Chapter 12: Campaigns & Strategy

What principles guide successful strategy and allow movements to integrate the different capacities in this book?

In a nutshell: Strategy is how movements use what they have to get what they want; to succeed they must build winning campaigns, find allies, develop capacity, and learn how to devise and improvise strategy.

In this chapter: 
Site 41Activists spend more than twenty years trying to stop a garbage dump from being built on a vulnerable aquifer—things change when settlers and Indigenous people join together for direct action. ­(p. 579) Histories or case studies
Anatomy of a Campaign – To build a winning campaign means combining key capacities—from recruitment to logistics—with action, in the right ratio. ­(p. 583)
Strategic Trajectories – To make big progress we can build on a series of smaller wins and intermediate victories. ­(p. 585)
American Temperance Movements – Feminists and temperance activists in the late 1800s and early 1900s fight the scourge of alcohol; they strike a difficult balance of between militants and moderates, and use the full spectrum of resistance to win prohibition (only to find that winning is complicated). ­(p. 592) Histories or case studies
Mid-19th-Century Chinese Rebellions – Colonial exploitation and ecological disasters provoke a series of rebellions that explode across Qing dynasty China; they might have won if the different factions had been able to cooperate. ­(p. 598) Histories or case studies
Alliances and Coalitions – What makes for a successful coalition? Shared ideals, bridge builders, tangible goals, and a crisis, among other factors. ­(p. 611)
Strategic Capacity – What makes a group able to create and recognize good strategy? The history of the United Farm Workers shows us the key elements of what Marshall Ganz calls strategic capacity.  ­(p. 616) Histories or case studies
Devising Strategy – How can you come up with good strategy for your group? Some suggestions and starting points. ­(p. 629) Checklists or practical skills

Movements and groups in this chapter:

Featured: Beausoleil First Nation (Anishinabe Kweag), WYE Citizens, American Temperance Movements / Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) / Anti-Saloon League, Taiping Rebellion, Nien Rebellion, United Farm Workers / National Farm Workers Association, Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee. Discussed: Uyghur Rebellion, Miao Revolt, Spanish Coalition for Jobs (Chicago), Pittsburgh’s Alliance for Progressive Action. Mentioned: African National Congress, Irish Independence Movements, Chinese Communist Revolution, Che Guevara’s Bolivian Guerrilla Movement, Students for a Democratic Society, Sandinistas, Green Corn Rebellion, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Black Panther Party, Suffragists, Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, EarthFirst!.