Strikes without unions: Walmart

Posted on October 12, 2012 by David S. Meyer

Workers (“associates” to their employers) have walked off the job at several Walmarts sprawled across the United States.  The workers at Walmart, like most workers in retail, and most workers in the private sector, and most workers in the United States, aren’t unionized, so organizing a job action is pretty difficult.  Walmart workers haven’t pledged any loyalty to a union, so they can’t be called off the job site; there’s no collective contract or protections, and unemployment is high–particularly among the low wage workers Walmart tries to hire.

It’s hard to get attention for any movement during the final stretch of a national election campaign.  Journalists–and even your colleagues at the water cooler or coffee machine–are more likely to discuss Joe Biden’s smile or smirk these days than growing economic inequality or the plight of low wage workers.  With the beginnings of the walk-out, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW)has succeeded, at least for the moment, at breaking into the mass media.

Most reports suggest relatively few workers have yet taken the risk of walking off the job: as of yesterday, 88 workers (out of more than 2.2 million that Walmart claims to employ), spread across 28 stores in a dozen cities.  But they’ve been able to get attention for their grievances: very low wages, poor working conditions, and retaliatory action (reduced and unfavorable scheduling) against workers trying to complain–or even organize a union (this, by the way, is illegal).

And there may be more to come.  Making Change at Walmart, the unionization effort sponsored by the UFCW, has threatened a strike for Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, and probably the most important sales day all year for mass market retailers.

How can a non-unionized workforce strike?  It would be easy for Walmart to fire and replace workers, particularly with the current employment climate.  Everyone knows this.  But you don’t need to have to get many, much less most, to walk off the job to make a difference.  UFCW can organize pickets and protests, leaflet campaigns and rallies which could compete with holiday circulars in offering information about the mega-retailer.

Would-be employees might walk down the street to Target.  More significantly, Christmas shoppers can drive their minivans to the next giant mall parking lot for Christmas shopping.  Walmart doesn’t have to lose many shoppers to lose millions of dollars in sales.  Everyone knows this as well.  At a time when Walmart has been working hard to appeal to more upscale consumer by featuring organic food and green energy products, here’s a set of hassles that those consumers are likely to notice.

So, labor organizers don’t have to get huge mobilization to make some trouble.  Is that enough?

What can UFCW organizers get?  At once, it’s a little glimmer of creative labor activism in a time when unions have taken defeat after defeat.  They may be able to win some protections for Walmart workers trying to organize, acknowledging that Walmart has many other tactics for preventing its labor force from unionizing.  They may be able to send a message to Walmart’s retail competitors, most of whom don’t pay any better.

They may be able to forge alliances with the community activists across the country who have opposed Walmarts because of their adverse effects on local businesses, downtowns, and traffic.  (Low prices haven’t prevented lots of people from finding fault with Walmart!)

They may even be able to break into election rhetoric at some level, reviving the discussion of economic inequality that Occupy put on the public agenda.  With the onset of collective action, nothing is certain.  It’s certain, however, that quiescence hasn’t worked very well for low wage workers.

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Protesting the debates

Posted on October 3, 2012 by David S. Meyer

The frame of political discussion in the United States has steadily narrowed over the past year, as the election has crowded out attention for almost anything else.  Tonight the scope of politics will be limited to a small stage in Denver, where the major party candidates will hold a joint appearance, mentally rifling through prepared answers and canned ad libs.  Outside the camera frame, activists will be working hard to grab the spotlight and bring attention to their own issues.

When you go to vote in most states, you may be surprised to see more names than “Barack Obama” and “Mitt Romney,” although those other candidates have gotten precious little attention from mainstream media.  Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Jill Stein have done the best in securing access to the ballot: Stein will be a choice for voters in 37 states;  Johnson and the Libertarian Party will be on the ballot everywhere–if a few lawsuits work out.

They won’t be on stage, however, and all third party candidates together are unlikely to poll more than 1 percent of the vote.  Third party candidates rarely* influence the election or the political debate, and they’ll tell you it’s because they’re excluded from the debates and media coverage more generally.  Debate organizers and journalists explain they don’t generate enough attention to merit attention.  You can jump into that loop anywhere you want.

So the debate will retread familiar ground with familiar candidates, each well-prepared, disciplined, and determined to avoid saying something embarrassing.  Governor Romney, trailing in the polls, will look for an opportunity to deliver a memorable zinger but there’s unlikely to be much new information in an event staged to influence a few undecided voters in one of a half-dozen states.

Nonetheless, national attention and hundreds of journalists are in Denver today because of  the debate.  This is an apparent opportunity activists can stomach squandering.  The Greens and Libertarians will demonstrate outside, demanding access to the debate and the campaign more generally.  The Greens are behind a campaign called Occupy the Commission on Presidential Debates and is circulating petitions calling for a much lower threshold of support for candidates to qualify for inclusion in the debates (1 percent in polls, rather than the 15 percent the commission demands).  Gary Johnson is suing for inclusion in the debates.  Using the forces of the market, Governor Johnson’s supporters have written to the debates sponsors, and at least two, Phillips Electronics and the YWCA, have withdrawn their support for the debate.

The media mash around the debate is also an opportunity for activists with even weaker prospects for getting to the stage.  Occupy the Debates is working to promote a broader debate on the country’s problems and potential solutions, organizing protests and rallies in Denver, and promoting dialogues and meetings nation-wide.  From its statement of purpose:

Occupy the Debates, the People’s Dialogue, seeks to demonstrate the disconnect between the presidential candidates of the two corporate parties and the people of the United States whom they are supposed to represent…
 Occupy the Debates rejects the pay-to-play structure of the dominant system and recognizes that candidates already shedding light on populist solutions will not be invited to the podium. Therefore, in order to expand the dialogue, Occupy the Debates encourages local Occupy’s to organize activities the debates. Among the activities being planned are canvassing the community to hear their views, teach-ins, truth-telling sessions, general assemblies and conferences to discuss issues of concern and possible solutions.

Occupy Denver is organizing events, including protests, to draw attention to a foreign policy debate that’s been filtered out of the mainstream discussion.  (Both Johnson and Stein would agree.)

In activist life, this is about getting a few lines in a news story or a brief picture and sentence in a broadcast report, all to suggest a broader story than each candidate’s canned applause lines.  It’s an uphill struggle.

* Ralph Nader consistently claims that his candidacy didn’t matter; it didn’t cost Al Gore the 2000 election, and that there wasn’t much difference between Vice President Gore and George W. Bush anyway.  His audiences don’t generally believe him.

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Global campaigns to surround parliaments

Posted on September 29, 2012 by David S. Meyer

We saw the reemergence of broad and disruptive anti-austerity protests in Greece and Spain this week.  Although the causes of fiscal crisis and dramatically increased borrowing costs in the two countries, the proposed remedy from Europe was the same: strict

General strike in Greece, September 26, 2012

austerity, based on downsizing spending and government.  There’s doubt whether this strategy will preserve the Euro, in Greece particularly, but everyone seems certain that it will mean harsh declines in the standard of living for most people living through it, and no one suggests this that austerity will mean even a relatively quick correction.  The Spanish and Greek governments are bracing for years of cutbacks.

Every time a new round of reforms is announced, people take to the streets.  Although most people seem to want to save the Euro, most people also seem to think that protecting the people is even more important the defending the currency.  In Greece, activists staged a general strike, and some took to the streets of Athens throwing petrol bombs.  It’s hard to imagine that governments can continue to tighten fiscal constraints further, step by step, and not provoke even more disruptive protests.  Importantly, these actions are not spontaneous, but are organized by groups with broad bases of support and particular interests and constituencies to defend.  The unions are critical here.

In Spain, thousands of protesters tried to surround the parliament in opposition to austerity policies, and the Catalonian independence movement reemerged.  Policy makers are caught between domestic democratic pressures and the demands of mostly German bankers.  There’s not an obvious or easy solution for governments.  The protests are raising the costs of austerity; presently, most elected officials don’t see viable alternatives.  Meanwhile, riot police are defending the parliament with force, including rubber bullets, and activists are streaming video of their efforts (http://www.livestream.com/ICBcn?t=782341).

Activists elsewhere have seized upon the reemergence of broad public protests against austerity to try to restart their own campaigns.  Occupy Wall Street has posted a call for a global “surround the Congress” campaign, announcing protests in major cities around the world today.  And Adbusters has announced a Halloween Party in Washington, DC (October 31).

Days before a presidential election in the United States, it’s hard for me to imagine a huge turnout in DC.  Even if  Adbusters describes the election as a choice between Coke and Pepsi, most activists are going to see more substantial differences between administrations headed by Barack Obama or Mitt Romney.  But in European countries embracing austerity, where elections have generated broad coalitions or caretaker technocratic governments, it’s easier to imagine that frustrated people will see no more promising approach than street protest.

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Perils on the journey from activist to elected official (Akin edition)

Posted on September 28, 2012 by David S. Meyer

Rightwing Watch is promoting a video of Representative Todd Akin, Republican candidate for Missouri’s US Senate seat, acknowledging an arrest long ago for his ongoing efforts against abortion.  Here’s the video that’s everywhere at the moment:

I doubt that many observers will be surprised that Rep. Akin’s opposition to abortion is deeply felt, nor that he has employed various methods to try to stop legal access to abortion.  He has yet to provide the details of the particular protest, more than twenty years ago, that apparently put him, very briefly, in jail.  He has said, however, that his actions were peaceful.

There was a great deal of anti-abortion activism in the early 1990s.  Two decades takes us just about back to the Summer of Mercy, in which anti-abortion activists staged mass demonstrations and clinic blockades at selected sites across the country.  At right is a picture from Wichita, Kansas, posted by anti-abortion activist, Jill Stanek.

Is Rep. Akin’s willingness to engage in civil disobedience on behalf of his beliefs important information to Missouri voters?  I can’t imagine that this new bit of information changes the way Akin’s opponents feel about him.  Surely his record over more than twenty years in the Missouri and US legislatures offers ample evidence of his political vision and commitments.  And unlike other Republicans, say Governor Mitt Romney, Akin is unlikely to have had difficulty convincing voters of the depth and strength of his opposition to abortion.

Is it the fact that Rep. Akin was willing to risk arrest?  Liberal activists, even members of Congress, have risked arrest for causes they saw as important.  At left, see Representative Ron Dellums, a Democrat from California, who was arrested for non-violently blockading the South African embassy.  Rep. Dellums worked inside and outside Congress to end US support of the apartheid regime.  He wasn’t alone;  Republican Lowell Weicker, Senator from Connecticut, was one of many members of Congress who went to jail after protesting outside the South African embassy in 1985.  Much more recently, Democratic Representatives Jim McGovern (Mass.) and Jim Moran (Virginia) joined George Clooney and his father in protesting for human rights in Sudan.

Obviously, these aren’t the same issues, and most readers are unlikely to react the same way to each struggle.  But the Akin story underscores the extent to which non-violent civil disobedience has become a staple social movement tactic in American social movement politics.  People protest when they think it might matter, often after finding frustration with working exclusively through conventional political channels.  Rep. Akin now has the opportunity to own that tradition.  His opponents would be wise to focus on his motivations and beliefs, rather than his willingness to go to jail for them.

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Policing police at Davis

Posted on September 27, 2012 by David S. Meyer

Nearly a year after a campus police office at the University of California pepper sprayed students nonviolently protesting against tuition hikes–under the banner of Occupy–the University has reached a settlement with the students.  The LA Times reports that the police overreaction will cost the school nearly $1,000,000–$30,000 to each of the 21 students and $250,000 to the attorneys for the students.

John Pike, the officer who sprayed the student and became an internet sensation, is no longer working for the University.  Linda Katehi, the Chancellor whose leadership deficiencies contributed to the situation, remains in her job, and her immediate tasks include writing a formal letter of apology to each of the students.

One million dollars is a lot of money in the University of California, particularly in an extremely difficult budget environment.  The settlement should provide a powerful message to campus police and administrators throughout the system–and across the country–about how to police their own students.  I expect that campus police chiefs will be receiving long memos about appropriate force and administrators will think a third or fourth time before authorizing strong police action.  The settlement is a victory for campus-based activists for all sorts of causes.

But the larger battle about the future of the University of California, Occupy, or even tuition at the University, is still very much in the air.  Protest has absolutely subsided, and Californians will vote on a series of temporary tax hikes in November.

Should Proposition 30 fail at the polls, University administrators have promised program cuts and tuition hikes.  Some students, no doubt, working to make sure that doesn’t happen.  If they lose at the polls, they’ll be out in the streets–with others.  There will be police, but it will take a little bit more disruption before the pepper spray comes out.

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Celebrities of all sorts extend Pussy Riot

Posted on September 23, 2012 by David S. Meyer

When Aung San Suu Kyi visited Washington, DC last week to pick up the Congressional Gold Medal, she made time to meet not only with the president, Secretary of State, and leaders of Congress, but also the husband and child of one of the imprisoned members of punk protest bank, Pussy Riot.

Congress had awarded Suu Kyi its highest civilian honor in recognition of her brave, long, and very difficult struggle for democratic reform in Myanmar.  With the beginnings of what seem to be very serious moves toward reform, Suu Kyi has only just been able to leave her home country and stop by to pick up the medal, awarded in 2008, nearly two decades after she was placed under House arrest by Myanmar’s military government, and seventeen years after she had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Daughter of the assassinated commander of the Burma Independence Army, Suu Kyi started life with wealth and status that she deployed in the struggle for democracy.  Her visibility, coupled with physical courage and commitment, and a consistent and articulate moral position, enabled her to survive 15 years of house arrest, drawing attention to the violations of human rights in Myanmar.  (Take a look at the brief biography posted at the Nobel Prize site for more detail.)  In a moment when there is little common ground between Republicans and Democrats, there was universal acclaim for Suu Kyi in Washington.  Senator John McCain (Arizona Republican) described her as his hero.

Suu Kyi is now a member of parliament, but the transition to democracy in Myanmar is far from complete.  Still, Suu Kyi obviously sees her struggle as somewhat broader.  At an event sponsored by Amnesty International, she called upon the Russian government to release (video) the members of Pussy Riot, who project a somewhat different image than the Nobel laureate.

When an outsider gains recognition from authorities, there is always a challenge about how to use the newly acquired publicity and resources.  It’s easy for some to forget the years on the outside–or in prison–while enjoying new access to power. And it’s risky to extend the struggle to potentially less popular fronts.

Suu Kyi’s decision to share her spotlight, her credibility, and her struggle with the young women of Pussy Riot reflects her ability to see commonalities that others might miss.  Their struggle, she said explicitly, is her struggle, and it is for human rights and democracy.  Her efforts will be an asset for the band, providing publicity and likely some comfort and hope during a difficult time.

I was reminded of the words of Eugene Debs, an American socialist sentenced to ten years in prison for opposing US entry into World War I and encouraging young men to resist the draft:

Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

Supporting Pussy Riot may be the least important thing that Aung San Suu Kyi has done for democracy in Myanmar, yet it provides a very clear indication to the rest of us about the way she sees the world and her life.  She’s a hero.

Pussy Riot continues to garner other support as well.  Yoko Ono presented the “LennonOno Grant for Peace” to Pyotr Verzilov and his 4-year old daughter, Gera.  They are husband and daughter of Nadia Tolokonnikova, one of the three imprisoned Pussy Riot members.

Yoko Ono’s support is also extremely valuable to Pussy Riot’s members, as well as to other democratic reformers in Russia, even if her path to celebrity was somewhat different from Aung Sang Suu Kyi’s.

Both women have been able to move far faster than governments.

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Anti-Occupy demonstration in New York is tiny

Posted on September 21, 2012 by David S. Meyer

Anti-Occupy protesters turned up outside Rockefeller Center yesterday, demonstrating against those who would speak for the 99 percent.  The rally was organized by Americans for Prosperity, which was founded–and substantially funded–by the Koch brothers.  AFP was one of the most important national groups supporting the Tea Party, particularly in its early days.

AFP clearly meant to demonstrate a public counterweight to Occupy, which had commemorated its birthday a few days earlier with vigorous demonstrations.  The politics were explicit:  The Guardian quotes New Jersey AFP state director, Steve Lonegan:

The Occupy Wall Street crowd is nothing but a fringe element of malcontents bent on mayhem and destruction.  These are people who despise free enterprise. They are not attacking Wall Street. They are attacking the very freedoms that everyday Americans cherish to pursue their own dreams and succeed.

On a weekday–and without a chapter in New York City–AFP was able to turn out a few dozen people.  And it’s not clear they were all Tea Partiers.  Well-dressed provocateurs turned up with signs and slogans they thought might embarrass the Tea Partiers (at left, for example).

The Occupy commemoration, which generated numbers the the Wall Street Journal estimated as over 1,000 in Manhattan, and sympathy demonstrations across the nation, was widely portrayed as a sign of the movement’s fading.  Then again, unlike AFP, Occupy will not be sponsoring a $25 million ad campaign in support of a presidential candidate (AFP’s candidate is still Mitt Romney).

So, does this mean anything?  One message is that the Tea Party’s capacity to mobilize at the grassroots isn’t what it used to be–not that Manhattan was ever a stronghold.   At the moment, most of the energy and money is still going into the electoral campaign.  If President Obama is reelected, however, it’s likely that the groups underneath the Tea Party will try to resurrect the grassroots mobilization approach of 2009.  Organizers successfully steered that earlier wave of activism into electoral influence in the Republican Party and in the midterm elections.

Will they be able to go back to the grassroots?

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Is Occupy one?

Posted on September 16, 2012 by David S. Meyer

I mean: is Occupy now one year old?  Is it still around?  Is it unified?

A year ago on September 17, the Occupation of Zuccotti Park began, with a beautiful poster and far less participation and promise than it soon showed.  Journalists and activists want to make sense of what’s left now that the Occupations are gone.  There will be commemorations and evaluations everywhere.  (I participated in one yesterday at Marketplace;  the 20 minute interview condensed to 5-7, which is how these things go.)

Most evaluations are unlikely to be very optimistic.  Occupations across the United States–and around the world, were surprising, very visible, disruptive, and unpredictable.  The organization was confusing to outsiders, and the goals of the occupations were hard to pin down, not the least because activists differed in both their ultimate objectives and in their visions of how to achieve them.  Occupations saw their diversity as a strength, and were reluctant to adopt organizations that silenced or back burnered anyone.  In the name of democracy and horizontalism, nothing very specific came to the fore.  But critics were reluctant to acknowledge the very clear concerns with political and economic inequality.

The unwieldy and time consuming governance at the Occupations made it hard for Occupiers to agree on anything beyond continuing their encampments, and local governments refused to let them do so. Once the occupations ended, Occupy was a lot harder for journalists to cover and to make sense of, and much less visible to a broader public.  To be sure, meetings and actions continued, but without an overarching unity.  And if you weren’t following the right sites or plugged into an active network, Occupy just slipped from visibility.

Elections crowd out social movements in America, sucking up attention, activists, and money.  Many people redirect their efforts from issues to candidates, compromising a message for a messenger.

The Tea Party, still visible in national politics, mostly through a few Washington-based groups and the Republican Party, has made this move vigorously.  With some disappointment, Tea Party organizations and activists have embraced their 29th choice for the Republican nomination, Governor Mitt Romney because, whatever his flaws, they see him as preferable to another term of President Obama.

Occupy activists were determined not to let this happen, to face a fate like that of the movement that helped provoke them, to wind up sucked in and sold out by a politician who would use them offering only slight reforms.  They refused to build formal organizations, open national offices, or endorse candidates, emphasizing the grassroots as an alternative approach.  But there are risks associated with that strategy as well: lack of a clear message, lack of visibility, difficulties in mobilizing broadly, and difficulties in influencing mainstream politics.  That’s what we now see.

So, activists are trying to use the anniversary to revivify Occupy–or at least remind Americans that they and their concerns are still out there.

#S17NYC, representing the 99 percent, will work to resume an Occupation “with non-violent civil disobedience and flood the area around it with a roving carnival of resistance.”  Several groups have already turned out to protest, and police have arrested dozens of would-be Occupiers in New York City and elsewhere.  The authorities will certainly be better prepared and less tolerant of Occupations than they were a year earlier.

It will be hard to re-raise a mass movement during the last phase of the electoral campaign, but Occupy campaigns across the country will continue to search for events and issues that will spark the imagination in the same way that the first Occupation did.

In the meantime, thousands of young people cut their political teeth sleeping outside in public spaces around the United States.  They’re not done, even if we don’t see what they’re doing now.

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Arab Fall

Posted on September 16, 2012 by David S. Meyer

To paraphrase the old Boston politician, revolution ain’t beanbag.  The wave of revolutionary action across the Middle East and North Africa about a year and a half ago captured the imagination of democratic reformers around the world.  But it wasn’t only democratic reformers who had grievances with their authoritarian governments.

Arab Spring toppled, or dislodged, a few governments, with the aid of local (Egypt) or distant (Libya) military support.  Establishing new inclusive governments, however, is even more difficult, particularly when the anti-authoritarian coalitions were so broad.

Shays’s Rebellion

Revolutions raise the aspirations of the people who participate in them.  They are less likely to take the world as it is for granted, and more likely to try, again, to bring about the world they imagine.  (Remember, the period after the American revolution was filled with rebellions against unresponsive or intrusive state governments, and sometimes they were violent.  We don’t even have to go to France to make the point.)

Arab Spring demonstrated widespread dissatisfaction and the power of politics in the streets.  When the pace or direction of change disappoints, activists will seize upon new opportunities or provocations (even a cheap and nasty video produced with the intention to irritate and agitate) to mobilize again.  The new regimes are likely to lack both the capacity to maintain order and the will to repress ruthlessly.  And it can’t be surprising that activist targets would now include the distant powers, like the United States, that had supported the authoritarian governments in the past.

Just as Arab Spring spread across states where activists saw themselves as having similar grievances and similar–or common–opponents, the Arab Fall is spreading, so far targeting the United States as well as local governments.

Are there lessons here?

First, making democratic change from below is hard work that doesn’t end when the first round of bad guys is forced out, and, second, allies in the first round of activism can become bitter opponents when it comes time to build a replacement.

Third, while great powers are attracted to doing business with ostensibly stable regimes, with whom they can make deals, those regimes will be stable–only until they’re not.  And the moment of collapse may come suddenly.  The more abusive the governments revolutionaries toppled were, the greater their grievances with those powers that supported the authoritarians will be.

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Chicago teachers, commitment and numbers

Posted on September 15, 2012 by David S. Meyer

Thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of people rallied to support the Chicago Teachers Union, as its representatives moved closer to a negotiated agreement with the city that would bring them back to work–and send 350,000 students back to school.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel promised education reform when he took office, and his ideas included a longer school day, a longer school year (currently, Chicago schools are open for 170 days a year, short by US standards, and the United States has the shortest school year of any rich country), more charter schools, and more vigorous, test-based (value added) evaluation of teachers.

The teachers union has obvious gripes: they want to be compensated for more work time, are reluctant to cede jobs to the charters–which haven’t generally demonstrated greater effectiveness, and they want input on their evaluation, knowing that the value-added measures have been wildly inconsistent.

Taking the teachers on strike was a high risk move.  Parents want the best for their kids, and generally want their teachers treated fairly, but they also want their kids in school.  Union leaders know their support will erode over time.  Mobilizing a large turnout at a rally is an indication that they have support–at least now.  And even the lowest estimates of the turnout far exceed the demonstrations at the Republican and Democratic conventions.  The New York Times reports supporters came from Wisconsin and Minnesota, as well as the neighborhoods of Chicago.

But even if the teachers turned out the 50,000 people they hoped for–or more–that doesn’t necessarily reflect their support among the voters of Chicago.  The union mobilized and demonstrated the intense commitment of its supporters, which can be powerful.  But Mayor Emanuel is at least as concerned with a much larger number of people in the City who won’t show up at a rally, but might turn out to vote.

In the streets and parks, the intensity of commitment matters a great deal, but in other kinds of politics, numbers trumps strong commitment.  Organizers have to take risks about translating their support to different kinds of political contests.  Bet that every Chicago Teachers Union organizer remembers how vital and exciting the demonstrations in Madison, Wisconsin were, just over a year ago.  People who cared a great deal marched through the streets in the winter, and slept in the Capitol.  Feeling the tremendous enthusiasm of their side, they staged a recall of Governor Scott Walker–and suffered a harsh and demoralizing defeat, as larger numbers of people who were less engaged had a chance to weigh in.

The CTU will try to get as much as it can in negotiations now, and the demonstration adds some leverage.  The City is eager to get its children back in school, and union leaders know their greatest advantage is now–or soon.  They’ll be eager to claim a victory before the less committed get involved.

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