Home  Chapter Sections  1. Introduction  2. Campaigning  3. Civil Disobedience  4. Direct Action  5. Action Planning  6. Lobbying  7. Picketing  8. Starting a Group  9. Publicity  10. Leafleting  11. News Media  12. Internet

How to Do Animal Rights - and Win the War on Animals Chapter 3 Campaigning Methods for Animal Rights 5. Action Planning What is an Action Plan? An action plan will help you ensure that your activities will be successful. An action plan guides the day-to-day activities of your project. It is a document that sets out reasons and practical steps to help you achieve your ultimate objective. It helps ensure that things happen when and how you intend them to happen. All action plans are different, varying from one group to another depending on personalities, interests, skills and experience. An action plan relating to a commercial business is often called a business or marketing plan. You may not want an action plan if you intend just a single quick once-only action. But if you have a long-term project it is useful, even essential, to think ahead about what you intend to do. You need to know matters like: What is the actual and specific purpose of your campaign? How exactly are you going to accomplish your campaign? Who is going to carry out particular responsibilities and for how long? What are your opponents' weaknesses and how can you attack them? What are your weaknesses and how can you overcome them? When and where are actions going to take place? What is your timetable for fulfilling actions? How will you know that your actions are successful? What resources do you have for accomplishing your purpose? How can you get more of the resources you lack? Why an Action Plan? You could carry all this around in your head, but writing it down concisely on paper helps you think more clearly because you must share, explore, clarify and communicate your intentions to colleagues. They will know what to expect and what is expected of them. Moreover, writing down your action plan helps keep you on target. With an action plan you are less likely to lose sight of your objective and how you are to reach it. Without a secure record of what you intend to do you might allow your aim to change imperceptibly from one week to the next so that you lose direction, waste your resources and accomplish little of what you set out to do. Should anything go wrong with your campaign you have a concrete document to review and correct to improve your performance. Finally, when concluding your campaign you have an indelible account to look back on to check how well you performed and suggest how you might improve next time. Who Should Produce the Action Plan? If you are a one-man-action-group then of course you do everything by yourself. But if you are the organiser or founder of a group you may wish to clarify the basics, such as your ultimate objective and method of reaching it. But once you get a team running, everyone should have a chance to assemble and voice their input. Usually people can contribute different skills and complementary experiences so that you are more likely to make a better job of the plan. A brainstorming session can elaborate on the plan and establish what is and what is not feasible. But one responsible person should write down the action plan so that it is homogeneous and completed. Before You Begin Your action plan should not be too long-term as it is difficult to see far into the future. Depending on what you are doing it could steer a course for the next three, six or twelve months. So that you do not get bogged down in detail the action plan should be concise, basically a summary, with no excessive or irrelevant detail. If you need to include more information put it in an appendix. Your action plan should be well thought out and executed but you do not have to spend an overly long time on writing it; one or two hours might be enough for a team to contribute their input and for you to make a first draft on paper. Operations & Administrations You might find it useful to distinguish two kinds of aims; we might call them operation aims and administration aims. The former relates to your campaign actions and the latter to running your group to make it more effective. They complement and somewhat overlap each other. Operation aims for example could be: Organise a super-massive picket once a month. Decrease the number of customers entering a target shop by fifty percent for one year. Get a news item about our campaign published once a month in the local newspaper. And administration aims could be: Increase the group's membership by twenty percent this year. Raise X amount of money to pay for running costs. Establish a second group in a neighbouring town. Depending on what you are doing you may need to consider administration aims to further your operation aims, but do not dwell entirely on the former at the expense of the latter or your group may become strong yet ineffective. Again, depending on what you are doing, you could write a separate action plan for each aim. Creating Your Action Plan Every action plan is different and it is up to you to decide what to include and exclude. But consider the following points for inclusion in your particular plan. Your Objective Write down your ultimate objective – your final goal. For example, stop people selling fur in my town. Or motivate people to engage in practical animal rights. Your Message Write down the clear and simple message of your ultimate objective. People forget complicated messages right away, so keep it simple. Remember KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid! For example, 'Animals need their skin as much as you need yours!' Or 'Do more exercise – do animal rights!' Find a positive angle for your message; instead of 'Meat-eating is unhealthy and harmful!' try 'Veganism is healthy and wholesome!' Your Body Targets Write down the organisations and people you must influence to reach your goal. Deal with the right people the right way; approaching the wrong people is a waste. For example (re fur shops) shop keepers and people passing by in the street. Or (re motivating people for animal rights) people sympathetic to animal rights who could be active supporters if given impetus. Your Strategy Write down how you will achieve your ultimate objective. For example, if your objective is to help stop the fur trade your strategy could be practical steps to close down all fur-selling shops in your town. Or if your objective is to popularise and get people to do animal rights you could hold an annual animal rights fair in your town. Your Tactics Write down the steps you must take to reach your ultimate objective. For example, each one of these can be broken down into a number of small steps: use undercover video for exposés, picket each fur seller until they stop selling fur and hold public meetings to publicise and debate animal rights issues. Your Time Write down realistically how much time you / your group have for your project and when you will do it. For example, six hours per week: about an hour per week for organising plus the rest for picketing. Your Message Distribution Write down the optimum times when you will give your message to people. For example, hand out our leaflets when most shoppers are about - lunch times – or when we are on our demonstration. Your Management Write down a list of key tasks (like action-plan planner, leaflet producer, site reconnoiterer, event co-ordinator), who will do them and when tasks will be completed. For example, who will finalise the action plan, monitor its progress and review it in three months time. Your Resources Write down what resources your need, such as people, space, equipment and funds. For example, half a dozen members for picketing; material for leaflets, banners and placards; storage space; computer and phone. Your Preparedness Things seldom go perfectly as planned and a good project has a back-up strategy. Imagine and write down a couple of potential disasters and their solutions. For example, if picketing a shop selling furs has no noticeable affect then you might consider driving up the shop's insurance premium so that they cannot pay it and go out of business. Or, if the police prevent demonstrating at site x then demonstrate at site y or z. You Should Be Smart In smart acting business circles they say you should always make sure your goals are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-based. Our goals when doing animal rights should also be smart: Specific Be precise about the ultimate goal you aim to achieve. 'End the fur trade' or 'stop factory farming' is vague. 'Close down this fur shop' or 'stop this restaurant offering foie gras' is precise. Measurable Know when you have reached your goal. To do this your goal has to be something that clearly stops (eg the place you picket closes down or stops selling the stuff) or be something that you can count (eg ten new members recruited). Achievable Not over ambitious but within your reach. Ending factory farming is unattainable for your group; exposing to the press the cruelty of a particular chicken farm could be. Realistic You can identify an effective campaign strategy given your group's members, money and other resources. Being realistic makes your campaigning easier to carry out and makes success more likely. Time-based The time available to achieve your goal. Is your goal on-going without a clear end? Not so good if you want to feel you have achieved a goal and be seen to do it. You may have to impose a deadline by which time you have accomplished something solid. You can be SMART, or better, you can BE SMART by adding: Believable You must believe you can achieve your goal - and make others believe you can realise it too. Ever-flexible Willing to modify your actions or goal as necessary. An example of being smart could be stopping shops in your town selling foie gras (or veal, or frogs' legs, or eggs from caged hens, etc). So what do you do to be smart? Be specific "Our aim is to stop the shops and restaurants in our town from selling foie gras." Not "our aim is to stop all shops in the state selling foie gras" (maybe you have the resources to do that but you might start low down then build on your successes). Make things measurable "We shall count how many places sell foie gras before we begin our campaign, then for comparison count how many places stop selling it." Not "I think some places stopped selling foie gras and some didn't." Let it be achievable "We know we can accomplish our goal because we have the motivation, time and resources we need and can mobilise the manpower." Not "I suppose we can do it so let's have a bash." Keep it realistic "We can do it within our resources because we have queried similar groups elsewhere that have done it." Not "ditto" (as above). Set a time scale "We should be able to accomplish a significant reduction (at least half our targets) within ten months." Not "We shall keep going until we drop or they do." Follow the above process and you will have more confidence believing in yourself and greater capacity for flexibility to changing circumstances. In practical animal rights you should always BE SMART! You Should Also SWOT SWOTing helps you identify your objective and goals and solve problems that may turn up. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats are factors that affect every one and every group. Strengths and Weaknesses are factors within your personality or group that you might change; Opportunities and Threats are external factors outside your control. List your Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats in a few words. For example: Strengths High motivation, persistence, flexible working hours, several potential co-workers to form a group. Weaknesses Only locally mobile, no media contacts, little money, incomplete knowledge of relevant law. Opportunities Several shops selling fur in town, local supermarkets selling eggs from caged chickens, an animal laboratory nearby. Threats The law if we cross the legal line. Think how you can counter or take advantage of these factors. For instance: Strengths "We shall play our strengths and look for opponents who have weak spots that will fall to them." Weaknesses "We shall decide how we can overcome our weaknesses, perhaps by looking further afield for opportunities. We shall get to know how the news media and how the law work. We shall budget and/or seek funding for our campaign." Opportunities "We shall look for opportunities that match your strengths and figure out which objectives are the most interesting and achievable to tackle." Threats "We shall avoid or neutralise them, shall stay within the law or if necessary challenge it by legally borderline actions." Do a SWOT of your opponents from their point of view. Where are they strong and where are they most weak and vulnerable? This may help you attack them. Make It Happen Working hard on your action plan will do no good if you do not execute it. When your action plan is complete - do it! Review Does your action plan work in practice? From time to time, say after a number of activities or after an appropriate period, dispassionately criticise and analyse it. Get everyone together and ask their opinions about what is going wrong, what is going right and how to do better. Some questions to put are: Are we achieving the results we want? If we are not, why not? How far have we moved toward our ultimate objective? What things can we do better? What additional things might we do? What lessons can we learn? Build on experience and rewrite your action plan accordingly. A Simple Action Plan Template To make a start with your action plan write applicable headings like these across the top of a sheet of paper: Goal/Target Action Anticipated Benefits Time Scale/Completion Date Resources Needed Member Responsible You need only a few headings. Do not end up with reams of paper. Other headings, according to your needs, could be Rational, Expected Outcome, Measure of Performance, Progress Update. How to Do Animal Rights - and Win the War on Animals. © Roger (Ben) Panaman, April 2008. All rights reserved.