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Follow UsOrganization and the Ascent of Resonance-Consciousness
Yesterday we discussed the importance of emotional resonance with regard to effectively reaching an audience (ala Ze Frank). Resonance is an imperative tool for organizers to strive to comprehend, especially when trying to encourage or inspire any sort of group action.
Primal Leadership: The Ascent of Resonance-Consciousness
In 2005, David Goleman authored a book entitled Primal Leadership (co-authored with Annie McKee and Richard Boyatzis) that recognized the significance of resonant leadership. Done wrong, the style appears to be what Michael Scott of The Office is often sloppily fumbling to emulate—the maintenance of a stale, “authentic” connection to his employees. Done right, maintaining a sense of emotional resonance with a base of people requires of the leader the cultivation of emotional intelligence.
The website Values Based Management has a page devoted to Goleman’s concentration on resonance and his leadership styles. It breaks down the assessment of the resonant leader:
“Effective leaders are attuned to other people’s feelings and move them in a positive emotional direction.They speak authentically about their own values, direction and priorities and resonate with the emotions of surrounding people. Under the guidance of an effective leader, people feel a mutual comfort level. Resonance comes naturally to people with a high degree of emotional intelligence (self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management) but involves also intellectual aspects.”
Ze Frank: Resonance Conscious
We spoke yesterday about resonance in the context of Ze Frank and his assertion that it is one of the most important variables when connecting with a crowd. Frank recently put an open call out (via twitter) for folks who were down with giving up their Facebook profiles - and handing them over to him for a week. He received so many responses to his request that he had to take it down nearly immediately. Again, Ze Frank “gets it,” and in the context of this more in-depth study on resonance, it becomes clear that by saying he “gets it,” I am very likely implying that Frank:
- Has a high emotional intelligence.
- Knows how to translate said emotional intelligence into a connection/trust with his fellow Twitter users so strong that they are willing to grant him access to their Internet identities - something many of us try hard to keep out of the hands of strangers.
“Resonant Leader Is One in Tune with Himself, Others”
After the release of Primal Leadership, USA Today also looked at Goleman’s take on leadership and resonance. The article, Resonant Leader Is One in Tune with Himself, Others, describes the resonant leader as “in tune with him or herself, and the people they work with.”
The article offers the following conditions for being a resonant leader:
- Mindfulness. The awareness of what is really happening within your body, mind, heart and spirit, while paying attention to what is going on around you. [Mindfulness] can be gained from meditation, prayer, exercise, music and being in nature.
- Hope. They cite research describing hope as charting a course of action on clearly articulated goals, believing the goals can be met and eventually reaching them with a sense of well-being.
- Compassion. To be truly resonant with others, you must genuinely care about them.
Watching the projects Frank is involved with, from his daily webcast to his Color Wars project, he displays an immersion in each of these conditions. He is clearly mindful of himself, his performance, and his audience. His hope in his own projects is displayed clearly by how explicitly he defines and completes his goals (his show lasted for exactly one year). And finally, it is clear that Frank cares about the people who pay attention to him. He is compassionate. He takes time out for the people who recognize him on the street. He takes care to craft the activities he challenges them to engage it.
Organizing with Resonance
Establishing a sense of resonance and working on an increased emotional aptitude isn’t just for middle management and web personalities. Moving forward with any sort of group action, be it encouraging people to sign on to a petition or leading a walk-out, it is important to instill in fellow participants a sense of trust and authenticity. Establishing a sense of resonance with the people you’re trying to move, and the people with whom you are moving, is key for successfully getting any task done. While this may seem obvious, at a time where putting together and executing action appears as simple as clicking a mouse a few times, the importance of tailoring people skills might easily be lost by the wayside for some. In a world of millions of web-petitions, flash-mobs, and other one-off schemes, keeping the upper hand might be as simple as knowing who you are and where you’re coming from as well as knowing and caring about who you’re organizing.
A Closer Look: Peter Dreiser, Obama, and the Rise of the Organizer Class
Will Obama Inspire a New Generation of Organizers, a piece written by Peter Dreier and originally published in Dissent Magazine, appeared in The Huffington Post on Tuesday evening. Dreier, a professor of politics and director of the Urban & Environmental Policy program at Occidental College (and also teaches a class on community organizing), details the effect Sen. Obama, a former community organizer, is already having on the Millennial Generation:
- “There has not been a candidate since Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy who has inspired so many young people to become involved in public service and grassroots activism.”
- “The number of young people seeking jobs as organizers has spiked in the past year in the wake of Obama’s candidacy.”
- “Obama, through his own example, has already dramatically increased the visibility of grassroots organizing as a career path, as well as a way to give ordinary people a sense of their own collective power to improve their lives and bring about social change.”
Here, Dreier appears to be correct, and not necessarily over-optimistic. Having been an organizer in the past—becoming one quite by accident as I had no idea the job had existed before I had it—I’ve seen that Sen. Obama’s Presidential candidacy has brought to a greater consciousness that there exists a career centered specifically on personal empowerment and mobilizing social change. My parents and peers are now more familiar with what community organization is and entails than when I was an organizer myself.
Dreier also outlines the history of community organizing in America. Obama openly acknowledges the great Chicago organizer Saul Alinsky as an inspiration, which leads right-wing bloggers to loosely draw parallels between the Chicago organizer, the Illinois Senator, and, of course, Communism [see: "Saul Alinsky - yet another Obama mentor from his Marxist past"]. Dreier, however, illustrates the tradition’s more-substantial, three-dimensional history:
- “The roots of community organizing go back to the nation’s founding, starting with the Sons of Liberty and the Boston Tea Party.”
- “Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, author of Democracy in America, was impressed by the outpouring of local voluntary organizations that brought Americans together to solve problems, provide a sense of community and public purpose, and tame the hyper-individualism that Tocqueville considered a threat to democracy.”
- “Historians trace modern community organizing to Jane Addams, who founded Hull House in Chicago in the late 1800s and inspired the settlement house movement. These activists—upper-class philanthropists, middle-class reformers, and working-class radicals—organized immigrants to clean up sweatshops and tenement slums, improve sanitation and public health, and battle against child labor and crime.”
- “In the 1930s [...] Saul Alinsky, took community organizing to the next level. He sought to create community-based “people’s organizations” to organize residents the way unions organized workers.”
Finally, Dreier imagines the Organizer-In-Chief, and how this role could be leveraged to better leverage a platform and elicit constituent action:
- “Obama can certainly learn valuable lessons from President Franklin Roosevelt, who recognized that his ability to push New Deal legislation through Congress depended on the pressure generated by protesters and organizers.”
- “Roosevelt became more vocal, using his bully pulpit—in speeches and radio addresses—to promote New Deal ideas.”
- “[Obama] understands that his ability to reform health care, tackle global warming, and restore job security and decent wages will depend, in large measure, on whether he can use his bully pulpit to mobilize public opinion and encourage Americans to battle powerful corporate interests and members of Congress who resist change.”
And finally, Dreier suggests that Obama’s inspiration can be used to put on pressure to reform - even his own platform:
- “But if it appears that he is veering too far to the political center, they will—inspired in part by Obama’s own example, and perhaps with his covert support—mobilize to push him (and Congress) to live up to his progressive promise.”
Again, Dreier is not over-optimistic or too-simplistic in his assessment. Community organizers and anyone generally excited or inspired by seeing a collective of people make something happen have reason to be excited, as their craft is being highlighted by a presidential candidate - specially one that has already inspired a young generation. Throughout my elementary school life, there always seemed to be ploys to make reading look cool via posters featuring endorsements by Spider-Man, Tom Hanks, Patrick Ewing, and others. It seems that now, however, considering how empowered different communities feel resulting from Obama’s candidacy, his is the best enforcement that community organization will get.
It it especially interesting to think of the president-organizational community role Dreier outlines, patented after Franklin Roosevelt and some of his constituents. After nearly three decades of presidencies that have celebrated individualism, imagining the constituent, or organized collectives of constituents as players rather than passive bystanders is exciting. Further, I very much appreciate the suggested interchangeable role of the constituent as an agent for platform change (using the “bully-pulpit” to mobilize collective action in response to climate change issues, war attitudes, gas prices, etc) and keeping the President’s (and Congress’s) platforms in check with reality (as we’re presently seeing Sen. Obama’s netroots supporters do with regard to his stance on FISA).
Today In eAction News // 06.03.08
On this day, July 3nd, 2008, the news brings to our attention a generation of community organizer aspirants, the Chinese finding their way around the Great Firewall, backlash against Rogers, the Canadian iPhone provider, and much, much more.
- Ukrainians are becoming “increasingly involved in grassroots activism.”
- A short profile of Carrotmob and the Carrotmobsters who make it work.
- Canadian iPhone customers going about their outrage the wrong way?
- Living and dying by social networks.
- Chinese finding a way around the firewall.
- And finally, I want to be an organizer when I grow up.
Ze Frank and the Value of Resonance and Branding
I very recently had the pleasure of talking with Ze Frank, a web personality who continues to show that he “gets it” more than others [especially with regard to the art of communicating with and moving people online]. Frank is already well known to many for several handfuls of reasons, which include his year-long web show and, most recently, for co-hosting Color Wars, “an internet-wide game in which players from a number of self created teams compete for prizes and medals.” We discussed, in particular, the value of resonance with regard to capturing and motivating an audience, both on and off line.
Frank stressed that resonance, not a necessarily logical or quantitative exponent, is one of the most important variables when it comes to connection with an audience or a crowd. This is important for movement-makers of all shapes and sizes to internalize when trying to mobilize a base.
Consider that before he won the primary, there was an element of faith that was projected unto Barack Obama by his supporters. For many, support for Obama the figure [strong, transcendent, untraditional, "post-partisan"] did not necessarily mirror or represent support for Obama the public servant (based on a number of votes, etc). This embrace was, and case of many continues to be, rooted in part in illogic — to some, the Senator fro Illinois represents youthful optimism, the reinvention of American mythology, opportunity for the disenfranchised, and so-on. Sen. Obama’s allure lies in his mythology; he resonates with people in a way that the other candidates did not.
Understanding how to connect on a movement-to-person level is as fundamental as knowing how to maintain databases, properly leverage the power of Facebook, frequenting all of the right blogs, etc.
Having been to many conferences, talks, and seminars, where suggestions regarding the how-to of maneuvering in a “post 2.0″ world are thrown around with varying degrees of authority; having read thousands of blog entries dealing with “the right components necessary” for putting together successful social movements; having attended hundreds of hours of rigid panel discussions and keynotes about how networking will change everything, I find a topic like resonance to be as refreshing as it is ethereal
The road to establishing a sense of resonance with the audience—be they viewers or potential supporters of a revolution—requires a brand consciousness. I consider one particular episode of Frank’s show, entitled Jon-Benet, to be required viewing when it comes to “getting” branding. In it, he says, “A brand is an emotional aftertaste that’s conjured up by, but not necessarily dependent on, a series of experiences.” Further, “The shared emotional aftertaste of brand is platform-independent. If you leverage those aftertastes, people will pay attention, regardless of where they are. And whether the emotional aftertaste is good or bad is irrelevant! As long as they’re watching.”
Frank is not only excellent at articulating this, he is great at putting it into action. His knack for comprehending resonance is very much the difference between the successful cult following of The Show with Ze Frank and why many other daily vlogs go nearly unwatched. It is the reason he was able to help to put together an Internet-based game and why he knows that people will be really into posing as younger versions of themselves or why they might be willing to compete in a nerd rap battle. His comprehension of how all of this fits together is the reason why there are thousands of people waiting to see what he’ll do next.
Understanding resonance works similarly to what they say about getting your shit on Digg: You can go through the motions but content is key. The only way that one can harness a true sense with any degree of authenticity is not by attending conferences and learning the calculus of maneuvering online, but by knowing who people are, what they connect to, and what they want. To do this, we are required to listen much more than we talk, be willing to digest input as much as we love creating output, and maybe, once in a while, turning our backs on Twitter here and there and talking with someone, outside of our apartments, face to face.
For tomorrow, we’ll take a look at some successful instances of branding.
Today In eAction News // 06.02.08
On this day, July 2nd, 2008, the news brings to our attention some fresh approaches to collective action, peace movements in Nepal, email tips, and more.
- “Imaginary friends who live in my typewriter” and “the inverted Matrix.”
- The World Bank walks us through collective action against corruption.
- Tips for successful action-prompted emails.
- Diversity and collective action in Nepal (lengthy but interesting).
- And finally, a different approach to acting collectively.
MSHcast #4: David Sirota and “The Uprising”
David Sirota is a political organizer and journalist based in Colorado. He has helped to organize/worked for Bernie Sanders, the Ned Lamont for US Senate Campaign, and other populist, grassroots movements. His columns have been published in the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, and many other well-regarded publications. Sirota recently authored The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington, a book he is presently promoting.
Considered to be an expert on this emerging movement towards a new kind of revolt (lubricated in part by Internet technologies), Sirota explains to us the difference between grassroots politics and populist grassroots politics. Further, he answers:
- What gets in the way of collective action with regard to grassroots politics?
- What regions are more conducive to making collectivism work?
- Why is territorialism a big issue with movement building on the left?
Please enjoy our MSHcast with David Sirota:
[And a special thanks to Connecticut-based Waiting For Sully for providing the opening song.]
Reflections on eAction News: Millennials Torn Between Individual and Collective, Myth and Reality
Will the Millennial generation be able to buck the hyperindividualist tendencies with which they were instilled thanks to 80s and 90s political mentalities? Will they be able to avoid getting in their own way when pushing forward for collective change? I have heard this question time and again and yesterday, as featured in our news links, Sally Kohn, senior campaign strategist with the Center for Community Change, addressed the issue in an op-ed for the Christian Science Monitor.
“The lone cowboy story was a myth,” writes Kohn, recognizing and celebrating the Millennial’s shift towards an embrace of collective action. I had a similarly themed conversation as early as last week with Josh Levy of Change.org, where we discussed our simultaneous appreciation for how awesome the movie Iron Man was while also marveling that it exists as yet another continuation of the dated mythology that suggests “one great hero will save us all.” Enabling collectivist political and social behaviors is impossible without the connectivity provided by Internet technologies, the Millennials are moving beyond that myth. As Douglas Rushkoff said at this year’s Personal Democracy Forum, “You can either be an in-charge individual, or an in-charge collective,” and this generation has showed which side they prefer.
I agree with Kohn’s caution, and believe it important to keep a close eye on the Millennial’s tendencies towards the hyperindividual (Kohn suggests that the Internet is a tool of the individualist). The Millennials are a generation struggling with its own identity. Further, I agree with Kohn’s assertion that the Millennials must be cautious with regard to how we move forward as a collective by taking as many of their actions offline as possible. They must strive to participate in as many face-to-face ways as they can, so as to strengthen a connection that goes beyond familiarity with screen names. It is important that the Internet is consistently embraced as a tool, not a single answer, with regard to increasing civic engagement and degrees of social capital.
Where Kohn’s assertion gets tricky, however, comes when she claims that “the Internet does not bind individuals in shared struggle the same as the face-to-face activism of the 1960s and ’70s did.” Generational comparisons as measures of success are both tricky and dangerous. This mirrors an argument I have heard time and again between the 50+ crowd and Millennials themselves—an argument centered around an expectation held by the elder collectivists that believe that since the youth are not rioting in the streets ala France in May of ‘68, something isn’t going right. Unfortunately for that argument, May, 1968 is as mythical as the proverbial lone cowboy.
On the 40-year anniversary of said summer, it is sexy to remember all of the radicalism that took place all over the world, but in doing so, it is easy to forget that in the US, many of the fruits of that particular movement weren’t as attractive as we care to remember. There were, of course large successes with regard to “the culture war” and the movement towards a stronger civil rights policy, but the rise of Nixon’s “silent majority,” the cultivation of distrust in government and the collective, and an eventual embrace of the hyper individualism that we’re now trying to re-imagine also came out of it. It is important, as Kohn points out, to be sure that the Millennials are careful to embrace as many opportunities for face-to-face action as possible, be they opportunities provided by Meetups, using Couchsurfing, flash-mobbing, or other available tools and mechanisms. We must be careful, though, to not get too hung up on measuring the successes of this generation by the foggy, glamorized spectacle of the ones that came before.
Today In eAction News // 06.30.08
On this day, June 30th, 2008, the news brings to our attention a grassroots cry for help to Bob Barr, a reminder that “real change” happens offline, a look at what happens when you make the netroots angry, and much, much more.
- Sally Kohn, senior campaign strategist with the Center for Community Change, reminds us to log off once in a while.
- It looks like Bob Barr’s supporters would like to see him read Ms. Kohn’s article.
- With regard to environmental issues, Chinese Millennials are starting to make something happen.
- Don’t piss off the Netroots.
- Community organizes to help family (aw).
- With regard to mobs, does ’smart’ necessarily equate ‘wise’?
- Perhaps you’d like to know the (speculative) future of e-politics.
- And finally, want to win a campaign? Bring a camera
Paper Cranes and Persistence: Successful Resistance in Belarus
Zmister Dashkevich learned firsthand that in Belarus, collective action is too often met with violence and incarceration. Dashkevich was ushered into a Belarus prison for being the de facto leader of the political opposition group Youth Front. Formely a faction of the Belarusian Popular Front (BPF), Youth Front has been fighting against the Belarusian regime since Alexandr Lukashenko took power in 1994. Some popular contentions with the regime include the ownership of all the media outlets, imprisoning or otherwise crushing political opposition, praising Adolf Hitler, and supporting Yugoslav war criminal Slobodan Milošević.
Enter Amensty International.
Amnesty was at the forefront in the campaign to release Dashkevich from prison. They organized a global campaign to send 10,000 paper cranes to the Belarus Minister of Internal Affairs as a sign of solidarity with the young activist.
Cranes came as far away as Mexico, Canada, and Croatia. Amnesty’s flikr account shows groups of smiling children folding cranes in the shape of a lit candle or a “Free Zmister” sign. Many of the cranes came from high schools, where Amensty helped educate students about free speech issues in Belarus and elsewhere. In colleges, student activist groups organized workshops to make cranes for Dashkevich and denim wristbands for other prisoners.
But the internet played a major role too.
Searching for Zmister’s name on Google leads you to a trail of bloggers, promoters, and Amnesty supporters urging people to send in their cranes, complete with a ready-made cutout and a how-to video to help people along. Bloggers reposted the call for action and reached many more people who were either unaware or not familiar with Amensty’s actions, including a “widget” that played John Lennon covers and linked to a petition to show support for Belarus.
Overall, the campaign was a huge success.
Zmister Dashhkevich was released from prison early, determined to keep fighting for representation and democracy in Belarus. Lukashenko has no intention of stepping down soon, but Amensty’s efforts are at least a small indication that his regime is not above international law, and it has made a small but noticable change in the country’s greater political climate.
-Vadim Gershteyn
MSHcast #3: David All and the Organization of the Rightroots
David All is a Republican 2.0 (and emerging 3.0, as he notes in this episode) consultant who has long been advocating for an Internet conservative grassroots movement. Further, he is the brainchild behind Slatecard, a conservative competitor to ActBlue. He came to my attention last year when a summer issue of Mother Jones highlighted a conversation with key players in the politics 2.0 movement included him as an authority on the subject. Composed and articulate, All outlined his efforts to bring the Republican Party to a Netroots style movement.
We reached out to All because his efforts are inspiring from several perspectives that many collective organizers can learn from:
- He saw where the movement was going and, two steps ahead of it, he got there before everyone else did. All realized that the nature of right wing participatory politics would emerge, and while his constituency did not, he got there and built himself as a key player.
- He is unafraid of taking on a (large) majority. Despite the well-recorded, much-reported on upper-hand that the left has with regard to netroots involvement, All rallied around his point of view and has, as a result, rallied his base accordingly.
- While I didn’t mention this in the episode, All is a spectacular self-promoter. He has admirally branded his name, as when I think of the Internet-based grassroots organizing for the right, I automatically think of David All. This sort of credibility is obviously important when further perpetuating press coverage of your particular cause as well as when it comes to finding support various means of support.
Please enjoy our MSHcast with David All:
[And a special thanks to Connecticut-based Waiting For Sully for providing the opening song.]
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