Theme 6: Analysis to Strategy

Power analysis is essential for guiding our choice of strategies – the short- and long-term actions, tactics, and organising processes that we invest in to build and mobilise collective power to block, resist, expose, and change power. Power analysis can also help us identify gaps in our strategy, opportunities to build alliances with groups doing complementary work, the access, resources and relationships we need, and ways to strengthen our base and leadership. A strategy requires a deeper layer of power analysis and other ingredients that are included in other chapters and pulled together in Chapter 6: Power and Strategy.

This section builds on all the concepts covered in this chapter and begins the process of bridging from analysis to strategies and actions. We connect analysis of the four arenas of power to strategies and then explore whether and how these strategies build or catalyse power to, with, within, and for. This approach to strategy development is shaped by the orientation toward (decolonial) feminist movement-building discussed in Chapter 2: Naming the Moment, and in more detail in Chapter 6.

Strategy is a collaborative, dynamic, and evolving process that guides an organisation, alliance, or movement towards achieving social change. It includes processes and steps to align more opportunistic or urgent short and medium-term actions with long-term goals. A movement-building strategy also specifies how these processes – organising, developing leadership, and action – embody and enrich the underlying values and vision.

We use The Power Matrix¹⁵ to connect an analysis of the Four Arenas of Power to the formulation of strategies and actions, using concrete issues or one of the case studies as examples. The Power Matrix is a simple but effective and flexible tool that has been used and adapted by activists in dozens of contexts and organisational settings. It helps us identify specific strategies for contesting or building power in each of the four arenas – visible, hidden, invisible, and systemic – and for thinking about how these strategies are connected. We then reflect on how or whether these strategies catalyse transformative power (to, with, within, and for).

The Power Matrix can be useful to assess the strengths and gaps of your current strategy and identify opportunities to build alliances. Chapter 6: Power and Strategy gives more depth.

Summary

• Movement strategy that centres a power analysis is about solving problems of injustice and inequality by building, mobilising, and using our power to block, change, and engage the dominant structures and expressions of power. What connections do you see between creating and resisting power?
• Distinct arenas and expressions of transformative power require different, interconnected strategies and approaches that are interdependent and mutually reinforcing. For example, to face formidable forces, we need to build and leverage our movement power – through intersectional organising, critical awareness, diverse leadership and alliances. Our tactics seek to mobilise and amplify our demands, collective voices, and narratives so that we can block, resist, pressure, propose or engage with the structures and dynamics of power.
• Building our collective power is ongoing, long-term, and foundational to all other strategies involving the heart, mind, and body. It is also where we put our democratic values into practice and stretch beyond our comfort zones with new allies and organised collectives.
• Our ability to reimagine the future in line with our values reinforces how we build and sustain our movements and guides our demands and narratives.
• No single organisation or group has all the capacities necessary to do everything it takes to transform power and achieve systemic change. Movements are all about expanding the ‘we’ through the ways we organise, connect, communicate, and take action. In this way, we manoeuvre through shifting opportunities and threats while always strengthening our ‘critical connections’ across borders, issues, and sectors.