Making An Impact

Getting Started

So much political activism these days is reactive. You see something outrageous online and you share a petition urging the Mayor to take action. You learn about a protest forming and you join in. That’s important for sure. What can make your time even more impactful is becoming proactive, rather than exclusively reactive.

The sooner you can be involved in the policy process, the better. You don’t want to wait until the news hits the media. Oftentimes, it’ll be too late to effectively take action. You want to be at the table when the policies are being discussed or even be quoted in the news story where they’re being announced. The less surprised you are by news stories, the better.

The way you do that is by starting to talk with policy advocates, other people being impacted, and/or elected officials as soon as an issue grabs your attention. Find an issue that is impacting you and begin educating yourself. Start with research. Google searches are easy but there is nothing more powerful than directly connecting with people who are actual stakeholders. Consider getting your friends, neighbors, or community group together for some “research meetings” with people and organizations that likely have knowledge of an issue. None of them are going to have the entire answer and some might have completely wrongheaded ones, but putting time into this process will help you understand the full landscape. And in the process, you’ll build valuable relationships that can put you on the path to victory. 

In a place as big as Los Angeles, there are usually people working on the issue you care about who also share your values. Do your best to find them and try to collaborate! (LA Forward can help with this.)  

Especially if you’re not from the community most impacted by the injustice, resist the temptation to come up with your own policy solution. You may end up doing more harm than good if you don’t learn from and partner with people who have direct lived experience. The more powerful and privileged you are, the further you are from the pain. Figure out how you can listen, learn, and support the people for whom the problem isn’t just a puzzle or irritant but a high-stakes matter of life and health.

Make sure the people you are working with have expertise in areas you don’t. Adding value to an existing campaign is key. This is also an effective way of doing advocacy because a coalition of people can divide up labor more efficiently and effectively than if you are doing work by yourself.

As you join and build coalitions, make sure you divide up the labor. None of us do everything well. And none of us should bear the load alone or worse, monopolize leadership so that we weaken the opportunity for a wide community of people to develop as leaders.

So have some people focused on tracking bills as they move through the legislative process, others building relationships with supportive elected officials, and many more developing policy and legal strategy, leading communications, organizing with impacted communities, and generating support from constituents of key decision-makers.

Joining Together

Try your best to avoid doing this work alone. Making change is always a collective endeavor. You need a group of people to support you and hold you accountable to keep showing up and taking action.

We love how Patrisse Cullors, a founder of Black Lives Matters and a native Angeleno, expressed it. When asked what the most important thing a person could do, she said:

“People should join an organization. Now is not the time to try to do some of the hardest work of changing systems on your own. It’s not possible. What is possible is joining together and being organized. It might be a formal organization that you join or it might be something small or might start something on your own. Be in community. We really need each other right now.” 

And your group, no matter how small or large, shouldn’t be going at it entirely alone either. Find coalitions — formal and informal — you can tap into. There is strength in numbers.

Connect with the people and organizations who have been doing the work for a long time. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. It can be as simple as signing up for a newsletter and action alerts from coalitions you respect. Or it could be as deep as joining a coalition’s meetings and as you learn, eventually becoming part of the leadership that is strategizing for success.

The key thing with coalitions is that they let you divide up the labor. Not everyone has to track legislation on their own. A few people can do it together. A couple people can team up to draft and send out action alerts. Divvying up the work frees up everyone to focus on all the other pieces of successful organizing and advocacy strategy – mobilizing constituents, getting the story out into traditional and social media, meeting directly with decision-makers, crafting legal strategy, and much more. 

Make sure as you join coalitions that they’re connected with and being informed by the people most impacted by injustice. A coalition fighting for the rights of street vendors to earn a living should take its lead from vendors themselves. 

Take care that you’re joining up with coalitions who have their ish together and know what they’re talking about on the technical stuff. For example, the LA Street Vendor Campaign’s approach to policy is informed by vendors AND has expert attorneys who can effectively respond when the City Attorney insists that something isn’t legally possible and say “yes, actually, we can and here’s why.”

We encourage you to follow some of the bigger coalitions yourself by signing up for email newsletters and following them on social media. They’ll tip you off to key moments for taking action.

Healthy LA Coalition  // LA Street Vendor Campaign // ACT-LA

The People’s Budget  // STAND LA // DA Accountability Coalition

Reimagine LA // Justice LA // Housing Now // Right to Counsel

If you’re looking for a community to support and motivate you, you’re always welcome at LA Forward. That’s why we’re here. We also provide a platform for you to connect with bigger coalitions beyond just receiving action alerts. Sign up at losangelesforward.org

Alright, let’s get down to business!

Understanding & Moving Decision-Makers

While local government is primarily governed by elected officials, civil servants and appointed officials wield significant power too. To be effective, it’s critical to understand that each type of decision-maker has their own set of motivations, incentives, and constraints. What works to move a City Councilmember is not something that will change a civil servant’s recommendation.

Elected officials are theoretically the most susceptible to input and pressure from the public, so this guide focuses principally on them. There are opportunities to influence appointed officials and civil servants and we plan to cover those more in depth in future versions of the guide.

Elected officials, as a general rule, prioritize getting reelected as their main goal. They want to look good to constituents, donors, and powerbrokers and avoid looking bad as much as possible. Some lean more progressive and others more conservative. Some are known for their courage and others for taking the path of least resistance. For that reason, it helps to get to know them each as individuals, to learn about what they care about personally and politically, the people and organizations that are most influential in their decision-making, and so on. 

In Los Angeles, we basically have a one-party system – nearly elected official is a Democrat and unlike national politics, there is not rigid polarization that encompasses all issues. On different issues, politicians may line up very differently. The official you love for their advocacy of tenant protections may regularly oppose more affordable housing construction. The champion for street vendor protections may be in the pocket of mega-developers. You have to really get to know the ins and outs of the political landscape for the issues you care most about. You can do that by specializing in one particular issue initially and then using that as a jumping off point to learn the broader landscape.

But ultimately, remember that officials want to be elected again and so they tend to respond to a carrot-and-stick approach. If they support your policy, they want to get good publicity in the press and on social media. They want to be cast as heroes of the public narrative. They want to know that come election time the people and organizations who they supported will support them back. And they don’t want to get on the wrong side of the media or anger a deeply committed group of people or interests who may try to ensure their defeat in the next election. 

That’s why politicians are frequently known for speaking out of both sides of their mouths and for making grand rhetorical gestures without much in the way of solid policy commitment to back them up. It’s important for you to obtain firm, specific commitments and ideally to get them made in public, whether in front of the media, large assemblies of people, or in the legislative debates.

Praise them when they do the right thing and critique their actions when they go astray. Think carefully before going full “scorched earth.” Attacking them personally can feel good. It can be an incredibly effective tactic in pushing people to vote against them in future elections. But it usually backfires when you’re actually trying to get their vote for your agenda. If you’ll ultimately need their vote to win your policy, you need to give them a way to be welcomed back into the fold. If you act publicly as if they’re irredeemable, they’re not going to see the point in even trying to get on your good side. 

The most powerful tactics in the world won’t be effective unless they’re part of a coherent strategy. More on that later.

When you’re thinking of contacting elected officials, keep in mind two general rules.

1. Focus on contacting the elected officials who directly represent you — your City Councilmember, your county supervisor, and any Citywide or countywide officials. 

If you don’t live in their district (or otherwise have a stake through a job, school, or property ownership), your opinion doesn’t matter nearly as much to them. Don’t live in a key Councilmember’s district? Work on getting someone you know there to make a call. The exceptions are the leaders of committees that have authority over an whole issue area. Like Paul Krekorian for LA City Council’s Budget Committee and Gil Cedillo for LA City Council’s Housing Committee.

2. Both the quality and quantity of your outreach matters. 

Generating a huge number of digital petition signatures is great, but generally speaking, the more effort an action takes, the more weight an elected official will give to it. 

• Petitions and generic form emails can make a difference at the local level (unlike at the national level where they are increasingly ineffectual) but a phone call is even more powerful. 

• A letter from one organization is great. Letters with sign-ons from dozens of organizations are even more powerful.

• A small group face-to-face visit (even via Zoom) is more powerful than a phone call, but having the elected official join your community group for a forum where you get them on record in front of dozens or hundreds or thousands of people is even more powerful. 

• And an uprising like we saw in June 2020, which is rare and difficult to generate, is stronger than all the rest combined, in its power to completely shift the landscape of debate.

So whenever possible take the next step beyond a form email, and follow up with a phone call. There are staffers in each elected official’s office whose job it is to tally the number of phone calls and other communications for every side of an issue. 

The more you can show electeds that there is widespread and deeply committed support among their voting constituents and that there is not significant widespread or deeply committed opposition, the more likely you are to win. On contentious issues, a politician will likely be forced into angering one side or the other, as much as they might not want to. You want to be the ones they’re most afraid of politically and who they most want to have their backs in the next election.

In addition to mobilizing a lot of their constituents in ways that demonstrate high levels of commitment (e.g. large numbers of people showing up in person for rallies), you’ll be more likely to succeed if you are effective at controlling the public narrative and offering detailed and well-thought out policy proposals. This is as true for individual comments you may offer up as it is for policy campaigns as a whole. 

Let’s take the example of public comment at a city council meeting.  If you’re able to come to the microphone and instead of saying “I’m Amy and you’re all terrible for not doing x, y, z” It’s far more powerful to say I’m Amy and I’m with ___ organization that has 5,000 members in LA City and we urge you to do x, y, z because it’s so important to our members.

You want to be clear in what your asks are. General asks are fine (e.g. “Defund the police” is a clear message), but other times, you might want to share details.  Even though your time is short (sometimes only 60 seconds!), you generally should cover 

• Who you are and why you care about this issue

• What the elected body should do and why it makes sense to do it

If you’re not used to public speaking, do some prep on your own, or better yet, with a friend or family member.

You can also coordinate with multiple people so you each emphasize something different.  The people most impacted by the issue will have powerful stories to share – the more they can get comfortable articulating those publicly, the stronger your case will be. 

Politicians may respond most to electoral incentives, but they are also human beings. Stories are the way in which people both understand the world and change their mind. You can have some speakers who detail the policy specifics, how it will work practically, and why it's the best option. Other folks can give historical context or demonstrate how an “unlikely ally” is also in support. 

Cover your bases as much as possible. You want to leave elected officials as few reasons for avoiding your policy as possible. Criticism has its place but if you have people with policy and legal expertise in your corner, as well as people closest to the impact of the proposed policy, plus a sizable number of constituents of the elected official, you’re going to be in a strong position to win their support.

You have every right to be angry about the state of our city and world. We recommend you use that righteous anger as strategically as possible. It’s the “boy who cried wolf” principle. If you’re always the angry speaker, many people — especially decision-makers — are going to soon discount your anger as just the new normal. But if you hold it in reserve and only let it out publicly at key moments, you can preserve its power to command attention. This isn’t “respectability politics,” it’s a strategic approach that frequently pays off.

Build a reputation for knowing the ins-and-outs of how policy works, so when you’re pushing the envelope on a new type of policy you’re more likely to be taken seriously. 

Credibility and reputation matter with policymakers. The same is true for the communities with which you’re organizing. Be a straight shooter and don’t overpromise, monopolize credit, or mislead. It’ll go a long way in keeping people together, unified for the cause you all share.

Below we outline different ways to contact and press elected officials. But before that, it’s important to understand the basic division of authority in local governments, how policymaking processes work, and where your best opportunities are for intervening.

The Policymaking Process

At the federal and state level, the division of authority between the Legislative branch, which is responsible for passing laws, and the Executive branch  which is responsible for operating the government within the bounds of those laws, is relatively clear

Our region’s big cities — Los Angeles, Long Beach, Inglewood and a few more — have similar systems, where there is an elected Mayor who functions like a Governor or President to run the government, plus an elected City Council which exists to pass laws like Congress. In these places, it’s relatively clear where to direct your energy. To pass better laws, focus on the City Councilmembers. To reform how City Departments are run, who is hired to run them, and what kind of budgets are being proposed, push on the Mayor. (That’s the general rule – there are definitely exceptions.)

In LA County government and in most of the County’s smaller cities, things operate a little differently. 

The County Board of Supervisors is both the Executive AND the Legislative branch of government. They act to pass laws like a City Council or Congress would, but also have direct control over the daily operations of the government itself through their power to hire and fire the heads of all Departments and agencies.  There is a Chair position and whoever holds it is responsible for presiding over regular meetings and working with the departments to set the agenda. Every year the position rotates to a new Supervisor based on a vote of the members. The same is true for many smaller cities. Each year a new Councilmember assumes the title of “Mayor” even though the position is far more limited than the power held by a Mayor who is popularly elected. 

That means that in the case of the County government and many small cities, there really is one main body to visit regardless of whether you want to change the laws or change how government carries out these laws.

The Committee System

So how do the legislative branches of government work? Committees are crucial in almost all of them. Councils divide up their jurisdiction into multiple issue areas and assign a committee to each one. Each committee has a chair who’s responsible for setting the official agenda of each meeting plus several members who are interested in that issue, for one reason or another. For example, if you’re working on housing issues in the City of LA, that means you’re going to need to get Gil Cedillo, Chair of the Council’s Housing Committee to take what you’re saying seriously. 

Chairs have the power to prevent legislation and even proposals to study legislation from coming up for discussion. And they can play a critical role in whether motions pass the committee once they come up for a vote since committee members generally try to avoid getting on the bad side of the Chair.

At a minimum, passing a policy will involve getting it put on the agenda in a committee, successfully passed by a majority vote, placed on the agenda of the full council, and successfully passed by a majority vote there. Usually, however, there are multiple iterations of that process, with motions going back and forth between the full council and a committee. Oftentimes, the policies have to be considered by multiple committees since a single policy proposal may involve different issue areas. 

There are an incredible number of checkpoints and chokepoints for slowing down and killing legislation before it ever comes up for a final vote. Decriminalization of street vending languished for years until the election of Donald Trump finally spurred the LA City Council to act. And the Council still hasn’t put a definitive stop to oil drilling in residential neighborhoods despite years of advocacy by grassroots community groups. But when something is important to wealthy and powerful interests, like the Olympics, it’s amazing how quickly it can move. 

At every step of this process, there are different ways to contact and press elected officials. You’ll need to make sure committee chairs put your policy priority on the agenda, rally the votes to pass it through committee, get the full council to put it on their agenda, and then muster the votes to pass it there.

It’s a reminder that you’ll need to keep sharing your voice and putting the pressure on at every step of the process. Even better is the ability to pull powerful people and institutions behind your cause. And best is building your own electoral power so effectively that politicians fall in line when you put forward a policy priority.  That leads us to the question of how to do all that. For the answer, rkeep reading…