We all want to be a part of something bigger, something that moves the needle forward,
something that ideally makes the world a better place.
Enter social movements.
Led by fearless and revolutionary ideas, social movements brought women the right to vote
after nearly 100 years of protests in the US.
In the last few years, there have been waves of protests for racial justice
and against the climate crisis around the world.
But the truth is, not every movement is bound to succeed.
There’s never been a social movement in the history of the world that has said,
“Hey, we want X to happen,” and everyone’s like, “Great, it’s going to happen, right?”
Instead, what happens is that social movement agitates for change and then they get pushback.
And the real thing that differentiates a successful movement from an unsuccessful movement is
how do they react when they get that pushback?
So is there a recipe for a perfect social movement?
They simultaneously negotiate but also hold big ideas.
Hahrie Han, professor of political science
at Johns Hopkins University, explains.
For starters, every successful movement has these three Ps.
It makes the participation of ordinary people possible. So people are able to participate.
It makes it probable so that people want to participate.
And then it makes it powerful, right?
It creates a scaffolding or a vehicle through which people can realise their own power.
Social media has made movements accessible to millions.
One tweet or a viral hashtag can get people on the streets.
Just look at #RoeVWade leading a discussion on reproductive health care
or people pitching in on #inflation around the world.
But to make a movement powerful, Professor Han says, it needs to accomplish several things.
Number one, don’t mistake attention for power.
We live in an attention economy. We live in a place where people can get lots of attention for the work that they’re doing.
But attention doesn’t necessarily mean that you can actually make the change that you want.
Number two, aim to organise, not just mobilise.
So mobilising is about trying to essentially harness people’s outrage.
And because of all the tools that we have with new technologies,
it’s easier than ever before to phrase just the right ask to get lots of millions of people
who are really angry about something to come out and take action.
But that doesn’t actually translate to power.
Organising, on the other hand, is about actually transforming people’s capabilities
to turn people from people who are just outraged into people who are actually working with each other to
create the kind of flexibility and strategic capacity they need to make the change that they want.
Number three, develop a quick reaction time.
The most powerful movements are not the movements that have the best strategy at time one.
They’re the movements that, at time two, are able to react in real time with flexibility to the challenges that come their way.
While ticking all those boxes may sound unrealistic, there have been movements that accomplished it.
The classic, iconic movement that people talk about a lot is the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.
One of the core pieces of that was the Montgomery Bus Boycott, right,
where a bunch of the Black community in Montgomery, Alabama, boycotted buses to protest segregation on buses.
And what people forget a lot of times when we tell that story of the Montgomery bus boycott is that it lasted for over a year.
So what that means is that for over 365 days, the Black community had to be able to hold together
its entire community so that none of them would take the bus.
And so that meant these are people who were trying to get their families to the doctor. They were trying to get groceries.
They still had to get to their jobs. They still had to get children to school.
And in this climate, people were really pushing back against them.
The 11-month-old protest against the city buses will be called off.
And that the Negro citizens of Montgomery, Alabama, will return to the buses on a non-segregated basis.
And there aren’t many right now. And I think that’s one of the things that we think about, is the difference
between movements that have that lasting power and movements that don’t.
A social movement is likely to thrive in a society where various thoughts
and ideas can coexist, which is one of the core ideas of democracy.
Democracy is fundamentally about self-governance.
It’s about people putting their hands on the levers of change and becoming architects of their own future.
And I think social movements in the ways that we’re talking about, sometimes people see that as
antithetical to democracy because it’s agitation from the outside.
And I actually think it’s a core part of democracy because it’s the way in which people become equipped
to engage in the self-governance that makes democracy work.
So if you are a movement organiser, how do you bring communities together to solve global problems like
inequality, climate change or poverty?
It’s all about the people you involve and how you connect them to one another.
As an organiser, I don’t know what challenges are going to come my way
in three months, six months, one year, five years down the road.
And so I have to try to think, what choices can I make today that’s going to
help me build that successful movement in the future?
So much of it we find from our research has to do with the extent to which you
build an interconnected set of relationships among the people in your base.
It might not be a good sign if you feel like your role in the community is not exactly clear.
And that means there’s no relationship to you, right? That you are just another warm body that they can take.
But the movements that we’ve seen that are the most successful,
I mean, it’s impossible for the leaders at the center of the movement to be in relationship with everyone, of course.
But what it means is that people are connected to other people, so that even
if they’re not in relationship with the leaders, they’re connected with other people who actually will notice,
“Hey, Hahrie didn’t show up for this meeting.’’
It’s not just that we’re missing one person is that this specific person didn’t show up because we needed them.
In other words, behind a powerful movement, there is a community of people, each with their unique purpose, ready to stand together.
So is there a secret formula to a successful movement?
The research does not show that there is any unitary strategy that makes movements work.
I think sometimes when people say, “Oh, if I sit at this table, then I’m giving up,”
“I’m sacrificing some of my ideals.”
Or the fact that I’m entering into conversation with this strange bedfellow
means that I’m losing some of the purity of what I’m trying to achieve.
And what we find is that there aren’t clear black and white
lines that are going to tell you when you can form this coalition or when you can’t
and when you should sit at the table when you can’t.
But the key thing is, are you accountable to an actual base of people?
And do you make those decisions about sitting at these tables in constant conversation with the people who need the change the most?
And the fact that no social movement has had a unitary strategy for victory
means that, you know what? You can compromise and still be bold.
This gets back to the idea of being bold and pragmatic at the same time,
that negotiating with key players is a key part of any movement.
Having both inside and that outside strategy is absolutely a key part of the movement.
So I don’t mean to suggest at all that movements shouldn’t sit at those tables.
They just have to be really clear what their source of power is when they’re sitting at that table.