Future Hope column, February 29, 2024

Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World, a book review

By Ted Glick

“Legendary organizer Bayard Rustin, a consummate practical radical, criticized two other dominant ways of approaching social change: ‘My quarrel with the ‘no-win’ tendency in the civil rights movement (and the reason I have so designated it) parallels my quarrel with the moderates outside the movement. As the latter lack the vision or will for fundamental change, the former lack a realistic strategy for achieving it. For such a strategy they substitute militancy. But militancy is a matter of posture and volume and not of effect.”    page ix

“A defining challenge for Left organizations today is building healthy cultures that encourage real strategic debate and building caring communities that people want to join. In our experience, many organizations lean toward one pole or another—either having honest but harsh debates that lead to splits and drive people away or developing a culture of ‘nice’ that prevents engaging differences in ways that are necessary for breakthrough strategy. Reducing harmful and unnecessary conflict can create the conditions for generative conflict, which can be healthy for organizations and movements.”  p. 263

Deepak Bhargava and Stephanie Luce have written an important and timely book, Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World. For those of us who are committed to live our lives, day after day, in as effective a way as possible to bring about fundamental, transformative, social and economic change, there is a great deal of food for thought in this substantive book

What are the seven strategies which they identify as essential?

-Base Building: “To win anything, you need to organize people, often one by one, door by door, co-worker by co-worker, and to develop strong bonds and leadership capacity.”

-Disruptive Movement: “Disruption is the ability to stop those in power from doing what they want to do and to break up the status quo.”

-Narrative Shift: “A Big Story, rooted in shared values and common themes, that influences how audiences process information and make decisions.”

-Electoral Change: “Organizations endorse candidates or run their own, develop platforms, pursue get-out-the-vote efforts, and attempt to win the power to govern.”

-Inside-Outside: “Win major policy reform by working ‘inside’ in alliance with sympathetic legislators, but also building ‘outside’ pressure through grassroots organizing.”

-Momentum Model: “Momentum-driven campaigns seek to change the political weather—to expand what’s possible to win by changing the ‘common sense’ on a particular issue.”

-Collective Care: “While care—meeting people’s basic needs for food, health, emotional support, or community—is part of everyone’s daily lives, caring for one another can be about more than survival; it can be strategic.”

To help people understand more fully about these seven approaches to world changing, the authors write about the work of nine organizations or movements: Make the Road New York, St. Paul Federation of Educators, the welfare rights movement, Occupy Wall Street, New Georgia Project, Fight for Fifteen, 350.org and Gay Men’s Health Crisis.

One of several key points that the authors make based upon their research and thinking is this one: “Transformational change will likely require multiple forms of power and all seven strategy models. Base-building is fundamental, but the other models work best under particular conditions. To this end, organizers should consider the ways different strategy models might fit together in a larger long-term struggle.”   p. 241

One aspect of the book that I appreciated was the integration of action on the climate emergency throughout it. One of the chapters was devoted exclusively to the work of the international climate group, 350.org, but at various other points the authors make clear that they believe this must be a key focus of the overall people’s movement for positive, systemic change.

One weakness, however, was the lack of a consistent identification of who it is that we must overcome if we really do want to prevent increased attacks on the rights and livelihoods of people of color, low-income and low-wealth people and workers; 21^st century fascism; and worldwide ecosystem and societal breakdown. One of the few places where they do so is in reference to what Bernie Sanders consistently and repeatedly spoke about during his 2016 and 2020 Presidential campaigns. Here’s what they said at one point:

“Some parts of the progressive movement focus exclusively on single issues or policies, which makes it challenging to build support for transformational change. If they aspire to assemble a majority coalition, Left political insurgencies must work across issues and speak to different constituencies. One vivid example is the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, which achieved improbable momentum in 2016 in part because of great grassroots organizing, but also because Sanders offered more than a laundry list of policies. He offered a critique that named the villains: corporations and the billionaires and millionaires who were responsible for and profited from the struggles of working people,” the 1%, as first named by Occupy Wall Street.  p. 20

This is not a small issue. If we are not clear that this is the primary reason why humankind and all other life forms are in such great danger right now, we will never bring together the political and social force, the tens of millions of people, the multiracial working class and allies, that is absolutely, strategically necessary.

There is one other issue of note. Toward the end of the book, on page 300, the authors report on a “planning exercise” they were part of in 2022 which emphasized the importance of a “long view.” “We looked at a potential scenario of climate collapse and authoritarian takeover a decade in the future, and then at a world with a multiracial, feminist, global social democracy three decades from now.”

I support having a long view. Having a long view, both looking backwards and looking forward, is an important component of personal and movement staying power. But the way this particular exercise was reported was striking to me.

Why such a disparity as far as timetable between these two possible paths? Did people really think that we need 30 years to get our act together? Did they realize that there are climate tipping points after which it will be extremely difficult, at best, for the world to recover from this century: the drying out of the Amazon rainforest, Arctic and Antarctic meltdown, the release of massive amounts of methane currently locked-in-ice on ocean floors as the oceans warm, the slowing of the Gulf Stream potentially leading to weather instability and crop failures around the world?

Back to the Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign: the Bernie movement garnered over 13 million votes that year, and polls for literally months showed that if Sanders had won the Democratic Party nomination he would have started his general election campaign ahead of Trump by about 10 percentage points. This is one big example—there are others, like the majority support right now in opposition to US support of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and Palestinians–that there really are tens of millions of people who support a strong progressive agenda. And that can’t be translated into winning power until 30 years from now?

Bhargava’s and Luce’s book can help us unite on a basis which can last, and sooner rather than later. That’s what we need. That, indeed, is what is absolutely needed strategically.

Ted Glick has been a progressive activist, organizer and writer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21^st Century Revolution. More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.