Two years ago, many of you read my reaction to the election, where I admitted to living in a bubble. Privileged, upper-middle class, white, urban, male. And an academic to boot! But I have been watching, and listening, and thinking about what may be going on outside my bubble for the last two years, and I think I have a pretty good hypothesis of some of that activity. Here is what I believe. Am I right?
There is another bubble outside of mine, with almost no overlap, although there are a few points where they touch. Inside that bubble there are mostly middle class, mostly white folks who, for many years, are seeing their lives in decline. What used to be taken for granted, like my kids will be better off than I am, now seems out of reach. They work hard and play by the rules. But even though the stock market is booming, and the growth in GDP is healthy, not much of that wealth has made it into their bank accounts or onto their balance sheets. Many of them have to work two jobs to make ends meet and to send their kids to college.
And nobody seems to be talking about them and their problems. The news features a lot about blacks and Latinos and LGBTQ people and their problems. About immigrants and their problems. They know that their grandparents were immigrants, too, and are proud of the success their family made in this country, but it is not clear what that means when more and more people in town are black or brown or wearing odd clothes. The people inside this bubble don’t have anything against others having their problems addressed, but it has been a long time since it was their turn.
For years and years, the Republican party has been telling the people in this bubble that the GOP was going to make things right for the middle class. With tax cuts and less government regulation, the economy would boom and we would all be better off. After a while, though, it has become clear that those policies don’t seem to benefit the middle class. The rich keep getting richer. Nothing is trickling down.
The Democrats, who used to be the party of middle class white people, are reaching out to gays and people of color and immigrants. They haven’t addressed the economic inequality that the people in this bubble are living. The Democrats have said that they are worried about being accused of “class warfare,” but then they keep looking out for the underclass, as if the middle class had no problems.
At some point, they decided, “Enough. A pox on both your houses.” Screw the Bushes and the Clintons, both of which have been caught lying to our faces about economics, but also about other important things like war and like moral behavior. “We want,” they say, “to change this, and change it NOW!”
Was Trump going to make it worse? Well, what is worse than being ignored? Then seeing a steady lowering of your buying power and a decreasing ability to conjure up hope, with nobody paying attention? So, they voted for him, and he won. Maybe things will finally get better.
From inside my bubble, it seems to me that we have spent two years testing whether they were right. But things are pretty much the same. The kids are still going to have to work mighty hard to just break even with their parents. Republicans still pass tax cuts for the most wealthy and lie to us that this will redound to our benefit, running up a magnificent deficit in the process, a deficit that those kids will have to pay up. Trump is a pathological liar and a monumental narcissist, with no impulse control and no overall plan for anything, violating the most basic norms of governance and legality. Of civility.
And nobody in power is addressing the most pressing problem we face, the reality, not a hoax or a plot, that the climate is changing, that hurricanes will come quicker and harder, that winter will be deeper in some places, and, in others, summer will be unbearable, so hot that planes can’t fly. This really shouldn’t be talked about in future tense anymore. Climate change is here, now. The urgent question is can we stop it from getting much, much worse. If not, the ecological niche that human-kind evolved in will be closed, or, at best, deeply pinched. If we live long enough, we may look back on these days as the best in the lives of our children.
I don’t live within that other bubble. I think I get it – it was a bad couple of decades for America’s white middle class. But I just can’t believe that no one within that bubble doesn’t see pretty much the same awfulness that I have seen in the last two years. If you are one of those people, you have to speak up, to act up, to share your views with your bubble-mates. We have to learn to act together, or we are all in trouble. Together.
Am I wrong? What don’t I get about the lives in that other bubble? And why don’t you see the last two years as I do?
Thursday, September 20, 2018
Friday, March 23, 2018
Can the rich and powerful be beaten?
As I write, kids are planning to converge on Washington to demand action on controlling guns. Will they succeed where other such efforts have not? It would be tempting to believe that the rich and powerful, in this case, the NRA, are simply too rich and too powerful to fight. But this would be too cynical, and we would be paralyzed.
Another temptation is to believe that the rich and powerful are easy to defeat, because we have the facts on our side. This is not cynical enough. Nothing short of a great social movement is going to overcome the ability of the NRA to spend money on “independent” advertising during campaigns, recently identified as their most successful tactic.
For years, I have been arguing that progress in the toughest fights on public health policy only exists through social movements. Starting 150 years ago, we had more than a century of successful, progressive social movements, each of which won in spite of seemingly overwhelming opposition by the rich and powerful.
These efforts succeeded because they were social movements – widespread, coordinated and well-led efforts by committed and energized activists who wouldn’t give up:
150 years of Successful Progressive Social Movements
(dates are culminating events; movements take decades to work)
Abolitionism, 1865
Antitrust, 1890
Pure food and drugs, 1906
Conservationism, 1910
Universal suffrage, 1920
Labor low reform, 1935
Social Security, 1935
Child labor laws, 1938
Minimum wage, 1938
Civil rights, 1964
Healthcare for the elderly and the poor, 1965
Women’s rights, 1967
Fair Housing 1968
Environmentalism, 1970
Occupational safety and health, 1972
Superfund clean ups, 1980
Act-up AIDS activism, 1986
Black lives matter, 2013
MeToo, 2018
You can read a bit more about this in “Giving up would be a historical mistake,” at http://danswartzman.blogspot.com/2016/03/giving-up-would-be-historical-mistake.html.
I have been slowly developing a list of things that a social movement needs to be successful. My current list includes nine things:
1. Intensity – public health advocacy is all about generating and managing intensity. A social movement only wins if the issues it addresses and the positions it takes are viewed intensely by its members. When you see a leader of a social movement take a position that is a bit far out of the mainstream, it is likely an effort to generate and focus intensity. Example: environmental opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline.
2. Focus – You have to be able to explain the emphasis of your movement succinctly, and people involved need to be clear what they are fighting for. This requires focus. Example: the “Fight for Fifteen.”
3. Cohesion – The people within the movement need to believe that they belong to something, and their relationship to that “something” and the people within that “something” provides cohesion. Example: Black lives matter.
4. Structure – One of the most successful recent movements in the US is the Tea Party. One of the reasons they were successful is that right-wing big money stepped in and started to organize them. They have multiple layers of structures. Does the fact that they are being funded by conservative organizations make them “not” a social movement? No. Many social movements rely upon funding from the rich.
5. A constant infusion of energy – Physics tells us that any organized system will move from a state of organization to disorganization, without input of extra energy. Entropy. So, too, with social movements. There needs to be some source of a constant infusion of energy, in contributions, in volunteer energy. Example: the Sanders campaign in 2016, with millions of small donations.
6. A good narrative – By “good” I don’t mean acceptable to you and me. I mean that there has to be a narrative that explains why the movement exists, what it is trying to do, and how someone can help by joining. Example: the Trump campaign in 2016.
7. A supportive reaction from the media – If you are going to sustain a multi-year effort (and all of the movements mentioned above lasted for decades), it helps to have a supportive reaction from the media. At first, the Sanders campaign got very little good press. That continued for quite a while, and even when the media coverage began to shift, much of the mainstream media were still “pooh-poohing” his efforts. On the other hand, the media played a critical role in the success of the Trump campaign. Note that they were not substantively supportive, but all of the attention they gave and their lack of an effort to successfully counter his statements were critical to his success.
8. A bit of luck – It doesn’t hurt to have a bit of luck along the way. A member of the rich and powerful does something really stupid (think Romney’s talk about the 47% in 2012 or McCain’s picking Sarah Palin in 2008 and the impact of these two decisions on the Obama movement). A media story breaks that provides an infusion of interest or energy. World events work to support your narrative. Everyone needs a bit of luck.
9. Leadership – There is a view that big, important people are what move history. That is way too simplistic. But successful social movements have leaders. Those leaders are not sufficient to success, but they are necessary for success. Here is a blog on the importance of this:
“We have forgotten how transformational leadership works,” http://danswartzman.blogspot.com/2015/07/we-have-forgotten-how-transformational.html
So, lets see what happens with the Kids and Guns movement. They seem to have a good focus, and they seem cohesive. They are getting great media and have had some initial successes. Can they maintain their intensity? Will those great teens with obvious leadership skills be able to step up to the challenge of leading a multi-year effort? Or will others come along and fill that need?
I am energized by their efforts, and hopeful about the results.
Another temptation is to believe that the rich and powerful are easy to defeat, because we have the facts on our side. This is not cynical enough. Nothing short of a great social movement is going to overcome the ability of the NRA to spend money on “independent” advertising during campaigns, recently identified as their most successful tactic.
For years, I have been arguing that progress in the toughest fights on public health policy only exists through social movements. Starting 150 years ago, we had more than a century of successful, progressive social movements, each of which won in spite of seemingly overwhelming opposition by the rich and powerful.
These efforts succeeded because they were social movements – widespread, coordinated and well-led efforts by committed and energized activists who wouldn’t give up:
150 years of Successful Progressive Social Movements
(dates are culminating events; movements take decades to work)
Abolitionism, 1865
Antitrust, 1890
Pure food and drugs, 1906
Conservationism, 1910
Universal suffrage, 1920
Labor low reform, 1935
Social Security, 1935
Child labor laws, 1938
Minimum wage, 1938
Civil rights, 1964
Healthcare for the elderly and the poor, 1965
Women’s rights, 1967
Fair Housing 1968
Environmentalism, 1970
Occupational safety and health, 1972
Superfund clean ups, 1980
Act-up AIDS activism, 1986
Black lives matter, 2013
MeToo, 2018
You can read a bit more about this in “Giving up would be a historical mistake,” at http://danswartzman.blogspot.com/2016/03/giving-up-would-be-historical-mistake.html.
I have been slowly developing a list of things that a social movement needs to be successful. My current list includes nine things:
1. Intensity – public health advocacy is all about generating and managing intensity. A social movement only wins if the issues it addresses and the positions it takes are viewed intensely by its members. When you see a leader of a social movement take a position that is a bit far out of the mainstream, it is likely an effort to generate and focus intensity. Example: environmental opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline.
2. Focus – You have to be able to explain the emphasis of your movement succinctly, and people involved need to be clear what they are fighting for. This requires focus. Example: the “Fight for Fifteen.”
3. Cohesion – The people within the movement need to believe that they belong to something, and their relationship to that “something” and the people within that “something” provides cohesion. Example: Black lives matter.
4. Structure – One of the most successful recent movements in the US is the Tea Party. One of the reasons they were successful is that right-wing big money stepped in and started to organize them. They have multiple layers of structures. Does the fact that they are being funded by conservative organizations make them “not” a social movement? No. Many social movements rely upon funding from the rich.
5. A constant infusion of energy – Physics tells us that any organized system will move from a state of organization to disorganization, without input of extra energy. Entropy. So, too, with social movements. There needs to be some source of a constant infusion of energy, in contributions, in volunteer energy. Example: the Sanders campaign in 2016, with millions of small donations.
6. A good narrative – By “good” I don’t mean acceptable to you and me. I mean that there has to be a narrative that explains why the movement exists, what it is trying to do, and how someone can help by joining. Example: the Trump campaign in 2016.
7. A supportive reaction from the media – If you are going to sustain a multi-year effort (and all of the movements mentioned above lasted for decades), it helps to have a supportive reaction from the media. At first, the Sanders campaign got very little good press. That continued for quite a while, and even when the media coverage began to shift, much of the mainstream media were still “pooh-poohing” his efforts. On the other hand, the media played a critical role in the success of the Trump campaign. Note that they were not substantively supportive, but all of the attention they gave and their lack of an effort to successfully counter his statements were critical to his success.
8. A bit of luck – It doesn’t hurt to have a bit of luck along the way. A member of the rich and powerful does something really stupid (think Romney’s talk about the 47% in 2012 or McCain’s picking Sarah Palin in 2008 and the impact of these two decisions on the Obama movement). A media story breaks that provides an infusion of interest or energy. World events work to support your narrative. Everyone needs a bit of luck.
9. Leadership – There is a view that big, important people are what move history. That is way too simplistic. But successful social movements have leaders. Those leaders are not sufficient to success, but they are necessary for success. Here is a blog on the importance of this:
“We have forgotten how transformational leadership works,” http://danswartzman.blogspot.com/2015/07/we-have-forgotten-how-transformational.html
So, lets see what happens with the Kids and Guns movement. They seem to have a good focus, and they seem cohesive. They are getting great media and have had some initial successes. Can they maintain their intensity? Will those great teens with obvious leadership skills be able to step up to the challenge of leading a multi-year effort? Or will others come along and fill that need?
I am energized by their efforts, and hopeful about the results.
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