New Orleans       The Anthropocene Alliance, or more easily stated, A2, as we’ve discussed in the past is a national coalition of more than 400 frontline groups brought together largely because of their experiences being on the brunt end of climate change, whether hurricanes, floods, fires, or the like.   A2’s annual staff retreat was in New Orleans this year, so most of their team was here.  I joined them for a two-hour workshop on organizing, focused mainly on how to handle campaigns and support the groups in their coalition that are moving in that direction.

It was an interesting experience.  Most of the more than a dozen people would probably more acurately be called “campaign support” perhaps.  Their work was in communications, digital activity, tech, research, finance, and grant writing, all of which are extremely valuable, but not a natural or organic fit with grassroots or community organizing campaigns.  Others on the team were equally varied, including a former political organizer, an advocate of sorts, a new person without previous experience in an organizing role, and one experienced community organizer.

I had done previous training sessions with A2 groups on community organizing methodology.  We did six sessions around the country in 2024 to then focus on specific groups, which is still ongoing.  I had done another one-day session with an earlier organizing team designed to support A2’s initiative in building statewide organizing committees or SOCs.  These SOCs are the core of the current direction of A2, as it looks to the future.  The process is designed to create statewide coalitions of some existing A2 members along with other organizations with clear constituencies and membership bases, who have a mutual interest in issues that might be seen as environmental, despite these groups not being seen or self-identifying as green.

So, where should I start in trying to add value to their work?  They aren’t going to be community organizers in the sense of building new grassroots, membership groups from scratch.  They might be called campaign organizers, but organizing through coalitions of organizations involves a separate set of skills and challenges.

Among the first things I tried to clarify was the difference in being an organizer as opposed to an advocate or an activist.  This might seem trivial to some, but it’s fundamental in clarifying baseline understandings of their support and facilitation role.  For an organizer to help coalitions survive, it’s critical to understand every group’s self-interest, and to get agreements on the rules of engagement, decision-making structure, and other potential stumbling blocks, so that each group is fully engaged.  Understanding that most will join to borrow power, rather than loaning power is critical.  The coalition only works if there’s an understanding that the organizer is not the leader of the coalition, and that’s hard for people who see themselves as advocates or activists without accountability.

From there, we spent time on how to move issues for the coalitions into campaigns.  Eventually, looking at the issue of heat, people broke into small groups to plan campaigns.  In one group, the focus was on landlords.  In the other, they moved towards changing regulations.

Was I value-added?  Was I able to put them in position to better support their state programs and their provide service to individual members of A2 when it comes to campaigns?  I don’t know.  There will be no way to tell until we see how the work evolves over the next year.  That’s the proof of the pudding, not what happens in the meeting, but what happens after the meeting.