If You Don’t Want to Invite Your Friends, It’s Not a Movement Space
For movement staff who are serious about building and expanding power
In the months after Trump’s return to power, I found myself asking a question I had never asked so bluntly before: If I, someone who has dedicated my career to organizing and training others to do the same, don’t feel comfortable inviting my own friends into many progressive spaces—what does that say about the spaces we’ve built? This isn’t about apathy. It’s about strategy, scale, and the simple truth that if a movement space cannot activate the people who already agree with us, it is not built to win.
This piece is a call to my fellow movement staff and staff leaders: the people designing our programs, shaping our messaging, and building the spaces that are supposed to grow our base. If these spaces don’t work for the people closest to us—people who already share our values—then we are not in movement-building mode. We are in performance mode. And it’s time to confront that with honesty and courage.
The Warning Sign
It’s February 2025, a few months after the losses of the 2024 elections and a few weeks into Trump 2.0. I’m at RootsCamp, a convening where progressive organizers, campaigners, and messaging strategists come together to share lessons, celebrate wins, learn from mistakes, and build power for the future. I arrived genuinely ready to plug in: hungry to learn, to experiment, to be in community.
Two former senior strategists from AARP—an organization that has quietly built one of the most powerful membership machines in America—are presenting. AARP doesn’t just represent seniors; it organizes them. They know their base, invest in them, communicate with them daily, and move millions of people into action with discipline and scale. They are, quite literally, what it looks like when you take constituency-building seriously.
The presenters had left AARP to run Seniors for Harris, and they were walking us through how each campaign—Harris vs. Trump—pitched their message to older voters. They queued up a Trump ad. Immediately, half the room shut down. People covered their eyes. Groaned. One person put their fingers in their ears. The video had barely started.
This moment stayed with me because it revealed something I’ve been feeling for a while: our movement has gotten so used to talking to ourselves that many of us can barely tolerate being in contact with the very narratives that are shaping half the country. And if we can’t even watch a video that millions of people are responding to, how are we going to reach them?
The Ask That Reveals the Problem
“Can you invite three friends?” is a familiar ask after you’ve voted, donated, or subscribed to a cause you care about. Asking people to invite three friends is an organizing tactic because it moves them from passive supporter to active recruiter, revealing who’s willing to bring others in and expanding our reach exponentially. Through Donor Organizer Hub, I’ve trained and coached thousands of people across the country to bring others into movement organizing, build fundraising teams, and grow power from the ground up. I believe deeply in multiplying leadership. My friends already share my values. Many donate. They vote every cycle. They textbank when asked. They are exactly the kind of people Erica Chenoweth identifies in her research as the crucial 3.5% needed to create lasting nonviolent social change. But here’s the issue: they are not being moved into deeper, sustained action. And I don’t want to invite them into spaces that are not built to activate, develop, or retain them. If the spaces we’ve created can’t even hold the people who already agree with us—much less grow beyond them—how are we going to build a majority?
That’s why I joined Unfortunately Not a Sound Bath. As a progressive staff leader, I realized that our echo chambers weren’t just protecting us from discomfort—they were preventing us from growing power. We’ve lost the muscle of strategic experimentation. We’ve stopped training ourselves to hear and engage with any view that challenges our priors—whether it’s coming from disaffected leftists, disillusioned Democrats, the movable middle, the populist right, or anyone who doesn’t exactly mirror our existing worldview—and instead we keep refining messages for people who already agree with us. I didn’t join this group because I’m fascinated with right-wing podcasts. I joined because I want us to win—and right now, collectively we’re not studying what we need to study to build toward that reality.
What Can We Do, Really? If you are a progressive staffer, strategist, trainer, or communicator:
Stop revising the 12th draft of a Google Doc that’s ultimately going to be read by the same 20-30 people already on board.
A list of email addresses is not a base. People who attend one mobilization are not members. Membership is consensual, sustained, and participatory—a relationship where people choose to belong and are invited into deeper leadership over time.
Think about what would make someone WANT to attend your event. People are craving third spaces and community. If we’re serious about building power, we have to stop refining messages inside echo chambers and start listening to—and organizing with—the people we claim to fight for, including those who don’t already speak our language or follow our scripts.
So what does it actually look like to talk to people outside our echo chamber—strategically?
Get off your organization’s Slack and make a list of 10 people to discuss politics with—people who are not already fully aligned with you: disaffected leftists, disillusioned Democrats, the movable middle, the populist right, or anyone who wouldn’t describe your worldview as their own.
Start with curiosity, not conversion. Ask: “What are you paying attention to politically right now?” or “What are you hearing that feels true or concerning?”
Listen for needs, not takes. Instead of debating their position, identify what fear, aspiration, or desire is underneath it.
Don’t correct—reflect. Try: “It sounds like you’re worried about stability / safety / fairness. I’ve heard that from a lot of people. Here’s how I’m trying to make sense of it…”
Notice where your movement isn’t speaking to that need—and ask why.
Take notes. Treat it like field research. Because it is.
If you’re someone who cares deeply and mostly expresses it through social media posts, panic texts, or vent threads…
You are not powerless. Start a political listening group with 3-4 friends. Use the Unfortunately Not a Sound Bath model:
Choose one podcast episode on the right that people are actually listening to (just take a look at the podcast top charts, they’re all in there)
Prepare 5-7 juicy questions in advance (“What fear or need is this host tapping into?” “Why do you think this argument is landing with millions?”)
Don’t focus on what you disagree with, but what you can learn from their organizing strategy, narrative structure, emotional arc, and invitation to action
Reflect on how you would engage someone who finds parts of that message true or compelling
It’s not therapy. It’s not a content club. It’s political training for the reality we’re in.
Let’s return to movement work. Let’s return to base-building. This is how we rebuild civic muscles that have atrophied.
 | A guest post by
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