Organizing a Movement

Organizing a Movement
It’s all about power. Taking the power of one group of people or person and shifting it to another. To do this, great organization is needed to utilize the people to put pressure on on group to shift the power to another. From a nonviolent perspective it is key to use love with power once a person has attained power. “King spoke eloquently about the importance of power and the need to combine it with love. ‘One of the greatest problems of history is that the concepts of love and power are usually contrasted as polar opposites… Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice’” (Cortright 192). Political power relies on two main factors of money and people (Cortright 192). This means that the organization of a group of people is imperative in gaining political power. Unfortunately most social organizations looking to advocate change, don’t have the same amount of money politicians do, so they must rely on their ability on the number of people they can successfully organize. Organization is changing drastically due to technology. The communication capabilities of the modern world far surpass those even a decade ago. However, the idea is still the same; “to mobilize people and resources for collective action” (Cortright 195) The internet has been irreplaceable in terms of getting word out about organizing a movement. A campaign against the war in Iraq was started via the internet in 2002. MoveOn organized meetings with Congress members who opposed war, and generated nearly a million signatures in under a week, and vigils in 140 countries. The internet was key because this medium of communication was able to get word out to millions of people within an extremely short amount of time and be easily available for translations to get word to foreign countries (Cortright 195-196). Common ground is also very important when organizing. A unity of the social group must be found for a cohesiveness to reach an ultimate goal.

Overall, a few ideas need to be looked at when organizing
Is there a clear over arching goal that all members believe in?
Is there a unity among members? Whether it be religion, geographic area, morals, beliefs, etc.
Can the media be involved as leverage?