Remembering How to Win

Our job is to defeat defeatism. I have found no better way to do this than to actually win something.

The other night a few organizers came over for dinner. One told a story of a recent three-month campaign to win something from a federal target. I didn’t completely track the issue, but it was hard to not track how her story of winning changed the spirit in the room. Suddenly, we all felt lighter, and energized. It was another reminder of why we have to be winning.

One of the most hopeful shifts in organizing over the last 10 years has been the emergence of clearer north star structural demands that we are pointing toward. Whether a Homes Guarantee or the Green New Deal, having these north stars is a breakthrough and to be celebrated.

If something got lost during this period, it is the importance of winning. One secret sauce of organizing is that we teach people how to win and win early. Take that off the table and we have lost something unique to the craft – more unique than I think we realize.

Our job is to defeat defeatism. For most people winning or tasting power has not been a thing. They have every right to be skeptical of the organizer and the organization. We must prove, and pretty damn quickly, that this is going to be different. I have found no better way to do this than to actually win something.

My first national organizing issue was a federal home loan program that was part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The Federal Housing Administration was rife with corporate fraud and abuse, leading to a hundred thousand foreclosures a year, and tens of thousands of vacant homes, largely concentrated in Black neighborhoods.

In the beginning we didn’t have the power to change HUD policy, not even close. We had to find other ways to make progress. In some cities we would start by pressuring the property management companies that HUD paid to secure and clean-up their vacant properties. Often, the companies took the money and didn’t do the work.

First, we would send a letter or make calls requesting a meeting. After they ignored our requests, a group of members would load up a truck with trash from the vacant properties, and drop it off at the home or office of the guy who owned the company. He was paid to pick up the trash, but thought he could get away with not doing the work because of the race and class of the neighborhood. We quickly dissuaded him of this belief.

This action always worked. The next day the property management crews were out cleaning and securing the properties. Yes, the root cause that created these foreclosures had not been addressed, but in short order people had gotten a bit tougher, experienced a win from their action, and started to believe we could get to those deeper issues.

Members of National People’s Action holding “Ain’t Done Shit” signs outside Andrew Cuomo’s House when he was HUD Secretary

These same members went on to lead a successful three-year national fight to get HUD to give the boot to hundreds of sleazy mortgage companies who were ripping off first-time home-buyers and creating the vacant property crisis in the first place. Only a diehard few would have stuck out the three years if there had not been some winning along the way.

Today, I hear some progressives say that a recent or potential win is not commensurate with the scale of the problem. No shit. It does not take a genius to critique how every win is short of what we need. It does take some serious skill and perseverance to build the collective-confidence of larger and larger groups of people that then put those more structural wins into play.

Let’s listen to the wisdom of people in the neighborhood who need some near-term wins, and tune out the arm-chair “organizers” who critique every single thing but provide no credible theory to win. In the battle to defeat defeatism, let the critics create their own organization. I imagine their meetings to be less than energizing. 

Two years of COVID have depleted the base of many organizations. We are in a period of rebuilding. That’s okay. But, we rebuild not through Hail Marys, but from the ground up, organizing tangible wins that relieve people’s pain and build new believers. Then we head into the next, more structural fight, on even stronger footing. This is our secret sauce. Let’s not forget it.

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Long-time organizer Miya Yoshitani and I sat down last year to talk organizing, including the importance of winning. Here’s the conversation.

I hope you heard the good news that Sulma Arias is the new Executive Director of People’s Action. You can follow Sulma on twitter here!