The Fractious Politics of Education

Posted on May 10, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Hundreds of California teachers, declaring a state of emergency, demonstrated in Sacramento yesterday, marched on the Capitol building yesterday.  According to The Boston Globe (!?!), more than 100 rallied in the Capitol rotunda, resulting in 65 arrests.

There’s a lot to talk about here, telling us about protest politics, state budget crises, media, unions, and the troubled state of education in America.

Should we start with the media?  Bizarrely, while the Boston Globe published a good story (from AP) on the first day in a planned week of protests organized by the California Teachers Association, and several local papers picked up on it–and sympathy events across the state (e.g. here and here) , the Los Angeles Times, the biggest paper in California, missed the event altogether, leading its California section with the news of former Governor Schwarzenegger’s separation from his wife, Maria Shriver.

The decline of the LA Times, in terms of budget, circulation, quality, and coverage, has been as dramatic as that of any national paper still operating, surely part of the story here.  But the paper did cover education–and teachers protesting:

The protest story (embedded in a video) focused on Los Angeles teachers protesting against the Times itself; the paper has been publishing “value added” scores rating the effectiveness of all teachers in the city’s system.   The local union sees these scores as an attack.  The other education story covered the district’s plans to overhaul the staff at Huntington Park High School, one of the largest in the district; the district expects to replace at least one-half of the teachers.  The union is, understandably, concerned about this move as well.

But the bigger story is about massive budget cuts facing all public school districts in California.  Governor Jerry Brown’s budget plan was to retire the state’s $25+ billion dollar state deficit through roughly 1/2 cuts and 1/2 taxes.  (The tax part would come through a referendum to postpone planned tax cuts.)  If the voters failed to approve the tax extensions, Brown will cut, severely, spending on prisons and public schools.

It seemed like a clever plan.  Voters generally like the ideas of educating children and keeping felons in jail; additionally, Governor Brown would be able to count on two powerful unions, prison guards and teachers, to spend on the referendum campaign, and mobilize their members.  What Brown could not count on, however, was the votes of two Republican state assemblymen and two Republican state senators, which he needed to reach the 2/3 vote to put the question on the ballot.  (Insert your favorite rant here; the ones that come to my mind are about supermajorities, term limits, California politics, and Republicans.)

The Census Bureau reports on per pupil spending across the American states.  For 2007-08, the most recent data available, it lists a national average of about $10,000 per pupil.  New York and New Jersey spend the most, up to $17,000 per pupil.  Individual districts in affluent areas may spend as much as twice that amount.  (You can look up your district and its spending here.)  California is listed at about $9,800.  Since 2007-08, California has cut per pupil spending by more than $2,000.  California now spends less than most states, has larger class sizes than all of them, and lower test scores than almost every other state.  Governor Brown estimates that without the tax extensions, the new budget cuts will amount to something over $800 per pupil.

Local school districts will find their own ways to respond, and more affluent areas will try to raise independent funds–but they already do.  On the agenda in most districts are layoffs, program cuts, increases in class sizes, and reductions in the school year–already shorter than the academic year in any other rich country.  None of this is likely to improve public education in California.  Money isn’t the only thing that matters, of course, but it’s silly to pretend that money doesn’t matter.

The teachers’ union cares about this, of course, and the fact that jobs are part of the story, intensifies those concerns and makes them mobilizeable. Their answer, based on polling data: raise taxes on the rich.  Staging a week of protests is a way to try to draw public attention to the problem, and demonstrate their seriousness.  Given the 2/3 rule and the composition of that state legislature and the electorate, the demonstrations themselves are unlikely to matter all that much.  It’s not that the protest strategy is particularly likely to be effective so much as that everything else the teachers can do is even more unlikely to work–particularly without protest.

Maybe, however, at least in areas served by papers other than the LA Times, it can clue other Californians into the magnitude of the unfolding crisis.

To the extent that parents are tuned into what’s happening, they’re concerned and angry, and like most Californians, oppose the cuts.  Most Californians, however, also oppose any new taxes–except on the rich.

I suspect most parents are also trying to figure out solutions that spare them from engaging in the California budget process.  They can help raise independent funds for their district–or school, contract private services to help their own kids with music, art, and math, or leave the public schools altogether.  If they can’t afford any of these alternatives, they can fume privately, whine publicly, or urge their children to make the best of a bad situation.

But the fact that most families will try to avoid dealing with a collective problem as a collective problem makes the political work of the teachers union–and the professional work of the teachers–all that much harder.

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Professionalizing the Tea Party

Posted on May 6, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Can you keep the grass(roots) growing when you take it inside?

Judson Phillips, founder of the for-profit Tea Party Nation, has announced that he intends to take a salary out of the organization.  Tea Party Nation has produced a couple of national convention events (and some failed efforts) and some pithy quotes from Phillips in the media–but not so much else in the way of activism.  But the trend toward professionalism (paid activists!) is well underway in the Tea Party movement–and in American social movements more generally.

Establishing a group of people who can live off (rather than just for) a movement (this is Max Weber’s formulation) can be an immense asset for a movement.  The professionals worry about organizational survival, funding, and exploiting the opportunities of the moment.  They produce better materials, updated more frequently, are available to media for comments, and think about not only the campaign of the minute, but also the long term goals of a movement.  They are generally able to develop more expertise in at least some of these things than amateurs engaged in a movement for love of cause.

At the same time, the professionals have to think about all of their efforts professionally, not getting carried away by the exigencies and rivalries of the moment.  They don’t want to burn bridges with funders or politicians who are giving them trouble at the moment; they may be able to go back to them later.  And they have to think about the consequences of the issues and strategies they employ.  As a result, they tend to be more attracted to easily repeatable tactics (lobbying, rather than demonstrations; negotiations rather than confrontations, etc.).

Professionalized organizations can survive at the expense of the movements that created them, but then, once established, can provide the organizational core and and institutional expertise that animates a movement when circumstances are more favorable.

Now, what about this Tea Party?

The broad Tea Party movement was based in longer-standing organizations (especially FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity), run by political professionals and supported by well-heeled funders, including the Koch Brothers.  This meant that when there was the potential to mobilize a populist conservative movement, conservatives had already assembled the ideas, expertise, and infrastructure needed to do so.

It also means, however, that the funders and professionals may prioritize their concerns at the expense of those mobilized at the grassroots.  The proto-Tea Party groups aren’t vigorously anti-immigrant or willing to prioritize social conservative issues at the expense of their economic and regulatory goals.  That’s not the case at the grassroots.

The grassroots has to support and trust their professionals, but not blindly, aware of all the attendant risks.

What do you think of Keli Carender’s career?  An underemployed teacher and improv comic, she started the Redistributing Knowledge blog just after President Obama took office.  Adopting the persona, “Liberty Belle” (on the right), Carender blogged against Obama, government in general, and health care reform in particular.  She also organized, theatrically and effectively, in the Pacific Northwest.

Spotted by the talent scouts in FreedomWorks, she was flown from Seattle, Washington (grassroots) to Washington, DC, for activist training.  The training took, and she is now a professional, employed as a staffer at Tea Party Patriots.

Keli Carender

As near as I can tell, Carender’s wit and vigor are in no way compromised by the development of her professional career, and she can now devote herself to the cause full-time, without worrying about another job for money.  But she is no longer a part-time math teacher drawn to the political arena by the extraordinary threat Barack Obama represented to her.  She is now a professional managing a career as a well as a movement, and those goals may not always line up.  The question is whether her judgments about the most critical issues and how to pursue them will diverge from the grassroots she grew out of.

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Osama, Obama, O.J., and Hasselhoff

Posted on May 5, 2011 by David S. Meyer

When US forces killed Osama Bin Laden, they dramatically shook up domestic politics in the United States, but, really, nothing has changed.

For the Tea Party, having President Obama announce Bin Laden’s death is an extraordinary stroke of bad luck.   The Tea Partiers hadn’t devoted much attention to the incredibly divisive politics of national security–for obvious reasons.  Libertarian Tea Partiers distrust the extending reach of the Federal government altogether, and chafe at the sorts of surveillance authorized by the Patriot Act.  True deficit hawks (and there are few of them in Congress) can’t really look away from the hundreds of billions spent annually on the military, and can hear the meter running on the costs of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Libya.  But the Tea Party also includes what used to be mainstream Republicans, who support the military and a global leadership role for the United States.  (Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget left defense spending untouched.)

Killing Osama Bin Laden does nothing, really, about any core issues for the Tea Party:  jobs in the United States, taxation, the deficit, regulation, abortion, immigration, same sex marriage, and on and on.  It does, however, suck up the political and media space available for talking about those issues.

And it makes the Tea Partiers’ top target, President Obama, instantly appear more competent, successful, confident, and powerful.  Republican allies in Congress recognize this, even if everyone at the grassroots doesn’t, and this will influence how hard they bargain on, say, raising the debt ceiling.  (Democrats expect the president to be tougher than he’s been in the past as well.)

Antiwar activists are trying to use the killing to reinvigorate their case against the war/s.  In today’s LA Times, for example, Tom Hayden argues that this victory shows that special forces are more effective than conventional military engagement in dealing with terror, and that this achievement gives the president the “opportunity” to get out of all the current wars which, he believes, are wasteful, destructive, and counterproductive.  But, aside from the tribute to the special forces, Hayden has been making exactly the same argument for years.  Bin Laden’s death is just another news peg to tie it to.

And Hayden isn’t alone here.  Congressional opponents of the wars, mostly Democrats, but including Republican Rep. Ron Paul, are strategizing about how to take advantage of the moment, while Moveon.org is circulating an online petition to end the war.

Activists have to respond to the events that fortune throws at them, and luck sometimes matters more than skill.  But events can be an excuse as well:

In 1993, syndicated television hero David Hasselhoff scheduled a pay-per-view cable television concert to establish himself as a music superstar.  Alas, some potential viewers tuned into the mesmerizing slow motion police chase of O.J. Simpson driving a white SUV on California highways.  Maybe, with nothing so interesting available for free on tv, they would have paid up to watch Hasselhoff sing instead.

We’ll never know, but nearly eighteen years later David Hasselhoff still isn’t a singing star in the US.

And maybe the successful strike against Osama Bin Laden will get the credit for landing a body blow against a Tea Party that was already floundering.

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Authenticity at the Town Hall Meetings?

Posted on April 28, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Republican members of Congress who supported Paul Ryan’s budget plan (almost all of them) are having to defend their votes against hostile crowds at town meetings.  (Note that there is a lot to get angry about in this budget plan.  See James Fallows’ succinct take at The Atlantic.)

There have been protests all over, with particular efforts made in the districts of freshmen Republicans (there are plenty of them) in swing districts, but Paul Ryan himself has received a lot of attention as well.

The meeting unrest thus far is a smaller version of the confrontations with Democratic representatives considering support for health care reform.

But who are these people?  We tend to think of the people who agree with us as authentic grassroots activists, citizens pulled into sporadic political engagement by the urgency of the issue.  And the people who yell on the other side are provoked, mobilized, and scripted by nefarious interests.  In real life in the United States, movements are comprised of both focused organizations and the people they are able to reach: No mass mobilization without organization, coordination, and resources; no mass mobilization without real concerned people.

Marin Cogan and Jonathan Allen have a nice piece at Politico, examining the new town hall campaigns.  Quoting organizers and analysts on the left and right, they see continued struggle on budget issues–and more–over the next few years:

“This is the start of it,” said Lauren Weiner, deputy communications director for labor-backed Americans United for Change. “We know that the more people know about this budget, the angrier they’re going to get. We’re seeing two weeks in what the anger looks like … We hope and think it will grow.”

Adam Brandon, vice president of communications at FreedomWorks, put it this way: “The Ryan budget debate will last for the next several years—so we will also be very active in engaging our members. Town halls will become more of a staple on the American political scene… [our members] plant to stay engaged in this process.”

Expect it to continue at least through the next presidential campaign.

It’s completely appropriate for citizens to hold their representatives accountable.  I’ll be happier, however, if these demonstrators allow their reps. to answer questions, rather than shouting them down, and if no placards depict political leaders with Hitler’s moustache.

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Honoring Bill Gamson

Posted on April 27, 2011 by David S. Meyer

I’m off to the University of Notre Dame this long weekend.  Their Center for the Study of Social Movements will be honoring William A. Gamson with the John D. McCarthy Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Scholarship of Social Movements.  The award, won previously by Verta Taylor, Mayer Zald, and Doug McAdam, recognizes mentoring as well as scholarship, and Bill is completely deserving.

Bill, a sociology professor at Boston College, is a prolific author, former president of the American Sociological Association, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  He’s the designer of many educational games and exercises, and the inventor of the first version of fantasy baseball.

I’d add that one of the many admirable things about Bill’s work is his ongoing concern with linking studies of social movements to the work of activists.  He is the founder and a central figure in the Movement/Media Research Action Project.

I’m indebted to Bill’s scholarship and to his mentoring, and very excited to be part of the event.

Very much in the spirit of John McCarthy and those who have been honored, Notre Dame sponsors a Young Scholars in Social Movements conference coinciding with the celebration.  They’ve selected a dozen young scholars within a year or two of the doctoral degree (either way), and are bringing them out to present their work.  I feel very fortunate to be able to participate.

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Are Lawyers Different?: Does the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) Deserve a Defense?

Posted on April 27, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Several large gay rights organizations (e.g.) celebrated the decision of King & Spalding, a large law firm, to forgo work for the House of Representatives.  When the Obama administration declined to defend the

Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) defends an unpopular client

constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the House leadership enlisted the firm to provide a defense instead.

DOMA explicitly defined marriage as between one man and one woman, and relieved states and the federal government of the obligation to recognize other marriage formulations that states might decide to allow.  (Anyone who’s ever taken an American government class would wonder if this wasn’t an obvious violation of the “full faith and credit clause.)  Congress passed the law with large majorities in each house, and President Clinton signed the Act, triangulating the culture wars on the eve of his reelection campaign.

King & Spalding reconsidered taking the case amid a great deal of political pressure and the suggestion that this case might be costly in terms of its reputation and future work.  The Human Rights Campaign had contacted many of the firm’s clients, drawing attention to this other legal work, and suggesting that clients might exercise their leverage on the firm.  At the Washington Post, Greg Sargent reports:

…Fred Sainz, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, shared new details about it. He confirmed to me that his group did indeed contact King and Spalding clients to let them know that the group viewed the firm’s defense of DOMA as unacceptable.

Former Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, the partner who was to take the lead on the case, criticized the decision, resigned from the firm, and announced that he would handle the case with another firm.   According to the Washington Post:

In a resignation letter released to the media, Clement said he felt compelled to resign — not because of his views on the legislation, which he did not disclose, but “out of the firmly held belief that a representation should not be abandoned because the client’s legal position is extremely unpopular in certain quarters.”

He continued: “Much has been said about being on the right side of history. But being on the right or wrong side of history on the merits is a question for the clients. When it comes to the lawyers, the surest way to be on the wrong side of history is to abandon a client in the face of hostile criticism.”

Attorneys make a commitment to an adversary system of justice, in which both sides benefit from strong and honest advocacy, with a judge or jury making decisions about the merits of a case.  And there is something heroic and difficult about lawyers taking on unpopular causes.  You’ll note the fictional Atticus Finch above, who faced social opprobrium to defend an unpopular client.

Novelists can load the dice, however, and make that client worthy–and innocent.  In real life, however, sometimes unpopular clients are unpopular for good reasons.  The ACLU took a great deal of flack for defending the right of Nazis to march in a neighborhood filled with survivors of German concentration camps.  And today lawyers endure serious hardships to represent people who might well be terrorists housed at Guantanamo Bay.  As I understand it, this is what lawyers do.

But Evan Wolfson, at Freedom to Marry, says that while clients deserve representation, all causes do not:

In America, every person deserves a defense, but not every position does.  King & Spaulding has recognized what President Obama, the Department of Justice, and many members of Congress have joined Freedom to Marry in concluding: federal marriage discrimination and the so-called ‘Defense of Marriage Act’ are indefensible.
Freedom to Marry commends the many voices within the firm and outside, including the Human Rights Campaign, who spoke up against the firm’s hasty and wrong-headed decision to take on the defense of discrimination.  DOMA is an odious, oppressive law passed to exclude loving and committed couples from equal respect for their marriages; it cannot be defended without reliance on stereotypes and fears that do not stand up under the Constitution.  The House leaders pushing this abuse of taxpayer money to find a hired gun to defend DOMA should follow King & Spaulding’s lead and reconsider whether they really want to be on the side of unfairness and the wrong side of history.

But Attorney General Eric Holder, who made the decision not to defend DOMA, has praised Clement, explaining, “I think he is doing that which lawyers do when we’re at our best.”

At Slate, Dahlia Lithwick laments the movement strategy of pressuring lawyers off particular cases, even as she excoriates DOMA:

What’s the difference between Liz Cheney’s attack on the Gitmo lawyers and the gay rights groups’ pressure on King & Spalding? One argument, advanced at the Baltimore Sun, is that this is the difference between criminal and civil proceedings; the Constitution guarantees a right to counsel in criminal trials. But no firm has to take a civil case. As a descriptive matter that’s true. DOMA has no “right” to be defended. But as a normative matter it sidesteps the real question: What is the end game here? When groups pressure a firm into dropping representation for an unpopular client, is the ultimate goal to have only bad lawyers defend an unpopular law, or no lawyers at all? And what kind of legal victory would either of those ends represent?

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Where’s the Peace Movement? (Protest is a blunt instrument)

Posted on April 26, 2011 by David S. Meyer

It’s rare that social scientists studying protest get much attention from the mainstream press, opinion or otherwise.  Although the scholars may get a whiff of excitement from the attention, they’re usually frustrated by the distortions and oversimplifications that seem inevitable–almost.

Today’s story is about two social scientists, conservative media outlets, and the decline of the peace movement in the Obama era.

Michael T. Heaney and Fabio Rojas have been attending antiwar rallies for several years, bringing teams of students with surveys rather than placards.  They’ve found that the number of self-identified Democrats at the demonstrations declined after Barack Obama took office.

This finding won’t surprise readers of Politics Outdoors.  The question of ebbs and flows of movements generally–and the peace movement in particular, is one we’ve taken up before (here and here).  Most people are likely to protest only when they believe: something is wrong; it could be otherwise; and that their efforts might make a difference.

As soon as people around the world got a sense that President Bush planned to invade Iraq, a global antiwar movement emerged, most strongly in the countries that would support the war.  Some activists were against all wars, but I suspect a larger share questioned the case for this one.  (It’s hard to argue, nearly a decade later, that war supporters had as clear a view as their opponents.)

Some of the numbers and vigor of the demonstrations dropped off as the war started, but many stalwarts remained and activism continued.  In the United States, the President who launched the war stayed in office for another five plus years, and was a ready target.  When the war didn’t go as its architects planned–or, more accurately, imagined, activists could tack on grievances about morality and/or costs, and they had plenty of material to work with.  (It’s hard to get Abu Ghraib out of my mind.)

Democrats seeking the nomination to succeed President Bush flashed their antiwar credentials to primary voters, and Senator Barack Obama’s initial opposition to the war (although he didn’t have to vote on authorization) was an asset against Senator Hillary Clinton (his eventual Secretary of State).   He campaigned on a promise to wind down the war in Iraq, which he did, sort of, and increase the focus and forces in Afghanistan, which he also sort of did.

This course of action certainly didn’t respond to all of the concerns of peace activists, but it seemed far more promising to most than what it replaced.  Some share of the people who might turn out at a demonstration, marked by their willingness to identify as Democrats, stopped turning out.  It’s not necessarily that they were satisfied, but perhaps they were less angry or less hopeful (or less willing to claim affiliation with this president’s party on a survey at a demonstration).

Protest is a blunt instrument; an action pushes a direction or suggests a veto.  The grammar of a demonstration doesn’t accommodate complicated policy alternatives.  When the direction seems more promising, the urgency or possibility needed to engage falters for some people.  Others may feel they can talk directly to policymakers, rather than shouting at them from the lawn.  The demonstrations got smaller and those who did attend had a somewhat different set of concerns than the larger movement.

Movements are coalitions, not unified beasts.  And people and groups in those coalitions respond to the world around them, figuring out their best shot to move the world in the direction they want and recalculating constantly.

Conservative media outlets have seized upon Heaney and Rojas’s work to charge Democrats and/or the antiwar movement with hypocrisy.  John Stossel, at Fox Business, provides a succinct statement of the willful ignorance inherent in such a charge:

The anti-war movement was all over the news before President Obama was elected. But apparently they weren’t really anti-war … they were just anti-President Bush.

Amazing. Especially because the war in Afghanistan ramped up after Obama was elected. American fatalities shot up in 2009 and 2010.

The protesters have remained silent over Libya.

Now, remember that the antiwar movement included more than pacifists; there were also many people who believed that the war in Iraq was different, unnecessary and unjustified, than the war in Afghanistan.  Candidate Obama played to this sentiment in his national campaign–and mostly followed through on it.

Libya wasn’t on the antiwar movement’s radar–for obvious reasons.  And the United States is bombing, but not sending ground forces, and there is a call for intervention from the Arab League and an indigenous anti-Qadaffi force that is doing the fighting.  I don’t mean to endorse the mission here, only to point out that it is fundamentally different from the war in Iraq.

So, is there a surprise?

Perhaps only that no one at Fox Business or the Washington Times or the Wall Street Journal was able to think this through and get it into print.

And, by the warway, this isn’t just an antiwar movement story.  Where were the vigorous deficit hawks and tea partiers during the Bush era?  And why have the Tea Party demonstrations diminished after the Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives?

Samey-samey?

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Reexamining Organization/s

Posted on April 25, 2011 by David S. Meyer

From the comments, olderwoman writes:

Your theoretical point is spot on, but your empirical point about Wisconsin is wrong, and wrong in a way that reflects back to a refinement of theory. Empirically, protests in Wisconsin were organized by a lot of different organizations, and I personally have never even heard of Freedom Works — your link goes to a North Carolina protest! So, yes, organizations and organizing mattered a ton, but it was a whole lot of organizations that were mobilized, not any one. There were a lot of different unions involved who are not all centrally coordinated. There were many different non-union political groups that mobilized. This leads to the theoretical point, which is that it is important to pay attention to the diversity of organizations mobilizing. And even more to the extent to which mobilizing efforts work. Organizations are all the time trying to get people to go to protests or write the legislators etc. But only occasionally do these efforts lead to huge responses. Part of the theory has to be about why organizing works sometimes and not others. In Wisconsin, as the protest spread, people who lacked direct organizational connections started self-mobilizing: it became “the thing to do” to go protest at the Capitol, in some circles, and once previously-nonpolitical people got there, they became involved in networks and became politicized. Highly visible threats and suddenly imposed grievances are part of that answer, along with media attention cycles, and the ways influence flows through informal social networks.

I appreciate the clarification about multiple organizations in Wisconsin.  Unions provided one set of efforts for efforts against Governor Walker’s agenda.  Successful campaigns in the United States are generally comprised of more than one organized group, and negotiating priorities among them is a key element of life within a movement.

On FreedomWorks: I said that FreedomWorks was a key organization working to generate and script protests at the town hall meetings about health care (and pulled a photo from a protest in North Carolina).  It’s more than that.  FreedomWorks grew out of a split within the Koch Brothers’ group, Citizens for a Sound Economy in 2004, as others split off to become Americans for Prosperity.  Although there are differences between the groups, both have worked to spread what would become Tea Party Gospel, funding organizers to do the heavy lifting of mobilizing at the grassroots.

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey chairs FreedomWorks, along with the group’s president, Matt Kibbe, has tried to define and channel the Tea Party movement into an asset for the Republican Party.  Their manifesto is available, cheap, online (on the right).  If you prowl around their website, you’ll see a focus on older school small government Republicanism, with token (or less) commitments on some grassroots concerns like immigration and social issues.

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Anger, Organization, and the Myth of Spontaneity

Posted on April 22, 2011 by David S. Meyer

When protest explodes/emerges/erupts/ after a politician does–or threatens–something unappealing, we talk about the unrest as a response.

So, we saw disruptions at town meetings across the country in 2009 about President Obama’s health care reforms, and we saw large demonstrations and strikes across Wisconsin targeted at stopping Governor Walker’s efforts to strip unions of the right to bargain collectively.  These were, of course, people responding to policies they viewed as threats.  (Note that activists on the left and right shared a slogan: “Kill the Bill.”)

But there’s a step missing in thinking about how they happened; organized groups worked hard to mobilize those people.  FreedomWorks invested a great deal of time, money, and effort in stoking, scripting, and publicizing the town hall protests, and trade unions in Wisconsin, rightly viewing Governor Walker’s policy as a serious threat to their future, mobilized their base to protest.

Protests in Madison, Wisconsin

This doesn’t mean that either protest was illegitimate, or that the people who appeared to chant and hold signs didn’t believe what they were saying.  It also doesn’t mean that everyone attending either set of events was directly mobilized by one of those organizations.

Rather, organized groups plan and publicize events, and activate all their available networks to turn people out.  They define grievances, and try to get people to agree with them enough to turn out and participate.  And, when the events take place, they work hard to get their messages about what they mean out to a larger public.

Activists are often quick to identify the organizations at work in causes they hate.  We heard supporters of health care reform call out FreedomWorks and the big corporate money behind the town meeting campaigns.  And we heard Governor Walker and his allies dismiss the Wisconsin protests as bought and paid for by big labor.  (There’s an unfortunate–and widespread–misconception that legitimate protest, whatever that means, is spontaneous and unorganized.)

They’re both right–at least partly.  The large protests don’t happen without organizing, and a serious investment of time and skill–and often money, spent in convincing people that something was wrong, that it could be different, and that their efforts might matter.  They also wouldn’t happen, at least not on a large scale, if lots of people weren’t convinced.

This is, by the way, my gripe with Frances Fox Piven (very different, by the way, from Glenn Beck’s accusations, discussed most recently here).  Last December, Piven published an article in The Nation, worries that the failure of the unemployed to protest extremely high and sustained joblessness will allow politicians to ignore their plight, or even to adopt policies that hurt employment generally and workers in particular.  (She’s right about this.)

So where are the angry crowds, the demonstrations, sit-ins and unruly mobs? After all, the injustice is apparent. Working people are losing their homes and their pensions while robber-baron CEOs report renewed profits and windfall bonuses. Shouldn’t the unemployed be on the march? Why aren’t they demanding enhanced safety net protections and big initiatives to generate jobs?

Piven then identifies many of the obstacles to organizing and mobilizing the unemployed (e.g., they’re spread across the country and industries; people blame themselves and try to find individual solutions), but then neglects the organizing that needs to take place for such protests to emerge.  Indeed, she concludes:

A loose and spontaneous movement…could emerge. It is made more likely because unemployment rates are especially high among younger workers. Protests by the unemployed led by young workers and by students, who face a future of joblessness, just might become large enough and disruptive enough to have an impact in Washington. There is no science that predicts eruption of protest movements….We should hope for another American social movement from the bottom—and then join it.

But hoping won’t make a social movement about unemployment or anything else, and–in real life–Frances Fox Piven knows this perfectly well.  Even as she’s emphasized spontaneity and unpredictability in much of her academic work, her treatments of movements identify the contributions of organizers dedicated to mobilizing people.  And, in her real life, she’s spent a great deal of time and effort building organizations to do exactly that, working and organizing more than just hoping.

Waiting for conditions to create movements lets the other side–whoever that is–organize and win.

So, Slate’s David Weigel observes that liberals have been slow to organize against Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget proposal, supported by all but four Republicans in the House of Representatives.  Ryan’s budget, which would cut taxes for the rich, reduce government spending massively by cutting unnamed programs–but not defense, and turning Medicare into a voucher system.  Contrasting the relatively small crowds at the meetings hosted by members of Congress returning to their districts with the health care shout-downs, Weigel thinks the Democrats are missing an important opportunity, perhaps relying naively on the offensiveness of the policies themselves to generate protest.

There are some suggestions that organizations on the left get the message.  The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is planning a national campaign to “Fight for a Fair Economy”, spreading Wisconsin-style protests across the country.

Briefcase Brigades

Meanwhile, organizers are working to mobilize Briefcase Brigades of young people protesting unemployment by appearing at Congressional district offices this Wednesday, dressed for work:

On Wednesday, April 27th, when members of Congress are home for recess, we’re going to their offices all around the country to demand they prioritize jobs over budget cuts. We’re going dressed for an interview, briefcase in hand, with our resumes to show we’re ready for work, but the opportunities just aren’t there.

The opportunities for protest, just like the opportunities for employment, have to be created and recognized; nothing happens by itself.

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Clustering Issues: Environmentalism and GLBT Politics

Posted on April 21, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Politico’s Alex Guillen reported earlier this week that young environmentalists were consulting with gay and lesbian activists to figure out how to be more effective, especially in pushing President Obama.

The GLBT movement has won–and is winning–several important victories, so it makes sense that other activists want to bottle whatever they’re doing.  Of course, winning and losing on policy isn’t completely within activists’ control.  (The brave DREAMers didn’t lose on immigration reform because they made tactical mistakes; in very difficult circumstances, they played the cards they had extremely well.)

But the GLBT activists had a few breakthroughs, winning legal

Source: Freedom to Marry

recognition of same sex marriage in a few states, making progress in others–mostly through the courts.  They’re backing a case from California with high visibility/high skill representation (Boies and Olson) percolating up to the Supreme Court.

And the lame duck Congress voted to end the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in the military, responding to popular pressure, the Obama administration, and the leadership within the military.

Are there some lessons here for environmental activists?  Here are a couple of ideas:

1.  Even when changes appear quickly, the work takes a very long time.  The modern GLBT movement, frequently dated as beginning with the Stonewall protests of 1969, really dates back much further, and activists have been working for a very long time, without such visible victories.

AIDS activism in the 1980s, in conjunction with organizing around individual decisions about coming out, mattered over the long haul, probably even more than they seemed to at the time.  Organizing in the wake of hostile decisions, particularly Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), which allowed states to regulate private same sex sexual behavior between consenting adults, unified and broadened a movement, helping it make gains.

2.  If you want to change public opinion, work to change policy.  A campaign doesn’t have to win on the policy goal in order to mobilize and change public opinion.   The graph at the right, from Nate Silver at 538, shows a dramatic change in public opinion, driven by policy battles and demographic change.

Importantly, the notion that you should work to change opinion first, independent of an electoral or policy campaign, is mistaken.  Debate about a bill or a candidate pushes a movement’s issues into the window of public attention, which makes it possible to change opinion.

3.  Partial victories matter.  In the case of same sex marriage, it’s not all that long ago that sympathetic politicians responded to GLBT activists by denying marriage, offering “domestic partnership” as an alternative.  Vermont Governor Howard Dean, for example, brokered such a compromise in 2000.  A victory then, it provided an unsatisfactory, but critical, stepping stone just a few years later.

Something else interesting in this story: the environmentalists went to talk to gay and lesbian activists, even though the connections between their concerns aren’t immediately obvious.  (I guess it makes sense that they weren’t talking to anti-tax organizers, who have also been very successful.)  They share a view of President Obama as a somewhat disappointing ally, and still the best shot they have at policy victories.

If the initial consultations come from practical short-term considerations, they need not be limited by them.  The connections  forged through strategy meetings today are likely to influence politics in the future, as GLBT and environmental activists develop personal as well as political ties as they explore next steps in their agendas.  Consultations can become coalitions.

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