Love that you wrote this up and shared Emre! I definitely think we need more people having this kind of discourse publicly so appreciate you contributing.
I wanted to share some mostly anecdotal things from my experience in AR and XR in what seems to have worked for building deep/committed engagement from volunteers & activists:
I definitely resonate with the importance of social connections for building engagement. I thought XR and AR did this very well with things like: spending time together in an office, hanging out after work, shared housing[1], encouraging people to get to know each other more deeply (e.g. via check-ins, emotional sharing, etc) and more. I think this really builds the commitment of activists to not just the mission but also to not letting their friends in the movement down. We’re doing more in-person things with UK Voters for Animals and definitely think focusing on in-person organising is where you build the greatest depth (and lots of people crave it now!).
Some useful books on the importance of social activities for organising
The Making of Pro-life activists by Ziad Munson. There are some especially interesting things from the pro-life movement e.g. apparently 50% of people who join initially don’t believe in pro-life as an issue but they attend social events and essentially become conditioned over time via social norms. Similar to the NRA, the key thing is making fun, enjoyable events which bring people and the advocacy follows on from that naturally once they develop a stronger view on the issue.
It’s touched on by the book by Hahrie Han but something that I think XR was also really good at was building commitment & empowering people by giving them significant responsibility. For example, when I first joined XR, my first role was to help build XR in 4 countries, which is an insane responsibility to give someone who just joined and is 22 years old. But I found this very inspiring and tried to step up to the plate to deliver. Lots of other people did similar things and it really is inspiring when people believe in you.
I think this is a huge difference from the very understandable method of activism which says “we need to make it as easy as possible for people to engage” and only sends people 1-click campaigns to contact companies, etc, without giving them any meaningful responsibility.
I really do think the animal movement could do with a bit more of this “empowerment” mindset rather than just giving people very small discrete tasks.
On your point of single-issue organisations: I actually don’t perceive this as an issue and think it might be more damaging if we try to take a position on all things. If we do, I think we could risk becoming very politically homogenous (even more so than we already are!). When I think of some other successful movement organisations (e.g. XR, ActUp!, SNCC), there wasn’t necessarily a coherent worldview shared by all members and these organisations didn’t (I think) discuss lots of issues outside of their core focus.
Love that you wrote this up and shared Emre! I definitely think we need more people having this kind of discourse publicly so appreciate you contributing.
I wanted to share some mostly anecdotal things from my experience in AR and XR in what seems to have worked for building deep/committed engagement from volunteers & activists:
I definitely resonate with the importance of social connections for building engagement. I thought XR and AR did this very well with things like: spending time together in an office, hanging out after work, shared housing[1], encouraging people to get to know each other more deeply (e.g. via check-ins, emotional sharing, etc) and more. I think this really builds the commitment of activists to not just the mission but also to not letting their friends in the movement down. We’re doing more in-person things with UK Voters for Animals and definitely think focusing on in-person organising is where you build the greatest depth (and lots of people crave it now!).
Some useful books on the importance of social activities for organising
How Organisations develop activists by Hahrie Hahn—also a very good review on the EA Forum here.
The Making of Pro-life activists by Ziad Munson. There are some especially interesting things from the pro-life movement e.g. apparently 50% of people who join initially don’t believe in pro-life as an issue but they attend social events and essentially become conditioned over time via social norms. Similar to the NRA, the key thing is making fun, enjoyable events which bring people and the advocacy follows on from that naturally once they develop a stronger view on the issue.
It’s touched on by the book by Hahrie Han but something that I think XR was also really good at was building commitment & empowering people by giving them significant responsibility. For example, when I first joined XR, my first role was to help build XR in 4 countries, which is an insane responsibility to give someone who just joined and is 22 years old. But I found this very inspiring and tried to step up to the plate to deliver. Lots of other people did similar things and it really is inspiring when people believe in you.
I think this is a huge difference from the very understandable method of activism which says “we need to make it as easy as possible for people to engage” and only sends people 1-click campaigns to contact companies, etc, without giving them any meaningful responsibility.
I really do think the animal movement could do with a bit more of this “empowerment” mindset rather than just giving people very small discrete tasks.
On your point of single-issue organisations: I actually don’t perceive this as an issue and think it might be more damaging if we try to take a position on all things. If we do, I think we could risk becoming very politically homogenous (even more so than we already are!). When I think of some other successful movement organisations (e.g. XR, ActUp!, SNCC), there wasn’t necessarily a coherent worldview shared by all members and these organisations didn’t (I think) discuss lots of issues outside of their core focus.
Which also has a bunch of downsides but more on that another time..