Community Campaign
The Unit 4 assignment asks students to apply collective action tactics to issues of environmental racism by designing a community-based initiative for redress.
Students may focus on any problem, community, and scale, but their selected tool (e.g., protest, legal petition, songwriting and distribution, social media campaign, town hall event, etc.) should correspond with the parameters of their chosen concern, and the campaign must be a focused call for change using community organising strategies to bring about measurable outcomes.
While the plan can be entirely hypothetical, students are encouraged to use the assessment structure as an opportunity to brainstorm for future capstone projects, summer internships, and the like. At a minimum, the proposal should be well presented, such that it could be included in a portfolio of sample work for external audiences.
This assignment will support students in achieving Learning Objective 5: Apply problem-solving techniques and collective action theories in order to design effective community campaigns that redress environmental racism.
Assignment Details: the Community Campaign should summarise student learning on Public Participation by:
identifying an issue within environmental racism that needs to be redressed;
determining which collective action technique will best address the problem; and
designing a strategy for community engagement that clearly targets and could measurably impact the issue.
Students are not expected to successfully carry out the project, but rather to demonstrate their ability to effectively plan a campaign making use of formal and/or informal mechanisms for public participation in environmental justice work. Nuanced attention should be paid to the necessary logistics, including realistic detail about the timeline and resources required for success.
A detailed proposal will likely require at least three pages, though there are many possible formats for this assignment (such as a slide deck, grant proposal, lesson plan, or recorded presentation). Students are encouraged to speak with the professor about their general idea and intended presentation style well in advance.
Rubric: grades for this “Community Campaign” assignment will be determined according to the five requirements below.
Identify an issue within environmental racism that needs to be redressed (5 points)
Tips for meeting the criteria:
Be specific about the problem your campaign is addressing, and clearly communicate it throughout the plan: Stay on message!
Focus on a specific community and issue that you can reasonably affect. (For instance, you aren’t going to effectively end all police violence, but you might be able to pass a specific law in a particular city.)
Consider several possible issues, and choose one you can address with the tools you know how to use effectively.
Determine which collective action technique will best address the problem (5 points)
Tips for meeting the criteria:
Think carefully about the kind(s) of response strategy that make sense for your problem. (For example, writing a song doesn’t ‘fit’ a project trying to bring about legal reform, but does make sense for a public awareness campaign.)
Consider a wide range of tactics before deciding on your plan. (Examples from class include marches, demonstrations, educational events, petitions, running for public office, court cases, media coverage, civil disobedience, direct action, and more.)
Explicitly explain why your chosen strategy is appropriate - don’t assume the reader will follow your logic for why this particular strategy is feasible.
Design a strategy for community engagement that clearly targets and could measurably impact the issue (5 points)
Tips for meeting the criteria:
People’s involvement should be a vital part of the plan: the entire purpose is to consider how collective action can be effective against multiple layers of racist norms and structures.
Consider and discuss the outreach, communication, training, and management necessary to maintain effective public participation in the campaign.
Describe what ‘success’ means, and how your campaign will monitor and evaluate its own progress. How will you know your collective action is ‘working’?
Be detailed, thinking about what needs to happen for your campaign to be successful (5 points)
Tips for meeting the criteria:
Think about and explain every part of the campaign, from idea to completion.
You should address questions such as:
Which actions are necessary?
Who is responsible for what?
What resources are needed...and where would you get them?
Where will different aspects of the plan take place?
When do various action items or project stages need to be completed?
How will you enable people’s participation?
Make the plan accessible, understandable and actionable by the general public (5 points)
Tips for meeting the criteria:
Consider how you would engage everyone in the project. Think about how you can target your messaging and tactics to the audience(s) who should be most actively involved, while ensuring the general public can understand the campaign and its goals.
Remember that the most effective campaigns will include even those individuals and communities who didn’t previously know about these issues, or haven’t previously been involved in collective action work.
Ensure your proposal presentation is well organised. The everyday person should be able to easily follow your plan, and there should be minimal spelling and grammar concerns.