These are challenging times for social justice movements and human rights defenders.
Governments, politicians, and conservative forces use attacks on “others” to build support based on fear and hatred. Extractive industries have intensified raids on natural resources, leading to the brutal repression of communities protecting their land and the environment. Narratives, often false, ignite negative emotions into violence and division. Land, bodies, and life itself are under attack.
Authoritarian politics and the imposition of transnational business interests are closing off traditional democratic avenues for representing the interests of the global majority. Many traditional ways of organizing have become less effective in this hostile and rapidly changing environment. Yet strong social movements are needed more than ever.
Understanding power to build strategy
To meet the challenge, a group of seasoned movement-builders from around the world began getting together. In an interview, Shereen Essof, Zimbabwean feminist and director of Just Associates (JASS), describes the process: “We were seeing a troubling rise of authoritarianism, coupled with right-wing populist and fundamentalist groundswells, and intensifying levels of repression and crackdowns on dissent, and at the convening, we really took hope in the emergence of social justice movement formations. The conversations underscored the need for deeper thinking about power, but also about strategy.”
After several years—including a game-changing pandemic—JASS put out a compendium of reflections and exercises called “Just Power: A Guide for Activists and Changemakers.” The guide dissects power as both an oppressive and a liberating force that shapes contexts and lives, from the most intimate to the most public aspects, affecting what social movements build and how they work together.
It posits that a careful, context-based power analysis is essential to strategy: to identify and assess who and what are at the root of systemic and structural inequities, injustices, and violence; to point to where and how to focus change efforts in a given context and moment while investing in the long-term power-building process; and to direct organizing and change work within the wider movement ecosystem.
A power analysis for changing times
The premise: every context has an underlying power equation that is in flux and can be intentionally shifted. Power is not inherently good or bad—its qualities depend on who’s using it, how, and for what ends. Power is contested in every sphere of life—public, private, and intimate—and it impacts everyone differently depending on gender, race, ethnicity, caste, class, sexuality, ability, and location.
There are four kinds of dominating power: visible power, including the state; hidden or de facto power, like corporations and organized crime; invisible power that shapes norms and beliefs; and systemic power that defines the underlying logic of dominant structures and relationships—what Essof calls “the overarching and interlocking system of capital and patriarchy, structural racism, colonialism, imperialism that is harder to perceive and dismantle than the other arenas of power.”
James Savage, a program director with the Fund for Global Human Rights that supported the project, explains the value of this kind of power analysis:
“A lot of activists that we were working with have an innate understanding of power because they're living the realities of how power is abused and targeted towards them and the communities and constituencies they're working with, and yet a lot of the strategies that were being deployed were largely addressing one face of power-- visible power, state power. Missing by and large was a more complex analysis of the other forms of power that were actually at play that had to do with the role of hidden and shadow actors, the role of corporations, the role of religious groups influencing governments, culture, and communities, and the invisible power of culture and social norms and behaviors.”
As movements understand and confront oppressive power, they build their own collective power for change, called transformative power. The Civic Council of Indigenous and Popular Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), the organization founded by feminist, Indigenous, and environmental leader Berta Cáceres, shows how a detailed analysis of power can lead to a successful strategy. The guide distills some of the lessons from their experience organizing their communities to suspend a hydroelectric project in Indigenous Lenca territory:
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COPINH investigated who was funding the project, who benefited, and the interlocking relationships among investors, front companies, and state agencies. They identified specific decision-makers and structures. Information gathering about power was essential to organizing, strategy, and building leadership.
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COPINH employed cultural strategies rooted in their Indigenous identity, practices, and cosmovision to sustain a shared commitment and sense of community.
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They fostered strong local communities and community involvement to build their power and strengthen unity and mobilizing capacity.
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They forged local, national, international, and media alliances to mobilize support, build clout, and exert greater influence.
Navigating new terrain
The guide also analyzes contemporary conditions that affect movement-building today. Savage and Essof mention two that should appear in any twenty-first-century guide to organizing: digital technology and narratives as a critical terrain in which power is disputed.
Digital media and social networks can play positive or negative roles in providing information, mobilizing, and connecting. But, as Savage notes, they have also contributed to inequalities and a toxic male culture where extremely wealthy and powerful media moguls control public forums. Social networks serve to disseminate narratives that shape public debate and attitudes, presenting both perils and possibilities for social change work.
Perhaps never before have narratives—“not narratives as a communication strategy, but narratives as a deep worldview,” in Essof’s words—been as central to defining our perception of society. Narratives have the power to make beneficial changes but also to promote campaigns that attack rights and democracy. A chapter in the guide focuses on crafting transformational narratives by identifying collective values and goals and creating short, positive statements that convey them to others. Examples include Black Lives Matter, the Myanmar pro-democracy movement’s use of the Hunger Games three-finger gesture, and the recasting of “protestors” as “water protectors” at the Standing Rock Indigenous protests.
Progressive people’s organizations have never stopped adapting and innovating, leading to recent victories, such as the Indigenous-led defense of democracy in Guatemala and youth-led protests to rescind tax increases in Kenya. Rethinking how movements understand the powers at play, what works and what doesn’t in specific contexts, sharing that knowledge, and providing simple tools can help strengthen the people’s movements so urgently needed for profound social change.