism to action. Now, at their next meeting, they could develop strategy knowing they were not a group than wrung their hands and wondered what to do. They were a group that took action and felt a hell of a lot better because of it.

Shel Trapp (center), with TC Calvert of San Antonio (right) and Sister Barbara Busch of Cincinnati (left) of National People’s Action on a bus going over last second details before a big action.

See, Trapp believed the biggest barrier to change was not a lack of information or even better strategy. It was that all across the world there were well-meaning groups of people who craved change, but would not confront people who abuse power, and until we overcame that problem the abuse would keep coming.

We came to think of Trapp’s style of organizing as “go, ready, set.” Meaning that sometimes we’ve gotta get out of the “ready, ready, set” stance, and just “go.”

To be clear, this is not a call to be cavalier about the context we are organizing in or reckless in our actions. We must be thoughtful about what risks we are asking people to take, and where our actions might spur backlash that puts us on defense. But we should all scan for where we are stuck for fear of making a mistake.

When you decide to act, you will make mistakes, and you will see things you could’ve done better. You’ll have regrets. That is the cost of taking action. More often than not, those consequences pale in comparison to the cost of inaction. Inaction emboldens bullies to expand who and how they punish. We speak loudly through action and, in moments like this, just as loudly through inaction. The choice as to how we pump up the volume is ours.

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