Tell the Story of the Fight (early and often)
The organization’s members have little time and many choices on how to spend it. We want our campaigns to become a priority. One way we do that is by telling the story of the fight.
One of the fundamentals of organizing is telling the story of the fight. To never assume anyone will tell it for you, and to certainly not let the opposition do it. That’s why we protect time and money to tell the story every step of the way.
From the Fundamentals of Community Organizing pamphlet…
Tell the Story
The organization’s members have little time and more choices than ever on how to spend it. You want them to decide the organization and its campaigns are a priority. One way we do that is by telling the story of the fight. Our story needs to become binge-worthy.
People love a story. A strong campaign has all the elements of a good one. We have a protagonist. That’s us. An antagonist. The bad guy. We have the initial action. The bad stuff the bad guy did to start the whole thing. We then have conflict, the people fighting back. Finally, hanging in the balance, is the question of how it all will end.
Having all the elements of a good story doesn’t mean much if we aren’t telling it. Telling our story is especially important when we win. People are hunting for hope, and every win, even a step toward that win, is a chance to help them find it. Tell your story early and often.
When I was doing street organizing, the morning after the big meeting, we’d be at a copy shop making fliers. And that night a group of members would flier the neighborhood making sure everyone knew about what happened the night before. It wasn’t extra credit, the work of the big meeting wasn’t done until the story was told.
Nowadays, we have more ways than ever to tell our story, including podcasts. Today we posted the first episode of season two of To See Each Other, where a group of small-town seniors have banded together to fight off privatization of their beloved county-owned nursing home. I’ve always loved telling good story, but this is the first time trying it in serial fashion, following the blow by blow of one fight, and because the fight is still on, no one knows how it will end.
If you want to listen, here’s the first episode.
Here are a few of the protagonists you’ll meet. These women have lived incredible lives, are all fighters, and they’re not done yet, organizing their community to preserve county ownership of Pine Crest, a 5-star nursing home that has been part of the community for a generation.
Judy Woller was born and raised in Lincoln County, grew up on a farm, and because of personal experience, founded HAVEN, the Household Abuse Victims Emergency Network. She has been in this fight from day one.
Dora Gorski is a retired social worker and was a volunteer EMT with the rural fire department for 15 years. Her husband Ken, a martial arts instructor and also a volunteer EMT, was a resident of Pine Crest.
Marge Roggenbuck, center, was born and raised on a Lincoln County dairy farm. Both of her parents received great care and lived the end of their lives at Pine Crest. She worked for 19 years at the Fox Point Factory in Merrill, WI and 18 years at Church Mutual Insurance.
You can listen to To See Each Other wherever you listen to podcasts (Spotify, ITunes, and YouTube). I hope you do. And I hope that you tell the story of the campaigns you are organizing early and often and do all you can to make those stories too damn good to resist.