INDIVISIBLE AGAINST TRUMP: COALITION STRATEGIES AND MOVEMENT SUCCESS ACROSS CITY CONTEXTS

Abstract

Coalitions can be critical to social movement success. This article compares thirty-five Indivisible groups founded after the 2017 Women’s March in ten U.S. cities. Through analysis of Facebook pages and interviews with activists, I find that groups that work more often in coalition mobilize more events and are more likely to survive. In cities with long histories of activism, groups tend to engage in more coalitions and a particular type of deep coalition work I call “supercoalitions” that strategically coordinate across a city and work to accumulate and channel resources to pre-existing organizations. In cities without long histories of activism, groups are less likely to engage in coalitions. However, when they do, they tend to organize into broad civil society coalitions that bring together a diversity of political and nonpolitical actors which can be very successful over time. This analysis highlights how coalitions are shaped by local political context.