Blueprint for a Multiracial, Cross-Class Climate Movement

What the evidence shows

This report examines why multiracial, cross-class (MRXC) coalitions are considered essential to climate advocacy’s political effectiveness, yet are also fragile and prone to collapse. Rather than treating coalition-building as simple resource-pooling, the authors argue coalitions transform individual organizations’ capabilities into political power — but only when specific structural and relational conditions are met.

Drawing on five detailed case studies (Portland Clean Energy Fund, NY Renews/CLCPA, the Minnesota Line 3 fight, Illinois’s CEJA campaign, and Washington’s I-1631/Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy), plus practitioner interviews and a facilitator training cohort, the report introduces “Strategic Culture” as its central organizing framework: the intentional practice of making a coalition’s shared values and effectiveness part of its core strategy rather than an afterthought. It then works through eight component variables — trust, clarity, resources, inclusion and voice, governance, conflict management, ways of working, and collectivizing identity/reflection — before closing with concrete recommendations for coalition builders.

Key Findings

• Coalitions that explicitly and collectively defined their “Strategic Culture” (shared values, decision-making norms, and behavioral expectations) were better able to resist toxic patterns like purity politics and unmanaged conflict than coalitions that treated culture as incidental.

• “A seat at the table” was consistently described by interviewees as insufficient for genuine inclusion; coalitions that gave frontline or historically marginalized groups actual decision-making authority (not just presence) generated more durable power and more equitable policy outcomes.

• All of the more formal coalitions studied used task- and/or constituency-based subcommittees anchored by a central leadership committee responsible for major strategic decisions — a structure that balanced the need for broad input with the need to act decisively during time-sensitive legislative negotiations.

• Trust was described as neither automatic nor static: coalition members carry histories of prior harm into new partnerships, meaning leaders often had to actively work to rebuild — not just build — trust, particularly across race and class lines.

• Radical transparency and over-communication were exhausting for coalition staff but were repeatedly identified by interviewees as essential; skipping this work early in a coalition’s life consistently resurfaced as conflict later.

Stand out data points

• Qualitative: Illinois’s CEJA coalition relied on what members called “redundant” and “overcommunicated” messaging to keep dozens of partner organizations aligned during fast-moving legislative negotiations — offered as an example of clarity-building in practice, not as an incidental detail.

Examples of how Understories uses this research

• Actionability the “Ways of Working” and governance sections provide concrete, evidence-based structures (subcommittees, leadership committees) for translating shared goals into coordinated action.

• Emotional Resonance Supports scoring via the “Collectivizing Identity and Reflection” pillar, which frames emotional belonging and “we-ness” as essential to sustained collective action, not incidental to it.

• Justice This is a central strength of the report — it is explicitly built around examining power asymmetries between mainstream environmental organizations and BIPOC-led, frontline, and labor organizations, and repeatedly distinguishes symbolic inclusion from real power-sharing.

• Explainability Findings are presented as qualitative patterns grounded in named case studies and direct interview quotes rather than statistical estimates — useful for narrative-level scoring guidance but not for numeric persuasion metrics.

Key quote

“Organized money and organized people is power. And if we’re running a coalition that doesn’t have what we need to go against fossil fuel industries, we’re never going to be able to compete.” — Lili Scales, Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition.

© Climate Advocacy Lab.

Library entry updated: 30 Septembe 2026.