Campaign coaching for local activists
Hamilton’s community organisers were among the first to experience a new ActionStation workshop.
Around 30 people gathered at YWCA Hamilton last weekend for a free workshop on organising and running campaigns.
The full-day event was facilitated by Eliot Pryor, Ruby Powell, and Kassie Hartendorp of Wellington-based ActionStation, and co-hosted by local groups Seed Waikato, Go Eco, YWCA, and Waikato Living Wage Aotearoa New Zealand.
the weekend was the second trial run of what ActionStation hopes to be a regular offering next year, with the three organisers sharing their knowledge on how to “go from one person in the living room saying ‘oh, this is really bad,’ to a town hall full of people”.
Citing the School Strike For Climate campaign as an example of young people organising for change, community campaign organiser Eliot Pryor said ActionStation hoped “ to pass on some of the tools and skills and concepts and empower our young people to be able to do that [the school strike]”.
The workshop also incorporated examples from the mental health education and Protect Ihumātao campaigns and included a brainstorm about using similar tactics to campaign for Te Tiriti O Waitangi to be taught in schools.
Attendees ranged from experienced campaigners to newcomers driven by a variety of causes including gender equality, public transport, and animal rights.
Activist Fred Hayward was pleased to see young people getting involved in activism.
Workshop participant and “old-fashioned activist” Fred Hayward has lifelong experience campaigning for environmental causes, state housing, poverty issues, and now human rights in Palestine, and said it can sometimes be hard to know which to focus time and energy on.
“People who [are passionate] about human rights tend to have lots of passions about all sorts of things, so which one do you choose?”
This challenge relates to what Eliot Pryor terms “the eco-system of campaigns,” describing the way different campaigns and goals overlap and often support each other.
As well as testing the format of the workshop, he said the weekend was a good chance to get to know people and organisations in Hamilton who share ActionStation’s goals.
“Meeting Anna [Casey-Cox, Poverty Action Waikato], Jo [Wrigley, Go Eco], and Zeta [Mohn, YWCA] and actually putting faces to names, I think that’s really valuable for networking as well as being able to work with those groups when they campaign in the future.”
While the overall atmosphere in the room was positive, ActionStation plans to collect feedback and use that to refine further the workshop ahead of their next test run in Christchurch this month.
“If somebody actually starts a campaign from this group, it might not be now, it might be next year, then that’s a sign of success.”
