Picking an Issue: From Service Projects to Issue Campaigns

Pick­ing an Issue: From Ser­vice Projects to Issue Campaigns

Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished by the Stu­dent Envi­ron­men­tal Action Coali­tion, and writ­ten by Adam Berrey (1993), expand­ed and updat­ed by Mike Ewall (1999)

Are you frus­trat­ed with the declin­ing atten­dance at your meet­ings? Do you feel like you are not mak­ing a dif­fer­ence on the issues that real­ly count? Your prob­lem may be that your group needs a new approach to envi­ron­men­tal activism.

Have you felt that your group was doing a lot of activ­i­ties but not get­ting any­thing done? Have you start­ed to won­der if anoth­er Earth Day is real­ly worth it? Are you frus­trat­ed with the declin­ing atten­dance at your meet­ings? Do you feel like you are not mak­ing a dif­fer­ence on the issues that real­ly count? Your prob­lem may be that your group needs a new approach to envi­ron­men­tal activism.

Most stu­dent envi­ron­men­tal­ists take one of two basic approach­es to tack­ling envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems: ser­vice projects or issue cam­paigns. A ser­vice project is an effort by the group to pro­vide a “ser­vice” to the cam­pus com­mu­ni­ty in the hopes that it will change the cam­pus (see box for exam­ple projects and the “ser­vices” they provide).

Ser­vice projects are usu­al­ly easy to orga­nize. They are very direct in the short run and ser­vice is an impor­tant aspect of com­mu­ni­ty par­tic­i­pa­tion. Also, ser­vice projects are com­fort­able for stu­dent activists because they don’t require the orga­niz­ers to con­front authority.

After a while, many ser­vice projects cause mem­bers of the group to lose inter­est, as they don’t feel that the group is get­ting any­thing done. Try ask­ing a ran­dom per­son on your cam­pus what they think of the cam­pus envi­ron­men­tal group (don’t let them know you’re part of the group) and see what their impres­sion is. Ser­vice projects usu­al­ly don’t result in last­ing change – as soon as core group mem­bers burn out, grad­u­ate, or move on, the prob­lem comes back. For exam­ple, if the group is recy­cling and every­one gets tired of pick­ing up cans, then the recy­cling stops. Luck­i­ly, there are more long-term approach­es to solv­ing envi­ron­men­tal problems.

Issue Cam­paigns

Anoth­er approach to solv­ing envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems is to orga­nize issue cam­paigns that result in con­crete changes in the way insti­tu­tions (schools, gov­ern­ments, cor­po­ra­tions, etc.) operate.

An issue cam­paign is a series of actions which result in a direct, con­crete change in the way that an orga­ni­za­tion or insti­tu­tion func­tions. Cam­paigns begin with clear goals, usu­al­ly the pas­sage of a pol­i­cy, change of pro­ce­dure, major deci­sion, or new law. They are based on a sol­id plan, com­mon­ly referred to as a strat­e­gy, and they are focused on influ­enc­ing key deci­sion-mak­ers to achieve the goals.

Thus we can see the dif­fer­ence between issue cam­paigns and ser­vice projects. Issue cam­paigns tend to be more dif­fi­cult to orga­nize. When they are done well, they result in more sig­nif­i­cant change and strength­en your group. Teach­ing peo­ple to orga­nize cam­paigns pre­pares them to go beyond vot­ing to solve prob­lems and be active mem­bers of society.

One of the most chal­leng­ing aspects of orga­niz­ing a cam­paign is con­fronting pow­er. An issue cam­paign, by its very nature, requires that we ask the ques­tion: who is respon­si­ble for the prob­lem? More often than not, nei­ther the stu­dents nor the cam­pus envi­ron­men­tal group are the respon­si­ble par­ty (sur­prise!). If we are real­ly going to solve prob­lems, then the respon­si­ble par­ties need to be held account­able. If the school is spray­ing pes­ti­cides, then they should stop. If they are not recy­cling then they should start. It is their respon­si­bil­i­ty as mem­bers of our com­mu­ni­ties to func­tion in an envi­ron­men­tal­ly sound man­ner. The same is true for cor­po­ra­tions and gov­ern­ments. We wit­ness long term change when we focus on chang­ing these types of insti­tu­tions, as opposed to focus­ing on indi­vid­ual change. It is our respon­si­bil­i­ty to orga­nize in order to hold these insti­tu­tions account­able, and to change them when they are not meet­ing our needs.

Edu­ca­tion or Action First?

Many groups spon­sor a series of ran­dom speak­ers on dis­con­nect­ed issues with the idea that they are edu­cat­ing their cam­pus. They hope that this will incite peo­ple to action, but pro­vide lit­tle or no vehi­cle for inter­est­ed lis­ten­ers to plug into a cam­paign. Rather than hope for action to spring forth from edu­ca­tion­al events, use these events to build action around your pre-exist­ing cam­paigns. Edu­ca­tion is a tool to be used in cam­paigns. It is not an end in itself.

Anato­my of a Campaign

Here is a brief overview of what goes into a cam­paign. Basi­cal­ly, most cam­paigns have 7 parts:

1. Choose the Issues
2. Plan/Strategize
3. Research
4. Recruit / Edu­cate / Build Coalitions
5. Inter­act with target
6. Win or Regroup
7. Eval­u­ate

These dif­fer­ent parts do not nec­es­sar­i­ly take place con­sec­u­tive­ly. You might start with some recruit­ment, do some research, then choose an issue. Choos­ing the issue means decid­ing what you are going to fight for. Usu­al­ly, it is easy to iden­ti­fy the prob­lem (such as pes­ti­cide use), but it does not become an issue until you have a solu­tion to fight for. Plan­ning and strate­giz­ing are cru­cial. They require your group to lay out clear goals, iden­ti­fy resources and allies, iden­ti­fy the deci­sion mak­ers who can give you what you want, and plan your tac­tics. Recruit­ment, edu­ca­tion and coali­tion build­ing are the means to build sup­port and pow­er to win your campaign.

Inter­ac­tion with the tar­get is a nice way of say­ing that you are ask­ing for what you want. The tar­get is the indi­vid­ual who can give you what you want. This step real­ly tests the strength of the group, yet it per­tains to the area that is most famil­iar to groups: tac­tics. You may be able to walk into the president’s office, sit down and say “Bob, I think it’s time we get rid of dis­pos­ables in the cafe­te­ria,” and get the response, “OK, no prob­lem.” If this is the case, well, either you’re lucky or you just gave the school a library. If you are like most cam­pus activists, you’d be stopped at the president’s sec­re­tary, which means you need to do some­thing a lit­tle more excit­ing. Inter­ac­tion with the tar­get does not need to be con­fronta­tion­al, but don’t be afraid of confrontation.

Final­ly, you win or regroup (a nice way of say­ing that you lost and need to reeval­u­ate your goals). At each turn­ing point or after a cam­paign is won, it is crit­i­cal for your group to eval­u­ate your actions and decide ways to do the next tac­tic or cam­paign better.

This was only a brief intro­duc­tion to cam­paigns. For a more thor­ough descrip­tion, check out SEAC’s Orga­niz­ing Guide.

Mak­ing Lemon­ade out of Lemons

Most of us who get start­ed as stu­dent envi­ron­men­tal­ists only know 4 things that can be worked on:

• Lit­ter cleanups
• Earth Day
• Recy­cling
• Adopt-an-acre / Spon­sor-a-cow / Rent-a-whale / etc.

Lit­ter cleanups

Short­ly after the first Earth Day in 1970, a group called Keep Amer­i­ca Beau­ti­ful was formed. Accord­ing to the Green­peace Guide to Anti-Envi­ron­men­tal Orga­ni­za­tions, Keep Amer­i­ca Beau­ti­ful (KAB) is actu­al­ly a sophis­ti­cat­ed green­wash­ing oper­a­tion that is fund­ed by the waste and pack­ag­ing indus­tries. The two largest waste cor­po­ra­tions in the world, Waste Man­age­ment, Inc. and Brown­ing Fer­ris Indus­tries, are among the group’s offi­cers and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers. Com­pa­nies like RJR Nabis­co, McDonald’s, and Coca-Cola, which con­tribute to the lit­ter prob­lem, also fund KAB.

The authors of Tox­ic Sludge is Good for You! – Lies, Damned Lies and the Pub­lic Rela­tions Indus­try explain that Keep Amer­i­ca Beau­ti­ful is a slick PR effort to get con­sumers to think that they are respon­si­ble for the trash that KAB’s fun­ders cre­at­ed. Think about it… you get to pick up their trash, put it in dis­pos­able plas­tic bags, then have it sent to a land­fill or incin­er­a­tor that is prob­a­bly owned by one of KAB’s founders. In fact, the trash decom­pos­es more quick­ly on the side of a road than in a land­fill; if brought to an incin­er­a­tor, the trash is turned into high­ly tox­ic air pol­lu­tion and tox­ic ash. This is not to argue in favor of lit­ter­ing, but to point out that there are bet­ter approach­es to help­ing the envi­ron­ment than pick­ing up after the cor­po­ra­tions who make the litter.

A long-term approach to this issue would be to pres­sure cor­po­ra­tions like McDonald’s to stop mak­ing so much dis­pos­able lit­ter. For exam­ple, in the 1980s, stu­dents around the coun­try worked with com­mu­ni­ty groups to mail back sty­ro­foam to McDonald’s and this even­tu­al­ly got them to stop using so much poly­styrene packaging.

Denis Hayes, a nation­al stu­dent coor­di­na­tor for the first Earth Day in 1970, spoke pas­sion­ate­ly at the Wash­ing­ton, D.C. ral­ly, shout­ing, “polit­i­cal and busi­ness lead­ers once hoped that they could turn the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment into a mas­sive anti-lit­ter cam­paign.” He stat­ed that “we’re tired of being told we are to blame for cor­po­rate depre­da­tions…. insti­tu­tions have no con­science. If we want them to do what is right, we must make them do what is right.”

Earth Day

Earth Day has lost its mean­ing over the years. Too often cor­po­ra­tions have tak­en it over by hold­ing their own Earth Day pub­lic rela­tions activ­i­ties or by spon­sor­ing the Earth Day activ­i­ties of envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions. This is some­times true of cam­pus-based Earth Day events as well, but more often, they look like this:

Stu­dents for the Envi­ron­ment (SFE) spends most of a school year prepar­ing a big Earth Day con­cert. They get mon­ey out of their school and throw a big par­ty dur­ing Earth Week in April. They get the hottest local bands who will play for free (hope­ful­ly) and lots of peo­ple come to see the bands (if the group is lucky). The infor­ma­tion tables that the group set up (assum­ing they’re not rained on or blown all over the place) are large­ly ignored by the peo­ple check­ing out the bands. The few peo­ple who real­ly GET the mes­sage (if there is much of a mes­sage) are those who are already some­what involved. All told, the group gets to pick up the lit­ter from the con­cert fans and leaves feel­ing like they were either ignored or were preach­ing to the choir. Any con­tacts of inter­est­ed stu­dents are of mar­gin­al val­ue, since it’s almost time for finals and the school year is near­ly over. Any enthu­si­asm gen­er­at­ed in new stu­dents is put on hold until next school year (if the stu­dents are still at the same phone num­ber). Stu­dents for the Envi­ron­ment didn’t have any cam­paigns, so Earth Day didn’t help accom­plish any goals. Since it didn’t even raise any mon­ey, SFE can’t even donate the pro­ceeds to anoth­er group that actu­al­ly does have cam­paigns. In some cas­es, groups did make mon­ey just to have the school steal it from them!

If your SEAC group decides to do Earth Day events, make sure that these events involve action around your group’s cam­paigns. Make Earth Day into Earth Action Day and hold protests, ral­lies, street the­atre or some­thing that will take advan­tage of the easy media atten­tion to give a boost to your cam­paign. Any speak­ers at your events should rein­force the demands of your cam­paign. Make sure that the time (and per­haps mon­ey) you put into Earth Day activ­i­ties is worth what you’re get­ting out of it.

Recy­cling

Near­ly every school has some­thing to be desired about its recy­cling pro­gram. This is so uni­ver­sal that almost every cam­pus envi­ron­men­tal group has worked on this at some time (if not for­ev­er). Keep in mind that it is real­ly the school’s job to do recy­cling. It’s not your job or your group’s job. If the school isn’t doing its job, then you must make them do so. It’s not enough to rely on stu­dent vol­un­teers to keep a recy­cling pro­gram going. Get it insti­tu­tion­al­ized and move on. Don’t take ‘no’ for an answer and don’t let the issue keep your group from work­ing on oth­er impor­tant campaigns.

Adopt-an-acre / Spon­sor-a-cow / Rent-a-whale / etc.

Your group should not be a fundrais­ing vehi­cle for large-scale ser­vice projects which don’t tack­le the root caus­es of a prob­lem. Remem­ber that our pow­er is peo­ple and the truth. Their pow­er is mon­ey. Use our pow­er to fight their pow­er. Don’t pre­tend that you can fight mas­sive insti­tu­tions that have tons of mon­ey with the lit­tle amount of mon­ey you can raise. Save your mon­ey for things you need in order to orga­nize your peo­ple to pres­sure insti­tu­tions to do the right thing. Buy­ing a ton of pol­lu­tion trad­ing cred­its isn’t going to stop the coal burn­er from pol­lut­ing the neigh­bor­ing com­mu­ni­ty. The com­mu­ni­ty envi­ron­men­tal group can use that mon­ey much more effec­tive­ly to stop the local polluters.

For the most part, these are ser­vice projects that don’t cre­ate last­ing change. With a lit­tle effort, though, you can take the stu­dents in your group through the process of mak­ing con­struc­tive issue cam­paigns out of these ideas.

Focus­ing on your school to pick a cam­paign issue

There are many ways that your school can impact the envi­ron­ment and oth­er social jus­tice issues. In gen­er­al, these can be put into a few main categories:

Invest­ments

If you’re at a col­lege or uni­ver­si­ty, your school most like­ly has a heap of mon­ey (par­tic­u­lar­ly in things called “endow­ments”) that it invests in the stock mar­ket to make extra mon­ey for the school. This mon­ey some­times grows on trees (if they invest in log­ging and paper cor­po­ra­tions) and it usu­al­ly grows at the expense of the envi­ron­ment, work­ers and con­sumers in gen­er­al. If you can get a list of your school’s invest­ments, you can com­pare the cor­po­ra­tions they invest in to the anti-social and anti-envi­ron­men­tal his­to­ries of these cor­po­ra­tions. You may find that your school holds stock in Shell Oil or Coca-Cola (both of which do busi­ness with a mil­i­tary regime in Nige­ria that mur­ders envi­ron­men­tal activists). Maybe your school is invest­ed in tobac­co cor­po­ra­tions or mil­i­tary con­trac­tors. What­ev­er the case may be, your school can pres­sure these cor­po­ra­tions by no longer invest­ing in them or can hold these cor­po­ra­tions account­able by using the stock to vote to change the corporation’s behav­ior. If you are real­ly ambi­tious, you may try to demand that your admin­is­tra­tion set up a stu­dent invest­ment review board that has the pow­er to over­see the school’s invest­ments and make sure that they use their stocks to encour­age cor­po­ra­tions to be less destruc­tive than they’d nor­mal­ly be.

Waste Con­tracts

Waste con­tracts are very sim­i­lar to pro­cure­ments (with bids, con­tracts, and such), except that the school is not pay­ing to get some­thing, but is pay­ing to get rid of some­thing. The nor­mal garbage gen­er­at­ed on cam­pus is con­sid­ered “munic­i­pal” waste and is ulti­mate­ly sent to a land­fill or incin­er­a­tor in some oth­er (usu­al­ly poor or minor­i­ty) com­mu­ni­ty. Your school may also gen­er­ate some waste that would be clas­si­fied as legal­ly “haz­ardous.” These high­ly tox­ic wastes are shipped to even worse places – usu­al­ly to be buried or burned. If your school has a hos­pi­tal or does ani­mal test­ing, then there will be med­ical waste that must be dealt with (see the Health Care With­out Harm arti­cle). If your school has a coal-burn­ing plant, then they have tox­ic ash that they must deal with. Some schools even use radioac­tive mate­ri­als which may need to be dis­posed of as “low-lev­el” radioac­tive waste in leak­ing nuclear dumps (they’re all leak­ing). If there are chem­istry labs at your school, you may want to check out what is allowed to be dumped down the drain. These and oth­er tox­ic chem­i­cals (auto flu­ids that run off the streets into stormwa­ter drains when it rains, flu­o­ride and lead con­t­a­m­i­nants in the drink­ing water, “antibac­te­r­i­al” pes­ti­cides in soaps and more) end up in the sewage sys­tems and even­tu­al­ly in sewage sludge. This sludge is usu­al­ly col­lect­ed at the waste water treat­ment plant in the town your school is in. The sludge is either dumped in a land­fill, burned in an incin­er­a­tor, used to fill up old mines or sold as fer­til­iz­er to farm­ers to grow your food in. If the sludge goes any­where but a land­fill, fight to change that.

With any waste issue, there is a hier­ar­chy of options for what to do with them. From best to worst, here’s the list:

The first pri­or­i­ty when check­ing out your school’s waste prob­lems should be to stop the worst options (incin­er­a­tion or “recycling/reuse” of tox­ic waste prod­ucts). After that, your group can focus at the top (the con­sump­tion end) and work on pro­cure­ment con­tracts so that the recy­cling and waste issues at your cam­pus won’t be as problematic.

Research

If you’re at a medi­um to large sized uni­ver­si­ty, chances are your school gets a good deal of mon­ey from research grants. These research grants are either from the state or fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, the mil­i­tary (the Pen­ta­gon is also fed­er­al gov­ern­ment), or from cor­po­ra­tions. If these grants are from the gov­ern­ment or mil­i­tary, you have a right to know about them. If you’re school is pub­lic, you also have a right-to-know. Grants from cor­po­ra­tions to pri­vate schools are hard­er to learn about, but it’s still pos­si­ble to learn some things.

These research grants (espe­cial­ly when they’re from cor­po­ra­tions or the mil­i­tary) are gen­er­al­ly not for the pub­lic good. Often, these grants are for research projects which help cor­po­ra­tions do awful things to peo­ple and the envi­ron­ment. Some research projects involve ani­mal test­ing. Some are to help pro­mote genet­ic engi­neer­ing, waste incin­er­a­tion, or tox­ic “recy­cling” of wastes into con­sumer prod­ucts. SEAC stu­dents in the past have man­aged to get many uni­ver­si­ties to stop their sup­port for a tele­scope project on Mt. Gra­ham in Ari­zona which has been very dam­ag­ing to the envi­ron­ment and to Native Amer­i­can culture.

Research projects can be under all sorts of depart­ments. Research has been done on Nutrasweet in nutri­tion depart­ments, Bovine Growth Hor­mone in dairy sci­ence pro­grams, human per­for­mance research for Exxon in engi­neer­ing depart­ments, nuclear waste dump sit­ing in soci­ol­o­gy depart­ments, CIA research in polit­i­cal sci­ence and for­eign stud­ies pro­grams, and spy satel­lite tech­nol­o­gy in pho­tog­ra­phy departments.

Stu­dents as Products

News media crit­ics have argued that news­pa­pers aren’t in the busi­ness of sell­ing news to cus­tomers. They sell the eye­balls of cus­tomers to their adver­tis­ers. By the same token, many uni­ver­si­ties sell access to their stu­dents to cor­po­ra­tions and even the mil­i­tary. They do this in the form of relent­less cred­it card ads, and through sign­ing monop­oly con­tracts to cor­po­ra­tions that want exclu­sive rights to pro­vide ser­vices and prod­ucts to you. This includes monop­oly food ser­vice (usu­al­ly Ara­mark or Mar­riott), vend­ing rights (usu­al­ly Coca-Cola or Pep­si­co), long dis­tance ser­vice, appar­el and many oth­er goods and services.

Cam­pus recruit­ing is a pop­u­lar way that schools help give cor­po­ra­tions, the mil­i­tary and even the CIA access to stu­dents. “Intel­li­gence” agen­cies have even met with cam­pus admin­is­tra­tors to help cre­ate spe­cial cur­ric­u­la so that a school would crank out stu­dents trained for their needs. It’s not usu­al­ly obvi­ous, but schools even adver­tise to cor­po­ra­tions about how they can use free stu­dent (and fac­ul­ty) labor and uni­ver­si­ty resources in places like cam­pus “research parks.” One of the most brazen exam­ples is avail­able at: corporate.stanford.edu

Cam­pus Democracy

Who runs your school? Did you get to elect them or did the gov­er­nor hand-pick them? How many stu­dents are on your school’s board of trustees, board of regents or school board (depend­ing on the sort of school you go to)? In most cas­es, cor­po­rate direc­tors and oth­er politi­cians or busi­nessper­sons run your school. If you’re at a col­lege or uni­ver­si­ty, it’s a good idea to fight to change things so that your school is run by peo­ple elect­ed by the stu­dents, fac­ul­ty, staff and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers. If you’re at a pub­lic high school, check out your school board and see if you need to be run­ning bet­ter can­di­dates to replace bad school board members.

You should also check out your stu­dent gov­ern­ment. Most stu­dent gov­ern­ments aren’t too bold or cre­ative and would rather promise bet­ter park­ing and then not do any­thing. It’s not hard to get your own peo­ple elect­ed and use the posi­tion to help build your campaigns.

Schools serve in many roles, includ­ing that of employ­er and land-own­er. There may be labor issues on your cam­pus that need stu­dent help (like if the house­keep­ers are seek­ing to union­ize and the school wants to cut jobs and pri­va­tize part of their work­force). Per­haps the teach­ing assis­tants need to union­ize to get bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions. As a land-own­er, col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties con­trol stu­dent hous­ing and may own a lot of open land they plan to turn into research parks. Maybe the col­lege is plan­ning to buy land near cam­pus to build con­tro­ver­sial stu­dent hous­ing. If you’re in a pub­lic high school, check out what land your school board owns. You may be sur­prised to find that they own more than the prop­er­ty your school sits on. Teach­ers and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers who have been around a while can help inform you about campus/community dis­putes over such things. Files on what real estate your school owns should be in your coun­ty courthouse.

Oth­er cam­pus democ­ra­cy issues are issues of dis­crim­i­na­tion. Is your school try­ing to kill affir­ma­tive action? Do they have a good enough anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion pol­i­cy? Does it cov­er dis­crim­i­na­tion against gays, les­bians, bisex­u­als and trans­gen­dered (GLBT) peo­ple? Does your school have such poli­cies at that same time that they allow out­fits like ROTC on cam­pus (ROTC bans GLBT members).

Final­ly, does your cam­pus make its infor­ma­tion pub­lic? Some schools receive some pub­lic fund­ing, but get away with not hav­ing to dis­close things that are nor­mal­ly avail­able under right-to-know laws for pub­lic insti­tu­tions. If you need to see con­tracts, invest­ments, teach­ers wages, etc., pres­sure the school into mak­ing these records pub­lic as a mat­ter of policy.

Bring­ing this Back to Your Group

OK, so now, per­haps, orga­niz­ing cam­paigns makes some sense to you… but how do you bring this back to your group? The first step is to take the group through the thought process about the dif­fer­ence between ser­vice projects (in which you usu­al­ly end up where you start­ed) and issue cam­paigns (which can cre­ate long-term insti­tu­tion­al change). Then ask your­selves what issues are real­ly rel­e­vant to your cam­pus. You may need to do some research before decid­ing this. Once you have an issue, make sure that you rec­og­nize what caused this prob­lem, who is direct­ly respon­si­ble, and what can be done as a solu­tion. What will we need to do in order to make that solu­tion a reality?

Don’t let the exam­ples above intim­i­date you if you don’t know how to go about them. Check out SEAC’s Orga­niz­ing Guide. Call the SEAC nation­al office or your region­al coor­di­na­tor. Post a mes­sage to the seac-dis­cus­sion email list. Oth­er stu­dents have been through these cam­paigns before and can help you with ideas. Share what you learn with oth­ers. Good Luck!

Also read: Expos­ing Cor­po­rate Ties to your School: Intro & Part 1 — Investments