Socially Democratic Podcast

Socially Democratic is your weekly centre-left politics and campaign podcast hosted by LCN member, Stephen Donnelly, community organiser and founder of Dunn Street – a campaign agency bringing change by organising from the ground up. Each Friday, Stephen and guests breakdown the issues shaping Australia and the rest of the world and the social democrats leading them.

Organising Month July 2024 – Socially Democratic Podcast x Leading Change Network

This July, Socially Democratic is celebrating ‘Organising Month’ with the Leading Change Network by bringing you a fresh series that highlights campaigns from around the world that use the community organising framework.
How do we build people power? What makes movements successful? Find out in this series and recall the power of organising.

Episode 248 – The LCN Series – ORGANISING with Marshall Ganz

Stephen is joined by Marshall Ganz in this exciting episode that launches the Socially Democratic x LCN series.

Marshall shares his origin story about the impact his family had on his views on education as drawing out people’s capacities instead of putting in knowledge and information. He also illustrates his journey through leaving college to learn organising in Mississippi with the Civil Rights Movement and in California with the United Farm Workers in the 1960s, to introducing the organising framework to the Obama Campaign in the 2000s. He discusses with Stephen how the organising framework has been adopted and developed in various contexts around the world, and how, even in some countries where it is not usual to talk about oneself, creating an authorizing environment or a ‘brave’ space enabled people to tell their stories and understand its benefits – connecting with each other in ways never before. Marshall challenges us to think: how can we, instead of mobilizing to fight authoritarianism in this day and age, proactively organise to revitalize democracy?

Episode 249 – The LCN Series – PUBLIC NARRATIVE & RELATIONSHIP BUILDING with Sreejani

Stephen is joined by Sreejani, who is a Senior Manager at Haiyya, an organisation in India that equips social changemakers with the organising framework, and is also a former classmate of Stephen’s in Marshall Ganz’s Leading, Organizing, and Action program at Harvard Kennedy School.

Sreejani walks us through Haiyya’s Health Over Stigma campaign, which built power among unmarried women in India by creating the space to connect with each other through their shared struggles in facing stigma when accessing sexual and reproductive health services. She also discusses how the strategy shifted from building pressure against medical service providers to building relationships with them through shared values of empathy and care. Finally, Sreejani emphasizes the importance of creating a space for women to first seek support and find solidarity network, and then to escalate their leadership by developing leadership of other women and supporting each other in the community.

Episode 250 – The LCN Series – STRATEGY with Mariali Cardenas

Stephen is joined by Mariali Cardenas, co-Founder of Vía Educación, who organised parents and education-related organisations, to allow children to return to school during the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico.

Mariali explains that she and her team shifted their strategy through execution of the campaign, from creating protocols with specialists on returning to school and sharing them with authorities (power with) to conducting a survey to show how many teachers and parents wanted children to return to school if they had the support and the resources, and eventually getting candidates who were running for the election to replace the authorities to commit to bringing children back to school (power over). At the end, Mariali invites everyone to find the center where you find hope, purpose, and the connection with others to develop your purpose.

Episode 251 – The LCN Series – ACTION with Djaran Murray-Jackson

Stephen is joined by Djaran, who is the reserved seat holder representing Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation on the First Peoples Assembly of Victoria, and also the community engagement manager at the First Peoples Assembly of Victoria at the time of the campaign, on which Djaran and Stephen worked together.

Djaran talks about winning the hearts and minds of the constituency, first finding his constituency at events organised by other organisations in the community, such as Aboriginal Football Carnival, giving them treaty t-shirts and inviting them to own events, including informational events and fun events like concerts and the Treaty Day Out. Throughout these actions, he highlights the importance of leadership identification for scaling; for example, finding leaders at a dinner event, forming a leadership team with those leaders, organise an event together with that team, and encourage each leader to organise their own event back in their community. Djaran also mentions at the end that the freedom within the organising framework enabled his communities to adjust it to the way they do business and made the framework special for them.

Listen all episodes

You can listen to the different episodes from Socially Democratic through the following links:
*Each episode will go live to public each Friday this July – until then, the episodes are only available to Dunn Street Patreon and LCN members through the unlisted YouTube links above.

1. Apple Podcast
2. Spotify

About Stephen Donnelly

Stephen is an Australian based community organizer and founder of Dunn Street – a campaign house driving social change by embracing the Ganz model of community organizing, leadership development and power building. Straight out of university, he began his career as a Research Officer for the retail and fast-food workers union – and was quite terrible at it. 
His career was saved when he was offered an organizing role at the union and thankfully made something of it. For the next decade he organized truck drivers and grocery workers to improve their wages and conditions.
Those organizing skills were crucial when he made the jump to political campaigning with his appointment as Assistant Secretary for the Labor Party in his home state of Victoria in 2012.
Taking what he learned from volunteering for the Obama campaign in 2008, he founded an unprecedented grassroots movement – the Community Action Network – and organized over 10,000 volunteers to mobilize and hold millions of values-based persuasion conversations with targeted voters that was crucial in the election of Dan Andrews as Premier of Victoria in 2014 and then the re-election of his Labor government in 2018. 
Stephen is a proud member of the LCN community and is committed to growing the global network of organizers, coaches and trainers, and when Stephen is not organizing, he hosts a weekly politics and organizing podcast called Socially Democratic. 
Every week Stephen holds an in depth conversation with progressives, social democrats, organizers and political leaders to share their stories, experiences and issues that are challenging communities in Australia and across the globe.

Follow Dunn Street on Social Media

• Instagram at @dunn.street
• Facebook at @dunnstreetaustralia
• Twitter at @Dunn_Street_
• LinkedIn at Dunn Street
• Website at dunnstreet.com.au