This is the third post in our School of Political Leadership (SoPL) blog series! This year, 14 dynamic leaders are joining SoPL to build powerful advocacy campaigns that drive racial, economic, and environmental justice in our food and farm systems. Over six months, participants will dive into leadership training, strategy development, and mentorship—gaining the skills and support they need to create lasting change. Stay tuned as we follow their journey! 💡🌱✨
Aligning Resources for More Growing: SOFSA’s reflections on field and base-building at SoPL
By Micah Orieta
In the fall of 2024, after a handful of community listening sessions and working group meetings, our small team at the Syracuse Onondaga Food Systems Alliance was sitting on a couple of campaign ideas that needed some more structuring.
Earlier that year, we had explored the potential of establishing an Office of Urban Agriculture within the City of Syracuse. Though there was interest from partners and a few next steps identified, we felt that in order to rally people’s limited capacity, we needed to bring a lot of clarity and intentionality to the campaign. In came HEAL Food Alliance’s School of Political Leadership (SoPL).
When we joined the 2025 SoPL cohort, we had a goal, an idea of who we needed to talk to to make it happen, and a rough list of allies and partners that would support us in making this ask of our local government. Through the initial SoPL workshops, we learned about power mapping and strategy development, which allowed us to get real about the capacity it would take and the amount of people we would need to engage to make it successful. These tools allowed us to break the campaign down into manageable pieces, and illuminated blind spots, like not being clear on who our opposition could be.
Our fourth SoPLsession, on Field and Base Building, got even more granular. It challenged us to take each of our targets and really think about where our relationships with them stood and how to engage with them in a one-on-one setting. The HEAL team offered a framework for one-on-ones that revolved around storytelling and connection– it seeks to understand where the other person is coming from and how they relate to this work before making any ask of them, prioritizing trust over efficiency, while still leaving with clear next steps.
The practice for this session felt so awkward! We were asked to take turns roleplaying how we would lead one-on-ones with either targets or potential partners. While the whole group seemed to feel some resistance, everyone seemed to come out with some good insights. In my case, the roleplaying allowed me and my team-member to consider what an interaction might be with someone who might be on board with the cause but have sticky relationships with people in the coalition. We realized we needed to be ready with de-escalation tactics, firm arguments for why this campaign could work, and specific accountability measures to ensure follow-through.
The base-building session also led us to revisit our initial engagement strategy with allies. We’ve since considered how to carefully move between one-on-ones and group settings as we build our base, to ensure that different folks have the space and tools they need to be able to fully show up to the collaboration table.
We’re excited to put these insights to work as we continue moving this campaign forward. Already, the concentrated strategizing work we’ve done has started to pay off. Having a clearer vision has enabled us to ask for better advice as we get into the nitty gritty. One-on-one practice left us well prepared as we had our first official meeting with an elected official about the campaign.
I feel energized for our next session, all about communications. Now that we have a broad-to-narrow vision of the campaign, and are thinking about how to engage individuals, I’m ready to think about how to successfully build public buy-in. We have some ideas up our sleeve, and I’m sure they’ll benefit from some refinement as a result of listening to other folks share their strategies.
It has been so valuable to have dedicated space for learning, and to interrupt the daily rhythms that ask us to go go go without getting clear on the bigger picture. Thanks to the leadership at SoPL, this campaign that just months ago felt nebulous and unachievable suddenly feels clear and approachable. I’m itching to see how it goes.
Micah is the Food Systems & Network-Building Organizer at the Syracuse-Onondaga Food Systems Alliance, where they take on a portfolio of work that includes running SOFSA’s communications, farm-to-school advocacy, event planning support, working group facilitation, and more. Micah has a background in Geography and Food Studies, and got interested in Food Sovereignty after seeing how the movement saved people’s lives in the wake of Hurricanes Maria and Irma in Puerto Rico in 2017. Micah loves crafting, swimming, and instigating beloved dogs into having zoomies.