Organizing effort gets activist groups on the same page

A few months after her first forays into political activism, Brianna Jones spotted a problem.

A project manager by trade, Jones was inspired by Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential run, and was upset by corporate money in politics. Eager to get involved, she met grassroots organizers who struck her as committed, diligent, and passionate.

The problem? None of them were talking to each other.

"I wanted to amplify what the grassroots were already doing," she said. "And a lot of these groups are more complementary than they think."

After Sanders lost the Pennsylvania primary, Jones saw an opportunity. The Democratic National Convention was coming to Philadelphia, bringing with it potentially thousands of protesters with dozens of causes. If those protesters knew what the others were up to, Jones thought, a tiny demonstration could swell to hundreds strong, bolstered by the support of other progressive groups.

And so Jones' DNC Action Committee was born: 15 or so organizers, some experienced, some not, with the goal of getting a few thousand protesters together over one week in July.

The first challenge was simply getting longtime activists, wary of infiltration, to trust her with their plans, Jones said. The second was getting them to trust each other.

"I got as many groups as I could in a room about three months ago," she said, "and there was a lot of conflict. A lot of ideas thrown around."

Protest groups argued about tactics, whether demonstrators should confront the police, or strive for nonviolence. They debated who could claim prime protest time slots. They discussed how to talk to the media.

Jones ended up talking to about 25 activist coalitions that among them represented about 100 groups, from economic justice activists to Black Lives Matter protesters to militant environmentalists.

(That last group surprised her, Jones said, laughing. "Stopping traffic? That's intense. But the efforts [environmentalists] go to to drop banners? That's, like, Mission Impossible.")

This week, Jones' committee released a handbook on nearly every progressive protest in town for the convention. There are guides on which protests got permits from the city and which have not. There are customized schedules, depending on which kind of event protesters want to attend. There is an image of a raised fist on the cover - "an indication that you are in a space of diverse thinking and diverse causes," Jones said.

The effort took about six months. Jones says it was exhausting at times.

But she is heartened when she sees, say, Black Lives Matter activists planning to show up at a clean energy rally. That was the goal all along - for activists to "do exactly what they've been doing, but in the company of people they never thought they would be next to," she said.

"Other organizations are realizing the necessity of banding together," said Erica Mines, an organizer with the antipolice brutality Philly Coalition for REAL Justice, whose members are attending several other rallies during convention week. "It's more practical to come together to fight larger issues."

awhelan@philly.com

215-854-2961@aubreyjwhelan