Membership Has Its Rewards

Groucho Marx famously explained, “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.” But the truth is that making others feel welcomed as a member of a club, organization, or political movement is one of the core determinants of long-term growth. In the New Yorker, the always interesting Charles Duhigg examines the differences between organizing and mobilizing, and several other factors that determine whether or not organizations become effective. What MAGA Can Teach Democrats About Organizing—and Infighting. “Republicans have become adept at creating broad coalitions in which supporting Trump is the only requirement.” (If you’re still for an America that remains a liberal democracy, consider yourself welcome in my coalition.) “The sociologist Liz McKenna, of Harvard, told me that movements succeed best when people feel welcome. A movement becomes sustainable when members feel empowered and find friends. ‘The left loves big protests, but protesting is a tactic in search of a strategy,’ she said. There must be some shared core values among a movement’s members, of course, but the requirement can’t be that every value is shared. ‘Making room for difference isn’t a nice-to-have thing—it’s table stakes,’ she told me. ‘The rallies are by-products of the community, not the goal.’ Most of all, even though anger can be useful, a movement also needs to provide some joy. ‘Trump rallies are fun,’ McKenna noted. ‘The Turning Point campus debates are fun.’ For a long time, she said, the left was less fun and more angry, ‘and so the right was out-organizing them at every turn.'”