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  I don’t expect that awkward dinners and introductory conversations have been replaced by online sites; instead, the online service just provides an alternate route to those awkward moments, in addition to fix-ups by friends or pick-ups at the beach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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Can Activists Become Politicians? (Hint: Jeannette Rankin)

Posted on September 18, 2010 by David S. Meyer

On Congress.org, Ambreen Ali  ascribes some of Christine O’Donnell’s electoral difficulties to her background as an activist:

It was shortly after college when the Delaware Republican embraced an identity aspiring politicians usually avoid: She became an activist.

Though political candidates often work closely with the activists who lobby them, the traits that lead to success in the two fields couldn’t be any more different.

Activists are deliberately controversial because it gets them and their causes attention. Politicians do the opposite, choosing their words carefully so they don’t alienate constituents.

I’m not convinced.  O’Donnell’s activism produced something of a paper (actually, video) trail of odd comments, most notably an interview on MTV nearly fifteen years ago, in which she took a tough stand on masturbation: she’s opposed (See Will Saletan at Slate).  Her activism produced no record of organizing events or groups, nor influence on any matter of policy.  O’Donnell’s activism was idiosyncratic, sporadic, humorous, and ineffective.  Her Senate candidacies have stayed true to form.

Most of what O’Donnell has done in the last decade is run for office–unsuccessfully.

The Tea Party has surely generated a new wave of populist conservative activism.  Some of those activists have run for office.  But many of the candidates were veterans of wildly unsuccessful campaigns for office, newly successful only by surfing the wave of Tea Party activism–as noted by Kenneth P. Vogel at Politico.  In addition to O’Donnell, Joe Miller (Alaska), Allen West (Florida), Keith Fimian (Virginia), Sharron Angle (Nevada), and Charlie Bass (New Hampshire) had recently lost in campaigns for office.  Some ran notably more moderate campaigns in the past.  The activist tide lifted all kinds of boats,  including both stronger and stranger candidates.  [I’ve already posted on how movement candidates disappoint.]  Most, however, were aspiring politicians, albeit not very successful ones.

Can activists make the transition to electoral politics?  John Lewis, the civil rights hero who was Executive Director of the SNCC moved the civil rights movement to Atlanta’s City Council to the US Congress.  Massachusetts Senator John Kerry‘s first appearance in politics was as leader of Vietnam Veterans against the war.

Joe Lieberman (a case study in disappointment) participated in Mississippi Freedom Summer as a young man. (See Manning Marable’s comments when Lieberman was nominated as the Democratic candidate for vice president.)  Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank helped organize Freedom Summer–although he doesn’t advertise this background on his website.

Not long ago, Ambreen Ali herself published a list of members of Congress who started as activists.  It includes veterans of civil rights, anti-abortion, and human rights campaigns.

Unsurprisingly, there are more local politicians with activist backgrounds.  Jackie Goldberg, an organizer in the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley and a GLBT activist, served for years in the California State Assembly and on the LA City Council.

Just one example.  Take a look at your school board or city council and you’ll probably find others.

And elected officials can graduate to activism as well.  Democrat Kweisi Mfume, in his fifth term in the House, left office to run the NAACP in 1996.  Republican Dick Armey retired as House Majority Leader in 2002; in 2003 he was co-chair of Americans for a Sound Economy,  which grew into FreedomWorks, one of the well-funded groups that supports the Tea Party.

Two points:

1.  Working outside government to promote social change is a different job than negotiating those changes as a legislator.

2.  Some people can do both.  Someone who demonstrated the courage and capabilities needed to organize large events and mobilize many people may well have the requisite skills and drive to succeed in politics.

Someone who has been unsuccessful working outside mainstream politics isn’t likely to have an easier time running for office.

And, oh, Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973).  She was an activist: feminist, suffragist, pacifist.  She helped found the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the Americana Civil Liberties Union.

She was also the first woman elected to Congress, as a Republican from Montana in 1916.   In her first year in office, she cast one of the few votes against entering World War I, and unsuccessfully ran for the Senate in 1918.   She returned to the House in 1940, casting the only vote against entering World War II.  She was turned out of office, but not out of politics or activism.

She campaigned against war and for social justice for the rest of her life, protesting against the Vietnam war during the 1960s.  It’s a great story, one detailed in a PBS production, Peace is a Woman’s Job.

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March for Chuckles?

Posted on September 17, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Here’s something new.  Comedy Central’s hosts have announced competing demonstrations at the same time and place.  I don’t know what kinds of politics are at work here.  Then again, maybe this isn’t so different from Glenn Beck’s March to Restore Honor, which didW more to build his (and Fox’s) brand than anything else.

Will politicians be invited to either of these rallies?  Will they have separate podiums?

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Immigration Activists Push the Dream Act

Posted on September 16, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Public frustration with current immigration policy never seems to fade into the background these days.   At Congress.org, Ambreen Ali reports that reform activists are planning to press Senators to vote for the Dream Act next week.  Their campaign will include lobbying visits in Washington and district offices, as well as demonstrations.

The Dream Act would provide a path toward citizenship (through education or military service) for young people brought to the United States as children.   Those directly affected are incredibly sympathetic, and advocates have found many hard-working high achievers, whose lives have been stalled by the absence of papers. See, for example, the story of 19 year old Eric Balderas, high school valedictorian from Texas, now studying biology at Harvard (Boston Globe link).  (See Roberto Gonzales’s report Young Lives on Hold, sponsored by the College Board, which supports the Act.)

The Dream Act addresses only a small part of America’s immigration problem.  Activists have focused on it, hoping that the compelling stories will help break the legislative logjam on immigration.  So far, they’ve been wrong; the Dream Act has been on the agenda for a decade.

Current immigration policy satisfies no one, and activists on both sides of the issue are frustrated, feeling that their efforts haven’t produced anything.  In fact, their efforts have succeeded in stalling their opponents, effectively preventing any kind of substantial reform.

And opponents of comprehensive reform also offer selected stories, often focusing on horrific crimes.  The Washington Independent reports conservative activist groups putting out a call for dramatic stories.

Obviously, valedictorians and murderers comprise a tiny fraction of the 11-12 million undocumented people in the United States.  Each side picks the story…and the policy agenda…they think is big enough to be worthwhile, yet small enough to be possible.

And they will tell stories, organize demonstrations, and lobby to try to make it happen.

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Why Movement Candidates Always Disappoint

Posted on September 16, 2010 by David S. Meyer

The Tea Party, like many American protest movements, jumped into the electoral fray quickly.  This is the way our system is set up; frequent elections mean that activists always seem to have the chance to replace politicians they don’t like with someone they do.

And Tea Party candidates have done very well–at least in Republican primaries.  Slate’s David Weigel has been tracking their efforts; his scorecard shows Tea Partiers beating Republican establishment candidates a little more than half the time.

The terrain gets tougher in the general elections–and in governing.  Movement-supported candidates virtually always disappoint their supporters, but in all kinds of different ways.  They lose, they fail, or they change.

They may be lousy candidates, bad at articulating a message and unlikely to win–and carrying personal baggage to boot.  (This seems to be the early consensus on Christine O’Donnell.)  Sharron Angle’s nomination gave Harry Reid an unexpectedly good shot at retaining his seat.  Supporting the purer movement candidate often means electing the opposing party.

And if they win, hold tight to their ideals, they’ll  be ineffective, unable to deliver on anything that matters to their supporters.  The nasty process of politics demands compromise and delivering less than you wanted–or promised.  Again, the system is set up that way.   If Rand Paul follows his father’s model in Congress, he will develop a record of statements that inspire the faithful and no legislative achievements.

Or, they  may win and become, shockingly, effective politicians, making deals and compromising.

The late “liberal lion” of the Senate, Ted Kennedy, constantly took flack from activists for his willingness–and extraordinary facility, in cutting deals, sponsoring legislation with Utah’s Orrin Hatch, and coordinating with President George W. Bush on No Child Left Behind.  The resulting legislation was always so much less than liberal supporters wanted–but there was resulting legislation.

Actually, there’s no need to go back to Ted.  Isn’t Barack Obama a perfect example of the movement candidate who compromises to try to get things done (e.g., still 50,000 service people in Iraq; no public option for health care)?

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The Tea Party and Grassroots Democracy

Posted on September 15, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Morning Edition features an interview with journalist Jonathan Rauch, discussing the tea party in general, and his article in the current edition of the National Journal.  Some segments of the movement are determined to serve the grassroots under any circumstances, ready to suffer defeats for a long time in order to build a democratic conservative movement.

Rauch cites me as skeptical of their prospects.  Of course, lots of movements start with such aspirations.  (Think Populists, Greens, antinuclear power activists, the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee, Students for a Democratic Society–think about anarcho-syndicalism altogether.)  They can become established Washington interest groups or they can dissipate and fade away—often, both.

Let me know how I’m wrong on this one.

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Purity versus Pragmatism

Posted on September 15, 2010 by David S. Meyer

The Tea Party, like all social movements in America, is facing the dilemma of making inroads in mainstream politics or focusing on articulating its message as clearly as possible.  By virtually all accounts (e.g., NY Times here), the Republican nomination of Christine O’Donnell in Delaware for Senate has undermined what was an excellent prospect for a pick-up.

Even if we let go of Ms. O’Donnell’s particular issues (Karl Rove says she’s “nutty“) the purists have a harder time winning general election than candidates who can move to the center.

And this case isn’t unique:  While Republican nomination of purists in Alaska and Utah are a good bet to win anyway–in Alaska and Utah, other cases are tougher.  The insurgent conservative campaign of Doug Hoffman–against a moderate Republican–virtually handed Democrat Bill Owens the Congressional seat from New York’s 23rd district, a district that had been Republican forever.  The Republicans may take that seat back–but Hoffman is running again.

Republican Senate candidates Sharron Angle (Nevada), Rand Paul (Kentucky), Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania) and Marco Rubio (Florida) are a tougher sell in their general elections than the alternatives they defeated–or scared off.  Some of them will win.  Maybe this time all of them will win, but the focus on purity is a high risk strategy for social movements in America.  (Read any good history of the Populist movement or think again about Ralph Nader’s presidential candidacies to remember this.)

I’d add that Madison set the system up this way!

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