Organize Don’t Mobilize

By Roger Berkowitz

The 2020 election may well come down to three states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. If President Trump wins just one of these states—he won all three by slim margins in 2016—it is likely he will be reelected. If a Democrat flips all three, there is a good chance that they will be the next President. In 2018, Democratic governors were elected in Pennsylvania and Michigan by a healthy margin of around seven points. In Wisconsin, the Democrat Tony Evers won by fewer than thirty thousand votes. For Joseph O’Neill, this suggests that the 2020 Presidential election may well be decided in Wisconsin. What is more, the one liberal city in Wisconsin that had significantly lower voter turnout in 2016 than in 2012 is Milwaukee. For O’Neill, this suggests that Milwaukee—a city rated the worst city in the country to be an African-American resident, yet one whose population is nearly forty per cent African-American—“has a superpower: the potential to decide who will be the country’s next President.” O’Neill spent some time recently with African-American activists in Milwaukee. What he found is a focus on organization rather than mobilization, a lesson that is worth hearing around the country. 
 

BLOC civic ambassadors—there are currently about thirty—work in twosomes or threesomes. Each group is assigned a “turf” of about a hundred and twenty blocks. This turf is systematically canvassed, usually for three to four hours a day, five days a week, year-round—non-stop, essentially. Records are kept of the interactions with the residents, and, gradually, mutual recognition and trust and knowledge is built. In 2018, bloc knocked on just over a quarter of a million doors and spoke with 20,336 people. The value of the group’s work lies in its persistence. It’s what people in the political business refer to as organizing, as distinguished from mobilizing. Mobilizing is rousing people to vote in a specific election or to join a specific protest. Organizing is making people aware of, and habitually participate in, the political process. When I asked Malone to describe the bit of her turf that I was seeing, I expected a reply that touched on the predicament of the residents. She replied, “I would call this area ‘organized.’ ”

The mission, Lang explained to me, “is to increase the quality of life for black people in Wisconsin by expanding their idea of civic engagement. Civic engagement isn’t just voting—we have folks on staff that can’t vote in 2020. It’s also learning about the difference between city and county government, about how to talk to your alderperson or county executive. We ask people what issues they have—say they want speed bumps—and we identify the process to get that issue resolved. People feel they don’t have the power to make a change, because they don’t understand where they fit. We help them understand their power.”