Mind, Body & Soul of Movement Building

Spirit in Action Executive Director Linda Stout has been named recipient of the 2007 Frances Crowe Award for social and economic justice.  This award comes from the National Priorities Project, a group that clarifies federal data so that people can understand and influence how their tax dollars spent.

Linda received the award on Sunday, October 28 at an event with the theme of Creating Better Federal Budget Priorities.  Other speakers include Rachel Maddow, a national radio host for Air America Radio; Matthew Rothschild, magazine editor, The Progressive, and author, You Have No Rights:  Stories of America in an Age of Repression; and Greg Speeter, the executive editor of NPP.

Here is the speech Linda gave:

Mind, Body & Soul of Movement Building

Thank you. I am so honored to receive this amazing award. Francis Crowe is a heroine in our work for change, and one of the many elders whose shoulders we stand on in our journey to create a just and peaceful world. Thank you, Francis & thank you, National Priorities Project.

As someone who struggles with disability – with Multiple Sclerosis – I think a lot about how to stay in a healthy place, so I can continue to do my life’s work. So tonight, I want to focus on the health of our movement for social change: the Mind, Body, & Soul of movement building.

The mind is critical in providing us with the research, analysis, and a grounding of information that supports all the other work we do for change – it’s what supports the body of our work. National Priorities Project is one of the brilliant minds in our peace & justice movement.

The body is the grassroots organizing – the people to people, door to door work that has to happen in our communities to make change happen. We can’t do the work without the mind, but the mind is useless without the body.

And, the soul. The soul of movement building is the heart, and it is the part that is most often left out of our work for change.

The soul, or heart, of our work is about connection – our relationships with each other and how we work together; it is about how we link our different issues and build networks and coalitions so we equal more than the sum of our parts.

There is a project called WiserEarth that has been making a list of all the organizations that work for social change, and they now have over a 100,000 groups listed. But if there are this many groups doing work, why are we not seeing massive change?

We have the information… we have the numbers… AND WE HAVE the ability to change the world… but we need to work across our boundaries of race, class, identities, issues, and strategies.

We need to embody a different way of working that can truly win – a way that can transform the world.

 In order to do this we have to learn how to include the soul of movement building in our work. We MUST work from a place of vision, a place of hope, of joy… a place that is grounded in our hearts.

To build a winning movement that mobilizes millions of people, we need to focus not only on what’s wrong, but we must also offer a vision of what’s possible.

We have to build a movement that reflects our values – a movement that nurtures and supports us as activists – as individuals and as families – a movement that feeds our hearts.

We also need to learn to speak to a public outside of our own circles.

Imagine: WHAT if all the time and resources we spend on fighting the Right were spent on building a majority?

I want to tell you the story of how an organization of poor people in rural North Carolina partnered with National Priorities Project in 1990 to do just that.

In order to change our conservative state, a state that continually re-elected Jesse Helms as our senator — we knew we had to reach out beyond our own organization, Piedmont Peace Project.

For the first time, we had a candidate that we could really believe in running against Helms – a person who not only reflected our values and beliefs, but reflected many of our constituency as an African American – Harvey Gantt.

We knew we would have no hope of winning, if we did not reach a much broader public than just the few progressive groups in the state. So we reached out to all the other organizations we knew to form a coalition of 34 groups throughout NC.

National Priorities Project provided us with detailed research and Greg Speeter led a workshop on how our tax dollars were being spent.

We took this information and translated it into visuals that our folks could understand (even though many could not read or write). We created a report and held speak-outs throughout the state.

As a result of this campaign, which truly combined the “mind, body & soul” of organizing, we were able to make a huge difference in NC.

Harvey Gannt — who used this report in his campaign in the face of incredible harassment and fear tactics toward African American Voters –did what many thought was impossible. He won 48% of the vote. He did not become Senator, but for us, it was still a victory. We elected many people of color into city & county government for the first time – in some cases, unseating Ku Klux Klan members. But most of all, we built a strong and lasting partnership with other organizations in the state. The campaign truly combined the “mind, body & soul” of movement building.

I want to close with thanking National Priorities Project for their amazing work, thank you for supporting them, and ask that you consider how you can be part of building a healthy winning movement for change.

As the Hopi Elders have reminded us,

WE ARE THE ONES

WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR!