Internal Communications 

Use language and imagery of drilling, mining, and draining to give people a common way to recognize how wealth and resources are being pulled out of communities.

A strong metaphor can become more than public-facing language. It can give grassroots movements a shared analytical tool they can use across issues—from housing and wages to schools, healthcare, and public investment.

Go deeper

Extend the metaphor.
In trainings, begin with something people can picture: drilling or mining pulls something valuable from a place, carries it elsewhere, and generates wealth for someone else.

Practice mapping the metaphor.
Ask people to identify: What is being extracted in our issue? Who or what is doing the extracting? Where does the wealth go? What gets left behind?

Look for extraction across issues.
A housing organizer and a labor organizer may be fighting different campaigns while confronting similar processes of extraction.

Make it usable, not uniform.
The goal isn’t for everyone to repeat the same phrase. It’s for people to have a shared way of seeing the process that they can express in language appropriate to their communities.

See it in action

Workshop activity:

Put a large image of an oil well or mine at the center of the room. Ask organizers and community members to complete four prompts:
What’s being extracted? → Who is extracting it? → Where does it go? → How are we organizing to stop or redirect the flow?

Then have participants apply the same questions to their own campaigns.

For Slack:
Extraction spotting: Where are you seeing wealth or resources being pulled out of communities in your work this week? Drop an example below.

Create opportunities for people to explore how race was created to justify taking land, exploiting people’s labor, and concentrating wealth and power.

Internal spaces can help build a shared analysis of why race was created, how it has been used to determine who controls land, labor, wealth, and power, and how communities have fought to change these systems.

Create opportunities for people to connect racial inequities across issues to the policies, institutions, and economic arrangements that produced them.

Go deeper

Show why race was created.
Move beyond identifying racial inequity. Ask how ideas about race were created and used to justify decisions about whose land could be taken, whose labor could be exploited, and who could accumulate wealth and power.

Trace that history into the present.
Follow how these ideas became embedded in laws, policies, and institutions and how they continue to shape who controls land, wealth, resources, and political power today.

Show who benefits.
Explore how racial hierarchy has helped move land, wealth, and resources toward some people and institutions while taking them from others.

Include resistance.
Tell the history of people who organized, resisted, built alternatives, and won—not only the systems and powerful interests they fought.

See it in action
Meeting activity:

Choose a current racial inequity that organizers, grassroots leaders and community members are working on and trace its history together:
What do we see today? → What decisions and policies produced it? → Who gained land, wealth, or power? → How were ideas about race used to justify who could be exploited, excluded, or dispossessed? → Who resisted? → What are we fighting to change now?

Use internal communications to reinforce that organizing is about building enough collective power to take on powerful interests and win.

Communications can easily slip into language about “raising awareness,” “giving communities a voice,” or “bringing stakeholders together.” Internal communications can instead reinforce a stronger understanding of the work: people are building a base, identifying opponents, fighting over resources and decisions, and developing the power to win.

Go deeper

Name the fight.
What are we fighting for? What stands in the way?

Name where power sits.
Who can make the decision? Who benefits from things staying the same?

Connect tactics to strategy.
Help people understand why the coalition is holding a rally, collecting signatures, publishing research, or meeting with policymakers—and how each action contributes to the larger fight.

Talk about winning.
Make victory part of the coalition’s everyday vocabulary. What would winning this campaign actually change?

See it in action

Instead of an internal update like:
This week we’re continuing our efforts to raise awareness about housing affordability.

Try:
This week we’re entering the next phase of our fight to keep families in their homes. We’ve built our base; now we’re increasing pressure on the three council members who can determine whether the protections pass.

For Slack:
This week’s fight: 3 undecided votes. Here’s where we are, what we’re doing, and what we need to win.

Create space for people to develop a shared picture of what they are building.

Coalitions need shared demands, but they also need a clear vision of the future they are fighting for. That vision can guide strategy while giving community members something concrete to believe in, fight for, and help build. Training and internal communications can help make that future vivid and shared across the coalition.

Go deeper

Get beyond broad aspirations.
What would people actually experience differently if the coalition succeeded?

Imagine structural change.
Who would own land? Where would resources flow? Who would make decisions? What institutions would work differently?

Look for connections across campaigns.
Housing, labor, education, environmental justice, and other fights may contribute to different pieces of the same future.

Use the vision to guide strategy.
Ask whether today’s campaign simply stops a harm or also moves power and resources toward the future the coalition wants.

See it in action

Workshop activity:
Ask groups to imagine that they have won their major fights ten years from now. Instead of describing the victory in abstract terms, have them describe an ordinary Tuesday:
Where do people live? What is work like? What resources are available? Who makes important decisions? What does the neighborhood look and feel like?

Then work backward: What would we have to change and what power would we have to build to get there?