Great idea on a lobby day for impeachment! We need a steady drumbeat for impeachment as the regime doubles down on brutality in the streets and their numbers continue to tank.
This has become a nationwide and international movement in great part to 50501 and Indivisible's supportive campaign to wear a paperclip. We receive messages from around the world that groups are spreading the message for everyone to wear a paperclip as a sign of resistance to tyranny and more importantly a powerful symbol of unity and solidarity. Wearing the humble paperclip let's everyone know where you stand, who you are and who you can trust. Symbols act as a universal shorthand that transcends barriers, speeds our comprehension and fosters a shared understanding. Wear a Paperclip!!
In this transcript Professor Chenoweth discusses the four elements necessary for a successful social movement. Below are excerpts from the transcript.
“The third thing that successful movements do is they innovate new tactics. This is very important because movements that tend to over-rely on a single technique like protests, like demonstrating every Friday, something that becomes very routinized, end up succumbing much more quickly first of all to protester fatigue, but the second thing is they often subject their participants to a higher risk of repression or communal violence from opponents. So movements that are capable of having the capacity to shift to methods of dispersion, like stay-at-homes or strikes or forms of economic noncooperation, tend to be much more effective because they have the capability of maneuver when the state begins to ramp up violence against them.
Those are the four things—numbers, defections, tactical innovations, and discipline. What do we need for those things to happen? We need to organize. I think one of the key reasons why many movements have struggled around the world, including in the United States before now, is that there has been an overemphasis on mobilizing and less of an emphasis on organizing because to have the capacity to do these things skillfully means that there has to be a baseline level of trust, political education, collective identity, and also a sense that the struggle is longer than just the next event we have to plan to be in the streets, that the struggle is a long struggle, and even if there is one particular event that gets derailed, we are still in this, and it's a long-term kind of struggle. Movements that end up planning event to event or march to march or protest to protest are in much more danger of being thrown off-course and having these sort of demobilizational factors affect their long-term trajectories.”
Protests in Perspective: Civil Disobedience & Activism Today, with Erica Chenoweth & Deva Woodly | Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
EDUCATE! These tools are great, thank you. We’ve held a protest every Sunday for over a year in our local park in the city core. Our structure educates at each step:
1. LEADER REMARKS: Focus of the week, brief analysis, handouts, recommended individual actions, recruit volunteers. Engage ralliers - call and response. Most people are new to living in a police state. Emphasize PEACEFUL event, teach crowd re heckler response: “If you take the bait, they escalate.” Teach re ICE: What’s the first # to call? 911! What’s the second? WAISN - (our state immigrant support/rapid response network). Hand out whistles and what to do info and they can then teach family, friends and neighbors.
2. MARCH and chant from park around the main shopping area (~3 blocks), trained peacekeepers, traffic marshals and medics in place and accompanying marchers.
3. OPEN MIC: march back to park and invite others to “share the air” of democracy - their thoughts, experience, public announcements.
Poulsbo is a small town outside Seattle, 13k, our online group - Poulsbo for All - now has 6k members from across the county & state+. Growing daily. Facebook group and website. 🥁❤️⚖️
Why aren't there giant headlines on every front page, largest possible font, saying "EPSTEIN FILES DROP: Trump accused of xyz crimes" and then a single accusation with every bullet point they can manage?
Wtf is happening to journalism? They were jammed the biggest story in world history (a sitting president linked to a global pedophile ring frequently by world, industry leaders!!!) and they are barely touching it? You could move the world with a lever this big.
May need to figure out how to better coordinate across the many groups running rallies, etc.
- People cannot attend 2 to 3 rallies a week, and what is accomplished with relatively few people at each of these rallies?
- Asking folks to not go to work and not to spend money, basically weekly, is not sustainable.
- Maybe ask folks to bank locally, spend money at local owned businesses, etc. Taking money away from large banks, large retail and commercial outfits (many which seem to be bending the knee to the current Administration) would be more helpful and is more sustainable.
Large impacts are required, not these weekly events to not go to work or not spend money. Most folks cannot live that way.
Great idea on a lobby day for impeachment! We need a steady drumbeat for impeachment as the regime doubles down on brutality in the streets and their numbers continue to tank.
My husband and I are continuing the work to Paperclip the Nation. www.thepaperclipresistance.com
This has become a nationwide and international movement in great part to 50501 and Indivisible's supportive campaign to wear a paperclip. We receive messages from around the world that groups are spreading the message for everyone to wear a paperclip as a sign of resistance to tyranny and more importantly a powerful symbol of unity and solidarity. Wearing the humble paperclip let's everyone know where you stand, who you are and who you can trust. Symbols act as a universal shorthand that transcends barriers, speeds our comprehension and fosters a shared understanding. Wear a Paperclip!!
Successful Social Movements
In this transcript Professor Chenoweth discusses the four elements necessary for a successful social movement. Below are excerpts from the transcript.
“The third thing that successful movements do is they innovate new tactics. This is very important because movements that tend to over-rely on a single technique like protests, like demonstrating every Friday, something that becomes very routinized, end up succumbing much more quickly first of all to protester fatigue, but the second thing is they often subject their participants to a higher risk of repression or communal violence from opponents. So movements that are capable of having the capacity to shift to methods of dispersion, like stay-at-homes or strikes or forms of economic noncooperation, tend to be much more effective because they have the capability of maneuver when the state begins to ramp up violence against them.
Those are the four things—numbers, defections, tactical innovations, and discipline. What do we need for those things to happen? We need to organize. I think one of the key reasons why many movements have struggled around the world, including in the United States before now, is that there has been an overemphasis on mobilizing and less of an emphasis on organizing because to have the capacity to do these things skillfully means that there has to be a baseline level of trust, political education, collective identity, and also a sense that the struggle is longer than just the next event we have to plan to be in the streets, that the struggle is a long struggle, and even if there is one particular event that gets derailed, we are still in this, and it's a long-term kind of struggle. Movements that end up planning event to event or march to march or protest to protest are in much more danger of being thrown off-course and having these sort of demobilizational factors affect their long-term trajectories.”
Protests in Perspective: Civil Disobedience & Activism Today, with Erica Chenoweth & Deva Woodly | Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/media/podcast/20201116-protests-perspective-civil-disobedience-activism-erica-chenoweth-deva-woodly
EDUCATE! These tools are great, thank you. We’ve held a protest every Sunday for over a year in our local park in the city core. Our structure educates at each step:
1. LEADER REMARKS: Focus of the week, brief analysis, handouts, recommended individual actions, recruit volunteers. Engage ralliers - call and response. Most people are new to living in a police state. Emphasize PEACEFUL event, teach crowd re heckler response: “If you take the bait, they escalate.” Teach re ICE: What’s the first # to call? 911! What’s the second? WAISN - (our state immigrant support/rapid response network). Hand out whistles and what to do info and they can then teach family, friends and neighbors.
2. MARCH and chant from park around the main shopping area (~3 blocks), trained peacekeepers, traffic marshals and medics in place and accompanying marchers.
3. OPEN MIC: march back to park and invite others to “share the air” of democracy - their thoughts, experience, public announcements.
Poulsbo is a small town outside Seattle, 13k, our online group - Poulsbo for All - now has 6k members from across the county & state+. Growing daily. Facebook group and website. 🥁❤️⚖️
Why aren't there giant headlines on every front page, largest possible font, saying "EPSTEIN FILES DROP: Trump accused of xyz crimes" and then a single accusation with every bullet point they can manage?
Wtf is happening to journalism? They were jammed the biggest story in world history (a sitting president linked to a global pedophile ring frequently by world, industry leaders!!!) and they are barely touching it? You could move the world with a lever this big.
May need to figure out how to better coordinate across the many groups running rallies, etc.
- People cannot attend 2 to 3 rallies a week, and what is accomplished with relatively few people at each of these rallies?
- Asking folks to not go to work and not to spend money, basically weekly, is not sustainable.
- Maybe ask folks to bank locally, spend money at local owned businesses, etc. Taking money away from large banks, large retail and commercial outfits (many which seem to be bending the knee to the current Administration) would be more helpful and is more sustainable.
Large impacts are required, not these weekly events to not go to work or not spend money. Most folks cannot live that way.
Thanks for listening.
This is an excellent and essential guide! Thank you!
🚨🆘‼️https://substack.com/@kristenstaffordhowexgen1/note/c-206991090?r=6no4n9&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action‼️🆘🚨