Strengthen and Sustain WWFOR
by Glen Anderson
WWFOR members believe in economic justice and a “living wage” for workers, so for a number of years WWFOR has been raising staff wages without solid plans for how to pay for them. “Wishful thinking” beyond what our hard-working fundraising efforts could generate is partly responsible for our current financial crisis. WWFOR’s economic problem has worsened because of the US’s widening economic gap between the rich and the rest of us and the economic crash that occurred in 2008 and will continue long into the future. But WWFOR’s problem is not just a shortage of money. It is also a shortage of grassroots volunteers and an organizational culture that does not fulfill our lip service to grassroots activism. In order to become sustainable, WWFOR must address both problems. Shortages of donations and volunteers are not unique to WWFOR. Many people throughout the progressive community feel powerless because the dysfunctional government rebuffs the public on so many issues (e.g., foreign policy, human rights, poverty, big business, election reform, labor, environment, climate). Progressives will not make significant progress on our issues until we (1) explicitly recognize that Americans feel powerless and (2) devise strategies to overcome that. People do not donate money or volunteer time to efforts that they sense are futile. We must address people’s sense of powerlessness head-on in order to generate hope and skills for turning things around! We could publicize printed materials and use our events (Seabeck, Spring Assembly, Fall Retreat), and conduct special workshops to help WWFOR members and other progressives overcome feelings of powerless and devise strategies to strengthen grassroots organizing.
In general, WWFOR’s people are attenders, not organizers. WWFOR’s most faithful people attend our activities. But except for a few skilled organizers, WWFOR’s people do not step forward to organize events and activities. Most of our people let a few people in leadership roles (especially our paid staff) do the work.
We are proud of FOR’s long history, but we are not generating bold enough activities nowadays. WWFOR’s Area Committee holds sparsely attended quarterly business meetings basically to keep the organizational structure going. A progressive organization relies on “organizers” and “activists” to accomplish the issue-based work as well as the organizational infrastructure work. WWFOR needs people to work on both kinds of work. We intended the “Bring Our Billion$ Home” campaign to do this, but it has not fulfilled our expectations.
And can’t FOR be more active and visible outside of Seattle and Olympia? Without specifically recruiting “organizers,” WWFOR is not attracting enough young people and energetic people to replace those of us who are “aging out” – and WWFOR is not inspiring enough current and new people to donate enough financial support.
We need to change WWFOR’s organizational culture so our people will not “delegate upward” to our paid staff, but will be empowered and trained to take responsibility to do the work themselves. I appreciate the motto, “We are the people we’ve been waiting for.”