Case study: how zone defense can turn the tide in rural organizing

 

A rural Oregon coastal county decided to file a lawsuit to weaken the endangered species protection of the western snowy plover, a seabird that nests on beaches along the Pacific Ocean. 

The habitat protection strategy for this bird involves closing many miles of beaches to motorized vehicles from Canada to Mexico so the nests and the birds are not disturbed. 

In Oregon, virtually the entire coastline is undeveloped state park, so weakening plover protections could open new miles of beaches to ATVs. The county sought to persuade other rural counties, towns, and organizations to join their suit.

By the time environmentalists realized that resolutions to join the suit were appearing on agendas of public bodies in a four-county area, some municipalities had already signed on. The challenge to the campaign was to mobilize local citizens in widely separated places to stop their local elected officials from joining the suit and to persuade organizations that had already passed resolutions to rescind them. 

None of the 20 or so environmental groups with members in the county had more than a few hundred local people as paid members although, together, the groups had almost 1,400 members in the area (about 3 percent of the total population).

Fortunately, although Oregon and West Coast groups in general have strong individual identities, they have a history of working closely together on ancient forest campaigns. In particular, Audubon, Sierra Club, and statewide umbrella groups have often worked closely together. So the leaders of the groups developed a new strategy to deal with this problem that was beyond the ability of any one group to solve.

Oregon conservation groups, with and without local chapters, joined forces to collectively identify their members in the area and to treat them as a single entity for the purpose of the campaign. The groups merged their mailing lists and sent a joint alert to all their members in the region under a masthead, which listed all the groups. Each group paid for its own postage. 

This alert informed everyone about the issue, kicked off the campaign and solicited volunteers. Having a pre-approved, off-the-shelf alert, with many groups on the masthead, meant any organization had pre-    approval to oppose any local resolution with the authority of its own and all the other major groups in the state and, later, dozens of major groups on the whole West Coast, without pre-clearing it with anyone. As a result of just this initial joint alert, several legislative bodies voted to either not join the lawsuit or rescind previously adopted resolutions.

The campaign was faced with one big, final, important public meeting (in the county that instigated the suit) at which the county was to finally decide to authorize the suit. In organizing for that meeting, this campaign broke some new ground. 

The campaign didn’t know when the meeting would be scheduled but it did have the contact information for the 1,400 members of those 20 organizations. To prepare for the meeting, the campaign used the 15 people who came forward in response to the request for volunteers in the first mailing to phone all the 1,400 people and ask them to commit to stand by to attend a public meeting whenever it might be called. About 200 of the 1,400 members agreed to do this. 

When the meeting was finally announced a week later, it was with only 48 hours’ notice. The 200 people on standby were then called, and 125 of them showed up for the meeting. The meeting went on all day because so many wanted to testify. Although the county had only 60,000 residents and covered a thousand square miles, and the campaign only had 48 hours to get ready, there was a large turnout.

Turning out five times as many people as the opposing side changed the perception that motorized interests controlled and dominated the public process, which till then they had. The 125 people in that meeting were drawn from a dozen different national and regional environmental groups, but collectively they were the activist base of the county. 

Those who attended the meeting were astounded to find their county had so many environmentally active people and immediately after the public hearing formed a new countywide organization.

No organizational or turf issues surfaced during this effort. Each group paid for its own alerts and chipped in for common expenses. Only one grant for $1,000 was needed to pay phone bills. The rest of the expenses, including a full-page $1,600 ad and all the mailings, were raised through contributions. 

The 20 groups involved in alerts and phoning included the Green Party and the Democratic central committees of two counties. Ultimately, 20 Oregon groups contributed people and 14 other California and Washington state groups contributed other support. Organizations in San Diego and Seattle furnished two attorneys for legal advice, as the county had an aggressive conservative legal foundation that had agreed to finance the lawsuit.

A note on confidentiality: Each group’s membership list was called only by one of its own members; lists were not retained or reproduced and the originals were returned. No caller saw any names other than the segment for their own organization.

Update for 2015: Despite the great turnout, the county proceeded 3–0 to file the lawsuit, but it was not successful and the county lost. The three county commissioners who voted to proceed with the lawsuit left office, two defeated in subsequent elections, in part because this group stayed together to work against them in subsequent campaigns. 

The ocean beaches in this county and Oregon are as closed to ATVs today as they were in 2002 and the population of snowy plovers has increased from 100 to 300. (The sign-on letter and ad for this campaign and website are discussed and illustrated in the chapter on sign-on letters in my handbook “Organize to Win,” downloadable at Britell.com)

 

Members of environmental organizations don’t mind being called and won’t hang up as long as you initially identify yourself as a member of, and  are calling on behalf of, their own organization. Only an organization’s members should call the members of that organization.

Members of organizations with a name like Save or Protect or some plainly pro-environmental name are the most motivated and usually 40-50% or more will agree to do what you ask. Organizations with aggressive reputations attract more activists.

Audubon members are less motivated than the Sierra Club but even 15–25 percent of their members will agree to be active — Sierra Club perhaps 40 percent.

The biggest problem in any contact effort is inaccurate phone numbers and getting through answering machines. But you may have better luck getting people to return messages than you think.

About 5 percent of the people you call will be exceedingly grateful for the call and volunteer to not just come to a meeting but also be telephone tree captains or become really active. These people have apparently decided already to become active and were just waiting for someone to ask.

Most people belong to only one or two organizations, and there is not a lot of overlap between local memberships of environmental organizations. Most of the members of Audubon are not members of the Sierra club and vice versa. But even the most extremely conservative counties in the U.S. have lots of potential activists.

 

Some people are far better making calls than others, so check on success after a dozen or 20 calls. People who don’t get results should be taken off this duty. People who are good at making cold calls love doing it and vice versa.

If you are using email, ask potential volunteers to add you to their address book so your future emails won’t be rejected as spam.

Members of environmental groups don’t distinguish among and between them and don’t much care who prepared an alert. People are interested in issues, not organizations, and are just grateful that someone got busy.

When groups work, together it will generally increase the membership of both groups. When people become more active, they increase the number of groups they join. The most likely potential Audubon member is a currently inactive member of the Sierra Club (and vice versa).

For non–fundraising matters, a written appeal to take an action (like write a letter) has a success rate of a half percent — or probably less — but a phone call might appeal to 10 to 15 percent.

Active people always know other active people; so when somebody commits to take action, right then, always ask them who else in their community might want to get involved. Sometimes potentially active people belong to no group at all or belong to civic groups such as the League of Women Voters.

For broad-based community campaigns, many of your best activists will always end up being conservative and Republican. Broad-based ecumenical campaigns function best when they confine discussions to campaign issues.