When activists and groups who are already well known, respected, and deeply rooted in community decide to strategically engage in electoral politics, they can help to generate significant momentum and support for values-aligned candidates (who often come from their very movements). Grassroots movements have long been tapping into their already organized bases to register voters, engage in voter education, dismantle barriers to voting, endorse specific candidates, and otherwise leverage their networks to increase the chances of electing leaders who will champion climate and justice issues from within the political system.

→ For example: Grassroots organization Kentuckians for the Commonwealth has been organizing around local social, economic, and environmental issues in communities across Kentucky for the last 40 years (they were originally founded to hold coal and timber companies accountable for their impacts on the state), and they’ve also been savvy about engaging in electoral politics in a really holistic way to challenge power structures and help get more values-aligned candidates into office. They register voters at community events year-round, create voting guides, host candidate forums to talk with their members, and mobilize voters around elections. They’ve also been organizing for decades to combat racist voter disenfranchisement laws and to expand voting rights, ensuring that all Kentuckians have the opportunity to participate in democratic processes.

Once grassroots movements have helped to get progressive champions elected, they can work together to advance bold, justice and liberation-oriented agendas. From the inside, progressive champions can stay responsive to their constituents by eliciting feedback and input on policies and decisions, holding community forums, surrounding themselves with advisors and staff members that come from grassroots movement spaces, and otherwise maintaining strong communication channels with community members. From the outside, movements can apply pressure on elected officials to follow through on campaign commitments by monitoring and publicizing their actions and voting records, organizing protests and direct actions, and orchestrating awareness-raising campaigns.

When policymakers work in lockstep with grassroots movements, it helps ensure that policies are comprehensive, responsive to community needs, and aligned with movement goals. As Sona Mohnot, the associate director of climate equity at the public policy-focused Greenlining Institute, explains in her essay in Climate Resilience (link), “Unless we’re actually speaking with people who are experiencing the impacts that policymakers are trying to address, listening to their stories and their lived experience, all of the stuff that’s harder to put in numbers, then we’re not getting the full picture or holding ourselves accountable to what communities might need.” She elaborates, “If we’re not connecting with [community members] early on and often throughout the process, it’s just a missed opportunity for us to be able to make truly impactful change.” Meaningfully engaging members of grassroots movements in the policymaking process and centering their lived expertise can help prevent well-intentioned policy from being ineffective, or worse, harmful to the communities that it was supposed to benefit.

Additionally, the dual approach of policymakers and politicians championing policy on the inside, and grassroots movements mobilizing people and applying pressure on decision makers from the outside, can provide the sense of urgency and level of awareness needed for policy to get pushed through and implemented.

→ For example: The San Francisco-based Transgender District, which is both the world’s first legally recognized transgender district and an innovative, Black-led, trans-led community organization, has worked closely with various San Francisco City and County government agencies to help shape and guide regulations, policy, and programs that better serve San Francisco’s trans community. The Transgender District has been tremendously thoughtful and savvy in fostering the relationships needed to win material changes for their community; they’ve worked with the department of public works and municipal transit agency to maintain and beautify their district, they’ve worked with the planning department and the state senator’s office to identify and document buildings that have been culturally significant to San Francisco’s transgender community, and they’ve worked with the city and county offices and housing agencies to identify ways to resist gentrification and displacement in their district and facilitate stable housing for disenfranchised members of the community. They even worked with the city’s mayor to successfully launch a cutting-edge guaranteed income program for low-income, trans San Franciscans!

Inside/outside strategy combines and amplifies efforts both within and outside of established institutions to shift public opinion in favor of climate action, social justice, and liberation. Inside advocates may influence public opinion through media platforms, educational initiatives, the arts, and engaging with other influential individuals and institutions. Meanwhile, outside activists may raise awareness, challenge dominant narratives, and mobilize public support through grassroots organizing, public demonstrations, direct action, communication campaigns, social media channels, etc. Together, this multi-pronged approach creates a synergy that helps to shape public discourse and shift paradigms.

Similarly, inside/outside strategy combines and amplifies efforts both within and outside of established institutions to secure resources and support for community-led initiatives and climate action. Inside advocates may work within foundations/funds, government spaces, and other major organizations to influence resource allocation, funding priorities, and policy decisions. They might shift decision making practices to meaningfully include grassroots movements in determining where and how resources should flow, or they might even create new decision making structures altogether to grant grassroots movements full governance over resources. At the same time, outside activists can attract resources by creating greater visibility around climate and social justice issues, generating public support to address those issues, demonstrating what they could do with more resources and support, and making the revolution irresistible.

→ For example: Solidaire Network, a membership-based community of progressive donor organizers, utilizes inside/outside strategy in a couple of different ways to mobilize resources to the frontlines of social justice movements. First of all, their grantmaking infrastructure allows foundations and individuals with wealth to relinquish control of some of their resources to pooled funds, like the Black Liberation Pooled Fund and Movement Infrastructure Fund, that are governed with the help of movement partners, advisory committees, and staff members deeply rooted in grassroots movements. Second of all, members, staff, and movement partners communicate through an active listserv to organize one another to quickly move money as calls for funding arise from values-aligned organizations and efforts. Third, Solidaire hosts regular political education webinars, peer learning working groups, regional gatherings, and retreats to prompt dialogue and deepen relationships between donors and movements, to assist donors in giving more boldly, and to meaningfully examine and challenge wealth, power, and privilege.

Inside/outside strategy can even be utilized to create alternatives to established—and problematic—institutions. As grassroots movements establish locally-driven projects and models to meet community needs in a just and liberatory way (such as cooperatives, community-controlled housing, urban agriculture, and community-owned energy), inside advocates can work within government bodies to remove barriers and push for policy changes so that those initiatives are legally allowed to exist and have the opportunity thrive. Inside advocates can also work within philanthropic spaces and other major organizations to funnel resources towards local initiatives and help them be as successful as possible. As more and more alternative models and systems are able to proliferate and prosper, the less reliant that grassroots movements will be on established institutions to advance their agendas, and the easier it will be to decompose antiquated systems in favor of new ones!

→ For example: New Mexico-based nonprofit New Energy Economy is working to shift the energy policy landscape while they build new models for community-owned energy! On the outside, they’re busy bringing solar to the people (so far, they’ve installed community-scale solar systems on public buildings, community organizations, local farms, tribal lands, and more) and demonstrating the tangible economic, environmental, and health benefits that community solar can bring. On the inside, they’ve been instrumental in developing and implementing the policy that makes their community solar projects viable! They helped to craft and pass New Mexico’s Community Solar Bill, which allows multiple participants to engage with and reap the benefits from a single solar installation, and they were also involved in passing the state’s Energy Transition Act, which set ambitious renewable energy standards and established a pathway to close coal-fired power plants.