Last year physician Carson Lam posted online asking if anyone else in the Bay Area wanted to meet up to talk about Andrew Yang’s Presidential campaign. Three people showed up. Carson, Greg, Victoria and Logan went star gazing on Bernal Heights Hill in San Francisco and the Yang Gang was born. 

When looking up at the stars, could he have imagined how big the Yang Gang movement would become I ask as Carson and I meet for coffee not far from the star gazing encounter. “No, its far exceeded my expectations by quite a bit!”

If you follow American politics and you haven’t heard of Andrew Yang, you’ve probably been living under a rock on social media. His supporters, the self titled Yang Gang, are everywhere online. He the attracts the third most online traffic of all 20 Democratic candidates behind only Sanders and Warren, he’s got the highest percentage of small donors to his campaign, raising over $1million in the last week alone and he’s polling around 7th place in the race for the Democratic nomination. This is for a candidate with practically zero name recognition having never held public office.

The tech entrepreneur is running on a flagship proposal of the Freedom Dividend giving every American over the age of 18 $1000 a month, a rebranded form of Universal Basic Income (polling told him Americans love the word freedom). He has over 100 other policy proposals on his website and his ability to answer almost every interview question with evidence and data has led to a campaign slogan of MATH (Make America Think Harder).

But who are in the Yang Gang? With a large online following, some commentators have dismissed Yang’s supporters as at best well meaning computer nerds who spend hours making memes on the platform Reddit or at worse white nationalists on the website 4chan (to be clear, Yang has publicly and categorically denounced the support of the latter). I’m curious to meet them and I’m reassured when I meet the friendly Carson. 

“I first got involved behind my little computer in the safety of my home but as I have been getting more involved I’ve been meeting more and more of those people face-to-face and we are real people, not robots, and we’re a lot more diverse than you think. A lot are previous Trump supporters and people who were not previously involved in politics. You’d be surprised.” He invites me to meet some of the Gang at a debate watch party they’ve arranged for Yang’s appearance in the second Democratic Debate.

His campaign is certainly bringing together a unusual alliance of progressives, libertarians, former Trump voters, conservatives and futurists. There’s about 40 of them packed into a small bar in the SOMA neighbourhood of San Francisco. 

“We’re a motley crew” says Monica, one of the organisers of the SF Yang Gang, “I was a Bernie supporter but now my focus is on Yang. I came to him for the Freedom Dividend”. Tristan, another one of the leaders who’s getting people to sign up the mailing list after the debate said “I’m totally new to being politically active, this is my first time being involved”. Carson too was a Bernie supporter in 2016 but this is the first time he’s been politically involved to this extent.

They are fast developing a reputation for the being the nicest people on the campaign trail, a “friendly gang” as Carson calls them. Whenever someone posts about #YangGang on social media, its usually followed by a series of supportive messages pointing them in the direction of some of Yang’s policies or long form interviews such as his appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience, which many cite as the moment his campaign gained traction. How did this Humanity First ethos develop?

“We’ve had a very tumultuous couple of years in the US since the election and its been very polarising creating two opposing groups” says Carson. “Yang’s campaign has painted a different narrative which is much more productive. It forgives that both groups are human beings and paints a narrative that economics is the more productive thing to focus our attention on. It skips over the blaming and finger pointing and goes straight to the underlying cause, in this case job losses and automation.” 

Indeed, Yang has resisted attacks on other campaigns and avoids the name calling and divisiveness that’s brought American politics to a standstill. Matt, another Yang supporter I meet at the watch party, says “Yang’s campaign has made me re-evaluate and help me understand other people’s opinions and where they’re coming from. We might disagree but we have the space to respectfully debate. When Yang went on Ben Shapiro’s show and had a well mannered debate with a cordial tone I thought, ‘why can’t our Washington politics be like that?’”

Matt, a third generation American-Asian, is also proud to see an East Asian man running for President. “I never thought I’d see the day but what I like most is that he’s not using his race as a central part of the campaign. He acknowledges he comes from an immigrant background but he’s avoiding identity politics and focusing on the important economic issues that impact everyone. He’s also being himself. People can relate to his nerdy Dad jokes. I really related to a campaign email he sent out earlier in the year about being an introvert. It really spoke to my experience” 

He’s referring to a campaign email Yang sent in May titled Trust the Process. It was one of the moments when I too first got interested in Yang’s campaign and I sent it round to some colleagues and friends. I’d never heard a politician be so open and honest about the challenges of being an introvert in public life. I too could relate to that. Perhaps it was why Yang initially came across as passive in the first debate, getting very little speaking time as, unlike the other candidates, he kept by the rules and didn’t interrupt people. 

He was a man transformed in the second debate however. He had sharp answers to each question that reframed the conversation entirely with bold ideas on health care, immigration, Iran and climate change whilst having laser-like message discipline to bring each answer back to his flagship Freedom Dividend. He was the only candidate to talk about the exploitation of women in the workforce, the challenges people with disabilities face and despite the debate hosted in Detroit, was the only candidate to relate issues to back to the crucial swing state of Michigan.

The only reason he had less talking time than anyone else was because he didn’t attack anyone, and no one attacked him. He ended the night by brilliantly contrasting this behaviour as he broke the 4th wall of television by saying “instead of talking about our automation and our future, we’re up here with make up on our faces with our rehearsed attack lines playing roles in this reality TV show. Its one reason why we elected a reality TV star as our President”.

His unique message allows him a wide open lane to run his race from the outside while the others scrap on the inside lane. Fellow candidates are going to have to find a way to deal with Yang because he isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. He this week qualified for the next set of debates in September and October, he’s got a message that will spark interest from a cross section of America and with such enthusiastic grassroots support, he’s well set to go all the way to the primaries in February. 

Just how far can he go? A lot will depend on translating his online following to offline organising on the ground. Sanders and Warren will have paid organisers across all the key states where as the likes of Monica, Tristan and Carson admit themselves they have no experience of organising, are very busy professionally and currently have no help on the ground other than a weekly zoom call and slack channel with Yang’s central team. 

They’ve been impressive at organising socials and they had 40 people at the watch party but there were a number who slipped away without signing up to commit to the all important phone banking or texting that the campaign needs. The campaign have said they intend to spend some of the $1m that’s come into the campaign coffers in the past week on field organisers and the sooner they can get organisers on the ground in key states, the quicker they can support some of these exciting new politically engaged leaders.

A couple of months ago, I spoke to Scott Santens, prominent basic income advocate and online hero of the Yang Gang. He suggested that in the absence of any real basic income movement in the US, the Yang Gangs could fill that void. Carson is certainly in it for the long haul.

“I fully intend to use the campaign infrastructure to pursue the goal of UBI. It goes beyond the MATH. The idea is greater than the person. Whether he wins or doesn’t win we’ll continue to convert this infrastructure into a force for UBI.” Maybe, just maybe, those stars are beginning to align for Yang and long term, we may be witnessing the emergence of a movement that could change American politics.

Citizens UK, the organisation I work for, adapts its organising method from the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) based in the US. The next stop on my travels was to spend a week in Los Angeles on the IAF’s annual National Training, spending time learning the craft of community organising from some of the most experienced organisers and civic leaders in the country. 

As well as deepening my skills as an organiser, I was interested to explore how we could apply the methods of community organising to kick start a basic income movement back in the UK. So what did I learn?

The IAF’s central argument goes something like this. 

Society is broadly organised into three parts: the market, the state and civil society. 

Historically, the three tended to keep each other in check. Civil society was innovative at organising for social change by incubating radical ideas that mitigated against the impacts of innovations in the market and it then partnered with the state to enact the ideas into legislation.

The introduction of the ‘weekend’ was an idea that came from northern England in the 19th century, often starting as voluntary arrangements between factory owners and workers and then fought for and won into legislation by labor unions and religious groups who wanted a ‘sabbath’, or rest day, to tackle the disruption to family life caused by the Industrial Revolution.

This tradition runs in my family. My great grandfather was a trade union representative in his colliery in the mining valleys of Wales. Miners suffered injuries and illnesses caused by the dangerous work. My grandad remembers workers coming into his front room each week to contribute a fraction of their wages to a collective fund that would pay for doctors and medicine if someone needed health care. These health co-ops were common place in the Welsh valleys in the 1920s and 30s, and it was Aneurin Bevan, from a neighbouring mining valley, who eventually enacted the idea in the form of the National Health Service in 1945.

Civic institutions have a tradition of organising themselves to hold the market and state to account. The market by nature creates winners and losers and the role of the state is to compensate the losers and to some extent soften the blow for people in times of great economic upheaval.

But what we’ve seen in recent decades is the power balance between the three sectors shift. The market is now dominant. A market culture has infiltrated and enveloped our politics and civic institutions. As the only British person in the room I’m shocked to hear some of the stories of just how far the market as permeated American cultural life but I’m uneasy as I know its beginning to happen in the UK too as our NHS becomes slowly more privatised and our weekend leisure time ever more consumer driven, eroding the victories that were hard fought by generations before us.

Our civic institutions like faith organisations, schools, unions and non-profits are now the only buffer between families and the impact of the market. The IAF stress the importance of institutions repeatedly throughout the training. They are the place we learn our values, where we learn to deal with conflict. They are where we interact with people different to ourselves and where we learn the skills needed to be active in public life. Healthy institutions are vital to a functioning democracy.

But our institutions are in decline. A reduction in social capital, a phenomena first written by Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone (2000), has accelerated in this century with less people going to church or in membership of a trade union. There’s a sense that individualism has taken over from collective community spirit and we’re in an era where people are rejecting institutions (with good reason in some cases it should be said). The IAF warn we should fight against this, arguing we should “value but distrust” our institutions, as well as creating new ones, if we are to revive democracy. 

The IAF and Citizens UK build Broad Based Organisations – alliances of civil society institutions – as the vehicle in which to build the power of civil society and strengthen institutions. Once powerful enough, these organisations can challenge the power of the market and state and win change. This method of broad based organising has spawned some of the great social changes in recent memory.

The idea of the Living Wage was driven by parishioners and parents from faith groups and schools in Baltimore and London in the 1990s, as they organised to challenge businesses to voluntary pay higher wages. It was seen as radical at the time but In the UK, we now see over 5,000 employers paying the real Living Wage and the idea is firmly rooted in our politics.

Citizens UK organised for the first urban Community Land Trust to be built in East London, a radical idea for communities to build genuinely affordable housing and own the land in perpetuity in the face of a market driven housing crisis – an idea that has its roots in the US civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Civil Society can create change but it has to be intentional about building power and have the vision to take risks and innovate to find new ideas that will tackle the innovations of the market in the 21st century that are ravaging our communities today.

I believe a Basic Income can be that idea. It could breath life back into our institutions with people having more time to volunteer and play an active role in their community. Perhaps people would run a prayer group at their place of worship, have time to manage their children’s local sports team or volunteer in the community. Or simply have more time to enjoy valuable leisure time with family.

It would strengthen people’s ‘ability to act’, giving workers the power to negotiate improved employment conditions, women the power to escape abusive relationships or people with disabilities the power to act in public life without stigma. It would transform people’s mental health, allowing people to stress less about finances and give people the power to make their own decisions, free from the cruelties of Universal Credit. Perhaps most importantly, it would lift millions of people out of poverty and go some way to tackling racial economic injustice in the process.

So what lessons can broad based organising give us that could help the basic income movement take a step towards our vision of the world as it should be.

1. Local work matters. We should embrace organising for a basic income at a local level, allowing civil society to design and run their own pilots and then partner with the state to scale larger.
2. Power Analysis. Our strategy must be based on an understanding of interests of the decision makers in power. Those in power will come to basic income from different angles and this may mean forming coalitions of those on the left and right of the politics, most likely from an unusual alignment of interests. But without understanding power and what their interests are, we risk missing opportunities.
3. Hold the state to account. We can’t wait for charismatic politicians to come and solve our problems. John McDonnell’s commitment to put basic income pilots in the Labour Party’s next manifesto is a step forward but even if Labour wins the next election (which is more doubtful that it was year ago) there is no guarantee it would happen. McDonnell has himself said he would need a social movement of powerful civic and businesses leaders calling for it to prove there is appetite. The role of organising is to prepare that path for politicians to walk down and then hold them to account when in power.
4. Curb the market. Basic income isn’t going to be truly transformational unless it can seriously begin to curb the power of the market and rebalance society, and that means structural change. This requires us to intentionally think about how a basic income policy fits into a wider social justice agenda that includes a significant redistribution of wealth from the rich to poor, tax reform and action to urgently address climate change. We can’t allow basic income to unintentionally reduce the role of the state and civic institutions.
5. Strengthen institutions. If we want to create a deep, sustainable and lasting support for the idea people need to own it and have won it for themselves. We must intentionally put civic institutions at the centre of a movement and design future implementation to incentivise civic engagement. 

I’m keen to get people’s reflections. Leave a comment or get in touch on social media or by email!

My basic income travels start in San Diego as I visit my friend Emily and I end up hanging out with her surfer friends for a weekend in the quirky neighbourhood of Ocean Beach – or OB as the locals call it.

It happens that surfers – and their deservedness of welfare -were a key topic debate in the early 1990s. The liberal philosopher John Rawls, argued that “those who surf all day off Malibu must find a way to support themselves and would not be entitled to public funds” (1988). Basically he argues you shouldn’t be entitled to welfare payments if you opt for leisure activities over work. Its that argument that justifies our modern-day means-tested welfare system that forces people to prove they are looking for paid-work in order to get their welfare payment.

The Hawaii state legislature actually introduced a residency requirement for welfare in the 1970s in an attempt to stop surfing hippies moving to Hawaii just for its generous welfare program. Perhaps the earliest form of Benefit Tourism?

Philippe Van Parijs however, a prominent basic income advocate, wrote a response titled Why Surfers Should Be Fed (1991) making the case that people should have the right to pursue their own conception of the good life – and if that didn’t mean taking the first minimum wage job they could find, they shouldn’t be punished for it. In fact, by providing a universal basic income, it would allow everyone to pursue their conception of the good life, arguing that’s the true liberal meaning of freedom.

So what’s the good life for the surfers in San Diego today and what impact would a basic income have on them?

First up, there’s Emily. She runs her own social enterprise called Made by Minga selling hats and cactus bags made by women in rural Ecuador. She was recently invited to go to a high profile music festival to sell her products. But she was torn. Its a $2000 fee to have her stall there. She has to weigh up the travel time, the cost and the time to make her stand against the big opportunity of exposure for her brand and potential new contacts. When I leave, I sense that she might not go and not take this big opportunity.

With basic income, that decision would be much easier. A basic income of $1000 a month would be a $12,000 capital investment in her business – each year. It would allow her to take more risks. Maybe she’d focus another day a week of her time working on the project, invest it in new products, and pay for more opportunities to get her brand out there like the festival.

And its not just her, there’s an entrepreneurial spirit everywhere in OB. Everyone I meet seems to have their own little project they’re working on. Emily’s neighbour Lauren is working on a startup specialising in CBD products (which are everywhere in San Diego, cannabis is big business in California and very much part of the good life!).

We head to a beautiful house overlooking Sunset Cliffs to a ‘house gig’ where 5 local musicians are playing an intimate show to raise money for their friend’s new charity that supplies water filters to people in Central America. The musicians are talented and are contributing their art to the local community with joy and generosity. I think of Ireland, where the government are giving artists a year’s worth of benefit payments so they can pursue their art. Think about the creativity that would unleash! 

One of the musicians not playing that night is Garrett. He’s also got his own surf school in Santa Monica. As well as investing a basic income in his music and surf projects – including a business idea to help returning veterans get into surfing – he says a basic income would fundamentally allow him “pay the rent and stress less”. It takes a LOT of capital to make ends meet in California and basic income would go some way to relieving people’s financial stress.

Garrett compared UBI to monopoly. “Imagine if some people started the game already owning some of the board and some started with no money. That game sounds shit, I wouldn’t play that. But that’s reality for us. A basic income would allow us all to start the game with the same amount of money, every month. I’d play that game!”

Rawls misses the point by linking ‘deservedness’ to work and its that ‘protestant work ethic’ that pervades our society – that somehow your value as a human is only measured by your ability to work. Not only is this link increasingly problematic in a changing economy that’s taking away well-paid sustainable work on a rigged monopoly board but it denies us the right to being valued for just being human. It also underestimates the value that non-waged labour roles such as volunteering, caring for a child or a loved one or creating art and leisure can bring to society.

I leave San Diego feeling energised by the entrepreneurial spirit of the surfers. Be it starting their own businesses and charities or being musicians and artists, they are contributing to OB and wider society. 

A basic income would unleash their talents even further. We should feed them.

I’m a community organiser working for Citizens UK. I’m based in North London, supporting our growing alliances of civic institutions in Haringey, Barnet and Enfield build power and win change in their communities.

My introduction to community organising came as a student when I started a Living Wage Campaign at the University of Nottingham back in 2012.

I was excited to be part of a campaign that was winning (Citizens UK have now persuaded over 5,000 businesses to voluntarily pay the real Living Wage) but more importantly to have a theory of change that believed ordinary people have the power to be the agents of their own change.

The campaign has always been built on a diverse coalition of workers and community leaders coming together to challenge, and then work with, the state and the market to collectively drive up wages. We now see both major political parties in the UK talking about a ‘Living Wage’ but make no mistake, its been the work of organising that has taken this radical idea to the mainstream and has developed thousands of community leaders in the process.

But we have a saying at the Living Wage Campaign that ‘work is the surest way out of poverty’ and its been bugging me. I don’t think that’s true anymore. We now see the destabilising impact the gig economy has on workers lives, the rapidly changing world of work that automation is already bringing and a welfare system in Universal Credit that not only doesn’t work for people but has cruelty built in to its design. We have a growing crisis of insecurity.

For me, it now feels like ‘economic security’ is the surest way out of poverty. Which led me to Universal Basic Income.

Through involvement with Basic Income UK, I’ve been to conferences, round-table discussions and talks on Basic Income. But what’s consistently struck me is how the basic income conversation is being had by academics, policy experts and a handful of politicians and campaigners. Its been very rare to see people from civil society and the wider population at the table in this debate. 

If Basic Income is to ever be implemented, it needs a much broader coalition of supporters than it currently does and it needs a mass movement of people calling for it. That was true of the Living Wage Campaign back when it started in 2001 and I see community organising as the means of us getting there again.

So I’m left with that question… how can civil society advocate for a Universal Basic Income?

That question is taking up a lot of my headspace right now and I want to share my thinking. That’s why I’ve set up this blog. It’s why I’ve decided to travel to take lessons from other countries on this topic. Its why I’m a Churchill Fellow, thanks to the funding and support of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. Its why I’m still an organiser with Citizens UK – the best place to learn how to organise civil society for change.

Michael Pugh

Community Organiser

Churchill Fellow