What is Community Organizing

What is a Separate Campaign Team?

September 2003

A important question we hear is: How do you apply the power you've gained from your community organizing without threatening the relationships with elected officials you and your coalition has worked so hard to create and maintain? How do you, as an LLA, tell someone who might be your boss's boss that they are wrong and if they don't choose differently you will rally public awareness into public pressure? You don't - your separate campaign team does.

The separate campaign team is a concept that we at The Center advocate to address the cross pressures affecting county staff and Prop 99 coalition leaders when it is time to get tough with the Board of Supervisors or City Council. We believe the campaign team needs to be free to act independently of the LLA and Coalition leadership to take whatever steps are necessary in the pursuit of strong local policy. But how “separate” or “independent” does the campaign committee need to be?

Our answer is: separate enough so that when political resistance is encountered, appropriate community organizing pressure, such as a media or turnout event, can be applied without stressing relationships between LLAs and decision makers. Separate enough so that the campaign committee can threaten to oppose a watered-down proposal without making the LLA or coalition chairs fear for their jobs, ongoing relationships with decision makers, or future tobacco control funding.

The separate campaign committee needs to have the participation and leadership of credible community organizations and will need to recruit members from outside the Prop 99 coalition. Some members of the Prop 99 coalition can become part of the campaign committee for the duration of the campaign, and the LLA and coalition leadership can lend as much help and guidance and they feel comfortable providing. But when it comes down to it, the campaign committee must have the freedom to aggressively pursue the best course for passing the policy.

At such times, the LLA and the Coalition leadership will actively support the same policy provisions as the separate campaign committee. Then, in meetings with elected officials, the LLA can honestly say they were not involved in the decision to call the press conference, oppose the measure proposed by the Supervisors or other such decisions.

The structure and membership of the separate campaign committee will be unique to each policy campaign, but the goals are common to all: improve recruitment of new allies into the policy campaign; protect the goals of the campaign from the bureaucratic pressures on LLAs and the coalitions; and allow for the more intense pace of work that a campaign requires.