Bike and transit advocates must build their own political power by getting their “rank and file” riders engaged. It takes time and consistent effort to find, educate, and organize the bus and bike riders throughout your community, but that is key to successful long term transportation political organizing efforts. However, at the same time we can quickly bulk up our movement’s power by bringing powerful allies into the effort. Fortunately, bike & transit activists have loads of potential powerful allies to try to engage though getting them engaged takes a bit of work.
Two of the approaches to getting powerful potential allies engaged on your transportation issues are a project-centric approach and an ally-centric approach.
Project-centric approach to bringing on powerful allies:
This approach starts with a question “what” and then “who.” What do you want built or what policy do you want changed and who would benefit from it? Whether you want something like a light rail line, discounted transit passes, more late night bus service, or a protected bike lane, the thing you want benefits a lot of other people. Think of what types of groups would benefit from it and then start building out a contact list of those specific groups in the relevant area.
For example, late night bus service helps service workers on the graveyard shift, supports the businesses along the route, and reduces pollution. Unions, the businesses along that route, business organizations, anti-poverty groups, justice organizations, and environmental groups are all potential allies on something like that. Build a list of the specific organizations within those types that are in the relevant areas. You don’t have to make some fancy database, I track it all on a big Googlesheet. The point is to go from saying “businesses should support this idea” to “here are the names, phone numbers and email addresses of the 30 businesses on this corridor this project would help.”
Then you are able to reach out to talk with them about the project, their transportation needs, and how the project helps them. Ideally you win some of them over and now the project has more political oomph behind it! This approach is a quick way to bulk up power for something you were already planning on doing. This approach’s main limitations are that it might not be enough to overcome the political hurdles your project faces and that its similarity to a “top-down” approach may rankle some of these potential allies. How you approach these allies will make a huge difference in winning them over or potentially inciting their opposition.
Ally-centric approach to bringing on powerful allies
This approach starts with a question of “who” and then “what.” Who is a politically powerful entity that I want to work with and what sort of project would we agree on? There are already politically powerful entities in your community that tend to get their way, getting them to prioritize your shared interests will make your life a lot easier. Depending on where you are, that entity might be something like the medical center, the university, the business association, a few specific businesses, an association of businesses in a specific industry, some specific unions, an advocacy group, or a coalition of advocacy groups.
If you are not sure who the groups with the power in your community are, check the local newspaper to see what groups get quoted or referenced. Look at your elected officials’ candidate websites and see who endorsed them. You can also ask around (particularly ask your elders or people who are more politically engaged than you). Folks are pretty good at spotting who is a powerful entity though they might not be right in their assessment of which entity has the most power. For example, they might say that the police union “runs this town,” and while that is definitely a sign that the police union has a lot of power, it might not be true that they run everything. For your purposes, you are just identifying who is powerful, you do not need to worry about ranking them.
Once you have ID’d the major players in your area, think about what are their priorities, how does transportation fit into that, and what are projects that would address their priorities that you would also like. For example, the downtown business district probably wants more customers to the district and there are a ton of ways of making that happen. What is a way that you would like to see that happen that they might also be open to? For now, it is ok if that point of overlap between you two is a low priority for them. Maybe their top goal would be to get a new parking garage, but would they also be up for better bus service to the district?
With that mapping of power in your community and some ideas as to productive paths of conversations, you can start reaching out to try to build relationships. You will likely have a hard time getting responses at first because you are inherently coming from a place of relatively low power and reaching out to people with full agendas and plates. The question of “why should I even bother with this person?” will likely loom large in their mind. There are lots of ways to overcome that (e.g. getting introduced, offering them something, inciting their curiosity, persistence, lowering the “cost” to them of engaging with you) but be ready for a potentially slow process.
This approach helps build powerful allies but its limitations are that it can take awhile. It is a very slow “yes” and there is no guarantee that at the end you will get that yes. The power imbalance might just be too large for them to spend any time on you at all, let alone work with you to get to some point of agreement. Some doors to partnership will only open after you have achieved a certain level of power. Also, your potential point of overlap with them might be such a low priority that they do not want to spend any time on it– though they might have a subdivision or a person in charge of the issue that you will have better luck with.
You have a lot more potential allies than you might now, but you have got to talk to them. Regardless of which approach you chose or if you do a hybrid, the key step is identifying these potential allies and reaching out to them. Assume that they will not seek you out and that they will not preemptively start advocating for the issue you are prioritizing. They will only get on the dance floor if you invite them in. They might not say yes (or at least not at first), but the default is them saying no. You will only get a yes if you ask. Go ask!
Need help winning transportation changes in your community? I’m here to help! Whether you want a 1-on-1 training session or a group workshop, let’s talk. Email me at Carter@carterlavin.com to set something up. Here’s a bit about what training sessions are like.
Free upcoming online events
3/20 @ 5:30pm PT— Free training: "A beginner's guide to building pro-transit & bike political power."
In the Bay Area and got your ballot? Check out the “Transportation Questionnaire” which got responses from 65 candidates across the 9 County Bay Area and see what the people vying for your vote have to say on transportation issues. You can view the responses by region here: East Bay Candidates, North Bay Candidates, Peninsula Candidates, San Francisco Candidates, and South Bay Candidates. The project was co-led with SPUR, Seamless Bay Area, San Francisco Transit Riders, Silicon Valley Bike Coalition, and Bike East Bay
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