Yesterday I attended a luncheon put on by Seattle's excellent Plymouth Housing Group, an innovative non-profit working to end homelessness in the city. Malcolm Gladwell -- staff writer at The New Yorker, author of Tipping Point and Blink, blogger, and public intellectual extraordinaire -- was the keynote speaker. (He was invited in large part thanks to his influential piece in the New Yorker arguing that problems like homelessness are "easier to solve than to manage.")
Opinions about Gladwell are mixed and deep-rooted. For my part, I think he's great. He basically lives the life I dream about: someone who takes obscure academic research and buried historical anecdotes and popularizes them for a broad audience. (And it could have been me in his shoes, dammit, if only I lived in NYC and were, uh, smarter. And more imaginative. And a better writer. Damn you Gladwell!)
Anyway, his talk was on social change. Stripped of the anecdotes, the basic thesis of the talk was that social change has three somewhat unexpected features:
- It almost always happens faster and cheaper than anybody predicts. See: Berlin Wall falling.
- It is typically brought about not by people with great political or economic power, but by people with great social power -- "connectors," as he calls them. These are folks who are part of an unusually large number of social circles, who can bring disparate groups together.
- It usually happens after a seemingly intractable problem has been reframed. The example here was the spread of seatbelt use in the U.S. For a long time it was a "government meddling" issue. Then a bunch of child-restraint laws were passed, and little Johnny started asking mom why she didn't buckle up, and it became a "family responsibility" issue. In a matter of just two or three years, seatbelt use rates soared from 15% to 65%.
I suppose the application of these insights to the environmental problems we face today is so obvious as to need no explanation.
One thing that shifted a bit in my thinking is that ... I think I've been preoccupied with getting the big political and economic forces of our time behind, say, tackling climate change. I've been somewhat dismissive of the "change your lightbulbs" school of activism practiced by, say, Laurie David. Gladwell's made me reconsider that a bit. Of course it's impossible to predict where and when sudden change will take hold, but for that very reason, any attempt at change, no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential, is worthwhile. Much food for thought. I hope to return to this in future posts.
Calling all radicals: Unite for Kerry-Boxer
Dispassion as the world ends: The absent heart of the great climate affair
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ebrown53717 Posted 4:45 am
11 Oct 2006
I'm tempted to connect the dots on this story with yesterday's comments about Christians and the environment and the ground swell that may be taking place over in our corner of, um, Creation. Some of the connectors are connecting in evangelical circles in particular; and as the discussion is reframed for our community as a fundamental faith issue, you may see the swell turn into a tsunami.
We can only pray... :)
Ed
http://careofcreation.org
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CyberBrook Posted 9:24 am
11 Oct 2006
I really appreciate you tipping us off to his speech and doing so in an elegant and concise way.
Here's some information on community organizing and social change that I got (mostly) from Rubin & Rubin, Community Organizing and Development.
"Community organizing will continue as it has for generations, solving immediate problems and helping to resolve the bigger issues of inequality, injustice, and the environment. Activism has created a vocabulary of responses, an understanding that a range of choices are available other than those permitted by top-down, authoritarian models. Each victory reduces the feeling of helplessness, empowers those involves, and builds capacity for future community efforts. Successful organizing efforts reinforce a culture of collective responsibility and make people aware of the possibility of change."
Organizing Issues
--people tend to support decisions they feel involved in making
--people think about abstract things, but worry about concrete things
--provide ideas and alternatives, but don't flood people with data
--listen carefully to what people feel, need, and want, including to what they say and don't say
--"learn to search out the rationalizations, treat them as rationalizations, and break through" (Alinsky)
Organizing Campaign
--define a problem
--document its extent (abstract with aggregate data and concrete with personal stories)
--frame the issue (create symbols, slogans, stories, etc.)
--publicize
--build alliances
--develop leadership (in yourself and others)
--target those who could affect a solution
--put direct pressures on the target
--ensure implementation
--claim victory
--begin a new campaign
(Alinsky: "pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."
Tactics must keep members involved and interested.)
Organizing Template
The M Factor (cf. The P Factor: product, price, placement, promotion):
mission (plan)
message (what's the point?)
mainstreaming (creating cultural resonance)
money (funding and resources)
mechanics (how to)
mapping (where best to organize, where best to marginalize)
might (strength and power)
marketing (getting the message out in appropriate ways)
media (using the mass media, supporting / creating alternative media)
management (organization)
measurement / market research (feedback)
mobilization (getting people organized and involved, developing capacity and leadership)
Organizing Advice
--examine your language (know your audience, be accurate, think about slanted language)
--don't let "no" stop you (hold firmly to your beliefs and passion-- persistence pays!)
--continue to educate yourself and others (keep learning facts, tricks, tactics, etc.)
--use the media to educate and pressure (get the media on your side, create alternative media)
--connect to history (show how this is one struggle in a long, proud tradition)
--practice political jujitsu (turn the energy of opponents against them)
--unite allies (create coalitions) and divide opponents (create wedge issues)
--be willing to do what it takes (and know what you're willing and unwilling to do)
--be prepared for a long and difficult struggle
Organizing Incentives
--be a winner, show victories
--make it fun, have fun
--develop camaraderie/friendships
--personalize the issues, personalize the target
--create buzz, excitement
--be cool
--make it easy, take it easy
--provide social and material benefits, free stuff
--give reinforcement, thanks, boosters, appreciation
--let people in, be open and inclusive, gracious and appreciative
--make people feel proud, meaningful, useful, successful, accomplished, and worthwhile
Organizing Reflections
--what's working, what isn't, and why?
--are means and ends balanced?
--going in the right direction?
--are tactics too militant or not militant enough?
--how can we get more people, orgs, and constituencies involved?
--how can we refine our message to make it better?
--how can we make things more win-win instead of zero-sum?
--how can we effectively address the roots and the puppeteer, not just the branches and the puppet?
"Lit by past successes, the path ahead is clear, though much remains to be done. Victories have built on each other, providing hope for future progress.... Activism is about creating social change, action by action, project by project."
Slavery was indeed an emergency, but as Howard Zinn notes in A People's History of the United States, "moral pressure would not do it alone, the blacks knew [Frederick Douglass and other black abolitionists]; it would take all sorts of tactics, from elections to rebellion."
Lois Gibbs says that facts and logic, morality and ethics, is vitally important, but never enough; there has to be so much pressure that they can't withstand.
Kevin Danaher says that the art of politics is uniting friends and dividing enemies.
Essentially, we have to raise the costs on our opponents so that their plans are no longer worth it, so that doing nothing is too much trouble, so that doing what we want becomes the least objectionable to them, while raising the hopes, spirits, and energy of our allies.
Eco-Eating: Eating as if the Earth Matters
http://www.brook.com/veg
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