Written by Julie Quiroz, Senior Fellow, Movement Strategy Center. Originally posted for Philanthropic Institute for Racial Equity

The years of fighting racism have taught us many lessons, perhaps the greatest of which is the recognition that we have to be clear about the type of racism we intend to confront. If we take a narrow view of racism as a set of stereotypes or personal beliefs, then educational efforts aimed at individuals have some impact. But taking on structural racism requires entirely different approaches. As scholar Eduardo Bonilla-Silva asserts,

“Social systems and their supports must be ‘shaken’
if fundamental transformations are to take place.”1

In order to shake such systems and structures, we would do well to keep in mind some important lessons – past and present – from the work of racial justice organizing:

▲ Leading with vision and principles, not just
disparities. An example of this comes from the
1980s, when African American communities
began organizing to stop the nearby siting of
toxic waste dumps, sparking research showing a
pattern of what became known as “environmental
racism.” In fact, the very term suggested a
redefinition of racism as a structural problem
and helped define the kind of organizing
that, inspired by longstanding work in Native
American and other communities of color, led to
a powerful set of environmental justice principles
that went far beyond comparative disparities,
putting forth a bold vision of structural change
that challenges racism and seeks transformation of
the economic and political structures in which it
is embedded.2

▲ Making connections across systems.

For example, when the anti-immigrant bill SB 1070
was gaining strength in Arizona, progressives were
united in their opposition to its racial profiling
provisions. Many organizations focused on the
victimization of Latinos and argued that such
a law would harm Arizona’s business interests.
By contrast, national networks and alliances of
grassroots-organizing groups approached the
law from a more structural perspective. They
also called the law racist, but went further by
connecting the dots between the Arizona law
and their long-standing campaigns against federal
immigration enforcement policies like Secure
Communities. “The fact is that any ICE/police
access or collaboration leads to racial profiling
and mistreatment of our community,” explains
Carlos Garcia of Puente, a local immigrant
organizing group. “Federal enforcement policies
are going to make us all Arizona.”3 In other
words, the organizing goal was not to merely
eliminate the obvious “Juan Crow” racism in SB
1070 in order to get back to the status quo; the
goal was to eliminate racism as part of challenging
the status quo.4

▲ Guiding principled movement communications.
Consider the Vermont Workers’ Center (VWC)
grassroots membership, which led to Vermont
becoming the first and only state in the country
to pass universal health care. VWC won by
building a massive grassroots base that publicly
framed health care as a human right – and
proactively prepared members for the racialized
wedge that was certain to come in the form of
exclusions for undocumented immigrants. When
both Democratic and Republican politicians lined
up to support the exclusions, VWC members and
immigrant groups fought back harder, issuing a
bold and consistent public statement: “When
we say health care is a human right, we mean
for everybody who lives and works in Vermont
regardless of legal status. We will not tolerate
racial profiling and accept the unjust immigration
and foreign policies of the federal government.”5

▲ Re-imagining change through arts and culture.

As the Movement Strategy Center report “Out
of the Spiritual Closet” observed in 2010,

“Movement leaders and organizers within the secular progressive movement are turning to transformative and spiritual practices to help them radically reimagine social change. Collectively, they are generating a transformative approach to movement building that speaks to the needs and challenges of our time.”6

Powerful networks and alliances ranging from the Domestic Workers Alliance to Florida New Majority have all made transformative practice a core component of their organizing. Similarly, networks like the National Day Labor Organizing Network
have made arts and culture a major focus of their work;
NDLON’s website features posters, poetry and
videos that support resistance to dominant ideas
and vision for a transformed future7. An emerging
national effort called Art Is Change has just
developed a capacity-building program that offers
cultural strategy development for organizations,
alliances and foundations.

▲ Embodying change, not just demanding it. At
key moments in our movements’ history, racial
justice organizing has gone from demanding
change to embodying change in the creation
of alternative structures. One classic example
is the movement for community control of
schools in New York City in the late 1960s. Fed
up with a school system that was failing and
even damaging their children, Black and Puerto
Rican parents organized, refusing to wait for the
promised reforms of Brown v. Board of Education
and choosing to believe that they and their
community knew what education should look
like. Partnering with progressive teachers of color,
parents literally took schools over, changing
the curriculum to challenge “students to think
critically about race relations.”8 It remains a
moment that challenged purely legal strategies
and demanded an anti-racist commitment of
a public institution, all while expanding the
political imagination of parents and children of
color.

Organizing does not always see or challenge structural
racism. But it has and it can, making possible the
massive shifts this challenge requires.

Julie Quiroz is a senior fellow at the
Movement Strategy Center, where she
is dedicated to discovering, generating
and telling powerful stories of social
change. Quiroz recently served as
senior program consultant to the
Akonadi Foundation, and is a cofounder
and co-principal of Mosaic
Consulting. She is a member of the PRE
Advisory Board.

notes

1 Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. “Rethinking Racism: Toward a Structural
Interpretation.” American Sociological Review 62.3 (June 1997):
465-480. Print. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2657316
2 University of Oregon professor and former organizer Daniel
HoSang discusses this in his unpublished 2012 essay “Racial
Justice as a Universal Framework for Freedom.”
3 Phone interview, March 2012.
4 A detailed case study of the Arizona communications effort will
appear in the Center for Media Justice report “Building Meaning,
Building Movements: Network Driven Communications Strategies
for Community Organizing,” Sept. 2012.
5 A detailed case study of the Vermont communications effort will
appear in the Center for Media Justice report “Building Meaning,
Building Movements: Network Driven Communications Strategies
for Community Organizing,” Sept. 2012.
6 Zimmerman, Kristen, Neelam Pathikonda, Brenda Salgado, and
Taj James. “Out of the Spiritual Closet: Organizers Transforming
the Practice of Social Justice.” Oakland, Calif.: Movement
Strategy Center, 2010. Print. http://www.racialequitytools.org/
resourcefiles/zimmerman1.pdf
7 National Day Labor Organizing Network http://ndlon.org/en/arts-culture/posters
8 Salomon, Larry R. Roots of Justice: Stories of Organizing in
Communities of Color. San Francisco: Chardon Press, 1998.
Print.