There are folks who will say that passing city council resolutions is a waste of time. And they can be right. There are plenty of examples of resolutions that are weak and performative. But this attitude may also simply belie a different analysis of what it means to organize at the city council level.
Sometimes these folks are looking for specific policy wins that can’t be had at the City Council level, and they don’t know or understand the opportunity and potential that city council resolutions provide as tools for local power-building, so they erroneously dismiss in its entirety.
This also comes from thinking like government staff/officials/policy wonks and not like organizers. The latter has goals that are more expansive than the former, including things that won’t be as important to, for example, city staff, who are focused on the nuts-and-bolts of policy.
Unfortunately, this dismissal of bigger-picture city council action helps encourage folks to ignore our most local elected officials entirely, allowing those local bodies to run so far under the radar that most people don’t even know the names of their most local elected officials. Instead their attention is drawn to the President or other higher-level officials, over whom they have very little actual power.
We can say with confidence that city residents, if they will work to effectively organize and exercise it, have much more power over their most local elected officials, who, incidentally, compose the beginning of a political pipeline to higher office.
In 2026 in WA District 32, there are four city council members running for higher office (Chris Roberts and Keith Scully of Shoreline City Council and Jenna Nand and Will Chen from Edmonds City Council). Current State Rep Cindy Ryu and State Senator Jesse Salomon both started on the Shoreline City Council.
We ignore these local bodies at our peril. They essentially provide paid training to those wishing to eventually seek higher office. Were they unopposed when first elected? Were they appointed to a vacant seat? Are they the people we want to see moving up the ladder?
Model resolutions on issues that resonate with voters is an excellent tool for getting folks engaged with these bodies. Shoreline Res560 in Feb. ’26 proved that.
It’s about using the right tool for the job, and if the desired outcome is bigger than just a specific policy win, it changes the tool we need to use, or how we use it. We must think like organizers, not like city staff. We must not self-limit ourselves to what we think can happen, but ask for what we want to happen.
This process, while always a work-in-progress, is based on over two decades of organizing in the Midwest Academy model of direct action organizing and its tool, the Strategy Chart. It also takes inspiration from large-scale city council resolution campaigns like Medicare4All, and builds on Move to Amend’s model resolution template.
To focus specifically on city councils and engender a long-term habit of organizing requires a tool that is multi-issue but accessible to emerging organizers who are starting from scratch. This is where the model resolution comes in.
Model resolutions that amplify established issue expert organizations are exactly the tool needed to generate engagement at scale (multiple cities without reinventing the wheel). That said, community-group resolutions that don’t amplify existing organizations are often performative and weaker than they could be, which is not helpful, allowing those councils that pass such resolutions to take the credit without actually taking a stand or effecting change.
But for many of the issues we want to promote, the cities may not actually have much (or any) power. This doesn’t mean there aren’t ways for them to take a stand that is both substantive to them and to the grassroots community. So the key is to get as much out of the model resolution process as possible, and that goes beyond thinking like city staff or government officials.
Following are some characteristics and tricks that help make model resolutions as effective as they can be for city councils, while serving as the rallying and engagement points that are their ultimate power:
- Two pages or less. This makes it printable on 1 two-sided sheet of paper.
- Amplifies an established expert organization’s work. Don’t reinvent the wheel! And, more critically, acknowledge and respect the work of experts in the issue area, especially if led by those who are directly impacted by the issue. Organizers do the organizing, experts do the experting.
- Is an issue that will resonate with people across the state (or further!). Again, don’t reinvent the wheel. Political platforms exist because they resonate widely. Rely on them. We know the major issues we face. If necessary, use a rubric to analyze issues, like the table for “Choosing and Issue” in the Midwest Academy‘s manual Organizing for Social Change, Chapter 3 (out of print, but a scanned PDF here). And remember the three principles of direct action organizing (Organizing for Social Change, Ch 2): 1. Win real, immediate, concrete improvements in peoples’ lives 2. Give people a sense of their own power 3. Alter the relations of power (in this case, showing a city council you have the ability to mobilize people and that they will be held accountable, which equals political collective-power).
- Connects the local to the State or Federal (ex., asks Council to endorse or oppose legislation). This is an easy way to make a resolution more than performative, because they will want to think about what they’re doing and learn about the legislation before taking what is a substantive and concrete, even if limited, stand.
- Connects the big-picture issue to the City itself. Some Councils use the excuse of a resolution lacking a ‘local connection’ to get out of having to consider important issues, despite the fact that big-picture issues affect people, and people live in their cities. By explicitly stating the connection, they can’t deny it. For example, “The council should endorse Medicare4All because medical debt affects people in our city, too, and can result in homelessness, which our city experiences.”
- Asks the Council to take substantive action. If the issue is generally not within their power to take action, then ask them to endorse legislation. Whatever the action is, it must be strong enough to force councilmembers to take an actual stand, not just get away with performative statements. The former is inspiring to residents, organizers, and activists. The latter is deflating.
- Will inspire residents to mobilize to City Council meetings. A major goal of all this is to get folks engaged with their city councils. Every first-time attendee is a win. Every one of them who thinks, “Maybe I should run for office” is an achievement. People resonate with big-picture issues more than they do the nuts-and-bolts of city function (despite how important the latter is in actuality).
- It explains, educates, and markets the issue/campaign. Model resolutions aren’t model legislation, they are ways to get the word out and educate both residents and elected officials. They are marketing and organizing tools. For example, residents aren’t the only folks who may not understand something like Ranked Choice Voting. Most elected officials themselves don’t really understand the very systems (and their failures) that got them elected.
- Think like an organizer, not like city staff. Our job is to make the ask. It’s not our job to put it in the city’s format and “legalese”, and we don’t need to be attorneys or policy wonks to write effective model resolutions. And we certainly shouldn’t self-limit ourselves on behalf of the City. Organizers and staff have different priorities. If you judge the value of the resolution based on its policy characteristics, you may be disappointed, but if you judge it on its organizing potential and outcomes, it’s a win, regardless of what happens. You may have to push back on councilmembers who are thinking like city staff and want to get rid of parts they don’t think have strength or value, such as the endorsement of state legislation. This is also why we post both versions – what we asked for (model resolution) and what we got – so folks can compare later.
- Neither a slam-dunk nor something councils can dismiss outright. If it’s too easy and performative, it’ll get unanimous support and give the elected officials a free pass. If it’s too out there it will be dismissed outright. The ideal is something that will garner mixed (but hopefully passing) votes, exposing the values of our elected officials and letting us know who may need to be challenged in the next election.
- How does this resolution set the stage for future action? A somewhat generic, values-based resolution may not have much in terms of teeth, but it can be leveraged for future resolutions that do have teeth. For example, Shoreline Res542 (2025) set the stage to ask the Council to pass the resolution to Fortify! WA Against Anti-Trans Initiatives and Wealthy Exremists(2026). Efforts that build on each other are also, of course, more opportunities to keep and get more folks engaged with their city councils.
- Community- and power-building are the ultimate goals, regardless of the resolution’s outcome. Sometimes even “losing” is the greater victory, as it will energize the base with indignation, and set the effort up for a future win.
Now, are city councils going to pass the model resolutions verbatim? Likely not. And that’s okay. This is, again, why every posting on the Fortify! website about a local effort includes the model resolution (“What we asked for”) and the passed resolution (“What we got”), so folks can judge for themselves the action of the council, and know who voted for and against it – useful info for future elections.
Resolutions can be performative or the wrong tool for the job, but by thinking like an organizer, model resolutions can be an effective way for an issue-expert organization’s work to be amplified in a space that has been too-long ignored (and ignored at our long-term peril).
