Why local organizing?

For over twenty years CODEPINK has organized and mobilized for peace, emphasizing creativity and inspiring actions to evolve our strategy as the war economy develops. While it is always going to be important to directly target federal spending on war and militarism, we’ve learned that a huge component of war is its domestic normalization, i.e. convincing civilians that warfare is inevitable, necessary, and appropriate as a measure of global safety and security. The war economy has expanded and is making record profits, bringing more and more workers into the fold of responsibility for warmongering. War doesn’t only get decided on in D.C. and abroad — every community in the U.S. has some stake in the expansion of war or peace. CODEPINK recognizes the importance of expanding efforts against the war economy throughout the country and empowering every community to take a stand against war and for peace. By expanding and strengthening our network of local Peacemakers and our connections to other peace movements, we are able to spread the message of peace further and scale up our coalition-based work as well.

The war economy has grown exponentially but is not unstoppable. The member-based strategy is designed to engage individuals, skill them up towards being capable organizers, and to foster local peace economy movements around the country. It is rooted in relational organizing, takes the importance of organizer autonomy and decision-making seriously, and seeks to steward a thriving network of local peacemakers who work to make peace popular in every corner of the country.

What’s our strategy?

Relationship building is central to local organizing and thus is central to our strategy. The workflow goes:

1. Individuals who would like to organize locally against war sign up to become Peacemakers on codepink.org 
2. CODEPINK's Member & Youth Coordinator, Jasmine reviews new signs ups and assigns them to a regional organizer based on their location or interests
3. The regional organizer reaches out within the month to introduce themselves and request an initial 1:1 meeting. The 1:1 is the foundation of relational organizing! It’s where we get to know each other and find out what has motivated us to organize; where we take stock of our skills and capacity; and make plans to support each other going forward
4. After the 1:1, the regional organizer invites the Peacemaker to join the next monthly onboarding call where they are debriefed on the history of CODEPINK + our principles and can begin to get to know staff and other Peacemakers.
5. From there, the regional organizer supports the Peacemaker in getting started in their hometown! This may look like researching the existing local peace movement, hosting a coffee chat to get to know other potential peacemakers, or some other actionable task.

Core to this strategy is one-on-one coaching support from our regional organizers who continue to support peacemakers with strategy, communications, and logistical support for their local peace actions. We do our best to simply ask questions and support the peacemaker in identifying tactics and solutions that are specific to their local context, but are ready to offer more detailed guidance when needed.

Also central to the strategy is our monthly Community Calls which present an opportunity for local peacemakers to get to know each other, hear from other locales about lessons learned or upcoming events, and to foster community among CODEPINK staff and the larger community. This is also a space to maintain alignment between CODEPINK national and local groups and to strategize together about issues coming up for local movements.

Progress to date

Already, this process for bringing on local organizers yields more autonomous, engaged, and effective Peacemakers who feel they have a true stake in the work and a strong sense of how they fit into the work. One-off actions such as signing petitions and joining large anonymous Zoom calls do little to engage folks over time. We’ve heard from people around the country that they would love to support the anti-war movement but aren’t sure where to get started. By reaching out to every single person who signs up to organize with us, stewarding 1:1 relationships, and building a community of peacemakers, we are able to strengthen the peace movement nationally and in many, many local powerhouses. Since launching this strategy, over 80 members have signed up and have been taken through our process. Most of the most engaged new members are young people and we have a new chapter forming in Portland, Oregon. We also have a handful of our new members on the east coast helping organize towards the climate march in New York City.

Further exploration and growth

In the coming months, our new Member & Youth Coordinator will explore the efficacy of the current strategy’s flow and make suggestions for how to improve. Some upcoming experiments include:

• Hosting an international onboarding call in a timezone that works for more folks to meet and support all of the folks in other countries who have expressed interest in doing local peace work with CODEPINK’s support
• Hosting an onboarding call for folks who signed up to organize with us before this strategy was implemented. With no clear way to capture and support these folks, many never got to engage with CODEPINK outside of individual actions like petitions. We will invite them all to the onboarding as a chance to re-engage, and from there will funnel still interested folks back into our strategy flow by scheduling a 1:1 with their regional organizer
• Using a Slack workspace for all of CODEPINK local organizers to use. This will be a space for organizers to connect with each other without a staff member mediating, to learn from each other, and to plan coalition and multi-local events together. This will also take a bit of administrative work off the shoulders of local groups as our staff person will maintain and moderate the slack workspace

In addition to the actions outlined above, Jasmine will continue evaluating the strategy, garnering feedback from local organizers, and looking for ways to improve. They will pay particular attention to if organizers feel they have the skills and political education necessary to carry out local campaigns; if local organizers feel sufficiently connected to other peace organizations aside from CODEPINK and how we can improve coalition involvement; and to how we might expand our toolbox for support via new creative direct action tactics and other potential actions for local organizers to carry out.