In this episode we hear about how billionaire casino developers were threatening two working class neighborhoods (7:39), leading to a new campaigning organization to try NOT directly organizing against casinos but instead to win over more support by focusing on a lack of transparency (9:25), and doing it by designing tactics that used “show not tell” principles to create drama and suspense (11:11), and then designing subsequent short campaigns around possible leverage points to keep casinos away (20:15), but refusing to give up when they lost repeatedly in the courts (24:10), and why it was important to refuse to hold a march or rally and limit themselves to new tactics rather than use any that had worked in the past (27:34) and how a 17-year-old campaign feels especially relevant today (38:35).
For a description of each Casino-Free campaign you can read their direct action manual, and this calendar of Operation Transparency actions. You can also check out Daniel’s book, Strategy and Soul.
Read more about this episode on our website and at The Forge.
Daniel Hunter is the Associate Director for Global Training at 350.org, where he has developed numerous open source training materials available in many languages. He has trained thousands of activists, from ethnic minorities in Burma, pastors in Sierra Leone, to independence activists in northeast India, and has written multiple books, including the "Climate Resistance Handbook" and "Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow,” and he was an architect of Choose Democracy, a campaign to stop a coup in advance of the 2020 election.
Visit www.trainingforchange.org for workshops and training tools, or to make a donation. Follow us on social media @tfctrains. The Craft of Campaigns podcast is made possible by grassroots donors. We welcome your feedback; if you like these episodes, please consider donating, to keep the show running. This podcast is hosted by Andrew Willis Garcés and produced by Ali Roseberry-Polier.
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