Community organizing, lessons from Ontario's grassroots disability accessibility campaign, David Lepofsky, Chair, Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance. Delivered at the Osgoode Hall Law School, January 31st, 2014 as a Roy McMurtry Clinical Fellow.
>> Good afternoon everyone. In other parts of this lecture series I'm talking about the history of our accessibility movement and the legal and practical and policy issues we faced and so on.

Today is gonna be very different. I wanna talk to you about practical strategies, that I have learned over 20 or more years doing community organizing advocacy. On how to be effective, as a community organizer or advocate. I'm not boosting by saying here are all the great things that I and my coalition do if only you could just do the things we do you'll be a success.

We have learned, I have learned as much from mistakes as from successes. And what I'm gonna bring together for you now is a collection of successes. It is, it's hard to find things written on this. This isn't what we normally teach in law school, and it's not the unique preserve of lawyers.

On the other hand, there are instances that we can look to of people who graduated from a good law school. Learned and became active as a community organizer and went on to some pretty good things. One of them, one individual that comes to mind, his name is Barack Obama, so, there's lots of people to learn from, who've done work in this area.

also, on your law school curriculum, there are books on this, there are books worth reading, the. Probably the best, the earliest and still the Bible are books by Sole Alinsky, A-L-I-N-S-K-Y-, rules for reticles. And reti-, for reticles from the, from the fifties and the sixties. A community organizer who set the stage and from whom we all learned.

He went from being a radical self described, to being taught now as regular course material in social work programs social work schools around around the world. Let me offer you some high point themes. And I'm gonna get into a series of practical activities that one might face when you're doing community organizing for any kind of community, and community advocacy.

This will be useful whether you are playing the role of the lawyer, or not playing the role as a lawyer as a, chair of the accessibility frontier with disabilities act, committee. Before that the chair of disabilities act, pardon me, accessibility alliance. And before that the. Ontario is to dispose of that committee, I wasn't a lawyer, I was a, I was at a, in a volunteer leadership role, and But the things I learned have informed my lawyering and things I learned about lawyering, informed my work as a community leader and organizer even if I wasn't playing the role of counsel.

A few general themes I want to, offer you at the start of, of, of, a more practical tips. The first is, you are constantly learning. You are constantly learning. Everytime you try something. Everytime you think about trying to do something, I encourage you to look at it, critique it, did it work?

What could we have done better? It is nothing like litigation it is nothing in fact you have to turn off any training you've got as a litigator often in litigation you're trained to use specific rules to counter specific points to achieve a certain litigation goal. In the arena of community organizing and advocacy you sometimes have to do the exact opposite of what a litigator would do.

It is important to look for natural allies. It may be a poli, if you're advocating on disability issues, it may be a politician that has a spouse, or a child, or a parent with a disability or more, may themselves have a disability. It may be one of their advisers who does.

There are natural allies whatever be the issue, wherever you are. They are often not readily apparent, they require some investigating. But wherever you go, whatever you do constantly be attuned for looking for someone who is a natural ally. Once you find them, harness that opportunity, get them on your side, find out what they can do to help you.

In a court proceeding, you make a brilliant argument, you win the case. You get reasons for judgement and you know your argument was the brilliant one that one the case. In community advocacy, rarely is that the case. You're constantly retuning your argument. And you never know which argument you pitch, which idea you, present, which media ar,article on a point.

That comes out, drives home the message in a way that actually changes the agenda of a government or an opposition party. That means, keep trying and don't assume you've only got one argument that's ever gonna work. Whenever you are retuning your argument, whenever you are trying to figure out what works.

It's important to know that you have to be like in the litigation, sometimes there are commonalities. You have to constantly be attuned to what the other side might be thinking. If you're advocating for disability/accessibility legislation, be ready for a government that is preoccupied with cutting it's deficit. Be ready to show that what you're proposing will save the government money, not cost the government money.

They may never tell you that's their number one concern when they're in meetings with you. They may think it would be inappropriate to say that they don't wanna quote it back. But, you wanna know what they're really thinking and and, and to be ready to counter arguments even before they're made, even if they're never made.

Now, now with those common themes in mind let me jump right in. Number one, how do you frame your message? It's really important to try to get whatever it is you're campaigning for down to a slogan, down to a punchy one-liner. For the disability and community, we said we want to achieve a barrier-free society for people with disabilities.

And we wanted a new law that would get us there. You want to define that statement in a way that no one's gonna disagree with you. Who's in favor of barriers against people with disabilities? Who thinks they're a good idea? Who thinks more should be created? We might debate over how we're gonna get rid of them.

But we can happily agree we've got to get rid of them, they're bad for society. So they a, the very argument, or the very statement of the goal a barrier free society for people with disabilities becomes not only a flag or a banner under which we can advocate, in itself is a persuasion.

In framing that message, we tried to avoid terminology that will antagonize some. Traditionally in the human rights context, we talk about discrimination because that's what the law, the term the law uses in the charter and the human rights codes. But the term discrimination gets people's back up. Now, I'm not saying it's wrong to be in the law.

And, I'm not saying that human rights lawyers shouldn't use them. But on the other hand, if you walk in a restaurant and say you're discriminating against me because you have a, not walking, but if you have a wheelchair and you can't get in. You say, your discriminating against me because you have two steps to your front door.

Number one, they never thought of it as discrimination. Number two, the accusation discrimination, can get people very antagonized. On the other hand if you say. Those two steps at your front door are a barrier to my coming in and spending money in your restaurant. For one thing, they can't deny it's a barrier.

And for another thing, they'd like you to spend money in their restaurant. So you've now defined the barrier in a way that hurts, and individual with a disability, and the business. Try to find terminology that will unite everybody behind you, rather than defining and antagonizing people. There's ways to turn an argument so it sounds stronger even though it's the same information.

We used to say that there is 17% of Ontario or 18% of the public have disabilities. One day it occurred to us that the exact same number could be expressed in a more powerful way. How about telling a politician that there's 1.8 million people who have a disability.

And note by inflection when I say the M word. All of a sudden, a politician in their mind or their staffer starts to image what 1.8 million people looks like. That's a lot of people. That's not some small minority. They gotta be concerned about it. If you want to make this statement even stronger, call them voters with disabilities.

Cause unless they're kids under 18, they're voters. And if you want the attention of politicians tell them that we are 1.8 million people with disabilities in Ontario, tell them that because just proportionately they are older. We will underestimate that there is at least one million voters with disabilities in the province and all of a sudden a politician is got to sit up and listen that 18% figure.

It sounds like it's a small little minority relative to the the 82% who don't have a disability. All of a sudden the number sounds more powerful. But, even then, there's a way to make that number even stronger and you'll see it in a number of the speeches that are made on behalf of my coalition.

We have defined people with disabilities as the minority everyone, because every, everyone either has a disability or knows someone near and dear who has one, or will get one. So all of a sudden, we're not just 18%. We're not just 1.8 million people. We are potentially everyone. Now what politician really can't ignore you because of the fact that they really don't want to be on the side of no one against everyone.

And in the back of their minds by saying it that way they might sort of think about the fact if they don't have a disability yet, they too might get one eventually. That involves literally redefining our constituency in a way that includes everyone. And it's completely genuine. There are also ways to present your message in a way that becomes more powerful.

Even if it's the same message. Here's an illustration. In the olden days blind people argued for braille. Deaf people for sign language, people in wheelchairs for ramps and the government could see them as separate groups that they might treat separately or even play off against each other. When we unite behind the term barrier we are indeed now united and can't be divided, but it gets even more powerful when it's the deaf person who argues about the need for braille.

The blind person who argues about the need for ramps and the person in the wheelchair who talks about the need for sign language to show that we are speaking about each other's needs. The exact same message by the same people but by a little a little revolving assignment of the message it becomes more powerful.

There are so many other ways to to, to talk about how to frame your message. These ideas I've just offered didn't all come at once. They've evolved over years. Let me talk to you next about educating the constituency or community that you're looking to organize or to bring together.

The public in governments and certainly the media, thinks that every social group in society is completely organized has a well oiled spokes person, loaded up with money, press releases, briefs and research. Ready to jump on any issue that just happens to come up would that if were so.

It isn't. And so for most consum, community constituencies that might wanna have an issue raised in the public arena, and those especially who are dis-empowered. Or who are not from the most powerful in society, they don't have that kind of premade infrastructure in place. And any community organizer.

Anybody trying to do some kind of community advocacy, has as an early job to education their own constituency and build a consensus around a message. Here's just a couple of ideas that I can offer. The first is, never underestimate one's constituency. There is a tendency, especially, dare I say it among lawyers, to think that we know everything about law.

And that lay people will just trust us to take care of those things. The truth is we must be good at explaining our issues. And the policy issues at stake and indeed legal issues. To lay people, we must be able to empower them to speak about it themselves.

If we leave it to leaders. Whether lawyers or not, or spokespeople whether lawyers or not. We've essentially cut off the vast majority of voices that could be rallied to bring the message to the public. So it's important to not underestimate their ability. I have found that the most complex questions of public policy.

If properly presented, can be grasped, understood, processed, critically thought about, and advocated for, by people with the absolute least credentials, education, training, and experience? That's part of the job of an effective community organizer. I've really become the most anti-elitist in doing this kind of activity, and I'm constantly delighted at how many people.

With the least fancy credentials, come up with the best ideas, frame it in the most effective way, and get their message across way more effectively than the usual suspect person frankly like like me. One thing to know about any constituency or any community or sector of community is.

A, they're really busy. B, they're typically exhausted. C, whatever issue you're presenting, no matter how important, will go on a plate that already has a million issues. And it'll go on that plate as number 1,000,001. So the key role of the community organizer is to make information available in a way that's easy to absorb.

Now anyone who reads the updates that my coalition sends out and that I write is gonna say that Lipowski is like the biggest violator, because often these updates are long and detailed. But there is method to our madness. What we do when we send out an update, whatever the issue is, the subject line in our email tells you enough that if you don't know anything more that could be your message.

If you open the update you'll see that there is then a headline written like a newspaper headline, longer than the subject line of the e-mail and it will also frame the argument in one line or two, everything you need to know. If that's all people read, if that's all they can convey to a journalist, politician or otherwise.

It's still effective. We then provide a summary, for those that wanna read further, and then we provide longer and more detailed resources. And I'm delighted with how many times how many people read the entire document, and then give us feedback on it, very thoughtful, creative, and well-considered feedback.

Probably the biggest impediment to community organizing. It's not money, cuz my coalition doesn't raise money at all. Or charge money for it's membership. The biggest impediment is, people thinking there's nothing they can do. The government is a big, lumbering organizaiton incapable of changing. Won't listen, they just issue news releases.

Out of touch with the people. That is the biggest impediment, and therefore. The big, one of the most important jobs of any community organizer is disabusing people of that sense, giving them the feeling that one, or two little things they do could really help. And, the designing proposals for them of ac, for action, it's best to give them things that are easy to do, quick to do, and people will immediately go.

That, it would, pardon me, that will quickly disabuse them of the sense of futility. That there's just nothing I can do. If it's just a matter of call your member of the legislature. Or call a phone in radio station. Or retweet a tweet. Something that can be done within a minute.

But that, overcome, but, both advances our agenda, and. Neutralizes or reduces that pervading sense that there's nothing, I could do about it. To enable people to do that, it's vital to be able to let people, encourage people to tithe their own experiences to whatever the message is. So, if we're advocating on accessibility, we will say, here's the message we need a new Disability Act or we need a accessibility standard in the area of education.

Whatever it may be. But they will encourage you, to tell your own story. So for the student who's faced barriers in the school, or a parent who is not fit with the disability who's faced barriers being able to go to their own kids' school play or whatever it maybe.

Give them away that immediately apply their own experience. Once they do that, they'll find that A. It's he just start talking because it's something that bothers them and B it makes them feel like they are connected to the, to the issue you are presenting because they are. When we one of the tools we use, I'm going to use this as an illustration for both empowering developing consensus and creating motion, movement.

We, periodically, will issue what we call an action kit. I believe for today's class, I provided you one which we've got on the AODA Alliance website at aodaalliance.org under the what's new link. There's action kits all along there, you can just search on the words action kit, but Ontario has to by-elections on February 13th 2014, and we put out an action kit with tips on how to get involved.

In the by-elections. So, one of the mess, underlying everything we do is, is, with these actions, is something I learned really early on in doing my community advocacy. If you get up in front of a very enthused audience, get them all motivated to, on an issue, and then say, will you go home and write your member of the Ontario legislature.

And press them to do acts. You'll have a room full of people who will happily nod and they really mean it. But when they get home, most of them won't write that letter, cuz they're busy, they've got other stuff to do, it takes too long, they've never done it before.

However, what we found is if you give them a sample letter. They will go home and they will take it and they will copy and paste it and they will make, and if you encourage them to not just send it as is, if they don't have any time to send it as is, if they have more time, change the wording.

Add your own experience. People will, you get a lot of letters. The exact same people, the exact same motivation, but a lot more action. So think of us as the fast food of political action, making it easier to do. We do this through an action kit. What's in the action kit?

It focuses on a specific period of time, a specific goal. So if it's a bi-election it's relevant from now until February 13th, 2014. And if the goal is raise disability accessibility issues in the by election then what you're doing is saying here's a campaign. What we're asking you to do one way or another is to get talking about this and I'll tell you if you go to the media and try to raise issues on a by election.

Its really hard to get coverage but getting grass roots folks doing it yes it can be done. What do you do in an action kit? What we, what we will do is give people a really quick synthesis of what the issues are and, to the extent we know it, the position of the parties.

And we try to boil that down to as brief an entry as possible, and then provide links for those who wanna read more about these subjects. And then what we do is, we will offer people two things. First, a list of questions they might ask at a politicians or that they can raise with voters.

And then second, a list of actions that they can take. Those actions could include going into an all candidates debate, calling candidates from different parties. Even if someone just comes to your door canvasing raise these issues. Raise it with friends and families who might wanna vote. Fax or email this to your local media and get them to raise it.

Call a Colin Show. What we've found through these action kits is it's amazing how, delightful how many people actually use these tips and who come up with other ideas. But it's got to fit in a few pages and it's got to be easy to read with headings that get people right into the mid of why we are doing it and what to do.

This is sort of what, this is one sample you can use it, not just during a bi-election but for many, many, many other kinds of activities. I remember one day I was speaking at a an event years ago in London, and a man I had never met before named Michael Lewis came up to me, and he said, I'm a folk singer.

He's totally blind, and he said, can I write a song for you guys? Can you, like go for it. Never thought of it before. Wrote a song called Still Waiting. It was fabulous, it a community group in London produced a video that went with it. Depicting different barriers facing different people with disabilities.

It became our anthem for years. Sadly Michael died the year that the disabilities act was about to be developed and enacted. A conference in working on it's develop, the development of legislation was named after him. And the theme still waiting still resonates. Just one person who took one of his life skills, song writing, and folk singing, and put it into action a way that.

None of us had thought of. Tons of examples like that just abound. Let me talk to you a little bit about developing consensuses. It is impossible to united an entire community on anything. So to try to seek unanimity is futile. My belief is to aim, or my goal is to aim for harmony not unanimity.

There will be descension. There are a couple of strategies for dealing with it. Here are some of them, first it is important to frame your platform in a term that has as few people disagree with as possible. Barrier free society. How many people with disabilities are going to get up and say we don't face barriers?

People chuckled. How many of you think they're being removed quickly enough? People chuckled again. Do you think we should do more about it? And do you think it should be mandatory? All of a sudden, these are all questions that, that unite people. But there will be people who disagree.

Whatever it is we propose, there will be people who say, you need more. You should ask for more. It's important to make requests that are realistic, that won't draw the the fire of government or other communities that'll say that's just not doable. Or that they can't credibly say that.

but, what it can be helpful are dissenters within your community who think that you're reasonable proposals. While ambitious and helpful, aren't good or strong enough. That helps. You might thing, oh my god, there's division in the community. People will think that we don't have the wind at our backs.

This will be terrible. What we've learned is that they're time that really helps. I will first, my coalition will. Always encourage those who think what we're asking for is not good enough, we'll say, you know what, we don't say, shh, don't dare say that, we have to all stick together.

We say, you know what? Go for it. Tell the government, tell the media and make your point. And we like more people to be heard from, and we don't claim that we speak for everyone. And then when you claim you speak for everyone, it allows a single dissenter to blast that claim and to draw all the attention.

The beauty though in addition of having a dissenting group who say you chose for me is it let's you go to the government or the media or whoever and say you know what. We're making request that we look for re, that look reasonable. We think that they're important and we should get them.

But let's be clear, there are people out there who think we deserve more. And they're out there pressuring too. What that does is it make it looks like you're coming up the middle. And puts pressure on the government at least to go as far as you want, because thankfully there are people out there demanding more.

And I'd do this cynically. I'd do it quite openly. And so rather than viewing people disagree with you and want more as being people who are at cross purposes, they can actually really help your cause. How do you maintain momentum over a multi-year campaign? This is a huge challenge.

We started our campaign for the disability act in 1994. And we didn't ultimately win our disability act till 2005. And it's very easy for people to give up. How do you maintain momentum? Again, just a few ideas, we have lots more. It's important to define the time into chunks with limited goals for an immediate two or three-month period.

If all we think about is will we win our law, people will feel frustrated. When you get in the car to drive from Toronto to Florida and you got kids in the back seat. What's the first thing they ask as you pull out of the driveway? Are we then yet, are we there yet?

There are two possible answers to the kid who says, are we there yet? One is, no we got 48 hours of straight driving. Most of it's boring. The radio sucks. And bear with it. You know, deal with it. Or you could say, guess what? We're in Toronto. We're only an hour and a half from Niagara Falls.

It's one of the wonders of the world. Guess what, we'll be there soon. And celebrate that milestone. And, in a sense I'm not equating our community to kids whining in the back of the car whatsoever but I wanna say that it's important to give people a shorter range goal.

It may just be a fight in a by-election or it may be a campaign for a particular change that let's people. Focus on it, feel a sense of immediate goal, and then succeed, if possible, and then celebrate your victories. And then, as those accumulate, one is in a position to say, look at all of what we've done over the past two or three years, look at the goals we've set and look what we've got.

That in turn brings more people on board in your activity, cause people will see success. It'll be no matter what community you're organizing it's going to be small because won't know if you're going anywhere. And it, it, it, just it, it, it, compounds the more milestones along the way you hit.

Now let me turn to dealing with the political world. First, how do you deal with political parties? My view is one must be non-partisan, one must be non-partisan. One will have the least credibility if you're seen as in one party's camp always for them or always against them.

You've got to be clear that you're prepared to work with any political party that's prepared to pursue your agenda. My coalition always says we're non-partisan. We don't support or oppose any party. We're just working with a particular agenda. That means that we will be critical if a party is bad on our agenda, but we'll be complimentary if they're good on our agenda, whoever they are.

And that may personally mean that the people within the coalition who may be strongly linked to one party, but have to thank. Another party. Non-partisanship also helps people join, inspire people, to join your movement. Because if people think you're just a liberal or you're just a conservative or you're just NDP, and they're not, they're not gonna want to get anywhere near you.

And that weakens your effectiveness. One of the things that I use as a rule of thumb. And my coalition uses as a rule of thumb. When we're dealing with any political party is that our dealings with that party are confidential. As between us and that party. What they end up committing to us, is public and in writing.

What we ask of all the parties, is public and in writing. But any back and forth that goes on between political parties I won't tell the NDP what the Tories have told us, and I won't tell the Tories what the NDP have told us, and the same with the Liberals.

It's important that they might want to find out from you what's going on in other camps, but it's important for each party to know that if they talk to you, it's not gonna leak back to other parties. Anythings that's gonna come up will all do be in the public arena.

When you're dealing with each party, its important to think of a couple of things. First, each has their own particular language. I'm talking about accessibility to conservatives, I will talk about the fairness part of it, but I'll also talk about the, the business case for accessibility because and, and our strategy is to accommodate the needs of small business and so on.

Now we'll talk about that would. And NDP too, but obviously Conservatives given their agenda, need to see it through the lens of their political agenda. Similarly I, I will focus, shift, we will focus our, our, our, our message or our emphasis with each of the political parties in that way.

Now they're also gonna wanna know about the focus that relates to each other. The NDP, if they're running. Don't want to be seen as anti-business. They want to because otherwise they think they're going to be cutting off themselves electorally. So, they want to know how your strategy accomdates the needs of small business frankly even as much as the conservatives or the liberals might.

So, while it's the same message in some ways there are ways that you tune it. But accommodate the platforms of each party and try to respond to it. That is not pandering, it's dealing with the reality that you've got to speak the language of the people that you're trying to persuade.

And they expect it, they don't expect anything different. When you're dealing with any political party, it's really important to find out who's actually making the platform decisions. That's not always readily apparent. In fact, one thing I will tell I've learned in all my community advocacy is that whether it's government or opposition.

The first time you approach them the person they send you to deal with is their upfront person not necessarily the real decision maker. It takes a certain amount of time to try and figure out who the real decision maker is. Many of our strategies are counter-intuitive. I'm going to give you one that is huge in that regard.

We are quite happy in my collocation if we get election commitments from a party, that are not set out in the main platform document. Instead they're set up in a separate letter to us. Now the intuitive response to that kind of strategy is that's nuts. Because wouldn't you rather it be in the mainstream of their agenda.

A either perform a platform, not an assigned document, that many people might not even see. Well, that maybe intuitively sensible, but it's wrong. Why? A commitment on the Disabilities Act, to pass a Disabilities Act, if it was in the party's mainstream platform, might only be one or two sentences.

It won't have any detail. When we got commitments from the liberals and the new Democrats for the 1999 and 2003 elections, their commitments were in a letters to our coalition that are up on our old coalitions website, ontarians odacommittee.net. And they're quite detailed, way more detailed than we could have ever gotten in a mainstream platform.

So is it not in the mainstream platform. And does that signal that maybe that's important. Some might see it that way. But after elections over, when you're actually trying to get them to keep their commitments. No body's gonna get up in a government and say, well I know we made that commitment in a letter to you during election.

But it wasn't in the main platform that was documented. It was in a separate letter instead that you put over the internet. There's not gonna do that. So, sometimes the counter intuitive really helps. Let me talk to you now about appealing to politicians. And I, we, people get all cynical and oh, they're just out for themselves and so on.

There are some really thoughtful and important strategies and ideas that we've learned over time. First I want to talk to you about dealing with a politician who is not a cabinet minister. Its important to know some basic things about about politicians so first is contrary to the public cynicism about them.

They are in my experience without exception hard working deeply dedicated to public service. And very much interested in advancing the public good. They may have a very different view of the public good then you have or your community has or a lot of people have. And you might think that what they think is public interest is not the public interest at all.

But the genuinely believe that their That what they're doing is in the public interest. I think a lot of the cynicism about them in that regard is unfair. They were, incredibly long hours, days, nights, weekends and wherever they go they're sort of on call. So whenever you, and any politician of any political stripe.

Is, in my experience, torn between wanting to do what they think is the good, the right thing, and on the other hand, having to face the reality that they're but one member of a party. They've got electoral issues to deal with, they got campaign, and they also got interpersonal issues to deal with within their party.

And they're really busy. So, whenever you sit down with any politician, you'd better be ready for the fact that they've got. Something right before you, something right after you, probably calls while you are there. You gotta be ready to accommodate some of them who is that busy. And ever distracted.

So what do you do? The first thing is, try to figure out ways that they would naturally attach to your issue. If it's disability advocacy, there's three things that can come to play. The first is, they may have a disability, or a family member with a disability, or a close friend with a disability, or a staff member with a disability, or a staff member who has got a family or friend with a disability.

In fact, any politician who doesn't have one of those things, I don't think exists. And so there's a natural attraction to our issue just by virtue of that. The second is they get calls from constituencies, constituent members, voters and their constituencies. Who will be raising issues about their needs as people with disabilities so even if they have not been pickled in these issues before they went into public life.

Believe me they've heard a lot about them. And third, they will have an intere-, you can at least generate an interest in your issue, either by their sense of justice or by tying it to their, their political agenda. Or simply because they're trying to move up in their party, and this might be a a ball that they'd like to run with.

You should be able to work, with them on one, or by activating one, both, or all three of, those kind of considerations that are going on with them. What can a back bencher do for you? Well, there's a number of things they can do. They, if, depending, opposition, or even in government.

They can lobby informally within their caucus to get support for you, or even to approach the governing party, if they're in opposition. They can ask questions in question period. They can help you negotiate the platform of their party, or build, find natural other allies within their, within their caucus.

They can bring in a private members bill or a resolution for the legislature to vote on depending how far they want to go with it. And even further as one illustration. We had one member of the liberals when in opposition in Ontario In the year 2000 actually hold shadow public consultations around Ontario hearing from people with disabilities which helped us build a community support.

Now let me turn and talk to you about meeting a cabinet minister. This is an interesting and different, everything I've just told you comes into play, but there's a bunch of other things that come into play. As well first it, it's it's my experience and our experience that if you're gonna wanna work with and meet with somebody that high up, you don't start there.

It's usually best to start at the lowest level of the organizational hierarchy. Meet with them, raise your issues, though that person may have absolutely no authority to do anything other than listen, and give you a little background, but you gotta start there. And then you work your way up to their director, and then you work your way up to their assistant deputy minister, and then at times, you may work your way up to the deputy minister.

And only after all of that going to the minister. No, no, we don't always do this, but often we do this. Why do you go through that? Number one, on your way up, you will learn tones. Not just about the formal government structure, but about who's really calling the shots, because at some point on the way up, you will find.

A natural ally. Somebody who cares about your issues or has been involved in it, either because they have a personal investment, or because it just, it makes policy sense. And they may just along the way share some good ideas with you. They're not being irresponsible or disloyal to the government in doing that.

They're being good public servants by helping and educate. A community member on how to, how to work their way through a complex government regime. There's a second reason for going up the food chain, or hierarchy this way. If you go too high, too fast. You're giving that person an out, by sending you back to the bottom, you go to a deputy minister first and you make your pitch.

That deputy minister might say, listen this is all very interesting I've never really heard about this before, have you talked to, this about this, with the policy people or the operational people in my ministry. You'll say no and he'll smile and say well thanks for coming in I think that's your next step.

On the other hand, if you've worked your way up the, up the ladder, then when you sit down with an assistant deputy or deputy minister, you're in a position to say look, I'm coming to you after I've taken the following steps. It also and so, at that point, when you get to that higher level individual They can't just sluff you off on someone below.

And I don't mean they would do that cynically. I mean they just may reassign it to where it should be considered first. Rather you're in a position to say okay Ms. Deputy Minister or Mr. Assistant Deputy Minister. I've gone up these steps. Here's what we've learned so far, and here are the core issues.

And then of course, by the time you get to a minister you can narrow the issues that need ministerial attention. If you get time with a minister, that is really scarce time. You want to use it to an advantage. You don't want to use it resolving things that could have been resolved way further down the ladder.

So, you've gone all your way up the, up the ladder, you get a meeting with a minister, what do you do? Few things, number one. You gotta set your goals. What do I want the minister to do? You can't just go in saying here's a problem. You want to be able to go in and say here's a problem, here's what we done about it, here's why it matters, here's what we're asking you to do.

And by the way you may get only half an hour with him like a lawyer in a court case with time limits. Use your time wisely. And frankly don't mess around a whole lot, waste a whole lot of time with howdy doody, nice to meet you, isn't it raining outside doesn't the weather terrible.

Get on with the time, don't let it get figured away or you'll suddenly find out it's gone, they've got their next meeting. In order to have the meeting be effective it's our experience. That it is very wise to first, get in touch with one of the minister's political staff.

In their office there will be political staff and I will brief, the political staffer on everything we're going to raise in the meeting. I will also brief people further down the hierarchy about what's going to be raised at the meeting. And I'll do that for a couple of reasons.

Number one, I want the minister in a position to not be surprised. This isn't like a surprise cross examination where you think you've got a brilliant knock out punch and you don't want a witness to be prepared. You want them to have had a chance to think through this because you're trying to direct them towards a solution.

But also if you say, minister as a result of this meeting I'd like to ask if you'll do X you don't want the minister to say, well that's an interesting idea but I've never turned my mind to that before. You'd rather be in a position of looking at the minister and saying, we're asking you to do X, as I've briefed your deputy and your, your policy adviser, than I'd be raising.

So they, all of a sudden, you cut the legs out from underneath any capacity to say oh, shucks, I never heard about this before, can you give me some time to work on it? as, as a way to, to of the minister to not confront and deal with what you're, what you're raising.

There are times we excuse me that the. It's usually worthwhile to not only brief the staffer but at the meeting offer an action list for follow-up. Here are the specific things we're asking you to do. And you may follow-up with a letter to confirm that. But it's also worthwhile to ask a specific next steps.

When can we meet again? Who in your office should I follow up with? Cuz I can tell you the minister's going to leave your meeting, rush off to another meeting. And you wanna help them actually formulate their, follow-up action memo within their office by essentially giving it to them.

You can't say, Now Minister, here's the memo to send your staff, but you can't give them the content, which essentially does their work for them in that regard. Now, let me. Let me shift to a whole other arena. Beyond formal meetings with members of the legislature cabinet ministers and staff.

There are times when the government will hold a public consultation. It's important to harvest those, to your best advantage. Often a lot of the heavy negotiating, or persuasion doesn't take place at those events. It may take place in informal meetings and conversations. But nevertheless, public consultations on any issue, whether it's public hearings on a bill or a policy consultation, whatever it may be.

They provide a phenomenal opportunity to accomplish a lot. In order to do that, first thing you gotta do is say, what do I want to get out of this consultation. Well there's the obvious, I gotta convince the government to do a particular policy, implement a particular policy. But there are other benefits to a public consultation as well.

Let me suggest some. One is, they provide a fantastic opportunity to energize and mobilize your own community. Your own community may not be involved in going week after week to meetings. With cabinet ministers it's hard to get those meetings. But, if a public consultation is provided this sets the table, it opens the door, it provides a platform, where you can turn to your community and say, hey folks, here's an opportunity to have your say.

We'd love you to all get involved. And that kind of mobilizing. Has benefits beyond just persuading the government. Obviously the more people that come forward and pitch on your issue. The more persuasive the more chance you've got of convincing the government to do whatever it is you wanna do.

But on the other hand. That's not all. The more people come forward, the more people you're mobilizing. The more people who initially thought, there's no way I can have any impact on the government, it's intransigent, it's a big bureaucracy, they never listen to us, and so, why bother?

The more of those folks, and, by the way, I completely understand why people think that way. I don't look. Negatively on them but as a community organizer, right now, I gotta work to counteract, and we've gotta work to counteract that attitude. But but, the more people actually come to a public forum and get a chance or public consultation and state their piece.

That's the more, the more people who've overcome some of that that impediment to action, people who'd be ready to take the next step. To go home and pick up the phone and call a call in radio station and repeat what they just said at the public consultation. We'll write a letter to the editor.

We'll talk to their friends, go to their kids school, raise these issues and spread the word. Public consultation also provides a phenomenal avenue for getting media attention. We're going to talk more about the media in a couple of minutes. But it's im, it I wanna emphasize, just because you think it's a public issue, that's important, doesn't mean the media does.

And if you just go to the media and say there is inaccessible public transit in Ontario facing people with disabilities, you know, they're not gonna cover that. If you say, there's public forum tomorrow night on barriers people with disabilities facing transportation. Come and hear their specific pro, individual stories.

That, that's an event. Media doesn't cover issues. The media covers events and a consultation can be catapulted into an event. How do you best facilitate your community taking part in consultations? Again, remember the aim is harmony. Not unanimity. So the goal is not making sure the only people who come forward sing from our song sheet or something like that.

It's important to first educate your community through action kits or tips. About what the consultation is, how to take part. Give them the e-mail address so they can send in a request and so on. In the disability arena it's really important to emphasize the government early on, that the consultation should be open, not mere invitation only.

It should be fully accessible with sign language. An accessible building captioning, and so on. Often government doesn't know to do all that. You've got to work with government to make sure they do. Once again what's important about the deaf community, if they don't see an announcement that sign language is available, they may, some may assume it's not available.

So make sure its in the ad and then more of them will turn out. Understandably. Understandably, why bother going unless you know for sure you gonna have sign language. The next important thing that we've found that is helpful is we try to get a brief or a position paper out to our community before the consultation begins.

At least a draft. Not because we want everybody to sing from our, our our hymn book. But to get people thinking of ideas. And if people come forward and they use our ideas, that's great. If they don't attribute it to us, we don't care, we don't claim copyright, the more people that use it the better.

But also, it can help get people thinking about their own ideas which may be different from ours, may even contradict ours. But, it's easier for them to do that by reading, our proposals. So, getting it out there to give people a resource to make use of is is very helpful.

Let me then, leap from that to talk to you just for two, two or three minutes about writing a brief like that You'll see lots of these up on our website. In another lecture I talk more about this, but it's our strategy to put out a draft brief first to get peoples' ideas.

Even though that means showing the government a draft of our position even before we finalize it and even before we know we know we're gonna say any of it. The advantage of that is it gets input from our community and helps educate our community. And if the timelines for consultations.

Our tide. We might not be able to get our final brief out in time. We send out a draft. We get comments and input. We finalize it. But, one of the core theme strategies we use in our brief is that we try to make it persuade anyone who reads it.

That what we're proposing is a good idea. So, it shouldn't just talk to the government as a regulator. It should talk to business. It should talk to the disability community. It should talk to the media. It should be persuasive to anyone. We find that we are at the same time educating and informing our community and indeed convincing members of our community at the same time as we're trying to convince.

And persuade the government. And if our arguments are full of holes that the, somebody in the business or the broader public sector might say that's wrong. We don't want that kind of argument out there. Because if they shut it down, it undermi, we'd rather have arguments that are strong and that are unassailable.

In our briefs, and if you look at any of them. And some of the community members say, Lukovsky, how can you write a 100 page document and call it a brief? But what we will do is begin with a summary. And if all you read is the summary, that's all you need.

Gives you enough. But then we will provide an explanation of who we are, and what our agenda is, or what our priorities are. And then we'll go through and make specific recommendations and if it's for legislation we may offer specific wording we want and will explain why. And you're able to read, if you look at one of our briefs is if it's commenting on a bill.

It'll say section so and so provides X. Here's whats wrong with it, here's what we recommend. And we will then aggregate all our recommendations in an appendix so, again if you don't have time to read the whole thing, you can look at the appendix and read all the recommendations in one place.

So whether you read or somewhere or just the appendix. There's a lot there for those who don't wanna read the whole hundred page document. But for the people who gonna do the detail policy work, they've got the detail policy work there. Let, let me now talk very briefly about the formal process of going to a standing committee of the legislature.

One particular process that is doesn't come up very often and is worth leaping on whenever the opportunity arises. Is when there is committee before the legisla, of the legislature holding hearings on a bill. A bill gets voted on for first reading and then second reading, and then it may be sent to a standing committee for hearings and then clause-by-clause debate.

Our coalition, both my current one and its predecessor, was active on several bills that concern us. And in each case what we will do, is we will put out a little four or five page primer to our membership. On how a bill goes through the legislature. Most lay people don't know about the first reading versus second reading private member versus public bill clause by clause debate.

What kind of amendments are permissible, what's not? So we actually spoke to the house of the clerk of the legislat, or the office of the clerk and the legislature year ago, got our own kind of primer from them, summarized it, and made it available to educate our community.

I ended up having the clerk's office actually ask me if they could circulate it in other contexts. And we said sure, if it's that helpful, you gave us the ideas we just wrote it down. But hearings before the legislature are an important platform. Now I will tell you formally, they are not the place where the action occurs.

In other words, hearings. And clause by clause debate are the staged activity but it's in the back room that the decisions are made. But that doesn't mean that either of them are unimportant. During hearings it's important to get as many groups lined up to participate, to encourage them to sign up.

And to get them to come before the standing committee so the committee hears from as many people as possible. Standing committees like to hear from organizations, but they love to hear from individuals. Cuz to politicians, hearing from John or Jane Q Public may be more interesting, or more compelling to them.

Than some organization that's got a brief that's all lawyered up and thought through and polished and media scanned and all that sort of thing. So both can make a huge difference, and some of the most one of the most amazing presenters and we've had many, is a woman named Penny LaClaire in Ottawa.

Penny is deaf and blind, and she went before, I've heard back from politician after politician. All political parties, and its just not, its not patronizing, always not wonderful a deaf-blind person could do this in that kind of. Patronizing stuff. They found her to be powerful as a speaker and her describing the barriers facing people deaf and blind, articulated at a standing committee by someone who is both deaf and blind was, was extraordinary.

Many other examples over our years of people who have done that. Indeed, I've been most delighted when I watch or read transcripts of hearings on bills we've done. When people that we've never met or heard of come forward, possible borrowing our ideas, often coming up with their own, but meeting our goal of harmony not, in making our, our message.

One of the odd things you may think about in. In the political, in the hearing processes, they will, they will give you ten or fifteen minutes or whatever, and they'll often tell you, use what time you want and then the rest is used left for questions. Should you leave time for questions?

There are in community advocacy a million strategy calls. Here's an example. Of one. In a court room, I love when a judge asks question, cuz it's an insight into their, their, their reasoning process, their thinking whatever is worrying them. Standing committee not so much. I'm not afraid of questions.

But what I find is politicians tend to make long speeches in their question, and eat up all the time and then they'll ask a question like, so do you think people disabilities need more? After they make this long speech and all of the sudden if you had fifteen minutes and if you left seven for for questions.

You've had a long and by the way this is not limited to any political parties and it could be politicians who agree with you or disagree with you. Either which way I find often not exclusively but often that questions eat up time that I'd rather tie up. I'd rather use more effectively in our actual presentation.

Let me talk to you briefly about clause by clause debate. Oh, excuse me, public hearings, like a, one more thing about public hearings. Public hearings, like a public consultation can be used as a platform to get media coverage. Media often don't cover them. But there are some ways.

To improve the capacity for there to be coverage. There is one committee room at Queens Park that is wired to be broadcast on the parliamentary channel, the provincial parliament, legislature channel. If the legislature is not sitting, that hearing goes live. And then we'll get replayed. So I one thing we've done in the past is try to actually lobby to get our hearings in that room on days when the legislature, or hours when the legislature's not sitting.

It also provides and opportunity to get a, a DVD recording of made of the, of the brought, of the event, and then put it up now on YouTube. A phenomenal opportunity. Now clause by clause debate over a bill is a hugely complex subject, I'm only going to give you a couple of head-liners.

It's where they amendments from my other party can be tabled. It's important to understand first that you don't just walk in and say, by the way here goes, can you propose amendments now? They are thought our before clause by clause starts, after the hearings. And on an important bill, each government will announce what amendments they're gonna table, often the day before the clause by clause begins.

To get to that, so the really decisive point is when the parties table what their amendments will be. To that end, what you need to do is to get to the three parties while the hearings are still going on, giving them a list of your priorities. They may come out of your bill.

And then what each party may do is decide what they wanna propose, and they give it to an office at the legislature called Legislative Council. They're lawyers who work for the legislature, not for any particular party. They will draft amendments for whichever politician asks. You've gotta make sure you get your package of ideas to each party early enough that they can get it to Legislative Council in time for it to be drafted and tabled with the committee.

When the committees actually voting. And I don't mean any disrespect for the members who sit, but there's often someone who is determining on behalf of the government or the opposition which they're gonna go for. And you will see a process in the committee room of staffers passing notes back and forth, either on the government side or on the opposition side.

It's important to develop a relationship with those staffers. And I often have a good relationship. I teased one that I was gonna intercept my notes and switch in mine. They didn't think it was funny.
>> [LAUGH]
>> But and often there's a chance to, not often, but there can be a chance to negotiate wording of amendments right there in the lobby.

Either with some of the members of the committee or with some of the staff members. But it's important to not, to understand that the formal, what's going on at the committee is often driven by a lot of this informal process going behind it. The final thing I wanna tell you about amendments, and then I wanna, I wanna.

I wanna conclude by a few, just a couple of minutes talking about dealing with the media. it, with every strategy move, it's important to look at its benefits in the short run and the long run. Like, you, you might think that well, every time the government votes down an amendment.

That's just a big loss. And so we lost, just like if you're in court, you argue a case, you lose, it's a loss. Not so fast. Amendments can have long-term consequences. Let me give you a couple of illustrations. In 2001, the then-conservative government under Mike Harris proposed a Disabilities Act, but a weak one.

We asked for certain amendments. The opposite, we got the liberals and the NDP in opposition to propose a bunch of them. Again, got to them early enough. They went through legislative council. Got drafted, and so on. The government of majority voted them all down. Swung on a. A short range view would say, oh, this is an example of.

Of you know just straight out loss. Why waste the time? But they were really important for us. They were important because, by getting the NDP and the liberals to propose them our view was we put the NDP and the liberals on the record supporting the amendments they were proposing.

So when we went into the 2003 election, these amendments were proposed in 01 and, and voted down. We went to the liberals and the NDP and each house for commitments that they would pass a dis, stronger disabilities act. That would, among other things, embody the substance of the amendments that they had proposed two years earlier.

Well, what's the party gonna do, say, no, no, we, if elected, will not do that which we criticized the. Tory government for refusing to do, and we asked them to do. And in fact, for example, if you look at the letter Dalton McGuinty wrote to our coalition during the, on April 7 on 2003.

Promising a disabilities act if elected, he said, among other things, it would embody the substance. Incorporate the substance in the amendments that they proposed two years earlier. So that's one way they can help. There's another way they can help. In' 05 the McGinty liberals passed the a stronger disability act.

We proposed amendments, the government made some of them, but the opposition proposed others that the government wouldn't accept. Now again you might say. Well, you're working with the government, that you've got a good relationship with now, they were really open to us. But you didn't get everything you wanted, isn't that a loss?

The answer is, not so fast. Some of the things we proposed in '05 and we didn't get, we always, can, we can keep in our, in our hip pocket for future events. So when some after a couple of years of experience under the Disabilities Act from 05 to 07 we found out that certain things weren't working as well as in the government thought.

So we could come back to the government and take some of the ideas from the amendments we proposed and lost. And pitched them to the government for election commitments as policies. And some of them, we succeded on. 2009, the government was required under the Disabilities Act to appoint an independent review of the Disabilities Act.

And there were certain things that we thought things weren't working as well as they could and we told the independent reviewer, Charles Beer, here's how you should fix it. Gave a list of ideas, some of which were things we proposed in 05 and the government turned down. We could turn to Charles Beer, an independent reviewer, and say, you know what, four years later, turns out we had good ideas that should have been considered, and you know what, some of our ideas he recommended.

So things that we initially proposed as amendments in' 05 were turned down at the time. Some were adopted as a matter of government policy in' 07. Some an independent review proposed in '09. And some of them of the '09 recommendations are now being implemented years later. So, we're in it for the long haul.

But there are long haul consequences that could be good. Even from things you thought were bad news. Concluding with some media. Could be the subject of not only a lecture, but a whole course. Let me just give you a couple of key points. The media are of course, a really important avenue, for any kind of community advocacy and organizing to convince the public.

And also to signal the government and the opposition that you're a force worth paying attention to. When you try to go to the media to bring a story a few thoughts in mind. Number one, it's an advocacy exercise with the media, just as much as it's an advocacy exercise bringing an issue to the government.

Journalists are similarly overworked, overburdened, understaffed, And under a lot of pressure. You gotta get to the point with them even more quickly than with anyone else. Or at least as quickly as anybody else in the, in the government or opposition parties. When you write a news release. You are, in effect, writing a news story.

It should be written such that they couldn't write it any better. It should make the point, it should include quotes and so on, and if a reporter really likes it, and they're too busy, they should be able to literally cut and paste liberally from it. Just as it's the ultimate compliment when a judge cuts and pastes from that a lawyer files in court, or a brief in court.

It's similarly a compliment if a journalist decides that part, of your new release made the point. You should be ready for the fact that news, you will bring the media lots of stories of which only a small number will get picked up. It's important never to get despondent from that.

It's like fishing, you throw the line, I don't mean you're fishing for stories but you throw that line in a million times and then you get a bite. Celebrate the bites you get and build on them. When the media first hears about you and your community they won't know anything about you and you have to build your credibility.

A, you've got to build just as you have to build relationships with political parties, you've got to build relationships with journalists and over time they will come to get to know you. There are times you will call a reporter to say I'm not calling with a story today.

I just had some background I thought might help you, so that they're not fearful, you don't want them fearful that every time they see your phone number on their call display. No it's another story I'm busy. It's important to build that kind of relationship. I believe that one should be as hold ones of two, as highest standard when giving information to a news organization or at a news conference, as you would apply yourself when making arguments in a court room.

Whether you are a lawyer or not, I think it's important for your credibility and that of your coalition not to overstate things, not to say things you can't back up even if you think they would have a lot of zing to them. And not to even accede a to question from a journalist that you'd love to agree to, but you really don't know.

I have found in the end that my experience working with the media has helped me as a lawyer in my day job. We lawyers, are wordy sorts, as I've mentioned in a couple of other lectures. And there's a huge pressure to get to the point, with the, with, radio or print or television journalism.

And, it's one of the le, lessons that I've learned that has really helped us at the, the pithiness and the to the point clarity that the journalist demands of us is something that I believe should be taught in law school as a standard writing skill. Let me. Let me conclude by saying creativity, creativity, creativity.

In any of this community advocacy, it's not just a matter of what did somebody else do, it worked, you try it. Look for new ways of doing things. If you're giving stories to the media and they're not taking them up. Look for other ways to reach the public through the media.

Write a guest column for the newspaper. They might let you write a story even if they wouldn't cover the story themselves. That's happened a number of times. Find avenues where the media has an open vehicle to reach the public. Call in, the radio is superb for this. Don't sweat a news conference where you didn't get any, any reporters or any coverage.

Now we have technology we didn't have ten years ago. Bring a, a, a web cam or a video cam, record it, post it on YouTube. The news conference remains vibrant even if there's no journalist there, if we preserve it on YouTube and then start using Facebook, Twitter and e-mail to spread the word.

Just Google, go to our AODA Alliance YouTube channel and you'll see what I mean. Don't sweat losses. Not only in the legislature, in the media. Some of the most important days in our campaign for accessibility got no media attention. Some of the worst days in terms of things not going well, later became the platform for things that turned out really well.

And, remember that no matter how many times. You think you know how to do it. There is a member in your community who's gonna think of something better. Whether it's Michael Lewis and his guitar or someone else in that situation who'll come up with something that will resonate.

Always be open to other people coming up with new ideas. I welcome the opportunity to speak to you about this. And I am eager to find ways for us to teach this in law school. So that it becomes part of the repertoire of advocacy for lawyers not just in the court room but in the community.

Thank you very much.