Actual Reformation

TL;DR

Electoral politics alone won't save usbut neither will abandoning it entirely. Real reformation requires both: personal transformation (examining your participation in systems), collective organization (tenant unions, worker cooperatives, mutual aid), building alternative institutions (dual power), strategic disruption, and leveraging electoral moments when movements have built enough power to make them meaningful. Historical changeabolition, civil rights, labor rightscame from organized movements that eventually compelled political action. The two strategies are complementary, not opposed. Stop waiting for someone to save you. Start organizing where you areand vote when it matters.

The Limits of Top-Down Change

Every four years, we're told the next election will save us. Vote for the right candidate, and everything will change. Meanwhile, wealth inequality grows, surveillance expands, climate catastrophe accelerates, and systemic injustice persistsregardless of who wins.

The problem isn't that we keep electing the wrong people. The problem is believing that electing anyone is sufficient for meaningful change.

Real reformation doesn't come from charismatic leaders alone or legislative victories in isolation. It comes from millions of people changing how they live, organize, and relate to each otherand then translating that organized power into political pressure that makes institutional change possible. This is harder, slower, and less satisfying than pulling a lever every few years. But it's how transformation actually happens.

Why Electoral Politics Alone Falls Short

I'm not saying don't vote. Vote. But understand its limitationsand what's required to make your vote matter.

The System Constrains Everyone

Presidents don't have the power we imagine. They operate within institutional constraints that limit unilateral action. Campaign funding shapes priorities, bureaucracies resist rapid change, and legal frameworks are designed to preserve existing arrangements. Even a genuinely progressive president would face structural barriersand most candidates are selected precisely because they're unlikely to fundamentally challenge existing power.

But here's the key insight from political science: these constraints aren't immutable. They shift when organized constituencies make them shift. FDR didn't implement the New Deal because he arrived with a fully-formed visionhe responded to mass unemployment, labor militancy, and the threat of more radical alternatives. The constraint on presidential action is, in large part, the absence of organized pressure from below.

Elections Can Channel EnergyOr Amplify It

Every election cycle, enormous resources go into campaigns, donations, volunteer hours, and emotional investment. The question isn't whether this energy matters, but whether it's connected to ongoing organizing or substituting for it.

Research on social movements and electoral politics shows these strategies are most effective when combined. A 2024 study of the Spanish Indignados movement found that protests in 2011 changed electoral results nearly a decade laterbut only because the movement built sustained organizing infrastructure and eventually launched political parties (like Podemos) that could translate street power into institutional presence.

The pattern holds across contexts: movements that view elections as one tactic among manyconnected to year-round organizingachieve more than those that either ignore elections entirely or treat them as the sole arena for change.

The Ratchet Effect Is RealBut Not Inevitable

There's truth to the observation that politics often moves rightward regardless of who's in power: conservative governments push policy right, while center-left governments hold ground rather than advancing. Each crisis justifies new expansions of state power or corporate prerogative.

But this pattern isn't natural lawit reflects the relative strength of organized constituencies. When labor unions were strong, policy moved left. When tenant organizations coordinate nationally, as the Tenant Union Federation began doing in 2024, housing policy responds. The rightward ratchet operates when progressive movements are weak, not because elections are inherently useless.

What Actually Creates Change: A More Nuanced History

The blog's historical examples point in the right direction but oversimplify the relationship between movements and institutional politics. The real pattern is more complexand more instructive.

Abolition: Movement Pressure AND Political Leadership

The standard storyLincoln heroically freed the slavesgets the causation backwards. But so does the counter-narrative that abolitionists alone ended slavery while Lincoln was dragged along reluctantly.

Historians have documented a more nuanced picture. Lincoln was not an abolitionisthe explicitly opposed immediate emancipation and supported colonization of freed Black people well into his presidency. As the Gilder Lehrman Institute notes, "Lincoln immortalized himself in American history by the role he played in abolishing slavery, but he arrived at this distinction only after a long career of opposition to abolitionism."

But Black abolitionists and Radical Republicans had "unprecedented access to the White House" during Lincoln's presidency. Frederick Douglass and others pushed Lincoln to abandon colonization and embrace Black citizenship. Enslaved people "self-emancipated" by fleeing to Union lines in such numbers that military policy had to change. The Emancipation Proclamation emerged from this combination of movement pressure, military necessity, and political calculation.

The lesson isn't that movements work while politics doesn'tit's that movements create the conditions under which political leaders take action they wouldn't otherwise take. Abolition required both decades of organizing and a president willing to sign the documentand that president was shaped by abolitionist pressure throughout his tenure.

Civil Rights: Strategic Coordination Between Movement and State

The Civil Rights Movement presents the clearest case of movement-electoral coordination.

LBJ was not, as the original framing suggests, simply responding to movement pressure with legislation he believed in all along. Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, interviewed in 1969, said of Johnson's Senate years: "We didn't consider him a friend. We considered him more dedicated to his concept of the role of a Majority Leader of the Senate than he was to the civil rights cause."

But Johnson also wasn't simply a passive recipient of movement demands. The Civil Rights Act required what the National Archives calls "a combination of timing, LBJ's political prowess, and the tireless efforts of the civil rights movement." The 60-day Senate filibusterthe longest in historyrequired coordinating pressure from multiple directions: the movement created moral urgency, religious leaders lobbied Congress, and Johnson worked the legislative process.

The movement couldn't have passed legislation without allies in government; the politicians couldn't have moved without movement pressure making the status quo untenable. This is the model: not movements versus electoral politics, but movements making electoral politics meaningful.

Labor Movement: Building Power First

The labor movement's victories illustrate how building power precedes political wins. The 8-hour workday, workplace safety regulations, and collective bargaining rights didn't come from benevolent legislationthey came from decades of strikes, organizing, and making extraction more costly than concession.

But these gains were consolidated through legislation (the Wagner Act, OSHA) that movements demanded and politicians eventually delivered. The political victories were real and consequentialthey created legal frameworks that strengthened organizing capacity. The mistake is treating electoral wins as the starting point rather than the culmination of organized power.

Personal Reformation: Where to Start

Real change begins with how you live. This isn't individualismpersonal choices become collective power when practiced deliberately and together.

Examine Your Participation

You participate in systems through consumption, labor, attention, relationships, and resources. Each choice either reinforces or challenges existing arrangements. Most people default to reinforcement without examination.

This doesn't mean individual consumer choices will save the planetthat framing lets larger systems off the hook. But examining your participation reveals leverage points: where you have power, where you're dependent, and where collective action might shift things.

Questions to ask:

• Does my work contribute to outcomes I believe inand if not, what would it take to change that?
• Do my purchases sustain exploitative systems or alternatives? Where do alternatives actually exist?
• Does my attention go to content that strengthens or weakens collective capacity for change?
• Do my relationships deepen community and mutual support, or increase isolation?
• Do my resources support extractive systems or organizations building alternatives?

Build Skills for Reduced Dependence

Dependence on systems gives them power over you. Building capacity creates freedom and resilienceand resources you can share.

Material skills: Growing food, repairing things, basic construction, first aid, self-defense and de-escalation. These aren't about going off-gridthey're about reducing vulnerability and having something to contribute.

Knowledge skills: Critical analysis and media literacy, historical understanding of how change has happened, technical capabilities, teaching and mentoring others.

Social skills: Conflict resolution, consensus building, emotional support, coordinating resources across groups, leadership that develops others' leadership.

These aren't just personal developmentthey're infrastructure for alternative systems.

Practice Prefigurative Politics

Build the world you want within the existing one.

Prefigurative politics means organizing groups using the decision-making structures you want to see more broadlyconsensus processes, distributed leadership, care for participants. It means worker cooperatives modeling shared ownership now, mutual aid networks practicing solidarity economy, community gardens demonstrating food sovereignty.

Don't wait for revolution to create just systemscreate them now, however imperfectly. These experiments prove alternatives are possible, develop practical experience, create immediate benefit, inspire others, and build infrastructure for larger change.

Collective Reformation: Building Power That Counts

Personal change is necessary but insufficient. Real power comes from organization.

Tenant Organizing: A Contemporary Model

Tenant unions represent one of the most dynamic areas of current organizing in the United Statesand they illustrate how direct action connects to political leverage.

In October 2024, tenants in Kansas City launched a rent strike in federally-backed housing, demanding repairs and rent caps. After an eight-month strike, they won rent freezes, limits on late fees, and protections against retaliationconcrete improvements secured through collective action.

The Tenant Union Federation, formed in August 2024, coordinates local unions in Kansas City, Connecticut, Louisville, Bozeman, and Chicago's South Side. Their strategy targets not just individual landlords but the federal financing system that shapes the entire rental market. As one organizer told the Yale Law & Policy Review: "My rent is my power, and I will use my power with my neighbors until we win what we are owed."

Results have been mixedthe national campaign didn't achieve federal rent capsbut the model demonstrates how building local power creates leverage for broader change. When the Federal Housing Finance Agency invited unions for engagement (even if it didn't commit to bargaining), that attention came because organized tenants made themselves impossible to ignore.

If you're a tenant: Form or join a tenant union. Coordinate with neighbors. Document conditions. The Tenant Union Federation and local organizations like KC Tenants, LA Tenants Union, and others provide models and sometimes direct support.

Worker Cooperatives: Building Alternative Economy

Worker cooperativesbusinesses owned and governed by their workershave grown significantly in recent years. The Democracy at Work Institute verified 612 worker cooperatives in the United States in 2021, representing over 30% growth since 2019 despite pandemic obstacles.

These businesses demonstrate alternative economic arrangements are viable. The median pay ratio from highest to lowest earner is 2:1, compared to 303:1 in conventional businesses. During COVID-19, worker cooperatives protected employment even while experiencing median revenue drops of 44%hours worked fell only 9%.

New York City, which has invested in worker cooperative development, now has the largest concentration in the country. Massachusetts established a permanent state Office of Employee Ownership in 2022. These policy supports matterthey create enabling conditions for cooperative development.

Worker cooperatives aren't going to replace capitalism overnight. But they build skills in democratic governance, create stable employment, and demonstrate that worker ownership works. They're prefigurative and practical simultaneously.

Mutual Aid: Solidarity in Practice

Mutual aid networksvoluntary, collaborative exchanges of resources and servicesproliferated during COVID-19 and have continued building in the years since.

Bed-Stuy Strong, a Brooklyn mutual aid network, supported 28,000 people and raised $1.2 million in grassroots donations during the pandemic. Mutual Aid Disaster Relief networks responded to Hurricane Helene in 2024, providing medication and water through existing organizational connections that enabled rapid response.

Research on mutual aid finds these networks build "empathy, a sense of nonjudgment, and critical consciousness" among participants. They create immediate benefit while building the relationships and organizational capacity that support longer-term change. As one study noted, "mutual aid groups can be powerful agents of change, specifically by combining community support with political mobilization."

The key distinction from charity: mutual aid is reciprocal (everyone gives and receives), democratic (participants control resources), and politically conscious (connects immediate needs to systemic causes). It builds relationships of solidarity rather than dependence.

Build Dual Power

Create alternative institutions that meet needs while building capacity for larger change.

Examples:

• Food cooperatives Bypass corporate food systems while building community
• Credit unions Local control of capital
• Tool libraries Share resources, reduce consumption and costs
• Community land trusts Remove land from speculative markets
• Time banks Exchange skills without money
• Free schools and skill shares Education outside institutional constraints

These institutions meet immediate needs, build organizational capacity, demonstrate alternatives work, create infrastructure for transformation, and build relationships of solidarity.

Direct Action: Strategic Pressure

Don't ask permission from those who benefit from your oppressionbut be strategic about where and how you apply pressure.

Direct action means rent strikes when landlords exploit, work stoppages when employers abuse, blockades when corporations destroy, occupations when space is needed. It creates immediate results, builds confidence and capacity, forces responses from power, and demonstrates possibility.

But disruption without strategy is just performance. Effective direct action targets pressure points, builds toward concrete demands, creates alternatives rather than just chaos, and can sustain itself over time. The Kansas City rent strikers didn't just withhold rentthey coordinated timing, built legal defense, developed media strategy, and connected local action to federal policy demands.

Sustaining the Work: Avoiding Burnout

The original blog rightly notes that "burnout destroys movements" and that care matters. Research confirms this is a serious issueand suggests some responses.

Studies on activist burnout find it's "a common threat to activists' personal sustainability and to a movement's effectiveness." Causes include overwork, lack of structured mental health support, informal organizational structures that make care difficult to implement, and what researchers call "cultures of selflessness" that treat rest as betrayal.

Organizational responses that help:

• Building sustainable structures with clear roles and boundaries
• Normalizing rest and rotation of intensive positions
• Creating explicit support systems for participants
• Pacing work for marathon rather than sprint
• Celebrating incremental wins rather than only final victories

Personal practices that help:

• Maintaining relationships and activities outside activism
• Regular physical activity, sleep, and basic self-care
• Setting boundaries on availability and workload
• Processing difficult emotions rather than suppressing them
• Finding joy and meaning in the work itself, not just outcomes

The framing matters: care isn't selfishit's strategic. Burned-out organizers deprive movements of experience and mentorship. Sustainable movements require sustainable participants.

The Electoral Question: When and How to Engage

Given everything above, how should organizers think about electoral politics?

Elections as Tactical Moments

Elections matter most when movements have built enough power to make demands that candidates must respond to. The Civil Rights Movement created conditions where Johnson had to act; tenant organizing could eventually create conditions where federal housing policy must change.

The question isn't "vote or organize" but "what organizing makes votes meaningful?" Electoral engagement disconnected from movement building often disappoints because it treats voting as the primary action rather than one tactic among many.

When Electoral Engagement Makes Sense

• When movement demands are on the ballot (ballot initiatives, referenda)
• When credible candidates are accountable to movement constituencies
• When electoral outcomes significantly affect organizing conditions (voting rights, protest rights, labor law)
• When coordinated electoral pressure can shift institutional power (school boards, local offices)
• When defending against outcomes that would severely damage organizing capacity

When Electoral Focus Is Counterproductive

• When it absorbs resources needed for base-building
• When it creates illusions that electoral victory equals change
• When candidates aren't accountable to organized constituencies
• When electoral framing demobilizes post-election
• When it substitutes for the harder work of organization

The Spanish research found that protests changed electoral results for nearly a decadebut only because the movement built sustained infrastructure connecting street mobilization to ongoing political engagement. The two reinforced each other.

The Hard Truth

Actual reformation requires sacrifice and discomfort, risk and vulnerability, sustained effort over years, accepting you won't see all results, and working without guarantee of success.

There's no hack for liberation. No perfect tactic. No charismatic leader who'll save us. Just the slow, difficult work of building collective power and alternative institutionswhile engaging strategically with the political system those movements make it possible to shift.

But here's the thing: this work is also deeply fulfilling. Building community, creating alternatives, taking collective actionthese things give life meaning. Research on social movement participation finds it builds empathy, critical consciousness, and connection. The struggle itself becomes part of the point.

Conclusion

Stop waiting for someone to save you. Stop believing the next election alone will change everything. Stop consuming political content as entertainment.

Start organizing where you are. Start building alternatives. Start practicing the world you want to create. Start taking action, however smalland connect it to others doing the same.

Real reformation happens through:

1. Personal transformation Change how you live, reduce dependence, build skills
2. Collective organization Join or build tenant unions, worker cooperatives, mutual aid networks
3. Alternative institutions Create new systems within the shell of the old
4. Strategic disruption Apply pressure at leverage points with clear demands
5. Electoral engagement Vote, but as one tactic connected to ongoing organizing
6. Long-term commitment Build for generational change, pace yourself accordingly

The system won't reform itself. Politicians alone won't save us. Market forces won't solve our problems. But the opposite errorbelieving that pure movement activism without any institutional engagement can transform societyhas its own history of disappointment.

What works is the combination: organized movements that build power year-round, translate that power into political pressure during electoral moments, and continue building regardless of electoral outcomes. That's harder than either voting and hoping or rejecting politics entirely. It's also how change actually happens.

The question isn't whether the current system is sustainable (it's not). The question is what we're building to replace itand whether we're building it strategically, sustainably, and at scale. Every action you take, every relationship you build, every alternative you create is an answer to that question.

What world are you building? Start today. Find others. Take action. Connect it to larger efforts. Repeat. That's actual reformation.

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Sources and Further Reading

On Social Movement Theory:

• Della Porta & Diani, Social Movements: An Introduction
• McAdam, McCarthy & Zald, "Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements"
• Heydari Fard, "The Transformative Power of Social Movements," Philosophy Compass (2024)

On Abolition History:

• Sinha, The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition
• Oakes, The Crooked Path to Abolition
• Gilder Lehrman Institute, "Allies for Emancipation: Black Abolitionists and Abraham Lincoln"

On Civil Rights:

• Branch, Parting the Waters and sequels
• National Archives, "LBJ Champions the Civil Rights Act of 1964"
• Wilkins Oral History, LBJ Presidential Library

On Tenant Organizing:

• Yale Law & Policy Review, "Tenant Union Law" (2024)
• Nonprofit Quarterly, "From Policy to Power: Centering People by Supporting Tenant Unions" (2025)
• The American Prospect, "Look for the Tenant Union" (December 2024)

On Worker Cooperatives:

• Democracy at Work Institute, "State of the Sector" reports (2019, 2021, 2023)
• U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives, 2024 Impact Report

On Mutual Aid:

• Spade, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis
• Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, "Mutual Aid Praxis" (2023)
• American Journal of Community Psychology, "How Mutual Aid Developed Solidarity" (2024)

On Activist Burnout:

• Chen & Gorski, "Burnout in Social Justice and Human Rights Activists," Journal of Human Rights Practice (2015)
• Cox, "How Do We Keep Going? Activist Burnout and Personal Sustainability in Social Movements"
• Gauditz, "Activist Burnout in No Borders," Social Movement Studies (2025)

On Movements and Elections:

• Casanueva-Artís, "From the Street to the Polls: Social Movements, Social Media, and Elections" (Paris School of Economics)
• Fisher, "Youth Political Participation: Bridging Activism and Electoral Politics," Annual Review of Sociology