By Musa T. Bey

I’ve spent my life in the trenches of struggle. I didn’t stumble into this work. I wasn’t looking for a cause. This work found me. It called me because the conditions around me were screaming for change. I was born and raised in Philadelphia—a city I love fiercely but a city that has always been a battlefield for Black survival.

I grew up watching police cars crawl through my neighborhood like predators, watching families get swallowed by evictions, watching schools wither from underfunding while prisons expanded like they were the only future we were allowed. I saw how entire communities were treated like disposable people—out of sight, out of mind, unless we disrupted the peace they never gave us.

I came up through the Black radical traditions that taught me to love my people enough to fight for them. I stood on the shoulders of those who came before me—freedom fighters, union builders, tenant leaders, artists who weaponized their craft. I didn’t learn this from a classroom. I learned it in living rooms filled with cigarette smoke and political arguments. I learned it on street corners passing out flyers until my fingers were numb. I learned it sitting at kitchen tables where mothers wept for their sons lost to the system. I learned it watching elders debate, push, correct, and challenge me because they wanted me to get it right.

I didn’t come to grassroots organizing because it was fashionable. I didn’t come to this work because I wanted to build a résumé. I came to this because I saw people dying. I came because I saw my friends brutalized by the police, because I saw corner stores become crime scenes, because I saw public housing demolished and never rebuilt. I came because I wanted to fight back, and because somewhere along the way, I realized I wasn’t alone in that fight.

Over time, I learned that grassroots organizing is not just something you do—it’s something you live. It’s a way of surviving, a way of remembering, a way of remaking the world from the ground up. It’s where I’ve found my purpose, my people, and my politics.

It’s not a career. It’s not charity. It’s not a stepping stone to power.

It is power. It is building power. From the bottom. From the margins. From the places the system tries to erase.

This is how I’ve come to understand the work. These are the principles I’ve held close. This is the framework I offer—not as an answer key, but as a roadmap carved out by struggle.

Let me walk you through how I see it.

Organizing Is Building Power from Below

When I say “power from below,” I mean the kind of power that cannot be granted, brokered, or negotiated by elites. I’m talking about power that is built by the people who are usually ignored, criminalized, or left to fend for themselves. This is not about winning proximity to the powerful—it’s about replacing their power with ours.

The systems we fight—capitalism, white supremacy, colonialism—are designed to make us feel small. They depend on our isolation, our fear, and our disconnection from each other. Organizing disrupts that. It gives us a structure to connect our individual grievances into collective action.

Building power from below means:

Developing relationships rooted in trust, not transactions. Creating organizations that are accountable to the people they claim to serve. Centering leadership from the most impacted communities—Black, Indigenous, immigrant, disabled, queer, working-class people.

Grassroots organizing is not glamorous. It’s showing up to the meeting even when it’s just five people. It’s building with folks who’ve never been asked what they think. It’s bringing the struggle to people’s porches, not just their social media feeds.

The powerful don’t fear our petitions—they fear our ability to unite and move in disciplined formation. When we do that, when we build power from below, we become unstoppable.

The First Step: Listening, Not Leading

One of the earliest mistakes I made was thinking I had to show up with solutions. I was young, I was angry, and I wanted to move fast. But I learned quickly that organizing is not about being the loudest person in the room—it’s about being the one who knows how to listen.

When we assume we know what people need without asking them, we risk replicating the very top-down dynamics we’re trying to dismantle. The first responsibility of an organizer is to listen. Deeply. Patiently. Humbly.

Listening looks like:

Holding one-on-one conversations where people feel heard, not recruited. Asking open-ended questions and really sitting with the answers. Mapping the social networks and informal leaders that already exist in the community.

People don’t organize with you because you have a fancy theory. They organize with you because they trust you, because they see themselves reflected in the work, because they believe you will fight for them and with them.

Some of the best campaigns I’ve been a part of started not because someone had a grand plan, but because we listened to what was already moving in the streets, in the churches, in the laundromats.

When you listen, you learn where the pain is. You also learn where the possibility is.

The Anatomy of a Campaign

If you want to win, you need more than anger—you need a campaign. A campaign gives the work shape, direction, and measurable goals. It transforms frustration into focused action.

Here’s how I break it down in detail:

Problem:

Start with what’s hurting people now. Police shootings, rent hikes, wage theft, school closures—these aren’t abstract issues. They are daily realities for people trying to survive. Naming the problem clearly brings people together around a shared experience.

Target:

The target is the person or institution that can give you what you want. Never confuse your opposition with your target. A racist mayor may not be your direct target if the school board holds the power over your demand.

We ask:

Who has the decision-making authority? Who can feel pressure? Who stands to lose if we disrupt them?

Demand:

Your demand must be clear, specific, and achievable. It cannot be vague like “justice” or “awareness.” It should sound like:

Drop all charges against the protestors. Pass the rent control ordinance. Fire the officer who killed our community member. Reopen the mental health clinics.

A good demand allows people to see when they’ve won.

Tactics:

What actions will build the necessary pressure? We use:

Petitions and phone zaps to show mass support. Protests and marches to apply public pressure. Direct action to disrupt business as usual. Media work to control the narrative.

Tactics escalate over time to increase leverage.

Base-building:

A campaign isn’t about a few activists. It’s about pulling in new people, developing new leaders, and growing the organization. If we’re not expanding, we’re not winning.

The campaign is a tool—but it’s the base-building that sustains the movement after the campaign is over.

Leadership Development: We Build Leaders, Not Followers

One of the most dangerous traps is building a movement that depends on a few charismatic leaders. That’s how movements collapse when those leaders burn out, get arrested, or are taken out by the state.

Real power is collective leadership. Real organizers develop leaders at every level.

Leadership development is not about pushing people into roles they don’t want. It’s about:

Creating space where people can take ownership. Providing mentorship and skill-building. Letting people try, make mistakes, and grow.

When I organize, I look for who’s showing up consistently. I look for who’s bringing their friends. I look for who’s asking questions after the meeting. Those are the people I pour into.

Leadership development also means protecting new leaders from the violence of overwork and the trap of martyrdom. Movements should not consume their own people.

A healthy movement builds up leadership in waves—so no one has to carry the entire burden alone.

Political Education: Building Revolutionary Consciousness

If you don’t know why you’re fighting, the system will give you the wrong answers.

Political education is where we build the understanding and the discipline to stay grounded in liberation. Without political education, movements are vulnerable to co-optation, bad deals, and the illusion of reform.

Political education must:

Connect personal experience to systemic analysis. Honor the histories of Black, Indigenous, working-class, and global struggles. Critique capitalist solutions that recycle harm under new branding.

We do this through:

Reading groups. Study circles on revolutionary texts. Workshops on race, class, and imperialism. Popular education that is accessible and directly tied to our work.

I’ve seen political education change people’s lives. I’ve watched folks who came in wanting to fix a bus route leave understanding why the whole transportation system is structured by race and class.

Political education makes us dangerous to the state because it makes us ungovernable by lies.

The Mass Line: Know Your Base, Speak Their Language

The mass line is not just a strategy—it is a principle. It means learning from the people, synthesizing their demands, and giving that back to them in a way that moves the struggle forward.

Too often, organizers come in with ready-made politics that don’t land because they haven’t done the work to know who their base is.

Knowing your base means:

Who is your community? What languages do they speak, literally and culturally? What do they already know? What are their fears, hopes, and contradictions? Who has informal leadership? Who do people listen to?

If you can’t answer those questions, you can’t build real power.

The mass line also means you can’t stay in the clouds of theory. You have to speak in the language of rent, of groceries, of safety, of surviving tomorrow—not just abolishing capitalism in the abstract.

Your base will tell you what they need. Your role is to help sharpen those needs into a collective struggle and help people see the systemic causes.

When you know your base, you can move them. When you speak their language, you can build with them—not over them.

Mass Action and Disruption: The People Make the Change

When we march, sit in, block highways, or occupy buildings, we’re not just seeking attention—we’re showing that the people have the power to bring business as usual to a halt.

Mass action builds momentum. It changes what people think is possible. It raises the stakes for those in power.

I’ve been in the streets when thousands of people flooded city hall, when students walked out of class and refused to go back, when whole neighborhoods gathered to stop an eviction. These moments electrify the struggle.

Mass action isn’t about the size of the crowd—it’s about the commitment of the people to keep pushing beyond that one day.

The people make the change. Mass action is how we show up for each other when the system won’t.

Direct Action: Disrupting to Build

Direct action is where the system feels us.

It’s not just about blocking traffic or chaining ourselves to a door. It’s about choosing strategic pressure points that force our target to concede.

I’ve been part of direct actions where we locked down government buildings, shut down police stations, and held spontaneous street occupations. These weren’t just flashpoints—they were part of larger campaigns with clear demands and follow-up plans.

Direct action is:

Disruptive: It makes it impossible for the target to ignore us. Escalating: It builds on other tactics to increase the cost of inaction. Disciplined: It is carefully planned with specific roles and contingency plans.

We don’t do direct action for drama. We do it to win.

When you disrupt, you expose the fault lines in the system. You make visible the repression that was already there.

Direct action works when people are trained, organized, and committed to each other’s safety.

Who Protects Us? We Protect Us.

Every time we organize, we know the police will show up—not to protect us, but to protect the status quo.

The police are not our allies. They are not neutral. They are the enforcers of capitalist, white supremacist order.

We never rely on the police. We rely on each other.

That means:

No talking to cops. Period. Talking to the police—even casually—can put your people at risk. Silence is a defense strategy. Know Your Rights trainings must be mandatory for all participants. De-escalation teams must be trained to reduce harm on the ground. Legal observers should always be present, wearing clear identifiers, to document police misconduct. Bail funds and jail support teams should be established before the action starts. Mental health and community care teams should be in place to support people before, during, and after the action.

The state will try to isolate us, demonize us, and repress us. Our safety comes from solidarity, preparation, and disciplined refusal to cooperate with the enforcers of our oppression.

We protect us.

Direct Action Training: Building Disruption with Discipline

Direct action is a skill that must be trained, not improvised.

Training includes:

Mapping your target: Where are they vulnerable? When are they most exposed? Role assignments: Arrestables, media liaisons, de-escalators, security, social media teams. Communication plans: Secure group chats, hand signals, and emergency backups. Scenario planning: What do we do if the police escalate? What’s our response if someone is injured?

Direct action without discipline can get people hurt. Direct action with discipline can make the system tremble.

We train not just for the adrenaline of the moment but for the sustainability of the movement.

The Emotional Toll and Preparation for Direct Action

Direct action changes you. It brings fear, adrenaline, grief, joy, and exhaustion all at once.

I’ve watched people cry in my arms after getting arrested. I’ve seen people break down after losing their jobs because they stood up. I’ve felt the ache of responsibility when things went wrong.

We don’t talk enough about how direct action pulls on your spirit.

Preparation is not just tactical. It’s emotional. It’s relational. It’s about:

Holding each other through fear. Practicing community care after actions. Debriefing as a group to process what happened. Checking on each other long after the media is gone.

The system is designed to wear us down. We have to actively resist that by caring for each other in radical, intentional ways.

I keep showing up because I’ve seen what happens when we fight together: We win. We grow. We become dangerous in the best way possible.

Conclusion: We Make the Road by Walking

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years of organizing, it’s this: there is no blueprint. No perfect step-by-step manual will save us. The struggle teaches us as we go. We build the road by walking it.

Grassroots organizing is messy, painful, joyful, exhausting, and absolutely necessary. It is the long game. It is what happens when we refuse to accept crumbs and instead fight for the whole loaf. It’s what happens when we realize the cavalry isn’t coming—we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

I didn’t choose this life because I thought it would be easy. I chose it because I knew my survival—and the survival of my people—depended on it.

We organize because the system is killing us.

We organize because our lives are worth fighting for.

We organize because when the people move, mountains fall.

The tools I’ve shared here—power-building, listening, campaign planning, leadership development, political education, mass line, direct action, and collective protection—are not abstract theories to me. They are weapons. They are lifelines. They are blueprints written in blood and struggle.

The question now is: What will you build? And who will you build it with?

Let’s get to work.