Campaigns, Initiatives, & the Climate Movement
Olympian Fields of Action Series Post 13.1
One of the main ways we can be together enough, our sixth Movement characteristic/imperative/goal, is through campaigns and initiatives.
Broadly speaking, the term “Campaign” is used in common parlance for a wide variety of efforts, such as:
educational campaigns;
money-raising campaigns;
marketing campaigns;
health campaigns;
preservation campaigns;
campaigns targeting corporations or products;
public awareness campaigns, and;
public interest campaigns.
Of course, the term is used ubiquitously in the political and policy arenas. Electoral politics are all about campaigns. In the policy arena many efforts to pass a law to one’s liking or support or influence the promulgation of a regulation are called campaigns. While these two areas overlap, given that elected officials pass laws and influence regulations, they are also quite distinct in that policy campaigns trying to influence decision-makers are usually nonpartisan. Many people in broader society don’t make this distinction, however, seeing all such activities as “politics.” This can give the term a bit of a negative taint.
Some employ “campaign” because they want to connote a sense of working together for positive change, a sense of excitement and camaraderie and forward momentum, like a weight-loss campaign or a giving campaign. Such efforts are so far from any political sense that these positive connotations eclipse any negative taint.
All of these types of campaigns have some common characteristics:
they involve more than one person, and in many cases the larger the number of people involved the better;
they have identified something they are trying to achieve, usually formulated as a goal or goals;
they are time bound; they have a deadline or a decision point when the campaign will end.
You’ll note that I said “person” and “people.” That suggests individuals rather than collective entities make up a campaign. But the term is also applied by some to joint efforts by collective entities. However, in general most of us think of campaigns as made up of individuals. Unless otherwise stated, that is how I will use the term, employing the terms coalition, alliance, and network for efforts by collective entities.
As I said, many of those who use the word campaign do so because it suggests positive change.
However, some campaigns are about preventing change or trends they consider harmful; these are campaigns to stop something. Stop pollution. Stop logging of rainforests. Stop the development of wilderness. Stop the construction of an oil pipeline (e.g. #stopeacop). Stop the destruction of historic buildings.
But whether to create positive change or stop bad stuff, campaigns are about
collective action to achieve
agreed-upon goals
by a set time.
Campaigns and Initiatives
The term “Initiative” is used for efforts that also share the three characteristics of campaigns. In many cases “initiative” is a safer word to use than campaign — especially if one wants to avoid the taint of politics or edgy advocacy. Initiatives aren’t run by such troublemakers.
As such, campaigns and initiatives can have stylistic differences even as they share core characteristics.
The stereotypical notion of a movement person, combined with the need for speed and scale, would suggest that we should be more in the style of campaigns than initiatives; the time for being nice has run out.
But if we are to be big and broad and active enough, and achieve 5% or 400 million by 2030, as I have suggested, we cannot confine our thinking to stereotypes.
This is doubly true when we are also trying to create broad support by growing the number of Climate Action Supporters, the second of The Catalytic-4.
Furthermore, we should not assume that the saying “move fast and break things” should capture the zeitgeist of how every part of the Climate Movement should operate. And there is no reason to assume that an initiative cannot achieve the speed and scale we need.
A softer approach may attract more people faster, or a specific targeted group more quickly and successfully. Such an approach can also help to create new styles and types of organized actions.
Simply put: we need both campaigns and initiatives, and campaign-types shouldn’t look down their noses at initiatives and those that gravitate toward them.
Campaigns and “The Grassroots”
As I said, campaigns are nearly always organized by collective entities or a person or persons within such entities. They determine the goals, the deadline, the strategy and tactics, the message, etc. However, most campaigns will only be successful if they recruit enough of what campaign organizers consider to be “the grassroots.” Usually this means non-professionals, the people out there beyond the confines of one’s organization or professional coalition — volunteers.
This understanding of “the grassroots” conflates, in my terminology, (1) Climate Movement Members, and (2) Climate Action Supporters. It lumps them together. From the perspective of campaign organizers, “the grassroots” are defined by what they are not; they are not professionals; they are the ones to be activated and told what to do when the time is right. Professional campaign organizers activate. The grassroots passively wait to be activated.
But as Climate Action Artist-Athletes we cannot adopt a stance of passivity if we are to play our part in achieving our Major Goal. We cannot be trapped in this passive grassroots mentality.
We are Artist-Athletes on our Olympian Fields of Action, not viewers watching on TV or sitting in the stands.
We are all leaders of ourselves; we must activate ourselves, not wait for someone to turn us on.
For us to achieve victory, many of us must organize and participate in Climate Action Teams. Most of these Teams cannot be organized by professionals because there aren’t enough of them to do so at the speed and scale required.
Now, to be clear, there is nothing wrong with Climate Action Artist-Athletes joining campaigns organized by professionals and being told what to do and when to do it to achieve the goal(s) of the campaign. Indeed, as I have already argued and will do so again, such collective efforts are needed to help make us strategic enough.
But what we cannot do is adopt a passive mindset, we cannot exist in passive mode. As Climate Action Artist-Athletes we must wake up every day, exercise our freedom, and take the initiative and act and create. We must train, find the next race, run the next race, learn how to run better, add a new race, support our teammates in their efforts, continually find ways for our Team to work together and for our Team to work with other Teams and make it all beautiful.
We are not waiting around for someone else to play our part in achieving our Major Goal. We cannot wait for someone else to tell us what to do.
We are forward leaning, seizing the initiative, constantly in search for the next strategic thing for us to accomplish together to achieve victory. We must be active enough.
One final note: there is no law that says campaigns and initiatives cannot be organized by people who aren’t getting paid to do so.
As Climate Action Artist-Athletes not only can we join together in Climate Action Teams, we can create campaigns and initiatives; we don’t need anyone’s permission. The kairos-climate moment we find ourselves in, and the vision, purpose, and Major Goal we need to achieve, are all the permission we need. The moment bestows permission. Our freedom bestows permission. More than that, every kairos-climate moment is calling out, crying out, for us to stop bad stuff, set wrong right, and make things better, make our future come faster, and our world more beautiful. Join us!
If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, as well as other posts in this Olympian Fields of Action Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.