The last Organizing Toolbox discussed the importance of building the strength of your organization while working to achieve your goals on issues. This toolbox focuses on methods for building up allies for your issue campaign while diffusing or minimizing opposition.

Constituents are potential allies

To begin to identify constituents on your issue, think in terms of categories or groups of people rather than individuals. Ask yourself what categories of people will benefit when you achieve your goal on your issue. Constituent groups are potential supporters of your campaign. If they do actual work to support your campaign, they are your allies. A good issue campaign strategy is systematic about contacting constituents for an issue and bringing them into the campaign as allies.

Let's look at an example of how this can work:

Suppose your goal is to build 50 new units of affordable housing in your community. You have targeted the members of the local housing authority as the decision-makers on this issue, since they have the authority and financial means to build the housing you want.

First, think through the categories of people who will benefit when you reach your goal. A list might look something like this:

• people who need affordable housing or have loved ones who need affordable housing
• people who live in neighborhoods where housing conditions are poor
• people in organizations that work for affordable housing
• people in organizations that work in the interest of children
• people in organizations that work on justice issues generally
• politicians favorable to building more affordable housing in the community

Second, think through the concrete reasons why each category of people will benefit when you reach your goal. When you eventually approach groups to bring them into the campaign as allies, you should be able to explain in a clear, simple way why you think they would benefit if the campaign is successful.

Third, think through the actual names of any organized groups that fit your categories. For example, where are groups or organizations of people who need affordable housing likely to be found? For example:

• the Martha Stewart Senior Citizens Center
• the Rising Sun Head Start Parents Association

Where are people who live in neighborhoods where housing conditions are poor likely to be found? For example:

• the neighborhood recreation league in a low-income neighborhood
• the residents association in a low-income neighborhood
• churches that serve low-income communities

Develop a plan for your group to contact the other groups systematically. Does anyone in your group already know someone in one of the other groups? If not, decide on the best people to contact in the other groups by calling or visiting one of the positional leaders Ð the president or chairperson of the group, for example. Before going to see them, be sure you are able to describe your goal, what you plan to do, how it will be of benefit to the other group if you succeed, and the specific kind of support you want from the other group.

Listen carefully to what the person from the other group says you will have to do in order to get their support. Remember that you want the support of the group, not just one of its members or representatives. For example, the person you visit from another group might say, "I'll distribute flyers for your group myself, but if you want the endorsement of the recreation league, you'll have to come to a board meeting." Find out when and where the next Board meeting is and who you have to talk to get on the agenda.

Think carefully about what you want your allies to do. What influence do they have that you don't have? Will they bring their influence to bear on the campaign? For example, an African-American neighborhood group in an overwhelmingly white community had been working hard to get the city council to appropriate funds for street improvements, but the council overlooked them as a tiny minority that had no political clout.

They asked a leader in the white community to do one thing: get a group of white residents together to come out to a city council meeting in support of the African-American community's goal. When they did, the city council took notice that they weren't dealing with an invisible racial minority group anymore, but a sizeable group of white voters who were watching the way the council treated the request of African-American residents. The council met the neighborhood group's demand for street improvements.

Many times allies can simply endorse your goals, offer financial help, or just get the word out about your campaign to their members. But remember to think about each ally in terms of what they can do that's unique, that brings something to the campaign that your group can't bring to it on its own.

Opponents

Community groups sometimes confuse their targets with their opponents. Targets are the people with the power and authority to implement your goal. They may be opposed to your goal, but not necessarily. Don't assume that your targets are against you, and don't assume that they are the only opposition you will face. In planning your campaign, ask yourself who will be opposed to your goal, in this example, building 50 new units of affordable housing:

• homeowners in the area who fear affordable housing will lower their property values or bring "undesirable" people into the neighborhood
• anti-government spending proponents who dislike any expenditure of public money as a matter of principle

Try to identify any organized groups that are likely to contain your opponents:

• the homeowners association located where you want to build the new housing units
• the middle-class or affluent churches that serve that area
• the "I'm opposed to everything" breakfast club

Try to sort out why these groups would be opposed and see if you can develop any arguments to sway them the other way. Then go meet with them and see what they have to say. It helps to listen to their arguments, even if it's hard to listen. It gives you some idea of how much they care about your issue, whether they care enough to openly oppose you, or whether they are likely to use their influence behind the scenes to stop you.

Facing your opponents directly helps your group in several ways:

• it sends a clear message that you're not afraid of your opponents
• it usually gives you information that helps you address or refute the opponent's concerns in public, and especially with your targets, the decision-makers
• it sometimes helps to diffuse or neutralize the opposition
• it sometimes helps some members of the opposition to change sides

A few words of caution:

First, while it is generally good for community groups to try to engage the opposition, or at least neutralize it, safety issues are more important. Obviously, any opponent group that you suspect might take violent action against you needs to be avoided. But there are other forms of retaliation: getting evicted from your apartment or fired from your job are common ones. Having your kids hassled in school is another. Sometimes racism, classism, sexism, or prejudice concerning sexual orientation make it extremely difficult for members of a community group to talk to members of the opposition. In these cases, it makes sense to take a look at your allies again to see if they can meet with the opposition as part of their involvement in the campaign.

Second, community groups sometimes get so distracted by opposition groups that they forget to keep their attention on the targets, the people who can actually give you what you want. Don't fall into the trap of getting into skirmishes with the opposition which drain your resources from the main goal you're working toward. Your objectives with opponents need to be clear and limited. Try to neutralize them if you can, but keep your eye on achieving your goal.

Build your organization by working with allies and engaging opponents

The members and leaders of your organization who participate in the work of building alliances and neutralizing the opposition learn many skills and collect information that are important to your immediate campaign, and they are also important to building the strength of your organization over the long-term. This part of issue campaign work is often the best place for leadership development in your organization. It helps your organization make many useful connections in the community that can be cultivated to achieve your immediate goal and build a foundation for even more ambitious work in the future.