Is protest contagious?

Posted on December 29, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Thousands rally against Putin in Moscow

As the year comes to an end, unexpected and potentially powerful protest movements are appearing in unexpected places, including China, Russia, and Syria, threatening to topple regimes and change the world.

Protest movements seem to appear in a spate.  Arab Spring was shorthand for anti-regime movements in 17 countries in the Middle East and North Africa (even if a few weren’t Arab) which emerged in a cascade after the self-immolation of a Tunisian vendor.  (There’s a great timeline from The Guardian.)

It’s not the first time that such movements have spread across national boundaries. The extraordinary events of 1989 featured revolutionary movements in six nations that used to be Eastern Europe–and included the inspiring demonstration and devastating massacre at Tiananmin Square.  Roughly 150 years earlier (1848), revolutionary movements spread across Europe, stoking more activism, reform, fear, and much analysis.

Tea Party protests spread across the United States in short order in the summer of 2009, and Occupy campaigns spread from Wall Street to thousands of sites in the United States–and around the world.  Time magazine, rarely the first to any story, has declared “The Protester” the “person of the year,” proclaiming that we’re entering an era in which protesters in the streets make policy–and history.

So what’s happening?  Is protest contagious?  Why?  How?

Lots of stuff:

1.  Most people take to the streets only when they believe that protest is both necessary–and potentially effective–in getting what they want.  It doesn’t have to be a good bet, just the best one they have.  Numbers are part of that story: when more people join in a campaign, it appears to have better chances of success, so more people are likely to join.  This is a bandwagon effect.

2.  When people with similar concerns find a tactic that generates disruption, attention, and a sense of possibility, others are likely to imitate it.  The mass demonstrations of 1989 spread across national boundaries to people who saw such protests as suddenly viable.  The civil rights sit-ins that began in February 1960 spread across the South as a group of young activists demonstrated the vitality and viability of a well-established tactic in new circumstances.  Occupy and the Tea Party demonstrate similar–definitely not identical–stories.  This is called a demonstration effect.

3.  When activists who’ve been trying to organize on an issue in one place see others making progress elsewhere, they can adapt their demands and their tactics to their own situation, surfing on the publicity others have generated.  Local activists who’d worked with little attention on issues of inequality picked up the Occupy label to rebrand their own efforts.  This is opportunistic protest.  Smart activists are always opportunistic.

4.  When protest movements appear to be successful, outsiders can pour in resources, including attention, money, and people power.  Organizers in a successful campaign use the platform they’ve created to promote their causes and themselves, spreading the word.  Organizers redeploy those resources to new site.  This is organization.

Occupy activists spread the word

5.  When your opponents seem to make progress through protesting, you’re more likely to take to the streets yourself in response.  Unsettled times are unsettled for everyone.  This is countermobilization.

People who look at potentially successful protests elsewhere and imitate them make judgments, often implicit, about how similar their own situation is.  These judgments don’t have to be right in order to be powerful.  Occupy Wall Street activists explicitly sited the inspiration of the Egyptian movement in Tahrir Square that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.

It’s not a very good comparison.  No one in the United States is waiting for the Army to take sides.

But the notion of regular people taking the future in their own hands is powerful.  Organizers stretch the analogies as far as they can, and we all take inspiration from any place we can find it.

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Occupy the Iowa Caucus

Posted on December 28, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Occupy activists are flocking to Des Moines for the new year, in an effort to Occupy Iowa’s Republican caucuses?  Why?  Certainly the Occupy approach has little appeal for the Republican caucus-goers, who veer more toward religious conservatism.

But Occupiers know that every major news organization in America has camped out in Iowa, trailing the candidates, interviewing activists and experts, and eating in chain restaurants across the state.  When the spotlight is pointed at Iowa, savvy activists can crowd into it.  Occupy Iowa Caucuses promises to respect the voting on January 3, but little else.  They plan to protest candidate events (nonviolently), stage their own events–including civil disobedience–and to keep the focus on their issues–all revolving around political and economic inequality.

By mounting physical occupations across the United States this fall, the Occupy movement created its own news peg.  The occupations are now mostly gone, but the Occupiers aren’t, and they’ve spilled into other institutions of American life, carrying the same message, sometimes a little more sharply.  Smart activists will play to a crowd and a camera, whether or not they brought them out.

In Iowa, the Occupiers will march and rally and protest.  While Republican candidates are talking about abortion, judges, gay marriage, taxes, regulation, the deficit–and each other, Occupiers are talking about the costs of the military, debt, unemployment and underemployment, and education.  Whether or not the candidates respond directly, this is news for the rest of the country.  (Thus far:  Rep. Michele Bachmann walked out on an event when Occupy showed up; Rep. Ron Paul waited them out; former Speaker Newt Gingrich has ridiculed them.)

American electoral campaigns are long, ugly, and usually disappointing, but activists ignore them at their peril.  One route to influence is engaging the process, organizing and fundraising and mobilizing voters.  Another is to push the issues into the debate over and over again.  Making candidates for office respond–even if it’s to explain why they disagree with, say, raising taxes on the wealthy–is effective movement politics.

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Travel to Israel

Posted on December 14, 2011 by David S. Meyer

I

I’m very pleased to be participating in the Seventh Annual Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Conference at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.  I hope to learn more about about lots of things, including the tent protests in Israel earlier this year.

I’ve been asked to comment on Time magazine’s decision to name “The Protester” the person of the year.

It’s an interesting twist, and I should have something more substantial later on.

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Can the Tea Party reelect Barack Obama?

Posted on December 11, 2011 by David S. Meyer

If Barack Obama is somehow able to win reelection, the Tea Party should be on his list for a thank you note.

President Obama’s prospects for reelection are decidedly mixed, but better than we’d expect given all else in the environment.  (I follow Nate Silver at 538.com on this.)

The economy is terrible, unemployment is high, and President Obama’s approval rating is extremely low.  Normally, this bodes badly for a president seeking reelection–although in this case, Obama’s approval rating is still much higher than the ratings for Congress or the Republican Party.  The Tea Party deserves some of the credit.

At least two Tea Party achievements are now helping the president:

By invigorating the Republican Party’s base and helping the it  make huge gains in the 2010 elections, activists have been able to pressure members of Congress to work on their agenda–an agenda that isn’t very popular with the rest of the country.

The Republican Party in Congress is now comprised of people elected with Tea Party support,  others who fear being challenged in primaries by Tea Partiers, and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.  The House passed Rep. Paul Ryan’s model budget, which would slash both taxes and government and turn Medicare into a voucher program.  Policy merits (or demerits) aside, it’s awful politics.  Republicans turned the debt ceiling debate into a debacle, and are now blocking an extension of the reduced payroll tax on working Americans to protect low rates on–really–millionaires.

Tea Party enthusiasts are still disappointed.  Others are scared.

And the Republicans need a presidential candidate to beat Barack Obama.  Without discussing intelligence and integrity at this point, candidates for the Republican nomination have created the weakest field of hopefuls in either party for generations.

The party out of power wants to nominate a presidential candidate who can win elections, and has demonstrated that ability in the past, preferably by winning big elections.  Practically, this means governors and senators, preferably from large and/or swing states.  Among the top tier of candidates, only Mitt Romney (Massachusetts) and Rick Perry (Texas)  qualify on this front, and Governor Perry has disappointed as a campaigner.  Governors Tim Pawlenty (Minnesota), Jon Huntsman (Utah), Gary Johnson (New Mexico), and Buddy Roemer (Louisiana) have generated minimal support; Pawlenty dropped out after the Iowa straw poll–and did you realize the others were still in the race?

Meanwhile, the rest of the field has included Herman Cain, a radio host who had never won an election, former Senator Rick Santorum, turned out of office by a large margin in a swing state (Pennsylvania), two sitting members of the House (Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul), and a former Speaker of the House (New Gingrich) who was forced to resign in disgrace (by his own party) more than a decade ago.

The last person to win the presidency without having won a prior election was Dwight D. Eisenhower (1952), who had been Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during World War II–a bigger job even than fronting that National Restaurant Association.

The last sitting member of the House to win the presidency was James Garfield, but that was 1880.

The Tea Party mobilization within the Republican Party scared off or silenced many establishment Republicans, and nourished several weak and improbable candidates (see above).  It has also moved the entire debate far to the right, with candidates trying to cultivate the enthusiasm demonstrated by Tea Partiers.

Because he started organizing and fundraising early, and because he has been willing to pander to the Tea Party, Governor Romney has survived all of this, but left little space and money for anyone else from the party establishment.  Romney has been unable to increase his support, and thus far, no one else has been able to topple him.

While journalists and political junkies may fantasize about the excitement of a brokered convention, it’s likely that one of the candidates still in the field will win the nomination through the primary process.  If it’s Governor Romney, he will be a less than inspiring choice for the Tea Partiers and some evangelicals at the Republican base, but he will have made enough pandering statements to them to fill the ads of his Democratic opponents.  Any of the other Republican candidates would be substantially weaker in a general election.

Either way, the Tea Party has had the perverse effect of helping the electoral prospects of its prime target.

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Occupy to office

Posted on December 10, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Tracy Postert holds her sign indoors

Tracy Postert’s protests with Occupy Wall Street led rather directly to a job inside nearby.  Ms. Postert, a biochemist with a Ph.D., had suffered bouts of unemployment over the years, and had a hard time finding another job in science.  Her frustration in job-hunting, according to the CNN story, led to her decision to join the Occupation.  (Thanks to Julie Song for the reference.)

Ms. Postert says that she moved her job search to Zuccotti Park in response to taunts from opponents of the Occupation, who cracked that the Occupiers would do better to find work rather than protest.  She handed out resumes to passersby.  As the job search manuals suggest, she used every opportunity to network.

It might lead to a job, but it was good politics nonetheless.  Hardworking young women with science doctorates should be employable.  Her resume was a job search, but it was also an indictment.

Wayne Kaufman, a market analyst, took a resume, and called her in for an interview.  In short order, he offered her a job as an analyst for potential biotech investments,

It’s a good story, but it’s not one of redemption or selling out.  Although some Occupiers want the financial infrastructure of the United States to collapse, that’s hardly the majority of the movement or its supporters.  And surely some Wall Streeters, investors, analysts, and financiers, want to live in a country that takes better care of the 99 percent.  (It’s no accident that President Obama constantly invokes the name of Warren Buffet in support of higher taxes on the very wealthy.  But Buffet is unusual in his extraordinary wealth, not his politics.)  Mr. Kaufman didn’t see Ms. Postert’s politics as a disqualification.

Tracy Postert went to Zuccotti Park for personal and political reasons.  The personal (personnel) issues now resolved, the politics can still remain.  Even if she’s now unavailable for full-time occupation, there’s much more that she can do.  And it’s a mistake to assume that Mr. Kaufman and his colleagues are waiting for Donald Trump’s debate to resolve the Republican nomination fight and continue the decades-long process of eviscerating what passes for the American welfare state.

And of course, although one underemployed Occupier now has a job, there are still roughly 13 million others still looking.  I expect that Tracy Postert and Wayne Kaufman will remember this.

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Pandering to Occupy

Posted on December 7, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Successful social movements spark the imagination and stiffen the spine of mainstream politicians, especially ambitious or desperate politicians.

Occupy has taken a lot of flak for failing to generate concrete policy proposals, but I’ve always thought that others will do that for them.  It’s already starting to happen.

Representative Ted Deutch, a first term Democrat from South Florida, has introduced an amendment to the Constitution intended to take corporate money out of the political system.  Lest anyone miss the point, Rep. Deutch calls it the “Outlawing Corporate Cash Undermining the Public Interest in our Elections and Democracy (OCCUPIED) Constitutional Amendment.”

The notion that such an amendment would pass even the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, much less win a 2/3 majority in both Houses and ratification from 3/4 of the states, is fanciful.  Either Rep. Deutch is hopelessly naive or more interested, at the moment, in making a symbolic statement.  It’s likely to be only one of many attempts by mainstream politicians to share the movement’s spotlight and play to its supporters.

You want your political opponents sucked up in the long, complicated, costly, and generally unsuccessful politics of pursuing amendments to the Constitution.

Then yesterday, Barack Obama offered another answer to the question, “What’s the matter with Kansas?”  In a provocative speech delivered in Osawotomie, President Obama challenged the Republican Party with a vigor unimaginable before two months of  Occupy actions across the United States:

In the last few decades, the average income of the top 1% has gone up by more than 25% to $1.2m per year. I’m not talking about millionaires, people who have a million dollars. I’m saying people who make a million dollars every single year. For the top one hundredth of 1%, the average income is now $27m per year. The typical CEO who used to earn about 30 times more than his or her worker now earns 110 times more. And yet, over the last decade the incomes of most Americans have actually fallen by about 6%.

Now, this kind of inequality – a level that we haven’t seen since the Great Depression – hurts us all…
Inequality also distorts our democracy. It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions, and it runs the risk of selling out our democracy to the highest bidder…

President Obama called for an extension of the payroll tax cut for working Americans and increased investment in education and science, all financed by slightly higher taxes on the very wealthy.

Testing themes for his reelection, President Obama directed the blame clearly at the Republican Party:

Now, so far, most of my Republican friends in Washington have refused under any circumstance to ask the wealthiest Americans to go to the same tax rate they were paying when Bill Clinton was president….

That is the height of unfairness. It is wrong. It’s wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker, maybe earns $50,000 a year, should pay a higher tax rate than somebody raking in $50m…

His speechwriters wrote the words, but Occupy provided the music.  When a movement is successful, lots of people try to join in and sing along–adding their own words.  It’s rarely harmonious.  For Occupy, it’s getting louder and louder.

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Activist lives

Posted on December 4, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Courageous or crazed, activists tip into our awareness in the context of a moment and a movement.  But when the media spotlight moves and the placards disappear, the activism often continues.  Here are two new projects that put the ebbs and flows of activist life in high relief:

Catherine Corrigall-Brown‘s book, Patterns of Protest, appears next week.  She traces the ongoing participation of activists in political life as they shift in and out of active engagement and across issues.  It’s a fascinating and important corrective to two prevalent–and simplistic–views of activists: 1) that activism is a temporary bout of madness or adolescence that passes; 2) that activists are different from everyone else, fighting on the frontlines of their causes consistently throughout their lives.  Catherine shows how activists negotiate the balance between personal and political commitments and maintain active lives as citizens between periods of intense engagement.

And here’s a chance to support a new film:

Michael Heaney and Melody Weinstein are seeking publicity and financing for their film, The Activists, which tells the stories of the individuals who made up the antiwar movement that worked–and works–to stop the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (link below).

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/melofilms/the-activists-war-peace-and-politics-in-the-street/widget/card.html

Both works offer compelling life stories and thoughtful analysis.

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More, Miley!

Posted on November 30, 2011 by David S. Meyer

I didn’t think I’d be writing about Miley Cyrus again, but:

Patricia Grim, identified as an “influential leader” in the Occupy movement, has endorsed Miley’s video, but challenged the singer to put her body on the front lines.  According to TMZ, a new source for my blog, Ms. Grim says the video “rocks,” but Miley should do more:

“I double dog dare [her] to fight on the front line of economic civil rights at LA City Hall…Revolutionaries occupy, Ms. Cyrus.”

With no aesthetic stake in this matter, I think Ms. Grim has it exactly wrong.  If the only way people can support Occupy is by sleeping outdoors and committing civil disobedience, the movement is doomed to marginality.

Close your eyes and think of thirty things that Miley could do that would be more helpful than joining any of the General Assemblies.  It’s a blink!

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MILEY! Music!

Posted on November 29, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Surely one of the one percent, Miley Cyrus has released a remixed video of “It’s a Liberty Walk,” dedicated to “the thousands of people who are standing up for what they believe in.”  While the dedication praises sincerity and commitment more than any claims, the video is edited to support the protesters.  Miley’s video shows Occupy as a global movement, marching–and sitting–to a disco beat.

I assume Miley was inspired by the movement to direct some of her talents to reinforce and publicize the activists and the issues they care about–and that she wanted to show her support.

Absent thoughtful and sincere commitment to the issues and the movement, a celebrity may have other motivations for signing on–or singing on.  Occupy is supported by a large, young–but not tween–audience, that might develop an appreciation for other music Miley might make.  The risk is obvious: Miley might offend the tween or country audiences she previously delighted.  We’ll wait to see if Taylor Swift or Miranda Cosgrove follow suit.

Meanwhile, professionals don’t own the artistic process.  Thanks to Pat Coy for sending another disco-inspired Occupy video, “I’ll Occupy.”  With new lyrics and protest pictures set to the tune of Gloria Gaynor’s 1970s, it’s a paean to the movement, but with a little bit of a snarky sense of self-deprecating humor.

I first was pepper sprayed
Just standing on the side
But it took me being blinded
to open up up my eyes
Cause I’d read the daily news,
and not responded actively
and I realized then and there
this revolution needed me

So, the movement is developing an indigenous arts culture and generating responses from the larger culture.  This is how movements work.

Watch as Occupy moves into workplace humor, television sitcoms, and mainstream politics.

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Vacating Occupy LA

Posted on November 26, 2011 by David S. Meyer

LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has consistently praised Occupy LA, camped out on the lawn in front of City Hall for two months.  (The most interesting achievement, according to an environmental activist, was destroying the environmentally unsound green lawn.)   Throughout the Occupation, the mayor and police chief kept talking to the protesters, emphasizing their respect and intent to work together to manage any problems.

Indeed, one police commander gave two stuffed turkeys to the Occupation for the Thanksgiving holiday.  Ostensibly embracing the dissent is an alternative social control strategy, one commonly practiced in the United States today.

The praise didn’t skip a beat yesterday when the mayor and Police Chief Charlie Beck announced that the Occupiers would not be allowed to camp on the lawn past Monday morning.  In a letter to the Occupation, the mayor continued to endorse both the issues and the effort: “In seven short weeks, you have awakened the country’s conscience…You have given voice to those who have not been heard.” But he was also clear that they had to find somewhere else to stay in the very near future.

The mayor, police chief, and the City Council have all been on this script for the duration of the Occupation, even as they’ve demanded that it end.  For the past two weeks, the Mayor has tried to negotiate a triumphant exit for the Occupiers, reportedly offering farm land for encampment and cultivation, a $1 a year lease on office space in City Hall, and beds for up to 100 of the Occupiers who are otherwise homeless.

But negotiating with a leaderless collective governed by consensus is a virtually impossible task.  (Indeed, that’s part of the idea.  Enthusiasts for horizontal organization and grassroots democracy argue that avoiding leaders means preventing the creation of someone who can sell you out.)  For people who are primarily concerned with pursuing politics to redress political and economic inequality, land and legitimation are real assets.  Abandoning the need to manage the logistics of the Occupation is yet another advantage.

But Occupy LA includes people who want to recreate the world from the ground up, and others who have found a place to live and a community.  Politics indoors isn’t very attractive to them.

Occupy LA’s General Assembly rejected the deal, and then announced demands for discussions leading to any other deal:

We reject outright the City’s attempts to lure us out of City Hall and into negotiations by offering us nebulous, non-transparent and unconfirmed offers which fail to even begin to address our local grievances. We will continue to occupy this space, in solidarity with our global movement, until the forces of the few are forced to capitulate to the power of the people.

When the following grievances have been addressed – grievances which we have agreed upon as a movement through our General Assembly as advancing our cause and providing for the people of Los Angeles – we as a movement will be happy to initiate dialogue with the Mayor and Los Angeles City Council….

  1. A moratorium on all foreclosures in the City of Los Angeles. The City of Los Angeles to divest from all major banks, and money to be removed from politics.

  1. A citywide effort undertaken to solve the homelessness problem which has led to 18,000 homeless people sleeping on Skid Row every night. Rehabilitation and housing must be provided for all homeless people.

  1. South Central Farm to be returned to the same LA community from which it was taken, and all other vacant and distressed land be open for the community use, and money to the tune of 1 million dollars – taken from Skid Row and given to the multi million dollar NFL firm – to be returned to Skid Row.

  2. Los Angeles to be declared a sanctuary city for the undocumented, deportations to be discontinued and cooperation with immigration authorities be ended – including the turning in of arrestees’ names to immigration authorities.

  3. All forms of weaponry used by multiple law enforcement officials – including, but not limited, to rubber bullets, pepper spray, verbal abuse, arrest, foam batons, long-range acoustic devices and more – are not to be used on those exercising their First Amendment Rights to petition our government for redress of grievances. We do not accept interference with freedom of the press and the public to document police actions in public spaces. We will not tolerate brutality.

  4. We assert our right to an open plaza on the South Side of City Hall for people to peacefully assemble, voice grievances, speak freely, hold our General Assembly and come to the people’s consensus 24 hours a day if needed.

  5. The City of Los Angeles to pressure the State to start a convention, as provided for in the Constitution, to remove corporate personhood and money from politics at a national level.

  6. The City of Los Angeles to begin a dialogue at the State and Federal level on the issues of student debt and tuition hikes.

  7. No cutbacks in city services or attacks on the wages, work conditions and pensions of city employees.

  8. A world class transit system which addresses our debilitating traffic problem and restores the quality of life in Los Angeles.

The communique above was endorsed without exception by the General Assembly, but the comments posted below it, some offered by people who participated in the discussion, reflect a more conflicted process.  Some pragmatists protested that some of the demands were impossible, and others, like stopping foreclosures, completely outside the control of the mayor or city government.  Others disagreed with the wisdom of some of the demands in the first place.

But the communique announced the firm intent of the Occupiers to continue, really the most important thing uniting them.  The General Assembly is comprised each night of the people who are present, who vary in outlook, ideology, goals, and commitment.  Those not present who may agree have little input into decisions because they haven’t made the commitment to participate.  It’s a demanding democracy.

It’s not clear at this moment whether any of the Occupiers will leave without police assistance (and Chief Charlie Beck has described his plans for evacuating the Occupation as helping the activists to leave), how many visitors will come to stand with them, or whether any of the mayor’s initial offerings will ever materialize.

Opponents of cutting a deal saw the mayor’s negotiations as a way to fragment the movement, and regardless of the mayor’s intent, concessions certainly work this way.  Those engaged in a political Occupation will find other ways to do politics.  Others will take the direct action struggle elsewhere, already including banks and college campuses.  Still others will find somewhere else to be.

To the extent that disparate efforts are united by a shared set of beliefs or demands, the movement becomes more powerful.  Maintaining such connections in the absence of a space, however, is a new and difficult challenge for a very young movement.

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