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Blacktivism Measurement

How do Blacktivists measure success?

We’ve all heard it before, “If you want to achieve anything you gotta set goals, preferably SMART ones.” This post is about the M in SMART: measurement. SMART goals include ways to measure progress towards your goal and when you’ve achieved it. (The other letters stand for Specific, Achievable, Relevant and Time bound.)

Measuring goals like fundraising campaigns is easy – you just look at your GoFundMe page (or whatever you’re using). However, measuring the success of political advocacy isn’t as easy for several reasons:

  1. Successes can take years;
  2. Many people and groups contribute to successes so it’s hard to evaluate the impact of your organization;
  3. There is often an active opposition working against you so, like fighting a strong current, success might be measured by how little you go back rather than how much you advance;
  4. Good evaluation can be expensive (i.e. measuring changes in public opinion); and
  5. Many people who are judging your success only consider final outcomes like successful policy change as “wins”.

Despite these challenges, advocacy work can, and must, be measured to:

  1. Know if your strategies are the rights ones;
  2. Know if your strategies are working; and
  3. Demonstrate success to the communities you’re trying to help, potential recruits and funders.

Advocacy efforts almost always involve a fight against a strategic adversary capable of learning and adapting over time. In some cases those counter-strategies come from interests who benefit from things as they are and resist change. Blacktivists are up against systems of discrimination and anti-Black racism that benefit, at one time or another, pretty much everyone except Black folks. What really distinguishes one group from another is the nimbleness and creativity it displays when faced with unexpected moves by its rivals or the reduced effectiveness of its key tools. Given this, adopting a “best practice” can sometimes be a disadvantage, if it means that one’s moves are easily predicted and countered. Advocacy, like war, rarely stays at equilibrium, and so success requires constant innovation to keep one’s adversary off-balance and force it onto the defensive.

Measuring success as a Canadian Black political advocate is particularly challenging as there are far fewer examples than in the U.S. of successful Black political advocacy organizations from which to learn. Also, similar to our American counterparts, some of our fiercest opposition comes from other Black folks. This is because generations of successful divide and conquering by white folks has trained many Black folks to see Black political advocacy organizations as uppity trouble-causing negroes – especially when we critique Black leaders. The Black Lives Matter movement didn’t always enjoy the widespread support it has now – from white folks or Black folks. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were both critiqued, at points in their careers, by members of the Black community. And it’s not just Blacktivists leading organizations who face critique. In Canada, activist, journalist and best-selling author of The Skin We’re In, Desmond Cole, has been harshly attacked by Black people for reporting on the Federation of Black Canadians. Since publishing their recent pieces critical of the BlackNorth Initiative, Cole and Nova Scotia-based activist, poet and educator, El Jones, “…have faced predictable push back by some members of the Black community who claim that asking questions or making critiques of Black people’s public actions equates to a malicious “destroying” of other Black people.”

Given all this, while striving to achieve the big, final goals, how else should Canadian Blacktivists measure success? Here are 10 suggestions:

  1. The media is calling you. – If your local media regularly calls you for comment, you’re probably doing something right. Use those opportunities to communicate your key messages, even as you know they’ll shape them to fit their agenda.
  2. People attend your meetings. – If you regularly get good attendance at your meetings, that’s good. If not, ask folks why they’re not attending and what you could do to make things more relevant.
  3. People in power meet with you when you ask them to.
  4. You are building new mutually beneficial relationships. – We have to work together to win so building relationships with other Black and ally groups is key (i.e. Indigenous, LGBTQ+, women’s groups, etc.)
  5. People attack you for asking tough questions. – One of the main things Blacktivists do is ask tough questions of people in power – and keep asking until we get credible answers. This often leads to people calling us aggressive or bullies, saying we have “agendas” or saying we’re trying to “shame” people. What they rarely, if ever, do is answer our questions. Keep asking.
  6. You’ve got haters on both sides. – If you’re following your principles and still occasionally get attacked by both white and Black folks, you’ve probably found a good middle ground.
  7. Other Blacktivists defend you when you’re attacked. – Being attacked is part of being a Blacktivist. If other Blacktivists defend you when you’re attacked, especially when they see things online, that’s a great show of support.
  8. People give you money. – One of the best measures of success is folks opening up their wallets – especially to sign up for monthly donations.
  9. People join – and stay with – your group.
  10. People thank you for helping them. – The best indicator of all.

As an example, our group joined many others in fall 2020 to lobby the Ottawa Police Services Board and Ottawa city council to reject the $13 million budget increase requested by the Ottawa Police Service (OPS). We didn’t succeed in blocking the increase but that was only one measure of success. We increased our group’s profile and credibility, made connections with other groups, learned lots about who’s with us and who’s not, educated people about what “defunding the police” really means in Ottawa and got council to commit to look at freezing the OPS budget next year – something we can now hold them to account for.

One final point…

To be an effective Blacktivist you have be as independent as possible from the people you’re lobbying. That’s not easy to achieve for a lot of Black folks as the current system leaves many individuals and organizations dependent on income and funding that limits their ability to speak out.

As more of us break free of those financial chains, the more powerful – and unstoppable – we will become.