Social Movement Building
Global surface temperatures have been the hottest ever recorded with the 16 hottest records in the past 17 years, according to NASA.1 Scientific evidence shows that there is increasing pressure to take action on climate change, due to the increasing temperatures. With ecological systems showing signs of distress and nearing tipping points, building a movement to force large scale change to address climate change seems necessary.
What can the climate justice movement learn from past successful social movements? Understanding what a social movement is provides a starting point towards building a movement to address climate change.
This section of the manual provides a brief understanding of social movements and a compilation of successful mass mobilization movement strategies that can be implemented to help move citizens to act quickly on climate change. Because definitions of social movements are as diverse as the movements themselves, looking at successful strategies from a variety of movements can provide insights that can apply to building the climate justice movement. Understanding these strategies and tactics for building a movement can provide insight for people, organizations, and cities to engage the public to take collective action in urging governments (local, state, national) to take bolder action on climate.
According to Hall, social movements vary greatly and have been defined by many different theorists and his definition takes into account what he felt was missing in others’ definitions.2 Hall proposes the following definition which includes the notion of tactics and collective action: “A social movement is a collection of people who organize to change their environment, improve conditions, or resist change in their environment, and who act collectively to achieve organizational goals.”3
Joseph Gusfield defines a social movement as “socially shared activities and beliefs directed toward the demand for change in some aspect of the social order…What characterizes a social movement as a particular change agent is its quality as an articulated and organized group.”4 John Wilson suggests that “a social movement is a conscious, collective, organized attempt to bring about or resist large-scale change in the social order by non-institutionalized means.”5 Standard definitions of social movements are missing a key feature of protest movements which is disruption or ‘defiance’ because “defiance does not usually characterize the activities of formal organizations that arise on the crest of protest movements,” according to Piven and Cloward.6
Shifting Public Support for Change
Hallmarks of social movements include Martin Luther King Jr.’s (MLK) civil rights movement, Ghandi’s movement to help India break from colonial rule, and the more recent gay rights movement. What is it that these social movements and other successful social movements do to create change? According to Chenoweth & Stephan, after studying 323 nonviolent and violent campaigns, both the frequency and success rates of nonviolent campaigns increased.7
While creating broad public support is the objective for a transformational movement, such as climate justice, according to Chenoweth and Stephan, only 3.5% of the population needs to actually take a stand and participate.8 Participation is defined as “the active and observable engagement of individuals in collective action.”9 Active engagement or support is comprised of several components, according to Engler and Engler.10 Having people show up is first and foremost. This can come in many ways of support such as attending marches, rallies, phone banking and attending teach-ins.11 According to a study by Chenoweth and Pressman, 4.2 million people marched in more than 600 U.S. cities, slating the Women’s March as the largest demonstration in U.S. history on January 21, 2017.12 Although this is historical in nature, many movements culminated on that day to stand in unity and the future will only tell its significance.13
The second component of active engagement is voting. In societies where people have that opportunity, people voting with the movement is a sign of active support. Third, active supporters persuade others through in person conversations or postings on social media. Lastly, people who act independently within their spheres of influence are active supporters. “This might mean lawyers taking on pro bono work for a cause they believe in, musicians writing songs that celebrate protesters in the streets, teachers bringing lessons on the cause into the classroom, ministers making it the topic of their Sunday sermons, professional athletes or celebrities being spotted in T-shirts that express their beliefs, or store owners putting signs of support in their windows.”14 Effective climate communication can play a role in helping people act independently, thus actively supporting the climate movement.
Social Movement Building Strategies
One of the most famous 20th century scholars of nonviolent action is Gene Sharp, who has had a broad impact on social movement building and became known as the leading advocate for strategic nonviolence.15 In terms of a social movement seeking a change that impacts political power, Sharp states that nonviolent action can affect political power that is pluralistic and fragile because it “depends on many groups for reinforcement of its power sources for governments that depend on people.”16 Political power that is monolithic, usually involves violence to bring about change.17 Sharp has, however, helped countries change government structures with his pamphlet, From Dictatorship to Democracy, which has been translated into over thirty languages.18 Furthermore, Sharp has compiled a list of 198 methods of nonviolent action in order to impact political power in a variety of ways (See below).19 The “emphasis may be placed on being for or against something; the grievances may be diverse; the group to whom the act is primarily directed may vary; the types of influence will differ; the intended result may range widely; the act may be an independent one or closely combined with some other method(s) of nonviolent action.”20 Descriptions of each method of nonviolent action and examples from around the world are depicted in the second part of Sharp’s book, The Politics of Nonviolent Action.
Social Movement Approaches— Structure and Mass Mobilization
There are two general schools of thought in relation to bringing about social change. Saul Alinsky’s landmark book, Rules for Radicals, paved the way with a set of organizational structures that help build organizations not movements.21 He is known for his approach for building community groups through slow and incremental steps, person to person relationship building, careful leadership development and creating institutional bodies within organizations which are stable with structure.22 The other main approach is described through the influential work of Frances Fox Piven as broad-based nonviolent disobedience that comes together quickly in the form of mass protest, according to Engler and Engler.23 “The future of social change in this country may well involve integrating these approaches – figuring out how the strengths of both structure and mass protest can be used in tandem – so that outbreaks of widespread revolt complement long-term organizing.”24
According to Alinsky, changing the system is only possible through a supportive base of popular reformation versus simply denouncing an administration and its policies. Reformation is defined as the point when the general public is disillusioned and while they may not act for change, they aren’t opposed to those who do.25 Action or changes in the system, for the sake of policy changes come when the pressure mounts and people keep the heat up and “no politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough.”26 It is critical in a democracy for people to engage their politicians on the issues they feel need to be addressed, such as climate change. “To lose your ‘identity’ as a citizen of democracy is but a step from losing your identity as a person.”27
Disruptive power was introduced by Piven and Cloward in the book, Poor People’s Movements, where case studies from successful movements in the mid-20th century proved that poor people couldn’t create change through conventional means.29 Piven defends that ‘disruption’ is their key tool, characterizing disruption as “the breakdowns that resulted when people defied the rules and institutional routines that originally governed life.”30 Disruption is “simply the application of a negative sanction, the withdrawal of a crucial contribution on which others depend, and it is therefore a natural resource for exerting power.”31 Engler and Engler distinguish between Alinsky’s approach and Piven’s by pointing out that “formal structures failed to produce disruptive outbreaks but also that these structures usually detracted from mass protest when it did occur.”32 Moving forward, social change can learn from the past and integrate best practices, strategies and tactics from a variety of approaches for change.
With the goal of urging governments to take bolder action on climate change, the voice of the poor can have an impact. According to Piven’s assessment of poor’s involvement with disruption in the mid-20th century issues, “The ultimate test of the power of the poor was not in their ability to disrupt particular institutions, but in the responses of electoral leaders to such disruptions.”33 The poor can impact how elected leaders respond. Piven argues that disruptive tactics decline in a movement when organizers look to build structure to sustain the movement in hopes to affect the electorate, instead of escalating disruption to create more pressure on the electorate.34 Piven also argues that disruptive movements can shift the paradigm away from neoliberalism to ideologies that are sympathetic for the poor which can ultimately influence the electorate.35 If we are to consider moving government to take bolder action on climate change, Piven builds the case for incorporating disruptive protest and voices of the poor.
According to Cloward and Piven in their forward, people are moved to take political action when they are organized at the local level. People will act collectively in their groups such as women, tenants, peace activists, environmentalists and those found in workplaces, neighborhoods and churches and this is the most important point of mobilization.36
Strategies must include the escalation of momentum and impact of disruption during each stage of movement building.37 Momentum-driven mass mobilizations have two measures for measuring success according to Engler and Engler.38 First, a campaign must shift public opinion on the issue, since the overall goal of transformation is gaining popular support for the cause of the movement. Second, a campaign must help build capacity to further escalation of the movement.39 According to Ivan Marovic, a key strategy is that you must create and claim your victories along the way instead of waiting for someone to either grant it or suggest that someone must concede.40 It is the pressure due to public support or shift in public opinion that brings about the change.
As in the case of MLK’s efforts, it was about creating change through the building of pressure on broader issues and having the government respond accordingly to that versus drafting proposals or legislation to pass.41 MLK’s success can be attributed to premeditated strategy for both the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott and seven years later, Project C in Birmingham, Alabama which aimed to force Birmingham store owners and city officials to desegregate the downtown.42 The seemingly unplanned, uncontrolled and emotional outbursts of dogs attacking protesters in the streets of Birmingham swept through the media and caused outrage around racial injustice which soon followed only a year and a half later, the signing of the Civil Rights Act into law.43
This may be why perhaps Citizens Climate Lobby hasn’t been successful in passing climate legislation in the United States for many years. Their focus is solely working on specific legislation instead of creating pressure to address the broad issue of climate change. Creating a mass-mobilization movement around shifting public opinion on the Keystone XL Pipeline over several years of addressing its broad climate change impacts as well as community and health impacts ultimately led to an increase of pressure that forced President Obama to end the project through executive order. The battle to stop Keystone XL Pipeline was resurrected after the 2016 election with a new executive order to resume the project.44
The strategy of showing personal acts of sacrifice, as Ghandi professed, can activate public opinion. This strategy forces people to choose what side to pick and “makes people think and act.”45 Ghandi’s success displayed that system change can be accomplished by withdrawing cooperation, obedience and submission of the masses.46 Some recent examples include people chaining themselves to bulldozers to not destroy sacred burial grounds, sitting in trees to prevent deforestation, joining hunger strikes against poor climate policy or locking down on railroad tracks to prevent coal and oil exports. Nonviolent movement building that incorporates disruption, sacrifice and escalation has the greatest impact for influencing change by awakening the general public to see things different than the status quo.47
Social Movement Approaches— Structure and Mass Mobilization
Bill Moyer argues that social movements are successful when the majority of the population is convinced that the movement represents “societies positive and widely held values and sensibilities.”48 He also contends that it’s imperative that social movements are nonviolent in order to be successful. During Moyer’s work of training activists in the 1980s, he found that there weren’t manuals for the stages of movement building.49 He developed a Movement Action Plan with 8 stages of social movement building to help empower activists (See below).50 He also provides a road map for 4 key roles of activists which are Citizen, Reformer, Change Agent and Rebel (See below).51
Sociologist and activist George Lakey of Training for Change has provided trainings for activists and has a variation to Moyer’s 4 roles, with permission from Moyer, which he labels as Rebel, Advocate, Helper, and Organizer. (See below).52 Lakey, along with students from Swarthmore University, created an online database of nonviolent campaigns around the world for activists to gather strategies to apply to their own campaigns (https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/).
Today, many manuals and training materials have been developed to provide strategies and tactics for social movement building. Activist and writer Joshua Kahn Russell has created an online resource library for activists and organizers (Click here).53
for Organizing
Social Movements
Popular Resistance
popularresistance.org
Waging Non Violence
wagingnonviolence.org
The Change Agency
thechangeagency.org
Organizing Cools the Planet
organizingcoolstheplanet.wordpress.com
Organizing for Power
organizingforpower.org
Beautiful Trouble
beautifultrouble.org
The Metta Center
mettacenter.org
Albert Einstein Institute
www.aeinstein.org
Training for Change
trainingforchange.org
The Ruckus Society
ruckus.org
Backbone Campaign
backbonecampaign.org
There is a plethora of examples of nonviolent actions and strategies to shift the public’s conscious towards justice. It just takes citizens to organize and come up with tactics and strategies to aid their campaigns and overall, their movements to success. Many movements take years to propagate, develop and come to fruition. The environmental justice movement has fortunately laid the groundwork for connecting the dots between racial disparities and impacts of environmental pollution. Add in the refugee crisis due to climate change and the impacts on countries and borders being crossed by millions needing another place to live. Also, farm workers having to migrate with the changing climate and not being able to work for a livable wage or be harmed by pesticides and unfair working conditions. All these battles are being fought and only become more powerful and successful when society connects the dots to the injustices created by climate change. Building a climate justice movement has been developing and will continue to grow when the social, racial, environmental and economical injustices are inextricably interconnected.
198 Methods of Nonviolent Action
Eight Stages of the Process of Social Movement Success
End Notes — Social Movement Building
1. National Aeronautics Space Administration. (2017, January 18). NOAA data show 2016 warmest year on record globally. Retrieved from https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-noaa-data-show-2016-warmest-year-on-record-globally
2. Hall, M. (1995). Poor people’s social movement organizations: The goal is to win. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.
3. Ibid., 2.
4. Piven, F.F. & Cloward, R. (1977). Poor people’s movements: Why they succeed, how they fail. New York, NY: Pantheon
Books, 5.
5. Ibid., 5.
6. Ibid., 5.
7. Chenoweth, E. & Stephan, M. (2011). Why civil resistance works: The strategic logic of nonviolent conflict. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., 30.
10. Engler, M. & Engler, P. (2016). This is an uprising: How nonviolent revolt is shaping the twenty-first century. New York, NY: Nation Books.
11. Ibid.
12. Chenoweth, E. & Pressman, J. (2017). Crowd Estimates, 1.21.2017. Retrieved from
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xa0iLqYKz8x9Yc_rfhtmSOJQ2EGgeUVjvV4A8sIaxY/edit#gid=0
13. Frostensen, S. (2017, January 31). The Women’s Marches may have been the largest demonstration in US history. Retrieved from http://www.vox.com/2017/1/22/14350808/womens-marches-largest-demonstration-us-history-map
14. Engler and Engler, This is an uprising, 111.
15. Ibid.
16. Sharp, G. (1973). The politics of nonviolent action – pt. 1. power and struggle. Boston, MA: P. Sargent Publisher, 8.
17. Ibid.
18. Engler and Engler, This is an uprising.
19. Sharp, G. (1973). The politics of nonviolent action – pt. 2. the methods of nonviolent action. Boston, MA: P. Sargent Publisher.
20. Ibid., 118.
21. Engler and Engler, This is an uprising.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid., 32.
25. Alinsky, S. (1971). Rules for radicals: A practical primer for realistic radicals. New York, NY: Vintage Books.
26. Ibid., xxiv.
27. Ibid., xxvi.
28. Ibid., 127-136.
29. Engler and Engler, This is an uprising.
30. Piven, F.F. (2003). Retrospective comments. Perspectives on Politics, 1(4), 707. doi:10.1017/S1537592703000483
31. Piven and Cloward, Poor people’s movements, 24.
32. Engler and Engler, This is an uprising, 45.
33. Piven, “Retrospective comments,” 708.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Staples, L. (2016). Roots to power: A manual for grassroots organizing. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, xiii-xviii.
37. Piven and Cloward, Poor people’s movements.
38. Engler and Engler, This is an uprising.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid.
44. Baker, P & Davenport, C. (2017, January 24). Trump revises Keystone pipeline rejected by Obama. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/us/politics/keystone-dakota-pipeline-trump.html
45. Finkelstein, N. G. (2012). What Ghandi says: About nonviolence, resistance and courage. New York, NY: OR Books, 51.
46. Engler and Engler, This is an uprising.
47. Ibid.
48. Moyer, B. (2001). Doing democracy: The MAP model for organizing social movements. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers
49. Engler and Engler, This is an uprising.
50. Moyer, Doing democracy.
51. Ibid.
52. Lakey, G. (n.d.). 4 roles relating to change. Retrieved from http://www.newjimcroworganizing.org/img/pdf/4%20Roles.pdf
53. Russell, J.K. (n.d.). Praxis makes perfect. Retrieved from
https://joshuakahnrussell.wordpress.com/resources-for-activists-and-organizers/