Block, Bridge, and Build: A Framework to Forge a More Democratic Future

We are living through a period of upheaval. In this world of uncertainty, one thing is clear: The need for coordinated, collective action is urgent.

Recently, the people at Convergence Magazine developed a very useful framework called Block and Build. Others in the solidarity economy movement have offered a similar framework called Resist and Build. Here I want to highlight a slightly modified framework, building on the work of john a. powell and other leaders, that we use at the Horizons Project: Block-Bridge-Build.

Adding the word “bridge” emphasizes that for broad-front organizing to be successful, we need the skills and relational infrastructure to work together across many lines of difference.

Envisioning an Integrated Approach to Social Transformation

Block-Bridge-Build offers a framework—rooted in theory and practice of conflict transformation, civil resistance, and democratic renewal—that aims to resist harm (block), facilitate dialogue across divides (bridge), and construct more inclusive, resilient futures (build), particularly in response to the spread of authoritarianism.

For example, communities are organizing to protect immigrants who are being detained by officials without due process, leaders are convening dialogues about who belongs and feels welcome in their community, while advocates may be designing and pushing for new immigration laws and systems.

While these approaches within civil society are often in tension, they can also be complementary. The framework recognizes that at any point, civil society leaders, organizers, and activists may move between these three strands of action. But often civic actors may prefer to stay within one “lane,” using a single approach without being in relationship with or seeking to complement other lanes.

One of the central paradoxes facing Block-Bridge-Build is the different timeframes inherent to different strategic actions.

It may seem obvious that people should cooperate across “lanes,” but this can be harder than it sounds. One of the central paradoxes facing Block-Bridge-Build is the different timeframes inherent to different strategic actions. Focusing on immediate needs is often in strategic tension with long-term, systemic change. Emily Kawano and David Cobb, citing the late Austrian-French philosopher André Gorz, have advocated that movements pursue non-reformist reforms, that is, those that support systemic change and help people in their everyday lives.

What the Block-Bridge-Build framework invites of us to do is to refrain from trying to solve this central challenge but rather incorporate a “both-and” approach into our relational organizing. This way of thinking will help us include the multiplicity of time horizons within our broad front.

For example, advocates may assemble a protest to federal cuts to the Meals on Wheels program, while other community organizers provide mutual aid in the form of weekly food donations for their neighbors. Leaders may participate in a coalition that convenes policy dialogues to discuss ways to solve food insecurity in their city, while some advocacy organizations may do all three. Below are brief summaries of each of these approaches:

• Block

Blocking can be interpreted as standing up against the harms and injustices that are happening in the world. To be in “block mode,” you must first acknowledge and see those harms, even when they are not happening to you or your community directly.

There are many skills and approaches that can be used here. One of the most obvious and necessary in the current moment is the use of litigation to curb the White House’s illegal actions. But there are many other approaches to blocking. When church leaders or educators stand up for immigrants who are being summarily detained without due process, these solidarity actions not only raise awareness but can put enough pressure on officials to release those in custody. Transgender rights networks are working (as they have for generations) to support their community’s safety and security in the face of alarming levels of political scapegoating and dehumanizing rhetoric. Creative, strategic nonviolent actions are also powerful blocking tools for pro-democracy movements, such as clowns showing up at a neo-Nazi rally to throw flour in the air, ridiculing the concept of “White power” with “white flour.”

While activists may be identified with mostly “block approaches,” when they engage with deep canvassing and relational organizing as a part of their base-building strategies, that is also a form of bridging. And when they set up mutual-aid networks and teach-ins for their communities, that is also a form of building for the future we want.

• Bridge

As Tabatha Pilgrim Thompson, director of Strategic Partnerships and Initiatives at Horizons Project reminds us: “Bridge-builders often use dialogue, mediation, negotiation, and other community cohesion-building tactics for the purpose of developing understanding, empathy, and relationships to find common ground and solutions on which communities can move forward together.”

In the past 10 years, there has been a proliferation of bridge-building initiatives in the United States, with a focus on depolarization and promoting civic friendship and pluralism. For example, programs might convene state leaders across urban and rural divides to discuss and plan around common issues such as drug addiction, political violence, or education policy.

There are many types of bridging activities working across several lines of difference to foster a “larger us” and a broader sense of belonging: interfaith dinners, community theater programs that invite the audience to step into someone else’s shoes, or dialogues around racial healing. Bridge-building helps to establish meaningful connections, centering trust, listening and finding commonality as a first step to working toward change together. Bridge-building can help bring together coalitional partners in the short-term, while also creating space for new allies to better understand the issues and join forces in the future.

• Build

Building activates critical analysis and mechanisms of hope to challenge power dynamics and reimagine just and equitable futures. There are clearly bright spots to point to for inspiration and hope. As science fiction writer William Gibson once said, “The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.”

Examples of build work include a wide range of activities, from very concrete discussions around potential constitutional reforms like Democracy 2076, the growing network of citizen assemblies that allow for direct citizen participation in the local decisions that affect them most, new healthier social networks, and audacious experiments for economies rooted in wellbeing or solidarity.

Builders help us break out of the frenetic pace of our current reality to imagine what could be, while also bridging to past lessons. Within a broad front, building allows us to block more effectively so we can communicate and embody not just what we are against, but also what we are all working toward.

Operating Under Stress and Uncertainty: How to Collaborate Better

Two dynamics make integrating different approaches difficult. First, the natural fight, flight, or freeze response to stress—and creating stress through divide-and-rule and intimidation tactics is central to the authoritarian playbook—leaves many civic actors in self-preservation mode.

Additionally, the response to operating with such high levels of uncertainty can reduce the scope for creative action. In contexts of extreme volatility, it is normal to seek more control and clarity, but this can create a barrier to being open to and incorporating others’ ways of being and doing, while holding each other accountable.

Polarity management,  from the work of author and Polarity Partnerships Cofounder Barry Johnson, is a useful tool that promotes “both/and thinking” while making strategic choices together. This approach essentially offers a way to explore interdependent concepts that may be seen as in opposition, for example consistency and flexibility.

The Block-Bridge-Build framework fosters needed conversations among potential allies to imagine what is possible.

Leaders often view one side of a polarity positively (“consistency provides dependability, clarity”) and over-focus on the negatives of the other side (“flexibility is wishy-washy and erratic”). That is, there is a tendency to view one’s own approach positively, while others’ views are devalued or ignored. Polarity management instead allows us to get the best out of both sides.

Applying polarities management to Block-Bridge-Build maps out some of the potential upsides and downsides of each approach. This exercise can help capitalize on the intended outcomes of our strategic choices and minimize unintended harmful impacts.

Bringing It All Together

We all make strategic decisions about where to put our energy and who to work with based on our lived experiences, our positionality, worldviews, and the stories we tell ourselves about how the world works.

It is, however, in conversation with diverse actors in a broad-front formation that we can determine where to place ourselves in the ecosystem. That allows us to strategically increase awareness, urgency, and power building, while building trust, collaboration, and relationships.

The Block-Bridge-Build framework invites complexity thinking and engagement, with paradox to hold all these tensions, in order to come together to fight for our democracy. As mentioned above, many actors go back and forth between these approaches, but it is also important to acknowledge that not everyone has to do everything within an ecosystem of change-making.

The Block-Bridge-Build framework fosters needed conversations among potential allies to imagine what is possible in the future, while recognizing the root causes of suffering and injustice.

If blocking is to be transformative, if bridging is to be authentic and sustainable, and if building can bring about belonging and equitable futures, then it is vital to extend attention outward, hold multiple narratives, and center and sit with “difficult” stories, contradictions, and ambiguity.

Acting in coalition means that activists and leaders may need to pierce their certainties about how to resist, and reconsider their assumptions. It may also mean suspending the impulse toward quick fixes and to work slowly—and relationally—to envision a collective pathway for making change while standing up against the forces seeking to divide us.