Changemakers

While the drama of the President’s coronavirus diagnosis, “Red Mirages and Blue Shifts” and stolen postboxes are catching the headlines in the US Elections, it is community organising that is likely to make or break the result for the Democrats (and let’s face it – for democracy). Even before COVID-19, two new (old) approaches to social change were adapted to electoral politics. One is called Deep Canvassing and the other Relational Organising. COVID-19 created barriers to door-to-door outreach that saw…

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It’s budget day. While traditionally a nerd’s holiday – this budget matters. Globally nations are slipping into depression. In Australia unemployment is as high as it’s been since the Great Depression. This year’s budget is a reckoning. In my work outside of ChangeMakers, I’ve been part of an extraordinary coalition of organisations asking this exact question. In May 2019 in the weeks after the last Federal Election a group of organisations led by the University of Sydney’s Policy Lab (where…

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As the pandemic descended on Australia we were told that we were ‘all in this together.’ For a time, politicians lived up to that. Political leaders reached across partisan divides on policy. In March, there was even unity between Gladys Berijiklian and Daniel Andrews. The new National Cabinet process emphasised consensus over division. Old ideological habits dropped away too, with the parties cohering around a plan to protect lives and livelihoods and then to build back better after the pandemic….

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Back in 2003, I was part of the movement that tried to stop the war in Iraq. In Sydney we built an enormous coalition of over 70 organisations. We met every week on Monday evenings on the third floor of an aging inner-city pub called the Spanish Club.  The coalition had lots of rules. Every organisation was allowed to bring two representatives to meetings, and both could vote. That rule was practical, in a variety of ways. The room struggled…

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This week ChangeMakers is launching the second season of our weekly organising broadcast – ChangeMakers Organising School. We thought this would be as good a time as any to step back and consider – what is this thing called organising? Before 1990 no one in Australia used the term organising. The word first emerged in the union movement in the mid-1990s when the ACTU (Australian Council of Trade Unions) Organising Works program started to talk about organising as a way…

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