"Building political power involves building democratic fights and victories beyond the ballot box. We need agency and participation in transformative community changes that people are directly involved in winning if we truly want to build lasting political power."
What have we learned about bridging the work of organization-building and protest with efforts to elect champions to public office? How close are we to our goal of actual governing power? How important is it to deliver material wins to communities through political action while building "political instruments"? This episode features a panel on inside/outside strategies hosted by Momentum and moderated by Hegemonicon host William Lawrence. The four panelists have each built a somewhat different political instrument for their own contexts: Lizzy Oh of NYC-DSA; Kamau Chege of Washington Community Alliance; Asha Ransby-Sporn, Chicago organizer; and Evan Weber of Sunrise Movement and Our Hawai’i.
Political power unionism pairs the strong organizing methodology of rank-and-file leadership development with social justice union politics. These approaches are essential if the working class is to build real accountability with elected officials and independent political organization.
