What is Momentum? 

Momentum is a training institute and learning community dedicated to supporting organizers to build social movements. Through our digital and in-person trainings, coaching programs, and a robust and growing community of practice, we provide organizers with the tools and support to effect lasting social transformation.

The living Momentum model is informed by historical and contemporary movements around the world, grounded in the understanding that popular movements are an essential vehicle for creating the conditions to win on the most pressing justice issues of our time, especially when established channels of change have failed.

Why is Momentum important?

Faced with a global pandemic, climate emergency, and enduring systemic racism, the U.S. political system has fallen short, at best, and exacerbated those crises, at worst. At precisely the moment that transformative government intervention is urgently needed, the American public has understandably lost faith in government altogether. Neither of the major political parties can convincingly claim to represent working people in this country at present; ​​progressives have shaped the agenda of the current administration in striking ways, but our government remains largely unresponsive to the needs of the vast majority of people in this country.

Transformational change will come from popular movements that allow ordinary people to claim their collective power and shift the terrain under policymakers feet. By activating millions of people, popularizing transformative demands, and providing crucial support for -- and pressure on -- lawmakers, popular movements shift what’s possible. 

None of this is inevitable. History shows that under undemocratic conditions, movements will happen. But, whether movements are able to change material conditions -- whether they can translate a demand and a new common sense into law -- depends on the leverage they can build and sustain over time. Despite the many external forces outside of movements’ control, research shows us that the single most decisive factor in movement success is skilled leadership. 

Whether the U.S. will be able to overcome the crises of climate, racial capitalism, and democracy will depend on whether or not we turn protest into power and invest meaningfully in movement leadership.

What does Momentum teach?

We see two dominant traditions of organizing in the United States: structure-based organizing and mass protest. In the structure-based tradition, developed by Saul Alinsky and others, organizers start with one-on-one relationships to develop leadership and build a base that can advocate for the needs of particular constituencies. Structure-based organizations, such as community organizations and labor unions, make instrumental demands, using the base’s leverage over policymakers to win concrete reforms for their members. By contrast, in the mass protest tradition, autonomous groups of individuals create polarizing moments that inspire thousands of unaffiliated people to take to the streets around symbolic, popular social issues.

The Momentum model fuses the strengths of structure-based organizing and mass protest to seed a new tradition of organizing in the United States. Built on the foundation of nonviolent civil resistance developed by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, our living model synthesizes the lessons of various 20th-century movements, including the Color Revolutions of Eastern Europe and the Arab Spring in North Africa.

We believe Momentum is the living model that this generation of movement-builders needs. Since 2014, a core team of volunteers has been sharing the living model through trainings across the country that have already re-oriented hundreds of organizers to the theory and best practices of civil resistance. We teach organizers how to activate the public and change the political weather through civil disobedience, mass training, and popular demands. Organizers are learning to integrate the discipline of traditional base-building organizations with the explosive growth of mass mobilization. 

Through training, coaching, and a national community of practice, Momentum gives activists the support and tools they need to experiment and launch a new wave of popular movement organizations. 

Organizations are vehicles to achieve purpose. Our purpose is huge: challenging the institutions and policies that uphold capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. Without the active involvement of hundreds of thousands of people, we will only achieve incremental victories every few years rather than win the public over transformative changes that seem impossible today. Momentum invests in leaders and teams of people who are poised to win big and drive popular movements in this country. No other group is better positioned to do this.