What is an Affinity Group? An affinity group is a small group of people who support each other and work together to change the world.

Social activism can be tough work. Acting alone, we may feel powerless to create real change. An affinity group can provide practical support as well as inspiration, motivation, and fun. Your affinity group might work together to prepare for a particular direct action or campaign, or it might stick together for years. 

Support and community. Americans are increasingly isolated. Mainstream culture encourages us to be cut-off from each other, relying on money, corporate products, and screen time to fill our needs. Even as activists, we often act as individuals, rather than in solidarity with others.

Forming community is one of the best ways we can undermine consolidated power. Many of us have lost community-building skills, so we can relearn them by being part of a small, supportive group. These skills make us all better activists, organizers, and leaders.

Taking action. Affinity groups support each other in taking “direct action,” such as attending a rally. Members take on different roles so everyone can participate. 

It’s fun! In addition to your commitment to social change, your group might share a common interest. You might get together just to have a potlucks and share laughs.

Affinity Groups in Social Movements

From the Spanish Revolution in the 19^th century, to the Pledge of Resistance in the 1980s, to the anti-globalization actions of the 2000s, affinity groups have formed an essential part of social movements. Some go by other names, such as consciousness-raising groups in the women’s movement. These small groups power the individuals who take part in them, and so power the movement itself. Small groups power lasting change. 

How Can I Form an Affinity Group?

Are you part of a campaign or network? Ask organizers if there is a way you can connect with a small group of others in the network who are nearby. Many campaigns could be significantly strengthened by embedding small groups into their structure.

Or, just think about a handful of folks you have “affinity” with. These should be people who can get together conveniently and who have some shared beliefs. Gather this group at your home over a potluck and talk about what it means to be an affinity group.

Resources for Affinity Groups

5 Tips for Forming an Affinity Group

A Guide for Your First Meeting (PDF)

Direct Action Roles for Affinity Groups

Using Consensus Decision-Making, from War Resisters’ International

Facilitation Tips

Small Groups in Larger Group Structures:

How Small Groups Can Power Big Change, by Sarah Byrnes, YES! Magazine
Globalize Liberation: 5 Stages for Social Movements, by George Lakey, Training for Change
How Many Circles Does it Take to Make a Community?, by Dave Pollard, How to Save the World
Cellular Organization, by Dave Pollard, How to Save the World
The Cellular Church, by Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker
Affinity Groups and Spokes-Councils, from War Resisters’ International

What is An Affinity Group? is a post on Resilience Circles

1. Start where you are. Can you think of five people who might want to form an affinity group? Congratulations, you’re half-way there! Bring those five folks together for dinner to talk about reaching five more. Can you think of three, or just one? That’s okay! Do the same thing – have dinner and begin brainstorming. You never know where your conversations may lead.

2. Take action early on. Once you have a group, get out of the house! Carpool to a rally, foreclosure blockade, or community garden “work day.” Or do something social – attend an educational forum, go hiking, or even go bowling! (It beats bowling alone.)

3. Learn about small group decision-making. As your group continues to meet, you will inevitably encounter differences of opinion. Decide how you will resolve these differences, such as through the consensus model. Try to include someone with small group facilitation in your group, or ask a few members to learn facilitation skills.

4. Go beyond politics – bring your “whole self” to meetings. What are the roots of our political commitments? What values and personal experiences motivate us? Create space to share your stories. Create space for your non-political selves as well. What are your jobs, passions, interests, hobbies?

For parents, bringing your whole self to a meeting may mean bringing your kids! Invite kids to eat with the group, and then set up a kid-friendly video in the next room, find a babysitter and “pass the hat” to pay him or her, or take turns watching the kids.

5. Meet over a meal. There’s something magic about food. Try to meet at someone’s home over a potluck, or rotate meal duty.

Resources for Affinity Groups

• A Guide for Your First Meeting
• A Guide to Consensus Decision-Making
• Affinity Groups and Spokescouncils
• The Seven-Session Resilience Circle Curriculum – Email info@localcircles.org for a free copy

Five Tips for Forming an Affinity Group is a post on Resilience Circles

As a general rule, as communities grow, they lose social cohesion. There is a tricky tension between growing a group and a maintaining sense of personal belonging for members.

Like other voluntary associations, social movements struggle with this. But we can learn important lessons from the places that have figured it out—even from unlikely places like Saddleback “megachurch” in Orange County, CA.

Over 20,000 people attend Sunday worship at Saddleback, and yet members experience a strong, deep sense of belonging. That’s because Pastor Rick Warren has created “a church out of a network of lots of little church cells—exclusive, tightly knit groups of six or seven who meet in one another’s homes during the week to worship and pray.”

In other words, the secret is small groups.

Progressive social movements don’t often take inspiration from conservative megachurches. But the lessons about organizational structure may be worth a second look. (Hat tip to Dave Pollard for pointing this out.)

Say a new activist works up the courage to attend a forum or rally. She may find herself part of a large, anonymous crowd. Of course, it is essential to provide such open spaces for people to join the movement, and it’s essential that we make them welcoming and inviting (like a Sunday worship service). But people don’t stay deeply involved with a movement for long if they don’t make connections with others.

People don’t stay deeply involved with a movement for long if they don’t make connections with others.
So we should ask: within our movements, are there opportunities to join a small, closely knit group? The group that will become your glue to the overall movement? That is structured not just for work, but for support and community?

Historically, this small group has been called the “affinity group.” The term can be traced back to the Spanish Revolution of the 19th century. In congregations, it’s called “small group ministry.” In the women’s movement in the 70s, small groups were called “consciousness raising groups.” Call it what you want, but the basic concept is the same: you’re human, so you need support and connection. You won’t really stick with a church or a movement that fails to provide these things.

Affinity Groups in Social Movements
Not all affinity groups are meant to last for the long haul. Some form to prepare for a single direct action and disband afterwards. But this structure is worth noting too: how much easier would it be for new activists to take part in direct action if they were supported by 5 or 10 others who were looking out for them?

Certain direct actions have required participants to be part of an affinity group. “To sign the ‘Pledge of Resistance’ against US invasion of Nicaragua in 1983, you had to join an affinity group,” recalls organizer Dakota Butterfield. “Signing the Pledge meant either risking arrest or supporting those who were risking it. That’s not something that should be undertaken as an isolated person.”

Some of the affinity groups whose members signed the Pledge of Resistance had formed in other movements: feminist, LGBT, religious, or anti-war. Some were from the anti-nuclear Clamshell Alliance, another movement that very successfully leveraged the involvement of affinity groups. This points to an important historical difference between now and the early 80s, when affinity groups were part of many movements. These groups could easily shift to new issues as the times changed.

Affinity groups do continue to meet today. Morrigan Phillips is part of one in Boston that is focused on preventing cuts to public transportation. “We’re a little group of seven people who can respond to calls for action,” she says. “When there’s a rally or protest, we get together to make signs. We go to the rally together. It’s way more fun than going alone.”

Morrigan was also part of affinity groups during the big anti-globalization actions of the 2000s in Washington, DC. “I was part of one that met for years,” she says. “The anti-World Bank actions were deliberately based on the idea that activists should be in affinity groups. There was a structure of coordinated groups, rather than individuals.”

Creating a Participatory Structure
In some cases, affinity groups are the basis of the decision-making structure for a campaign or movement as a whole. For example, during the Pledge of Resistance, each group sent a “spokes” (spokesperson) to council meetings. These meetings used consensus to make decisions for the whole.

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“Part of our work was educating people on the consensus process,” explains Dakota. “Consensus doesn’t mean unanimity. People had to understand that to ‘block’ something, you must be truly unable to let the group adopt the decision because of a deep, principled objection.”

Affinity groups themselves often operate using consensus. “That’s where the learning really happens,” says Dakota. “The close relationships in the small group encourage personal reflection. You have to really wonder, ‘Why am I blocking this?’ And you discover motivations and concerns you may not have known you had.”

Importantly, a spokescouncil structure based on small groups embodies the participatory kind of society we’re fighting for in the first place. As War Resisters’ International puts it, “affinity groups and spokescouncils challenge top-down, power-over decision-making and organising and empower those involved to take direct action.”

The Organizing Challenge
As a nation, we seem to be constantly better at keeping each other at a distance. That means we aren’t so good at the skills required to live in community and use consensus: real listening, compromise, self-awareness, personal reflection. “We don’t have a cultural norm of spending the time with each other,” says Dakota. “We participate in things, even in social movements, as individuals rather than in connection with others.”

“The close relationships in the small group encourage personal reflection. You have to really wonder, ‘Why am I blocking this?’”
In this context, it’s radical simply to try and make connections with each other—to get closer rather than farther apart. Because moving in this direction is radical, it can be hard.

But we ignore the small group dimension of organizing at great peril. If we somehow won all of our political goals, but still couldn’t figure out how to live in community, what have we really accomplished?

Our communities will continue to be challenged by the unfolding times; by the housing crisis, cuts to services like public transportation, job market instability. As we rebuild our community and consensus-making muscles, we’re better equipped to deal with all of this as it hits our own backyards. For all these reasons and more, it’s time to form an affinity group.

For information about forming affinity groups download these free PDF resources: What is an Affinity Group?, 5 Tips for Forming an Affinity Group, A Guide to your Affinity Group’s First Meeting

How Small Groups Can Power Big Change: It’s Time to Form an Affinity Group is a post on Resilience Circles

Corporations Are Not People! Bank of America Showdown, Redwood City, CA is a post on Resilience Circles

San Francisco, CA is a post on Resilience Circles

~ News and Views from the East Bay ~

“People Are Courageous and Want to Tell the Truth” is a post on Resilience Circles

Transition Palo Alto sponsors Introduction to Resilience Circles
By Thomas Atwood, Resilience Circle Facilitator, Posted September 19, 2011

On a balmy September evening in the Bay Area, 27 people gather at World Centric in Palo Alto to learn about the resilience circle movement. Many are already participants in Transition Palo Alto, and bring a mature understanding of the ecological basis of our collective pain. Others come at the invitation of friends, or out of curiosity. They’ve come to learn about local consciousness raising groups that face economic stress together in a supportive setting. As the evening progresses, the group experiences the power of a primal ritual. Some might attend the same event and argue that a ritual never took place. But, like any good story, it always happens when humans tap into the collective wisdom of the faces around the fire.

An opening reading from Meg Wheatley, Turning to One Another, sets the tone. Each voice contributes a line of the reading in turn, as though a Greek chorus had arrived just for the occasion. A round of introductions reveals a cast of characters that you might stereotype as comfortable, middle class residents of Silicon Valley, ground zero of American prosperity. The magic begins.

“What are the economic signs of the times?” facilitator Debbie Mytels asks. The room erupts with a familiar narrative. Small, local businesses are closing, and we’re seeing more empty storefronts. So many people don’t have health insurance, and six of them here in the circle. Adult children are living at home with their parents. Business people are running our education system. Worker productivity has increased over 40 years, but wages are stagnant. America has become an auctioning block of deep online discounts. Sailboats are going for a bargain at $2500. People who still have jobs are doing the work of three or more people. Employees of huge global enterprises are anxious, stressed, isolated, crying at their desks, and taking large doses of antidepressants.

The list goes on. A Stanford professor asked a student to lecture on dumpster diving. A technical writer with a PhD in English from Stanford couldn’t get a three-year supplemental employee contract renewed at a global software company. Another PhD had to go to Korea to find a job. People we know are internalizing the pain and blaming themselves, taking unhealthy solace in spectacle, illusion, and fast food. When the anesthesia wears off, the pain returns.

After an outburst of insights like these, the reading for Facing Economic Change simply cements in what’s already been said. Tough times lie ahead, and we are in a stage of fundamental transition. We won’t have more debt-fueled economic growth, and our economic model is not ecologically sustainable. A resilience circle is a place to support one another and prepare. The choir in the room wants to burst into song, but first the facilitators want to discuss cultural messages about the economy.

As more voices contribute to the circle, the burgeoning energy of the narrative takes on a life of its own. The media glorifies the wealthy and sets impossible standards, too many of us taking comfort in the hope that we’ll become “one of them.” Pundits foment fear. Talking heads scapegoat the poor, immigrants, feminists, gays, academics, the “elite liberal establishment”—anyone we don’t know well enough to hear their story. “You’re on your own.” “Be afraid.” “The world is divided into winners and losers, and losers shouldn’t get anything.” “The private sector and the invisible hand of the free market will fix everything.” “Go shopping.” “It’s your own damn fault.”

People are ready to talk about themselves, and the agenda opens the floodgates. The group breaks into pairs for a discussion question. “What are one or two ways that the economic crisis is touching you, or someone you love?” After ten minutes the group reconvenes to share back, and facilitator Thomas Atwood can’t write fast enough on his easel pad.

It starts with everyday frustrations, such as the distractions of an interrupt-driven lifestyle, hidden fees and penalties from banks, and 40 minutes on the phone trying to cancel a DSL service. It gets worse. Six people in the room have no health insurance, and one gave up in frustration trying to get through the process of comparing plans. A brother in law was laid off at age 65 just as he was asking for time off for surgery. One participant attributes a huge rent increase to a landlord trying to recoup his stock market losses. Another person had a 53% rent increase in January. A sister with a ten-year-old daughter has been homeless for three years, making her way through the shelter system and relying on the generosity of friends. Another woman volunteers for a rotating shelter at her church. After a series of job losses, a sister who started out as an Executive Director of a San Francisco non profit has given up on having a professional life in the US, and is now working in Afghanistan. A friend is living in a truck in the parking lot where someone works. Financial stress is forcing one woman to sell her house, which she characterizes as “her paradise.”

Mytels handles the logistics of next steps with a deftness born of years of experience as a community organizer. The group will take the seven-session curriculum from the national Resilience Circle Network together and finish by Thanksgiving. After working out the details, the group closes by standing in a circle and reading an excerpt from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech: “… I am not yet discouraged about the future. Granted that the easygoing optimism of yesterday is impossible.”

As if leaving is difficult, many linger in the room for conversation and debriefing. By 3:41 AM, Bart Anderson (a Transition Palo Alto organizer) has set up a Yahoo Group for the new resilience circle, saying that “I was keyed up after the great meeting of the Resilience Circle, so I thought I would use some of that energy productively.”

“It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.”

-    From The Moon Is Always Female, by Marge Piercy

———–
Posted September 5, 2011 

September 15
6:30 meet and greet
7:00-9:00 Intro to Resilience Circles

World Centric
2121 Staunton Court
Palo Alto, CA 94306
Hosted by Transition Palto Alto book group 4
For more information, thomas@thomasatwood.net or dmytels@batnet.com

For those already involved in local Transition activities, resilience circles are a natural way to tie in our concerns about peak oil and climate change with the real economic and personal challenges that we face. It’s all part of the same picture!

The Great Recession is a scary time. Debt, foreclosure, unemployment, anxious employment, evaporating savings, rising costs, job insecurity, and environmental uncertainties. 

Resilience circles are a positive way forward.  A resilience circle is a small group of people that comes together to: 

• Face economic and ecological challenges
• Learn about root causes
• Discover non-financial resources
• Build relationships that strengthen security
• Take steps for mutual aid and shared action
• Learn about community projects such as produce exchanges, time banks, and housing co-ops
• Rediscover what we have and the prospect of a brighter future
• Become part of a larger effort to create a fair, healthy, sustainable economy for all

Join us for an introduction to Resilience Circles. We’ll learn about the resilience circle movement and how resilience circles are helping people turn hardship into strengthened relationships and mutual support. We’ll also plan follow-on sessions for those who want to get involved.

Palo Alto, CA is a post on Resilience Circles

Where: UU Fellowship of Redwood City, Brewster Avenue, Redwood City, CA
Contact: Thomas Atwood, tatwood2005@gmail.com

News and Views from the Redwood City Resilience Circle

A Strategy for Coping with Unemployment is a post on Resilience Circles

The Bailey House
St. Martin of Tours Parish
200 O’Connor Drive
San Jose, CA. 95128

Google Maps
http://tinyurl.com/stmartinssj

A message from facilitator Thomas Atwood:

On April 30th, we’ll share our reasons for coming and our hopes for the group.

A common ground exercise will demonstrate whether we have more in common than we might have realized. After brainstorming some of the economic signs of the times, we’ll consider the “old story” about the economy that keeps us isolated and convinces us that we can’t change things. We’ll review a news article together to shine a spotlight on common attitudes about economic growth. Are we getting the whole story from the “experts?” How do we begin to write a new story of our own?

At the end of the session, we’ll consider having a movie night at the church or in someone’s home before we meet again. The movie is the Academy Award-winning documentary about the economic meltdown of 2008: Inside Job.

I’m so grateful that we’re embarking on this voyage of discovery and hope together. See you on the 30th!

San Jose, CA is a post on Resilience Circles

- how to talk about Resilience Circles and small groups with others
- finding participants through base communities and the “linking method”
- some notes on the curriculum

Tuesday, June 5
3pm EDT / 12pm PDT

As you know, small groups are a great way to enhance community resilience in tough times, build a strong social movement to create change, and have fun. Join us for this interactive conversation about how to get one started.

Register here!

June 5 – Webinar: Small Group Organizing 101 is a post on Resilience Circles