A Letter to the Next Generation of Organizers

Organizing is both an art and a science, and to do our best we should be creative, strategic, and rested.

Brick by brick my trials, errors, disappointment, rabbit holes, paralysis of analysis, and wins became the building blocks for my framework to solve the systemic challenges that obstruct the advancement of communities first and worst impacted by injustice.

Here’s what I’ve learned, the fundamental transformation we’re all endeavoring to achieve happens through strategy, relationships, data, and the kind of patience that can only come from understanding that real change is a generational endeavor.

This letter to you is my pursuit to weave together the lessons we’ve learned from history, movements that succeeded, those still in progress, and my own work, into a resource you can use. Our next generation of organizers shouldn’t have to encounter the same barriers and roadblocks that I’ve experienced, so I’m sharing what I learned in case it could lighten your load as you get into good trouble.

Gettin’ in Good Trouble

You may already know the story of John Lewis, who got into “good trouble” by leading over 600 people across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, to demand voting rights. Their courage stirred the Nation and pushed Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (Yes, the same one that could be gutted during its 60th Anniversary because of the Louisiana v. Callais case before the Supreme Court right now). The statesman, in his youth, recognized that “good trouble” meant achieving change by disrupting an unjust status quo so thoroughly that the system couldn’t ignore it.

But what does that mean today?

Good trouble means organizing around a vision to build the good by providing answers to the problems you’re naming.

As you look at the institutions and systems you want to change, your vision needs to have both a strategy to stop the bad and build the good. For every extractive institution you’re working to change, have a strategy to build something better.

This could be a cooperative, community land trust, a mutual aid network, a community education program, or a better financial institution; the options are infinite. Demonstrate to people what’s possible. Take what’s happening with the successful Target boycott. Organizers and a community of consumers revoked the corporation’s social license to operate through coordinated economic pressure, that caused their stock prices to plunge. That’s a great example of getting into good trouble, strategic disruption with measurable economic consequences.

Economic boycotts work when they’re organized, persistent, and communicated to decision-makers. These types of divest/invest organizing campaigns have real teeth when infused with narrative work, public pressure, and recommendations on where to redirect consumer spending. Don’t just call for action; create a better infrastructure for people to participate.

Standin’ on Business

What can you imagine staying committed to for years, not months? Before you organize others, spend some time organizing yourself.

Clarity around your motivations is the anchor that will keep you steady through the wins, the losses, the steps forward and the setbacks.

The most effective organizers I’ve met have three specific elements:

• clarity of vision,

• an identified community, and

• immediate next steps.

If organizing is purely about sacrifice and suffering, you’ll burn out. Look for others who share your vision. These might be friends, neighbors, coworkers, members of your faith community, or people you find on social media. I met my COWRIE Initiative cofounders on Twitter (Its mama named it Twitter, I’mma call it Twitter)

in 2016 around a shared desire to organize collective economic power against injustice and here is what I’d tell ya:

• Use or adapt proven organizing models. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, customize it.

• Acknowledge the problem, but organize around solutions. Focusing action builds real power.

• Yes, the problem is real. Yes, it’s systemic. Your assignment as an organizer is to help people move from “This is terrible” to “Here’s what we’re going to do about it.”

• Slogans inspire, but the real power is in the hands-on work: strategy, calls, meetings, and relationships.

• Impactful movements in history didn’t started with someone waiting to be discovered or “granted permission” to lead.

They began with a person asking a straightforward question: What do I want to see in the world? And then they started building with the people around them. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was led by community members who understood the assignment and got to work.

Organizin’ in the Digital Era

Good organizing respects your time and intelligence. It offers something genuinely useful: information, strategy, community, or a way to take action.

As you build your digital presence, ask yourself: Is the content applicable beyond making people feel righteous? Am I building a movement or a personal brand? Lets keep it a buck about digital organizing now:

• Social media creates instant amplification, but also instant fragmentation.

• Unfounded critiques spread rapidly because of the rise of engagement farming.

• People take credit for work they didn’t do, diluting the collective nature of organizing.

• Movements have been broken easily by social media conflicts that had nothing to do with strategy.

• “Going viral” is lagniappe —a bonus —not the goal.

Furthermore, the shift from the 1960s to now isn’t just about new technology, the architecture of movements has changed. Back then, strong institutions (unions, churches, civic organizations) held movements together. Today, those institutions rebuilding after have been systematically weakened.

But here’s what matters more: The organizations and movements that have successfully used social media are the ones that treated it strategically, not as a substitute for organizing. The goal is sustainable change rooted in truth and trust.

Keepin’ on When Things Get Heavy

The most impactful organizers I know are those who’ve figured out how to integrate their whole selves into their work while protecting their mental health and relationships. As Organizers we are overexposed to trauma, injustice, and the emotional weight of fighting systems that seem insurmountable. I ask you to consider:

• therapy to help you process the weight of the work, develop coping strategies, and maintain your mental health, especially if you are fighting systems that directly harm you.

• being outside. Time in nature regulates your nervous system and provides perspective. Build it into your organizing.

• building in time for hobbies. These things remind you that life is about more than struggle. Don’t let guilt convince YOU that you don’t deserve joy.

• spending time with people who love you for who you are, not what you do. Protect these relationships; they’re not distractions from your work, they make it sustainable.

• sharing the load. Burnout thrives in individual responsibility.

Passin’ the Mic

Our work is about making space, not hogging it. An accurate measure of success is seeing organizations and movements thrive beyond your time leading them.

Create space for new people with fresh ideas to lead. Being a gatekeeper keeps solutions in addition to keeping people out.

Sustainable movements thrive on innovation. When movements become about defending territory or maintaining power for specific individuals, they lose their capacity to adapt and grow.

• Leave the door open.

• Trust that new people will bring necessary perspectives and energy.

Creatin’ a coalition around a shared vision

The 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed because a broad coalition consisting of the NAACP, SNCC, SCLC, white allies, and faith leaders exerted irresistible pressure. They didn’t agree on everything. But they decided on what mattered: voting rights for Black Americans were non-negotiable. They were successful and you can be too if you when you understand the landscape.

• Map stakeholders.

• Understand their perspectives.

• Find where values align, not where you agree on everything, but where you share core commitments to justice and to centering those most impacted by injustice.

There are some gaps that may be unbridgeable. If someone’s stance is rooted in taking away your right to exist, forming a coalition will be mission: impossible. Should you choose to accept that mission, a great place to start is with this question: Can we agree that people most harmed by injustice should be centered? If the answer is yes, start there.

Lañap | Lagniappe

My colleague Ana Ramos, a Just Economy Institute Fellow like myself, has written about how she applies the Seventh Generation Principle in her financial activism. As an organizer, I urge you to think long-term, not campaign-to-campaign. You’re building for what your community needs for generations, not just for this moment. This perspective keeps you focused on what matters and may help you move past personality conflicts toward a shared vision.

Measurin’ Impact

Traditional metrics for activism have historically focused on easy counts: people at protests, media impressions, and social media reach. But these don’t truly measure what matters.

You could have 10,000 people at a protest and no policy change. You could have a small meeting of decision-makers that shifts systems. Which is the real victory?

I’ve learned to measure both the systemic change and the personal transformation.

• Did you move a decision-maker?

• Did policy shift? Did resources get reallocated?

That is systemic impact. But also ask:

• What shifted in how people understand themselves and their power?

• Am I helping build relationships that will last?

Use data, surveys, and interviews to get clear on both the policy wins you seek to achieve and the communities you want to empower.

Knowin’ what you got

Organizers have to be resourceful and make it do what it do because the urgency of issues we face. Since time isn’t always a luxury, we need discernment to recognize what we already have to work with within our communities. That recognition starts with mapping your assets:

• What skills exist?

• What relationships?

• What’s already working elsewhere that you can learn from and adapt?

Only then should we begin mobilizing around a compelling shared vision that people will invest their time, skills, relationships, and money into it. This creates both material support and relational power that become the foundation for strong organizing work.

Embodyin’ Servant Leadership

Many people will start to see you as a leader, even when that wasn’t your intent. When that happens, consider this as a guide I use: servant leadership. Author and scholar Robert Greenleaf introduced servant leadership in 1970 as a philosophy in which the leader’s primary goal is to serve others.

We need more leaders who are rooted in serving the collective by clearing pathways, amplifying community voices, and drawing attention to work of others.

John Lewis was visibly recognized as a leader, yet his leadership was always in service of collective movement. He didn’t demand prominence; it was thrust upon him by his commitment to the cause. He then used that visibility to open doors for others, amplify community voices, and modeling servant leadership.

Ella Baker, one of the most influential organizers in the civil rights movement, preferred to work behind the scenes. By founding the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), her leadership enabled students to coordinate and lead nonviolent protests against racial segregation and discrimination.

Both chose different paths, but they arrived at the same destination: centering others and building power that outlasted them.

Here’s the key: Visibility itself isn’t the problem. What matters is how you use it.

Be visible for how you make room for others, not how many rooms you occupy yourself.

I’ve seen leaders get caught up in the hype of red carpets and exclusive rooms, and appear to lose sight on why they were recognized in the first place. Their work morphs into a quest for proximity to fame instead of proximity to the people they were called to serve.

• Don’t confuse building a platform for yourself with building power for our people.

• Treat visibility as a resource, not a reward.

• Use whatever spotlight you have to shine on others, not just to be seen.

Buildin’ with the People Around You

Issa Rae articulates a component of philosophy best in an interview with Roland Martin: “Build with the people around you”. I know she didn’t invent the principle of building with the people around you. It’s ancient. It’s emerged in every successful movement. But Issa’s version—direct, explicit, refusal to wait—captures something essential that I think you, as an organizer, should know. Don’t wait for a celebrity or someone with a large platform to pull you up, because you might be waiting a long time —or forever. This isn’t pessimism. It’s a power analysis.

People with large platforms are often constrained by systems they benefit from and have less incentive to transform those systems. But the people around you? They’re invested in your community. They share your reality. They’re accessible. That’s where power begins.

Everything i’ve written to you, from good trouble to coalition building to servant leadership, and everything in between, flows from this core truth. Good trouble is disruptive only when the community backs it. Enduring coalitions come from thoughtful stakeholder analysis. Intergenerational learning happens blooms from genuine relationships. The most durable movements are built locally, rooted in the people and places most affected by injustice.

Bein’ Real

This letter comes to you at a particular moment where the systems we’re organizing against are entrenched and adaptive. But they can’t do what you can:

• build relationships across differences,

• develop leadership rooted in community,

• take risks that matter, and

• imagine a world fundamentally different from the one we live in.

This letter is meant as a guide, rooted in my own analysis of what needs to change. It is not intended to be prescriptive, so take all of this, some of it, or a lil bit. Remember you’ve already been doing the work, asking the hard question, taking the risks. But if you need permission and/or a framework, may this letter serve as both.

You got this!

Now go get into some good trouble!