63 Magazine - Issue 1

AM: Do you have any advice
for staying motivated to work
as hard as organizers do?
LT: A couple things. Number one: every
organizing campaign—whether it’s one
year long, five years long, or with no end in
sight—needs milestones. You build towards
those milestones, and you create artificial
milestones if there aren’t real milestones. A
real milestone on a presidential campaign
would be that primary, or that local
vote. But there may be some preliminary
milestones prior to that, that you set,
achieve, and celebrate as you’re going
through it, that will help you reach the next
goal.
The other advice is that somebody on
your team has got to be mindful of the
celebration. We shouldn’t carry the
burden of the world on our shoulders in
every organizing campaign. One of the
attributes that an organizer has to have
is joy. We’re trying to create something
better, and when we create something
better, there’s got to be laughter and joy.
There are ample opportunities for fun;
you just need to be creative about it.
AM: Something Marlon mentioned
that I was thinking of a lot when
I read your book was: despite a
lot of changes in technology,
organizing is always about
building relationships to organize
around a cause or person. What
are your thoughts on that?
LT: I’m not one of those people who says,
“Gee, technology hasn’t changed what we
do”. When I started, I had 3-by-5-inch cards
and I had to go to a phone booth and throw
dimes in, in order to make calls to people.
Obviously technology changes the way we
communicate and will continue to do that.
But at its core, organizing is about
relationships, and it’s making a
connection with people. I’m talking about
fundamentally changing people and getting
people in a community to take action
together. Technology can be used to keep
them together, to keep them informed,
and to provide discussion and forums for
people to talk. But fundamentally it’s about
relationships that you make with people to
get them to do things.
One of the things that technology can never
do, is give me the ability to be able to look
at you, in your eyes, and either invite you,
motivate you, or inspire you to get involved
and do something. That human connection
is essential for organizing.
Organizing is a constant. Organizing isn’t
ideology or about proselytization over one
way of thinking. Organizing is taking a
variety of people and working together and
trying to find solutions, which may not be
the ideological solution we thought. That
is such a powerful thing. It’s the human
connection of organizing that is really
important; and you’ve got to be skilled to be
able to do that.
I don’t think we’ll ever change that with
technology. I think twenty or even 100
years from now, the human connection
of organizing will still be the basics.