12. Learning from Opponents with Munira Lokhandwala of LittleSis.org

Practical Radicals

Most famous guides to strategy are written for overdogs. (Think of Machiavelli’s The Prince or Sun Tzu’s Art of War.) And overdogs today invest in strategic education at a scale that dwarfs anything on the left. Their commitment is captured in the slogan of the right-wing Leadership Institute, which has trained over 200,000 people: “You owe it to your philosophy to learn how to win.”

In researching Practical Radicals, Stephanie and Deepak found that overdogs rely mainly on three strategies to gain and keep power: 1) weakening underdogs’ sources of power; 2) employing what’s known in the military as psychological operations, or PSYOPS; and 3) dividing their opponents to conquer them.

The good news is that underdogs can use these same strategies against more powerful opponents. In this episode, Deepak and Stephanie discuss some great examples of how to counter corporate power, use PSYOPS against white supremacists, and drive wedges in elite coalitions. They also explore other lessons progressives can take from the overdogs’ playbook: crafting long-term plans, recruiting based on belonging rather than belief, and using data-driven evaluation paired with the lean startup model for organizing.

Our guest has made a career out of researching overdogs in innovative ways. Munira Lokhandwala is Director of Tech and Training at LittleSis.org, the “nonprofit public interest research organization focused on corporate and government accountability.” As the answer to Big Brother, LittleSis conducts research on the power elite, offers trainings for social change movements, and provides resources like Oligrapher, a tool that allows organizers to map power networks and pinpoint where to drive wedges. The secretive and overlapping networks of the powerful can seem “daunting” says Lokhandwala, “but actually, every one of those connections is a relationship that has to be maintained for them to maintain their power.” She encourages progressives to “think about[the overdogs’] large networks as an opportunity to come at their power, their reputation, their profits from many different angles. Then we can imagine building long-term, intersectional issue campaigns” that “turn the very source of their power against them.”

Episode 12 transcript

Links:

LittleSis’s Oligrapher for Beginners

LittleSis 2024 Research Tools for Organizers Training Series

Choose Democracy’s scenario planning tool https://whatiftrumpwins.org/