Complement, Don’t Compete: A Smarter Approach to Change

Too often, we fall into the trap of elevating one mode of change-making while dismissing others. Resistance. Bridging. Institutional reform. Each has its champions and its skeptics. But real power comes not from choosing one, but from aligning them to work in concert.

As one recent piece put it:

“One of the major pitfalls we often fall into is subscribing to one type of change-making and then putting down the others. Ayni argues that we need to embrace a vibrant ecosystem where many groups and individuals are making change in various ways, and therein lies true power and capacity for change.”

That part resonated. The challenge isn’t picking the “right” strategy, it’s making sure different approaches reinforce, rather than undercut, each other.

• Bridging efforts that build trust can open space for institutional change.

• Institutional shifts can create conditions for resistance movements to push boundaries further.

• Resistance can generate the urgency that dialogue and policy reforms need to gain traction.

These aren’t theoretical relationships; we’ve seen them work in practice.

In Tunisia, after the Arab Spring, mass mobilization and protest created the necessary pressure for change. Civil society actors stepped in to facilitate dialogue across ideological lines, and institutional actors, like the National Dialogue Quartet, helped formalize that momentum into constitutional and political reforms. The protestors didn’t do it alone. Neither did the policymakers. The breakthroughs came when different actors played to their strengths in concert.

The same is true closer to home. In the U.S., the Fight for $15 movement started with walkouts and street-level organizing, fast food workers demanding dignity and livable wages. That early resistance was met with coalition-building across labor unions, faith leaders, and immigrant justice groups, and eventually translated into real wins, wage increases passed in cities and states, shifts in corporate policy, and a reframed national conversation on labor and economic justice.

In both cases, no single approach delivered change. It was the interplay — the urgency of protest, the trust built through organizing, and the translation into institutional reform — that created momentum and made it stick.

That’s the kind of alignment we should be aiming for. Not arguing over whose strategy is better, but building movements where different approaches do what they do best together.