CT-OG Two Theories of Change APRIL,2026

Two theories
of change,
&what they
produce.

A Comparison

A common theory of change in progressive advocacy is mechanical: identify a target, power-map their pressure points, move them to champion, then hold the relationship. The campaign ends when the policy passes.

The transformative organizing theory of change is ecological: build and cultivate ecosystems in which people, relationships, institutions, and consciousness are cultivated together — such that winning a policy is an artifact of a larger ecosystem, not the point of it.

The transformation isn't going to come about through a single organizational form. Transformation is in the living ecosystem that we create together.
— CT-OG, 2025 Landscape on Transformative Organizing

The Campaign Pipeline

Move the target.


FIG. A — THE CAMPAIGN PIPELINE. LINEAR, TERMINAL. CAMPAIGN LN. Community = fuel for pressure. Target sits outside the community. Identify the Issue Identify winnable pragmatic demand, or just a demand 01 Power-Map the Target Who decides? Who pressures them? 02 Develop Tactics Build pressure and escalate to move the target 03 Move Target → Champion Conversion through pressure 04 Maintain the Pressure Hold champion accountable 05 DEAD END campaign ends Policy Win. Campaign ends. Coalition disperses. END (What did the participants become? Unclear.) — NO EXIT · NO REGENERATION —
1.The unit of change is the target. A decision-maker is assumed to hold the power to fix things if sufficiently pressured.
2.The community is instrumentalized. People are mobilized as pressure-mass — a resource to be deployed.
3.The model is terminal. The street dead-ends at the policy signing. What happens after the win is outside this traditional praxis.

What this produces: Wins that can be reversed when a new administration arrives. Coalitions that evaporate between campaigns. Staff leadership accountable to funders and targets, not base. A permanent campaign cycle praxis that never builds durable transformative people power.


The Living Ecosystem

Cultivate the ecosystem.

Six layers — culture, roots, grassroots, canopy, autonomous zones, mycelium — woven into a living system of people power.
FIG. B — SIX-LAYER ORGANIZING ECOSYSTEM. ABOVE & BELOW 1 · CANOPY 2 · AUTONOMOUS ZONES 3 · GRASSROOTS 4 · ROOT NETWORKS 5 · CULTURAL LAYER 6 · MYCELIUM ↔ Canopy — policy & electoral. 501c4 · ELECTORAL · PACs · COALITIONS Autonomous zones — practice the future. LAND TRUSTS · COOPS · AUTONOMOUS SCHOOLS · JUSTICE CIRCLES Grassroots — directly impacted people, in leadership. 501c3 · WORKER CENTERS · TENANT UNIONS · ASSEMBLIES Root networks — mutual aid as practice. COMMUNITY FRIDGES · TOOL LIBRARIES · CHILDCARE · RESPONSE PODS Cultural layer — the soil we grow from. RITUAL · STORY · MUSIC · HEALING · META-NARRATIVE MYCELIUM · COORDINATION · RELATIONAL POWER regenerates
1.Six layers, one living system. Cultural soil, root-network mutual aid, grassroots base-building, autonomous zones, policy canopy — bound together by mycelial coordination. Each occupies a niche; each feeds the others.
2.Directly impacted people hold leadership. The pipeline runs participant → organizer → transformative organizing leader. Consciousness transformation is an explicit, not incidental, goal across every layer.
3.The ecosystem is regenerative. Wins feed the soil. Losses build analysis. Culture and mycelium carry memory between campaigns, across generations — so durable capacity compounds.

What this produces: Durable power that survives repression (decentralized, no single target). Leadership accountable to the base. Alternative institutions that prove the future is possible. A movement that wins policy and builds the capacity to hold, extend, and if necessary replace it.


Unit of changeinstrumental·integrated

Theory of powerpositional·relational

Role of communitypressure·protagonist

Political educationinstrumental·integrated

Time horizoncycle·generational

End statepolicy win·dual transformation

One model asks "who has the power to fix this?"
The other asks "how do we cultivate durable and transformative people power?"

Ten contrasts.

Reading the two theories side by side — not as opposites, but as fundamentally different ways to approach the question of what organizing is for.

Dimension Panel A · traditional Panel B · transformative
01 · Unit of changeWho or what moves?
The target. A decision-maker is identified, pressured, and ideally converted into a "champion" who then acts on behalf of the community.
The ecosystem. The whole six-layer system — cultural soil, root-network mutual aid, grassroots base-building, autonomous zones, policy canopy, and mycelial coordination — moves together. No single target, no single key; the forest is what survives a bad season.
02 · Theory of powerWhere does it come from?
Positional. Power is located in office-holders and institutions; organizing leverages outside pressure to compel their action.
Relational & generative. Power is the mycelial network binding all six layers — leader networks, coalitions, movement assemblies, research and comms platforms — resilient and durable.
03 · Role of communityWho are "the people" in the theory?
Pressure-mass. Community members are mobilized as volume, bodies, and stories to persuade the target.
Protagonists. Directly impacted people lead and organize whole communities and with communities at the grassroots layer — worker centers, tenant unions, community assemblies, 501c3 orgs — authoring their own analysis, campaigns, and institutions.
04 · Political educationIs consciousness part of the plan?
Absent or instrumental. If present, it is messaging training — not critical analysis of the system being contested.
Integrated at every layer. Root-network mutual aid (fridges, tool libraries, childcare, response pods) is itself political education — people learn power by practicing it.
05 · Time horizonHow long is the story?
Campaign cycle. Days, months, maybe a legislative session. The campaign plan has a beginning, middle, and end.
Multi-generational. The cultural layer — ritual, music, story, healing, meta-narrative — carries memory like soil. Ghost Dance, Capoeira, Zapatismo, Maroon Communities: designed to survive, adapt, transmit across generations.
06 · End stateWhat does success look like?
Champion enacts the demand. A bill is signed, a commission is formed, a budget line is won. This praxis delivers outputs.
Dual transformation. The canopy wins policy; the autonomous zones (land trusts, coops, autonomous schools, justice circles) practice the future. Participants transform (receiver → contributor → leader); systems transform (carceral → liberatory; extractive → solidaristic).
07 · AccountabilityTo whom is the org responsible?
Funders, staff, targets. Professional advocacy shops answer to program officers and elected allies; the community is a constituency, not a governing body.
The base. Member-governed. Democratic assemblies. Leadership accountable to base-members, not institutions.
08 · What "wins" look likeWhat is harvested?
Policy. A measurable external output that can be reversed by the next administration.
Policy and power and people and alternatives. Every campaign leaves behind stronger leaders, deeper relationships, and prefigurative institutions that outlive the moment.
09 · VulnerabilityWhat kills it?
Single points of failure. If the target leaves office, loses a primary, or the coalition fractures, the theory collapses.
Designed for durability. Decentralized, culturally-rooted, with multiple layers.
10 · What it does between fightsDoes it exist in the quiet?
Demobilizes. Between campaigns, infrastructure hibernates. Relationships go transactional or dormant.
Cultivates. Mutual aid runs. Political education continues. Culture is made and practices. Alternative institutions feed people. The ecosystem is alive between fights.

Spontaneity alone feeds the fascist strategy.
Organization without the ecosystem is a skeleton
without muscle, without blood, without nervous system.