Democratizing Inequalities

Posted on October 18, 2010 by David S. Meyer

At some point, the call for “power to the people” transmographied into calls for “empowerment.”  Demands for influence were answered by offers of inclusion or dialogue or deliberation.

So, what does all this talking lead to?

The question is whether these new “democratic” procedures–and the new industry that’s emerged to promote and coordinate them– actually promote responsiveness on policy, meaningful political inclusion, or greater citizen engagement?

Caroline Lee, Mike McQuarrie, and Ed Walker organized a wonderful conference at NYU to explore these issues.   The quick answer seems disturbing: not only don’t these new venues promote a more democratic politics, they may actually stand in the way of one.

See what you think.

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How are GLBT activists getting along? Don’t Ask.

Posted on October 12, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Federal Judge Virginia Phillips today issued an injunction banning the military’s enforcement of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell globally.   The decision is all over the news, of course.  Judge Phillips was responding to a suit filed by the Log Cabin Republicans six years ago.

Of course, what a district court giveth, a higher court can take away.  Right now, however, we can see the strategic dilemmas inherent in pursuing social change through the courts.  We can also see the diverse and sloppy coalitions that make up social protest movements in the United States.

While the Log Cabin Republicans endorsed John McCain for President in 2008, most GLBT organizations (and activists) worked for–and helped to fund–Barack Obama’s candidacy.  President Obama’s (limited) efforts to advance GLBT causes have disappointed many of them, most recently, when the Senate refused to incorporate a ban on Don’t Ask in its authorization bill.

In a long and controversial article in Congress.org, Ambreen Ali reports on what she describes as a widening rift within the GLBT movement over how to end Don’t Ask.  The Human Rights Campaign, a large group pursuing multiple issues, had led the lobbying effort in the Senate.  Others, including the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, claimed the HRC didn’t push hard enough, letting its allies, including President Obama, off the hook on critical issues.  They argued for putting more direct pressure on purported allies who were willing to put Don’t Ask on the back burner, and for cultivating a more visible public profile.  Some, including Dan Choi, tried to stoke activism and visibility by taking dramatic action, including a hunger strike.  (Choi, left, a West Point graduate, served as an infantry officer in Iraq, and was discharged after coming out on the Rachel Maddow show.)

Such disputes within social movements are common.  Movements are diverse and sloppy coalitions, filled with people who agree on some issues, and disagree on others–including ultimate goals and the best ways to pursue them.   Harsh threats and exceptional opportunities encourage them to cooperate, but internal disputes are constant.

In this case, the HRC has a broad agenda to protect, while the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network is organized exclusively around open service in the military.  The HRC has to worry about husbanding resources and maintaining access and credibility with allies in Congress.  The Servicemembers are more willing to do whatever it takes to win on this issue now.  The HRC claims to have done the best it could with the current Congress and the current climate–and this may be true–but we can understand why the Servicemembers are frustrated and cynical.

Meanwhile, by taking the initiative, Judge Phillips has changed the game.  The Obama administration now has to work to prevent change–rather than to make it.   Alternatively, it could let the policy disappear without fighting too hard.  The HRC can move to focus on other elements of its agenda.  And the Log Cabin Republicans can claim some vindication, while continuing their uphill struggle to recruit gays and lesbians to the Republican Party and promoting tolerance within the Party.

Because Court-initiated change isn’t dependent upon winning battles in the legislature or public opinion, it virtually ensures backlash protest.   Watch for the backlash within the Republican Party.

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More on Westboro

Posted on October 7, 2010 by David S. Meyer

If you can find a remotely credible source that credits Westboro Baptist Church with even a hundred members, you’re a more energetic or skilled researcher than I am.  When Pastor Phelps describes his congregation as family, he’s not really stretching the truth.

The lawyer arguing before the Supreme Court, Margie Phelps, is Fred’s daughter, hardly a hired gun.  Indeed, she’s been an active contributor at a large number of the Westboro protests against sin.  (In most movements I know about, there’s a sharper division of labor between advocates in the courts and activists in the streets.)

Either Phelps would readily describe their views as well outside the mainstream of American life, shared by very few Americans.  (Don’t take my word for it; read an interview with Margie.)

No doubt, it’s not hard to find sin in America (although we often differ on definitions: splitting infinitives?  cheese with seafood?).  Westboro protests at servicemen’s funerals, the Holocaust museum, and Catholic colleges–among other sites, not because they are the most sinful, but because they will be the most visible.

Dahlia Lithwick offers an analysis of the court case at Slate.  She says constitutional law on these matters is unambiguous (the first amendment protects hateful speech), and wonders why the Court took the case.  She speculates the some of the justices wanted to condemn the protesters.

So, in comments, Lukas asks whether disruption really works?  Would you know about the Westboro church without it?

Maryann Barakso wonders whether there is any long-lasting benefits for the crusaders against sin.  Certainly, the Westboro campaigns probably don’t help the cause of a much larger number of people who advance a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible.  They’re not the people you want carrying your cause.

Deana Rohlinger offers another answer: witnessing and facing opposition and confrontation is a testing by fire that solidifies the faith of the few, their identities as Westboro fundamentalists, and their commitment to the cause.

Note that other marginal causes employ similar tactics. Here are a couple of examples from the acolytes of Lyndon Larouche.

Such efforts aren’t about convincing people of the merits of your claim.  Rather, it’s about getting attention through/and provoking confrontation.

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Intolerance of Intolerance

Posted on October 6, 2010 by David S. Meyer

What if your cause doesn’t have many supporters?  Smaller numbers have to take on more extreme tactics or make more outlandish claims in order to win the kind of attention that those large demonstrations on the Washington mall get.    A handful of protesters milling on the mall won’t make news.  Disruption does.

So, the Westboro Baptist Church, of Topeka, Kansas, hit upon the idea of staging anti-gay demonstrations outside the funerals of soldiers, sailors, or marines killed in combat.  The point wasn’t about the serviceman’s background (which church members never knew), so much as Pastor Fred Phelps vehement opposition to homosexuality.   Small numbers disrupted the solemnity that normally attends funerals, and  broke into news coverage by their sheer daring and outlandishness.  This is hateful stuff.

Ah, but it works.  Think of lunatic Pastor Terry Jones’s threat to burn copies of the Koran–drawing attention to himself and his tiny congregation that he never could have attained with more conventional spiritual pursuits.  Or think of the few individuals so opposed to the Vietnam war that they self-immolated near the White House.  The smaller the numbers, the more dramatic the event has to be to get attention.

The Supreme Court is about the consider whether Westboro’s demonstrations are protected as free speech.  According to CBS (source of photo as well),

The church’s lawyer, Phelps’ daughter, Margie, says the church holds the protests to make their point that U.S. deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq are punishment for Americans’ immorality, including tolerance of homosexuality and abortion, and therefore fall squarely under the protection of the First Amendment.

The plaintiff, Albert Snyder, sued for damages because of the disruption at his son’s funeral.  It’s not hard to imagine his grief and anger.

If the long route through the legal system provides slow and uncertain remedies to Westboro’s offense, others have found alternative methods.   The Patriot Guard Riders, a group that includes many veterans, rides motorcycles, at the request of families, at the funerals of servicemen.  Of late the riders have been idling aggressively to drown out intolerance, Ambreen Ali reports:

“There’s very few things on Earth louder than a V-Twin Harley Davidson,” said Dylan Waite, an Army first lieutenant and Patriot Guard volunteer who used his car alarm to contribute to the noise.

 

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The Numbers Trap

Posted on October 4, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Well, yes, size matters, but it’s not the only thing.

Large labor unions, the NAACP, and hundreds of other groups from the center to the left of American politics, staged their demonstration, a March for One Nation Working Together, Saturday.  Although activists estimated 175,000 the New York Times suggested the turnout might have been less than that:

Significant areas of the National Mall that had been filled during Mr. Beck’s rally were empty. In a broadcast on Thursday, Mr. Beck criticized the liberals’ march, saying his supporters paid their own way to drive to Washington, while labor unions chartered hundreds of buses to ferry demonstrators to Saturday’s rally.

Of course, the unions used their resources to build a turnout at the rally.  Beck is more than a little disingenuous in not acknowledging that his partisans did the same.  In addition to publicizing his rally on Fox, groups like Americans for Prosperity chartered buses to his rally.  (Recall that CBS estimated, with aerial photos, 87,000 at Beck’s rally.)

Organizers always try to make a statement with a large turnout, and the sheer number of rallies makes it harder and harder to generate that large turnout.  This fall, we’ve seen: Beck’s “Restore Honor” rally, FreedomWorks’ smaller Tea Party rally (9/12) (to the right), the One America rally, and the upcoming Comedy Central (Stewart/Colbert) rally.

Some union activists and Democratic partisans have criticized Stewart/Colbert for undermining their efforts to generate turnout for their rally, and potentially for undermining get out the vote efforts before the election.  And some Tea Partiers criticized Beck for stealing their thunder and undermining their turnout–and staging an event that was weak on explicit politics.  They realized that media coverage would focus on the size of the rally.

The focus on size, mostly shared by activists, puts activists in a box.  A large turnout makes it harder to hold another rally on the mall, because a smaller turnout will be read as a sign of a fading movement.

And generating people at those rallies takes lots of time, money, and effort.  Obviously, publicizing the event is a big deal, but even more difficult is coordinating logistics of sound, stage, security, and transport.

Although the turnout matters, more important is the larger effort in which the rally plays a part.  (I think of large rallies as punctuation marks in larger campaigns.)   If participants go home and organize other campaigns, a rally is a success.  If the event itself overshadows everything else, and neither message nor activism continues, it’s a sideshow.

The 1963 March on Washington, which featured ML King’s “I have a dream speech” came in the middle of a much broader and diverse set of campaigns for civil rights, which included civil disobedience, demonstrations, lawsuits, legislative lobbying, and electoral efforts.  The Dream had resonance because of everything else around it.

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The Lunch Counter

Posted on October 2, 2010 by David S. Meyer

A piece of the actual Woolworth’s lunch counter from Greensboro has a place at the National Museum of American History, in Washington, DC.

When I visited this past August, the Smithsonian was running a simulation of the nonviolence training sessions that activists conducted to prepare people for high risk activism.  (It was great.)  Such training sessions are typical for groups staging direct action campaigns.  They want to build courage, community, and discipline.

I saw people sporting tee-shirts from the Glenn Beck demonstration, and wondered about their responses to this kind of activism, to say nothing of the long history of campaigns for racial justice in America.

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What social media can do:

Posted on October 2, 2010 by David S. Meyer

I taught an undergraduate social movements course in the Fall of 2008.  The vast majority of the students reported that they had never done anything political at the beginning of the course.  This changed as the fall went on.  A few weeks into the course, one student was excited to tell about the demonstrations she’d been participating in against a referendum, Question 8, which would (and did, at least for a while) banned same sex marriage in California.  [For weeks, groups on opposite sides of the question demonstrated at the same time on opposite sides of busy intersections.]

Ready to make the most of a teaching moment, I asked how she found out about the demonstration.  I expected to use her answer to talk about the sorts of social ties that undergird activism: church or friends or a campus group or another class.  She explained that a Facebook group supporting Obama (who did not support same sex marriage) had featured a post.  In effect, the Facebook group played the same role as a bulletin board in the student union of an earlier era.  (I learned that I had to update my book)

Of course, she met people at the demonstration, and developed face-to-face ties with Facebook friends that could provide the thicker support needed for other kinds of actions.

A couple of points here:

While social media may not make for the same close ties that actual conversations do, they can provide both information and introductions to start those conversations.

[Is this like online dating?  I don’t expect that awkward dinners and introductory conversations have been replaced by online sites; instead, the online service just provides an alternate route to those awkward moments, in addition to fix-ups by friends or pick-ups at the beach or bar.]

People who decided to engage in the sit-in campaigns of the civil rights movement–or in numerous other direct action campaigns, often formed affinity groups of friends for support, even if they didn’t have them going in.  Social media offer one way to make those initial connections.

And sitting in at a lunch counter is rarely someone’s first try at activism.  Rather, people generally start with less commitment and less risk, attending a meeting, talking with friends, going to hear a speaker.  Commitment and social networks deepen with action.

Social media can’t replace face-to-face friendships, church groups, or well-established organizations.  They can, however, stand in for the bulletin board in the church basement, food coop, or bookstore.

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Tweet the Revolution?

Posted on October 2, 2010 by David S. Meyer

People either seem to overestimate or underestimate the potential impact of internet-based social media on social and political change.  I think it’s because they are confused about just what something like Facebook is replacing.

As example:  Malcolm Gladwell ( New Yorker) briefly retells the tale of the Greensboro lunch counter sit-in to argue that the new social media can’t support such heroic, radical, and effective actions.  The argument is too simple (standard professor’s criticism, alas), but the story is virtually always worth retelling: Ezell Blair, Jr., Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond, freshmen at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, stayed up talking all through a Sunday night.  They decided to desegregate the South.  (I always imagine other students on their floor stopping by, hearing their plans, and dismissively deciding to study for biology exams instead.)  On Monday, February 1, 1960, they shut the Woolworth’s lunch counter down; they returned throughout the week, accompanied by scores of other students, their efforts spreading to other stores in Greensboro.   And sit-ins  spread throughout the South.

The four young men were courageous; they were also already veteran activists, well-acquainted with the issues they were confronting, and inspired and informed by earlier sit-ins.  They were acutely aware of the risks they took.  They were also, as Gladwell notes, friends.  They trusted each other, supported each other, and were well positioned to push each other to do risky things that must have been very scary.

In effect, the four had forged a camaraderie of the trenches well before they actually got into those trenches.  But such closeness can come out of shared struggle as well.

Gladwell finds social media wanting in developing the thick ties that serve as the basis for high risk activism.  Pointing to the civil rights movement, he notes the critical role of real–and hierarchical–institutions, particularly churches, and well-established organizations often led by ministers.   Such organizations could support long and difficult campaigns, make strategic decisions, and even enforce discipline.

For Gladwell, social media produce networks, good for broad, but limited (and inherently conservative) action.  Organizations can do more.  [You’ll note that he compares social media with organizations, while it makes more sense to think about social media as one kind of tool that all kinds of different organizations might use.]

He correctly notes that the first four Greensboro sitters-in were members of the NAACP Youth Council.  He neglects to mention that they were frustrated with what they saw as an approach toward social change that was too passive and too slow (they would make the same charge against the Southern Christian Leadership Conference).  The Greensboro sit-ins led to the creation of a new organization, SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) that was deliberately decentralized, so as to give energetic young people a route to direct action.  Gladwell emphasizes the power of conventional resources, particularly money, leadership, and organization.

In contrast Jonathan Rauch (discussed earlier), in a profile of the Tea Party Patriots, is overly enamored with the decentralized networks developed online that helped the Tea Party grow quickly.  He neglects the big money behind many of the Tea Party groups, and the brewing battles over issues and tactics that are inevitable in social movements.  (In fairness, when Rauch published, Tea Party Patriots hadn’t yet received their anonymous one million dollar donation.)  Note the Tea Party Patriots logo brands the group as an “official grassroots organization.” Obviously, there’s a clear contradiction between an organization that emphasizes grassroots self-determination yet still claims the right to certify itself as “official.”

More in the next post….

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Protest after Defeat

Posted on September 27, 2010 by David S. Meyer

The Senate’s failure to consider both the DREAM Act and the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, was a clear defeat for advocates of immigration reform and GLBT activists.  Both sets of activists are, understandably, frustrated with the Senate, President Obama, and conventional politics more generally.  What does this mean?  What happens next?

Let’s look at the activists’ agendas and at their tactics:

Agendas: For both sets of activists, the defeated proposal represented a sliver of their broader agendas.  Activists always have to do this.  Although they may have a broad political agenda, they have to pick a piece, or issue frontier, that is big enough to be significant, yet limited enough to be possible.  You can’t “end patriarchy,” “establish world peace,” or “restore constitutional principles (or honor????),” for example, all at once.  Rather, you have to work piece by piece, and the coalitions you can form around each piece vary.  Progress on an issue frontier might help achieve their larger aims–or it may serve as an obstacle.

DREAM activists have focused on the most sympathetic constituency: college students and military personnel who came to the United States as children.  Taking care of this group may make it harder to build a reform coalition around the claims of 6-9 million other immigrants who entered the United States as adults or haven’t gone to college or served in the military.

While some gay and lesbian activists are specializing in legal status in the military, others are interested in range of other issues; same sex marriage is certainly the most visible at this point.  There is no broad public support for maintaining Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  In contrast, a majority of Americans still oppose same sex marriage–despite massive change in opinion over the past few years.  Winning equal treatment for gays and lesbians in the military is likely to provide a basis for making further claims about social and legal inclusion elsewhere in American life.

Tactics: When a group faces defeat in institutional politics, it may make sense to intensify its efforts outside those institutions, but it’s not a risk-free strategy.  Protest can fragment a campaign’s supporting coalitions, and protesters can lose the sympathy of institutional allies and the broader public.

Gay and lesbian activists have made good progress recently in the legal system, winning favorable decisions from Federal district courts on same sex marriage–and even directly on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Things seem to be going their way, although certainly not at the pace they’d like to see.

This is emphatically not the case for advocates of immigration reform.  The Dream Act has been stalled for nearly a decade, and efforts at broader reform have been on the back-burner since the Senate killed President Bush’s comprehensive reform effort in 2007.  (Oddly, George W. Bush represented the political center on immigration!)  The few Republicans who supported a comprehensive policy, most notably Senator John McCain, have aggressively worked to run away from their previous position, displaying the zeal of the newly diverted.  Anti-immigration activists have also become a powerful force, particularly within the Republican party, including the Tea Party.

I’d expect to see much more protest from immigration reformers in the next few months than from GLBT activists.

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A DREAM deferred

Posted on September 22, 2010 by David S. Meyer

What do Lady Gaga, Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen have in common?  They were unable to stop a minority in the Senate from filibustering a defense appropriations bill that would have led to the repeal of “Don’t ask, Don’t Tell.” (New York Times report here.)

The pop icon, Secretary of Defense, and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff all agree that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military is a good move not only for justice, but also for America’s military capabilities.  Although Lady Gaga hasn’t served in the military or–to my knowledge–expressed the intention of doing so, she’s received the most attention in the last few days.  [We should discuss celebrities and social movements some time soon.]

GLBT activists were not the only ones frustrated by the filibuster.  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid also planned for a vote on the DREAM Act, which would provide a path toward citizenship for students and service people who had come to United States as children–and without documentation.

Promised a Senate vote, gay rights and immigration reform activists aren’t likely to give up now, and they’ll look for their best options.  GLBT activists have recently made substantial progress in the courts.  In the past few months, Federal judges have ruled “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” and California’s anti-same sex marriage Proposition 8 unconstitutional.  In Florida, an air force flight nurse dismissed for being a lesbian is seeking reinstatement, and the federal district judge hearing the case seems inclined to grant it (Washington Post blog report).

Institutional routes to reform for immigration activists seem tougher, and the people pushing the DREAM act are now planning protest strategies, Ambreen Ali reports.

It’s hard to think that an experienced legislator like Sen. Reid was surprised by the result; he can count votes.  Rather, threw these reforms up against the Senate for the Republicans to block, no doubt hoping that the frustration activists faced would translate into enthusiasm at the ballot box in November, perhaps saving some threatened Democrats–including Harry Reid.

This may happen, of course; a lot more is also possible.  Recall Langston Hughes:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

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