If You Want to Win, You've Got to Fight: A Guide to Effective Transportation Advocacy

Your transit and street safety dreams are within your reach. While challenging our dangerous car-centric systems can feel daunting, you can win, and this book is here to help. In If You Want to Win, You've Got to Fight, transportation activist and advocacy consultant Carter Lavin provides a roadmap for transforming passion into political power.

Whether your dream is to make your community safer and more sustainable by getting protected bike lanes, improving bus service, or expanding high-speed rail, this book provides step-by-step guidance on organizing for change. Through advice from dozens of advocates across the United States and Lavin's own experience with over 100 campaigns, readers will learn transportation-specific strategies to win. Critically, the book teaches readers how to deftly navigate their political, cultural, and historical contexts to adapt their advocacy efforts and make allies -- from local businesses to transit agency staff to key decision makers. Action points at the end of each chapter and a toolbox of campaign tactics at the end of the book enable readers to move seamlessly from brainstorming into concrete action.

Whether you are just starting out or have engaged in transportation advocacy for a while, the tools and insights in this book will help you develop, plan, and execute the transportation-related campaign of your choosing. Professionals in the transportation space will also discover how to be an effective advocate while working within the system.

Accessible and inspirational, If You Want to Win, You've Got to Fight will be a game-changer for people who want our communities to prioritize people over cars.

Your transportation dreams are all possible. Are you ready to fight for them?


Author: Carter Lavin
Publisher: Island Press
Published: 11/13/2025
Pages: 216
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 8.96h x 6.15w x 0.57d
ISBN: 9781642833737

About the Author
Carter Lavin is a climate and transportation activist who helps organizations and individuals hone strategy and build political power. Carter has directly supported and trained non-profits, candidates, grassroots groups, businesses, and hundreds of individuals to win on the issues that matter to them at the local, regional, and state level. He has written for Streetsblog and Convergence Magazine. He lives in Oakland, California and is a co-founder of the transportation advocacy group Transbay Coalition and the board game design company Serious Mischief.