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Welcome to this week’s lecture, we are looking at the second part of the topic on social movements, change for sustainability and advocacy. Before I start, I would like to acknowledge the source for the content of the lecture this week. Aidan Ricketts, the author of the prescribed readings has generously made his activism training materials available on his website, from where this week’s slides have been drawn.
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The intended learning objectives for this week are…
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Let’s start with the first Topic ILO…understanding the stages of a social movement
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Social movements are like other living things, the movement and the people in and around it go through cycles of change
A key part of building a strong and tenacious movement is also gaining some understanding of what we may call the life cycle of a social movement. One of the most detailed and in-depth analyses of this idea is to be found in Bill Moyer’s book ‘Doing Democracy’ , in which he develops a complex map of the life cycle of social movements, which has 8 stages.
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Let’s start with a recap of some terminology,…
Of particular significance is Moyer’s point that ‘the power holders only rule as long as they have the consent and acquiescence of the people’. From this assertion comes the idea that the central focus of the social movement is to educate, alert, inspire and eventually involve the majority of the public. This is a focus that can be aided by particular strategic activities, such as protests, direct action, blockades or litigation. However, the activity itself should not be seen as the main purpose; changing public opinion should be the aim. Getting confused about the aim has led many activists to believe that a whole campaign is dependent on them personally stopping some activity.
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There are 8 stages of a social movement, which we will look at in turn. The 8 stages are…
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STAGE 1: NORMAL TIMES
• Conditions exist that violate widely held values in the community (ancient forests being destroyed, inequality in income)
• However, the majority is unaware of the nature or frequency of such events
• The majority feels comfortable with official explanations
(Moyer 2001 p43)
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STAGE 2: PROVE THE FAILURE OF EXISTING INSTITUTIONS • Activists must demonstrate that a problem exists (e.g. logging continues despite 'moratorium') • Conduct research to gather more evidence • Utilize available opportunities (political, legal, media) to highlight and publicize the issue • (Moyer 2001,p p48)
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STAGE 3: RIPENING CONDITIONS
• This may be a slow moving process • Growing numbers of people are discontent with the status quo. • People stop relying on established organisations to effect change. New small autonomous local action groups begin to form. (Moyer 2001,p 51)
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The Franklin Dam or Gordon-below-Franklin Dam project was a proposed dam on the Gordon River in Tasmania, Australia, that was never constructed. The movement that eventually led to the project's cancellation became one of most significant environmental campaigns in Australian history.
It is believed that when a campaign in the national print media, assisted by the pictures of photographer Peter Dombrovskis, whose most famous photograph was Morning Mist, Rock Island Bend, Franklin River, pictured here. This picture, some commentators believe played a part in the victory for Bob Hawke in the 1983 federal election. The photograph portrayed a section of the Franklin River which was to be submerged by the proposed Franklin Dam and spearheaded the visual appeal of the Franklin River in the contentious 'No Dams' campaign of 1982.
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STAGE 5: PERCEPTIONS OF FAILURE • Hopes of an early victory are frustrated as the power holders dig in and resist change. • Many activists despair, burn out or become internally divisive. • Ironically the movement is usually progressing to stage 6, but activists are too close to the action to see it. • (Moyer 2001, p 59)
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STAGE 6: MAJORITY PUBLIC OPINION
• The beginning of a long term grassroots struggle with the power holders • The movement wins the backing of a larger proportion of the public • The movement moves utilises all available means to educate and the public, tactics often change
(Moyer 2001,p64)
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STAGE 7: SUCCESS • The movement reaches a new plateau. • Public opinion turns the tide against the power holders • Power holders scramble to realign themselves • Significant goals are achieved (usually not all goals)
(Moyer 2001, p75)
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STAGE 8: CONTINUING THE STRUGGLE • The success attained in stage 7 is not the end of the struggle • The movement and the individuals have an opportunity to refocus and renew • New groups may focus on unfinished business
• (Moyer 2001,p 80)
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While Moyer’s model may appear quite linear, it is not quite that simple. For a start it is represented as a cycle rather than as a linear process, and secondly it is acknowledged that at times social movements will find that they need to re-engage in earlier stages of their campaigns to generate more momentum for overall change. The model is not meant to give any assurance of social movement success; rather it is meant to support the process of success by helping participants to gain a bigger picture of where in the cycle their movement may be at present, and hopefully this in itself will support strategic decision-making and avoid unnecessary despair. Obviously any theoretical model will be imperfect, or at least will need to be adjusted to the circumstances of a particular movement at a particular time.
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Aidan Ricketts, the author of the prescribed text this week, starts of chapter 3 by stating that “Effective strategy lies at the very heart of successful activism. It is all very well to have a good cause, good information and good intentions, but to be effective, activists and social change advocates need to coordinate all of this into an effective strategy. Strategic thinking needs to saturate every aspect of campaign practice.” So how IS an activism campaign strategy developed? That is what we explore in this ILO.
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What makes social movements work? To understand why a strategy is required, and what it entails, the following video illustrates some key points that are required in the development of a social movement strategy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxzvUZPe_jg
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This definition of strategy has been drawn from a business text, where strategy is defined as…
The use of strategy in public interest campaigning is similar in some ways to its use in military and business contexts, for example, but there are key contextual differences that we must explore. Military and business applications of strategy explicitly focus on defeating, overwhelming or outmaneuvering an enemy, business competitor or opponent.
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Dealing with an opponent, and more specifically an intelligent opponent, will often be a feature of a public interest campaign, but this will not always be the case, or there will be a more complex range of players than simply two sides. For this reason, four special aspects of public interest strategy will be explored:
Because of the complexity of working within community organizations, it is important that all campaign workers understand and accept the group’s Strategy. With this understanding and acceptance, campaign workers can gain a sense of context for their actions and comprehend how their involvement is contributing to the wider strategy. They may be able to see how they can advance the strategy themselves through their individual action. Further, where the community organization agrees to devolve authority and power, the well-informed campaign worker may be able to exercise their discretion or initiative to promptly respond to new information, changed conditions or the actions of the intelligent opponent, sparing the need for the convening of a formal strategy session to make the relevant decisions. The sense of empowerment that well-informed campaign workers can gain from being actively involved is a major reason why people persist in what can be long and difficult public interest strategies and campaigns. This sense of empowerment should be nurtured and encouraged wherever possible.
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Activist organizations and social movements are not usually run by CEOs (although Greenpeace is a notable exception). Strategic decision-making in public interest campaigns is almost always a product of group discussions and collective decision-making. Sometimes these decisions are taken at formal meetings and sometimes at specifically convened workshops or strategy sessions. Community organizations are usually far more egalitarian and democratic than most other forms of organization. As such the process of arriving at a statement of strategic vision, goals and policy generally requires much clarification, discussion, debate and amendment before final adoption. Along the way, during these discussions, a range of conceptual tools maybe employed, which could include:
The brainstorm: in a brainstorm anyone is invited to suggest any idea that may contribute to group vision or aim, no matter how crazy, without rebuke; all these ideas are then reviewed, grouped and prioritized. • Drawing a power-holder map: this identifies the key players, their relationships and critical links. Once this is done the aim is to focus on weak points to break these links. In the next chapter you will be introduced to various mapping techniques including power-holder maps and allies and foes maps, each of which contributes to this process. (See Chapter 4.) • Drawing a campaign calendar or ‘road map’: identifying the present situation and the intended final (conceptual) destination; sketching in steps and stages along the way, working both forwards and backwards in time to identify lead times and the action sequence. (This approach was described in section 3.3 above.) • Drawing an integrated strategy map: in brief, the place to start is the immediate goal that galvanized the group into action (‘the immediate goal’); the next step is to identify a deeper underlying objective that represents a unified vision for the group. Once these processes are complete it’s possible to begin to move down the map to devise component strategies and in turn specific tactics for achieving the goal and objectives. (Chapter 4 provides detailed instructions on how to approach the making of an integrated strategy map.) • SWOT analysis: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. SWOT is a popular method for undertaking strategic analysis. It is beyond the scope of this book to analyse it here. Nonetheless, many people find SWOT to be a very useful tool. A useful Internet site for an understanding of SWOT processes is www.marketingteacher.com/swot/history-of-swot.html.
The next ILO will explore how to apply these conceptual tools.
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For this ILO, we look at the actual campaign planning steps
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As in the text, to illustrate the planning steps process better, pretend that you are an ordinary citizen with little or no personal background in social movements. One day you wake to find that a lead refinery is being planned near your town (known as Corpvale). You are very worried about the health and the environmental implications of this, so you do something you have never done before – you decide to do something about it. The first you know about the proposed lead refinery is when the story appears in your local newspaper.
PLANNING A NEW CAMPAIGN
• Lets now bring the group's typical questions together into some practical methods of planning or 'mapping' your campaign • The documents you produce from these exercises are called campaign maps or conflict maps • Mapping is a practical exercise and a vital way of organising the information and resources that are available.
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This step is the brainstorm. Brainstorming is where you just let everyone offer suggestions and you write them all down or record them all for later analysis and selection. Not all the ideas will be practical, but brainstorming sessions are very creative, they are very inclusive and democratic, and they can have surprising results.
The first column includes the typical questions you would ask when planning a campaign, the strategic considerations are presented in the second column, and the third column includes the types of maps you would need to develop to help answer the questions. This ILO will introduce you to some of these maps.
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The highest-order component of your plan is your overall objective, and under this is your immediate goal.
Objectives are statements about your values, about where your group wants to go and what changes you want to see in the world around you. Depending on the nature of your group, your overall objectives may be very broad and take a long time to achieve, such as ‘world peace’, or they may be more limited, such as ‘maintaining healthy urban communities’. You need to be careful not to confuse an immediate goal for an overall objective. Frequently there will be a deep underlying issue such as industrial pollution, biodiversity or freedom from discrimination which really motivates your group, but your immediate focus is an impending issue right on your doorstep.
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An example based on the Corpvale scenario is given here, where your overall objective is to preserve a healthy living environment in your town, and the immediate goal is to prevent the establishment of a lead refinery near a residential area.
In such a situation it is a good idea to start by assuming that the immediate crisis represents an immediate goal, but that there is a deeper underlying value that motivates the people in your group. There are very good reasons for taking this approach. To put it simply, if you do not articulate your underlying values you are unnecessarily narrowing the scope of your campaign, and too narrowly defining its real public significance.
One consequence could be that you will be labeled as NIMBYs (Not In My Backyarders) because you have failed to articulate the underlying public interest issue, and secondly you will most likely shorten the life cycle of your campaign or movement. Suppose the refinery goes ahead despite strident local opposition. If the only objective had been to defeat the refinery then your group is utterly defeated, but if your objective is to keep working for clean air, then your group has suffered a setback but continues to have a very real purpose (perhaps even more so now).
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After you are clear about your overall objective and immediate goal, you can start to devise strategies for getting there. Normally you need a range of strategies that relate to different aspects of the whole campaign.
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It is a good idea to collect these ‘component strategies’ under the umbrella of one ‘grand strategy’. This grand or overarching strategy is a statement of what is needed in order to achieve success. In the example of Corpvale, the grand strategy is to convince government and corporate decision-makers to abandon the lead refinery plan.
In designing the component strategies, there are some generic subcategories that should be considered. These are of great practical importance. Most community groups should be considering what component strategies they will need in relation to factors like public awareness, media coverage, possible legal challenges, lobbying of politicians and other power-holders, and possible corporate strategies. It will also be necessary to have a fundraisin strategy (sometimes this is treated as an issue separate from the campaign as such, although often fund-raising and raising community awareness can be linked activities). Your component strategies need to be tailor made for your campaign, but the categories of public awareness, media, political and legal are all quite common in most public interest campaigns.
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Once you have determined your component strategy headings the next step is to identify specific tactics for making headway. Choosing tactics is something that will depend very much on your objectives, your strategy, the context of your campaign and also upon the resources and skills available to you.
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Here are some examples of tactics based on the component strategies.
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The most central of all is the integrated strategy map itself. This example, drawn from your prescribed reading, shows an example of a strategy map for the Corpvale campaign opposing the establishment of the lead refinery. Notice the way in which the overall objective and immediate goal sit above the more active parts of the map, such as component strategies and tactics. This hierarchy is very important because it helps all participants understand at every stage what the big picture is (goals and objectives) and how current activities (tactics) fit within that picture.
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This is what a general integrated strategy map for a campaign would look like.
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Obviously, in public interest advocacy it is primarily the public whom you want to convince in the longer term, but in the shorter term you will need to convince particular power-holders to change what they are doing. Power-holders have a much more direct say over what happens in the short term than does public opinion. Public opinion is a complex and slow-changing business, and in any case power-holders are not always as responsive to public opinion as you may hope, particularly where there are other powerful vested interests at stake. You need only look at the campaigns against involvement in the Iraq war to see that power-holders will often ignore public opinion if they think they can get away with it. Your job as an advocate, then, is twofold: you must try to influence public opinion, but you must also convince the power-holders that they will not get away with ignoring you.
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This is an example of a simple power holders map. The arrows represent the direction in which influence flows, which is sometimes a two way flow. A map like this allows you to identify what kinds of pressure are working in your favour and try to increase them
The idea behind the map is that the arrows represent the direction in which influence flows, so in drawing your own map you need to start by identifying all the various stakeholders and power-holders and then draw in the arrows. You may find you end with intersecting arrows all over the page. This is common; it just means that you may need to go through several iterations until you produce a map that is easy to read. A power-holder map is not just a descriptive tool, it is a strategic planning tool, and usually as you go about the process of completing the map your group will realize that there are more connections than you thought and more places where you can exert influence than you had previously appreciated.
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You should never make the mistake of thinking you or your group are the only people who care about the issue. There may be many supporters, or potential supporters, out there, even among the ranks of those you assumed were your enemies (e.g. council staffers, ministerial staffers), who might lend a hand at times. A friends and foes map is a good way of taking another look at the whole issue, without making too many assumptions.
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The idea of an allies and foes map is quite simple. You start with a page and list friends (people who are fully supportive) on the left and on the right-hand side people who you know (not just suspect) are working against you. Everyone else occupies some form of middle ground. In the middle of the page is the neutral/uncommitted line.
It is often a surprisingly empowering exercise because many people begin their campaign feeling that it is them or their group against the world. The usual result of this mapping process is the realization that there are a lot of allies and potential allies out there and that your opponent may be relatively isolated, even though they may possess substantial economic or political power.
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In the interest of time, and because the prescribed reading on this topic is very descriptive, please read about these other maps in your prescribed chapters for this week.
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SUMMARY
• Having a whole of campaign plan helps: • Focus your campaign for maximum effectiveness • Identify the key objectives and messages • Reduce internal conflict by allowing everyone to take part in and understand the whole picture • Provide a touchstone in future decision-making • But maps are not the territory and wi II need to be regularly re-visited and refined in light of new information
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FRANKLIN RIVER DAM ENVIRONMENTAL 1. Watch the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQrMq_euVug
2. Read the Wikipedia entry on the Franklin River Dam controversy at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Dam_controversy
Questions:
1. Identify the stages of the Franklin river dam environmental movement based on Moyer's (2001) 8 stages of a social movement.
All the homework materials are all available on LMS under this topic.
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REMEMBER ...
Please make sure you read the prescribed readings, complete the homework activities and the topic quiz before attending your seminar.
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