Figure 2: Effective vs. Ineffective Activism

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EFFECTIVE ROLES INEFFECTIVE ROLES

Empowered and hopeful Disempowered and hopeless

Positive attitude and energy Negative attitude and energy

People power: Participatory democracy Elitist: Self-identified leaders or vanguard

Coordinated strategy and tactics Tactics in isolation from strategy

Nonviolence/means equals ends Any means necessary

Promote realistic vision and social change Unrealistic utopianism or minor reform

Assertive/cooperative (win-win) Passive or overly aggressive/competitive

Feminist/relative truth/nurturer/adaptive Patriarchal/absolute truth/rigid ideology

Faith in people Put the "masses" down

Peace paradigm Dominator paradigm

The mature activist

Successful movements require activists to be personally and politically mature. Activists need to act politically in a way that facilitates the long-term process of social movement success, while at the same time behaving personally in accor­ dance with the model of peaceful human relationships. They should also keep the following guidelines in mind:

• Play all roles of activism effectively. There are many reasons why it is normal to play the four roles ineffectively, and many more reasons why it is hard to act effectively. First, being anti-authoritarian, oppressively hierarchical, or individ­ ualistic and self-righteous has long been accepted as standard social activist behavior. To switch from ineffective activism to effective behavior requires a high level of personal and political awareness and self-understanding. Second, because of the tremendous success of “deconstructive analysis” — that is, because they know what is wrong — activists often suffer strong feelings of hurt, sorrow, anger, and despair. These feelings are exacerbated because activists become keenly aware of the extent to which the official powerholders, those in whom the citizenry has placed its trust, violate the values o f democracy, justice, and fairness. With these feelings of anger, despair, and disillusionment, its easy to become self-righteous and bitter about the government. Finally, it is normal in our society to defend oneself and to react in kind when verbally or physical­ ly attacked. But to act effectively, activists need to be nonviolent at all times; they need to achieve a special level of personal development to respond nonvi- olently regardless of the severity o f attack on them.

40 DOING DEMOCRACY: The MAP Model for Organizing Social Movements

• Be allies with activists who are playing the other roles. There is a strong ten­ dency to believe that the way I see and do things is the right and only way. Similarly, there is a long history of social activists believing rheir brand of activism is right while condemning activists with different approaches. It takes a new level of personal growth and self-transformation not only to recognize the need for other activists to play different roles of activism, but to consciously accept them and become an ally by praising, supporting, and cooperating with them.

• Play all four roles. For their movement to be successful, individual activists need to be able to play all four roles effectively. One day an activist might par­ ticipate in a nonviolent civil disobedience action; the next day the same person could lobby for a bill in Congress and then give a talk to a civic group on why it should be involved in a social issue. This requires a range of skills and a well- developed, mature, and flexible personality. You need to be a rebel, able to resist, take risks, and put your body on the line and in the line of fire. You need to be a change agent, less egocentric than the resister and often invisible as you nurture and support other activists. Being a reformer requires another set of personality traits and political skills, as well as more mainstream attire and man­ nerisms that many rebels abhor.

• Act on positive emotions. Because they are often center stage, it is especially important that activists act on the positive emotions of compassion, love, and passion for a society that lives up to its highest values. Effective activists use the energy of their emotional distress, particularly their anger, fear, and frustration with powerholders, and strategically redirect it through imaginative and respon­ sible nonviolent actions.

• Achieve the vision of a good society. Dysfunctional societies and organiza­ tions both produce and require dysfunctional people, who, in turn, create dysfunctional social movements. Conversely, the good society sought by social movements can only exist to the extent that its individual members have taken the path of personal transformation and developed into functional individuals whose beliefs, attitudes, behavior, and psychological and emo­ tional levels are those of the good society. Social movements, therefore, need to be explicitly involved in the work of encouraging and supporting personal transformation.

Achieving political awareness and personal transformation

People do not need to wait until they are perfect before they become involved, but they do need to be committed to personal growth and transformation if they are to be effective citizen-activists. You can achieve political development through a wide variety o f means:

THE FOUR ROLES OF SOCIAL ACTIVISM 41

• Become informed beyond the mainstream sources through the alternative media including books, magazines, videos, and Internet websites and email lists of key groups and issues.

• Become thoroughly acquainted with the groups and spokespeople of social movements who are working on issues that concern you.

• Attend workshops and lectures and discussion groups.

• Become involved. You need to act your way into thinking; you cannot think your way into acting.

There is also a wide range of ways to engage in the process of personal devel­ opment and transformation. You can learn about conflict resolution, assertiveness training, group dynamics, co-counseling, twelve-step programs, personal support groups, and the many facets of multiculturalism. What is needed is a fundamen­ tal shift in our character from being dysfunctional and dominating, states that are normal for our culture and social systems, to being peaceful and consciously aware, which are the states needed in the good democratic society we seek.

3 The Eight Stages of Social Movements

S

OCIAL MOVEMENTS DO NOT WIN OVERNIGHT. Successful social movements typically progress through a series of eight clearly definable stages, in a process that often takes years or even decades.1 The Movement Action Plan’s Eight Stages Model enables activists to identify the particular stage their social movement has reached, celebrate successes achieved by completing previous stages, and create effective strategies, tactics, and programs for completing the current stage and moving to the next. As they follow this process, activists are able to develop strategies to achieve short-term goals that are part of the long-term evolution to their ultimate objective. When they achieve the goals of one stage, activists can develop short-term goals, programs, and activities for the next stage, and so forth. This allows social movement organizers and activists to become social movement strategists.

Social movements usually address big issues, such as civil rights for African Americans, the war in Vietnam, universal health care, or corporation-dominated economic globalization. These noble goals, however, are too abstract to excite and mobilize people to action. Social movement strategists, therefore, divide their issues into a number of specific critical sub-issues and organize a sub-movement for each of them. For example, the anti-corporate economic globalization move­ ment has been made up of numerous sub-movements including the sub-movement against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the sub-movement against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), the sub­ movement in favor of canceling Third World debt, the sub-movement against specific corporations that employ workers in sweat shop conditions, and the sub­ movement that organizes fair trade programs, to name but a few.

The process of social movement success, therefore, involves many sub­ movements that are progressing through the MAP eight stages of success. At any

THE EIGHT STAGES OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 43

given time the overall movement can be identified as being in a specific MAP stage, while each of its sub-movements may be progressing through the eight stages at a different pace. This process ultimately affects the cultural, social, and political climate to the point where it becomes more costly for the powerholders to continue their policies than to change them. Even sub-movements that are defeated can contribute to this building process. Finally, when the whole move­ ment achieves its major goal, many of the other sub-goals are automatically won, while others continue as part of a new movement.

The model in Figure 1, the Eight Stages of Successful Social Movements, pro­ vides a general description of each of these stages and the role that the movement, powerholders, and the public typically play in each stage. The model also delineates the goals for each stage, typical pitfalls, and the crisis that ends each stage and pre­ pares the way for advancement to the next stage. Notice that until the opposition reaches Stage Four it typically is not recognized as being a social movement.

STAGE ONE: NORMAL TIMES

Stagflation: It is a time of standstill and decline. The political and social environment is corrupt, insights or ideas from people of principle will be met with apathy or rejection, but they must remain true to their principles.

(From the I Ching, “Book of Changes”)

There are many conditions that grossly violate democracy, freedom, justice, peace, a clean environment, the meeting of basic human needs, and society’s other widely held and cherished fundamental values. These conditions do not exist in a vacuum. They are created and sustained by society’s political, economic, and social systems, which are typically run by society’s powerholders through private and public institutions. The two primary powerholders today are corporations and governments. Social problems are also sustained by various aspects of a society’s culture, such as its beliefs, worldviews, myths and rituals, and the state of awareness of individual citizens.

In normal times these violations of society’s sensibilities go mostly unno­ ticed. They are neither in the public spotlight nor on society’s agenda of hotly contested issues. Normal times are politically quiet times. The great majority of the population either does not know the problem exists or supports the institu­ tional policies and practices that cause the problem. Citizen opposition is too small in numbers and power and the divergent viewpoint is considered too radical or ridiculous to deserve credibility.

44 DOING DEMOCRACY: The MAP Model for Organizing Social Movements

1. Normal Times A critical social problem exists that violates widely held values Powerholders support problem: Their "Official Policies" tout widely held values but the real "Operating Policies" violate ^fchose values

■ Public is unaware of the problem and supports powerholders Problem/policies not a public issue

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