<aside> đź’ˇ Throughout the workbook, we share examples from the Save Our Safety Net DC (SOS DC) campaign to demonstrate tools and principles. Below is the full campaign story.
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It’s Fall 2009 in Washington D.C., and like many big cities facing a tax revenue shortage during the Great Recession, the Mayor and City Council just made $100M in budget cuts — half to key safety net programs like childcare subsidies for single parents. Mayor Fenty has already forecasted more cuts the following year in his budget proposal to be delivered on April 1, 2010.
Progressive groups that advocate for working class residents planned their normal tactics: writing reports, lobbying City Councilmembers, testifying at budget hearings, and holding rallies. The media might report on one or two people impacted by cuts to affordable housing programs, but the public story would likely be framed as “public safety” (police funding) vs. “safety net” (support for poor residents). This story would ignore the millionaires and corporate lobbyists who avoided paying their fair share in taxes and depict the mayor as being “forced to make cuts,” not “forced to raise taxes on the wealthy.” Also, 2010 would be an election year, with many observers forecasting another landslide victory for the Mayor and his allies in November. In pre-Occupy and pre-Bernie Sanders Campaign D.C., taxing the rich was not on anyone’s mind, and the impacts of the tax cuts were not visible beyond the advocates already paying attention.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g113yu8Kib4&ab_channel=SaveDCSafetyNet
Dissatisfied with the plans of existing advocacy nonprofits, a group of mostly younger, mostly white (in what was at the time a majority Black city) activists decided to form a new organization, Save Our Safety Net DC, with the goal of preventing budget cuts in 2010.
They had already ensured the support of three progressive City Council champions willing to raise taxes on high-income earners. But to prevent budget cuts, they would need to convince four other Councilmembers to join them. To do this, they would have to build and tell a narrative that would cast the Mayor as a heartless villain and create opportunities for everyday people and their primary targets – those “swing” councilmembers – to stand with tenants, single parents, and those who depended on the safety net. They would have to introduce a new character in the story: wealthy supporters demanding to have their own taxes raised, and they would need to reframe the Mayor’s narrative about “public safety vs. safety net programs.” They’d need to activate key voter bases — homeowners, middle class people, and high-turnout voters in primaries — because they knew elected officials paid attention to them. And they would have to use disruptive tactics to create a sense of urgency and make the question, “a city budget for whom?,” a dominant story of the election.
April 8: Kids “Sleep In”
April 19: High-Dollar Happy Hour: Organizing Wealthy White Voters ****
May 19: Wrapping a “Safety Net” Around City Hall
In the first phase of the campaign, between April and May, the group organized nearly a dozen public actions with hundreds of participants, most of them new to City Council activism. Although the budget cuts mostly went through, the group had begun successfully shifting the public narrative away from the mayor’s preferred “public safety vs. safety net” framing and recruited several Councilmembers to join the existing pro-new-taxes “safety net superheroes.”
When the Mayor and Council proposed even more budget cuts in the fall, the group disrupted several key Council hearings, using the “public filibuster” tactic that earned them more favorable media attention, which squarely framed the debate for the first time as “safety net cuts vs. new high-income taxes.” Shortly afterwards, Mayor Fenty lost his reelection bid. Six months later, the new Mayor proposed a tax on high income earners in his first budget proposal – along with more safety net cuts. It wasn’t until another two months of escalated actions and rapid response actions over the summer that seven councilmembers finally voted to pass a tax increase on the top 2% of households, immediately raising tens of millions of dollars for safety net programs.
S0S activist wearing red “Affordable Housing” T-shirt and a sign that reads “Tell City Council, restore FUNDING!”
SOS activists wearing super-hero capes and costumes
To the outside world, and to many of the thousands of people who phone-banked, signed petitions, and joined actions, the campaign had a consistent demand, a unified message, clear framing of the villains (the Mayor, his two henchmen on the Council and the Chamber of Commerce anti-tax lobbyists), the victims (tenants and others hurt by the cuts), and the heroes (the multiracial, mixed-class group disrupting Council meetings; wealthy residents demanding higher taxes; and the gradually-growing group of pro-tax Councilmember “champions.”)
However, like so many campaigns, each turning point brought wildly different options for the organizers. Should they water down their demand to attract more support from influential, yet cautious, community organizations? Should their actions use a friendly, open tone, or project anger and righteousness? Would they be able to recruit enough high-income supporters? Which Councilmembers were most likely to swing from “neutral” to “active support” of the tax increase?
Throughout this workbook we’ll unpack many of the organizers choices, strategy decisions, and behind-the-scenes work, to illustrate key campaigning principles.
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