Organizing for the Long Haul by Building Community

I have been organizing since I was a young person. And I get this question, [what does winning look like?] a lot because we don’t always win. Sometimes we suffer some pretty hard defeats.

And people ask, what allows you to sustain a life in this work and to stay committed to these sometimes seemingly maybe abstract or distant sort of revolutionary ideas or goals?

And for me, it isn’t in the winning. In fact, the conditions are 80 percent of it. And we don’t control the conditions, but they often determine whether or not we win or lose. We got a good 20 percent. That’s on us. Right?

But it really isn’t [up] to us whether we win or lose. We do our best, and sometimes we suffer some hard defeats. Sometimes we experience some amazing lifts. But the winning and losing isn’t for us. And then, the moralizing, whether or not this is a morally just thing to do. It’s hard to know enough to know if the things that you’re doing are the right things.

“This work, to me, is about…who I’m choosing to be in community with, who I’m choosing to fight with and fight for, win or lose.”

We try to do the right thing. But history often determines. History often determines whether or not we were right. And sometimes obsessing about whether or not you are right is more for your ego than for the people that you’re in struggle with.

We try to do our best, but we always are operating with incomplete information. And all decisions have downsides and upsides and trade-offs.

But the thing that I like to focus on, and the thing that I think we could really lean into is: what are we building together? Who are we choosing to be with? And who are we choosing to be? And we could always return to those questions. Win or lose. We could always turn to those questions and turn to one another.

And it’s like, when I lose, I’m choosing who I want to comfort and who I want to be comforted by. When I win, I’m choosing who I want to celebrate with and who I want to make assessments with. That’s really what this work, to me, is about, and getting every day to make those choices about who I’m choosing to be in community with, who I’m choosing to fight with and fight for, win or lose.

About the author

Maurice Mitchell

Maurice is a nationally-recognized social movement strategist, a visionary leader in the Movement for Black Lives, and a community organizer for racial, social, and economic justice. Born and raised in New York to Caribbean working-class parents, Maurice began organizing as a teenager — and never stopped. As a high school student, Maurice served as a student leader for the Long Island Student Coalition for Peace and Justice. At Howard University, after a classmate was killed by police officers, Maurice led organizing efforts against police brutality and for divestment from private prisons. Maurice went on to work as an organizer for the Long Island Progressive Coalition, downstate organizing director for Citizen Action of NY, and Director of the NY State Civic Engagement Table. Two tragedies changed the course of Maurice’s life. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy destroyed Maurice’s house in Long Beach, NY and left him living in hotels for months. Eighteen months later, after Mike Brown was killed by police in Missouri, Maurice relocated to Ferguson to support organizations on the ground. Seeing the need for an anchor organization to provide strategic support and guidance to Movement for Black Lives activists across the country, Maurice co-founded and managed Blackbird. Maurice was a key organizer of the Movement for Black Lives convention in Cleveland in 2015. In 2018, Maurice took the helm of the Working Families Party as National Director. He is applying his passion and experience to make WFP the political home for a multi-racial working class movement.

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