The Activist's Handbook: A Primer Updated Edition with a New Preface - Softcover

Shaw, Randy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520229282 ISBN 13: 9780520229280

Publisher: University of California Press, 2001

Synopsis

The Activist's Handbook is a hard-hitting guide to making social change happen. Shaw, a longtime activist for urban issues, shows how positive change can still be accomplished― despite an increasingly grim political order―if activists employ the strategies set forth in this desperately needed primer. In a new preface, Shaw describes how the power of grassroots activism has won newfound respect. Mass protests against globalization and in favor of stricter gun controls have led once-invulnerable targets like the World Bank and the National Rifle Association to take citizen action more seriously.

Inspiring "fear and loathing" in politicians, building diverse coalitions, and harnessing the media, the courts, and the electoral process to one's cause are only some of the key tactics Shaw advocates and explains. Central to all social-change activism, Shaw shows, is being proactive: rather than simply reacting to right-wing proposals, activists must develop an agenda and focus their resources on achieving it.

The Activist's Handbook details the impact of specific strategies on campaigns across the country: battles over homelessness, the environment, AIDS policies, neighborhood preservation, and school reform among others. Though activist groups can have widely different aims, similar tactics are shown to produce success.

Further, the book offers a sophisticated analysis of the American power structure by someone on the front lines. In showing how people can and must make a difference at both local and national levels, this is an indispensable guide not only for activists, but for everyone interested in the future of progressive politics in America.

About this title

About the Author

Randy Shaw is Director of Housing America and author of Reclaiming America (California, 1999).

From the Back Cover

"Anybody researching or writing anything about contemporary U.S. political life should be familiar with The Activist's Handbook. Anybody attempting to influence local, state, or national political decisions needs it desperately. Politicians may read it and tremble a bit. For that matter, the rich and powerful will probably read it to see how smart some of their enemies are becoming."―Ernest Callenbach, author of Ecotopia

"Provides rare insight into the strategies and tactics environmentalists must use if they are to succeed in today's political climate. A must read."―Barbara Dudley, Executive Director, Greenpeace

"This is a unique book, wise, realistic, and enormously valuable for anyone interested in social change. It is practical in its advice, and inspiring in its stories of ordinary people successfully confronting powerful interests."―Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States

"The Activist's Handbook could not have come at a more opportune time. In an era when poverty is growing and national social programs are threatened, the Handbook is an invaluable tool for community groups wishing to mobilize efforts in the service of escalating human needs."―Ben Bagdikian, author of The Media Monopoly and Double Vision

"Randy Shaw gives us a serious and respectful treatment of the strategic problems and opportunities that confront grassroots activists. This is a dimension of contemporary politics that is rarely treated, and welcome for that reason. Moreover, in developing his analysis, Shaw draws on numerous cases of local struggles to remind us of what the media has come to ignore, the persistent and insuppressible popular activism that is part of American political life."―Frances Fox Piven, City University of New York

"The Activist's Handbook lives up to its title and will likely join the company of organizing classics. It is the kind of book that should be on every activist's reading list."―Chris Ney, Nonviolent activist

From the Inside Flap

"Anybody researching or writing anything about contemporary U.S. political life should be familiar with The Activist's Handbook. Anybody attempting to influence local, state, or national political decisions needs it desperately. Politicians may read it and tremble a bit. For that matter, the rich and powerful will probably read it to see how smart some of their enemies are becoming."—Ernest Callenbach, author of Ecotopia

"Provides rare insight into the strategies and tactics environmentalists must use if they are to succeed in today's political climate. A must read."—Barbara Dudley, Executive Director, Greenpeace

"This is a unique book, wise, realistic, and enormously valuable for anyone interested in social change. It is practical in its advice, and inspiring in its stories of ordinary people successfully confronting powerful interests."—Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States

"The Activist's Handbook could not have come at a more opportune time. In an era when poverty is growing and national social programs are threatened, the Handbook is an invaluable tool for community groups wishing to mobilize efforts in the service of escalating human needs."—Ben Bagdikian, author of The Media Monopoly and Double Vision

"Randy Shaw gives us a serious and respectful treatment of the strategic problems and opportunities that confront grassroots activists. This is a dimension of contemporary politics that is rarely treated, and welcome for that reason. Moreover, in developing his analysis, Shaw draws on numerous cases of local struggles to remind us of what the media has come to ignore, the persistent and insuppressible popular activism that is part of American political life."—Frances Fox Piven, City University of New York

"The Activist's Handbook lives up to its title and will likely join the company of organizing classics. It is the kind of book that should be on every activist's reading list."—Chris Ney, Nonviolent activist

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Activist's Handbook

By Randy Shaw

University of California Press

Copyright © 2001 Randy Shaw
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780520229280


Introduction

In Montgomery, Alabama in December 1955, a seamstress named Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing a driver's order to move to the back of the bus. Her arrest spurred a citywide bus boycott that brought national attention to Parks and a young minister named Martin Luther King, Jr. Although it took another decade of struggle before state-imposed segregation laws were eliminated, Rosa Parks's courageous act stands as the symbolic start of the modern civil rights movement.

The civil rights movement comprised thousands of heroic acts, but the story of Rosa Parks continues to resonate long after other events of the period have been forgotten. Forty years later, when Parks held a book-signing in a small bookstore in Oakland, California, thousands of people waited in line for hours merely for the opportunity to see her up close.

Why has Rosa Parks's stature grown rather than diminished? I believe it is because people today have nostalgia for a seemingly bygone era when individuals at the grassroots level could initiate campaigns that made a difference in the world. Underlying the reverence for Parks is the common perception that today's political climate is too complex or too burdened by institutional barriers for a modern Rosa Parks or a significant campaign for social change to emerge.

In this book I flatly reject the widely held notion that current political conditions have confined social change activism to the history books. The Montgomery bus boycott and the civil rights movement were triumphs of strategy and tactics over seemingly insurmountable

barriers. Similarly, today's activists use strategy and tactics to triumph in their own campaigns for change. As hostile to progressive change as the U.S. political landscape appears at the close of the twentieth century, contemporary institutional and cultural obstacles do not approach the magnitude of the barriers successfully overcome by the civil rights movement.

The critical impact of strategy and tactics on the outcome of social change campaigns is often overlooked. One likely reason for this omission is that most current analyses of U.S. politics are not written by activists. People who participate in social change activism recognize that the chosen tactics or strategies often spell the difference between victory and defeat; outside commentators, however, evaluate actions by what did happen, not by what alternative strategy or tactic might have brought a better result. Moreover, the value of tactics and strategies is best demonstrated at the local level, but most accounts of institutional barriers to political change focus exclusively on Washington, D.C.

In the pages to come I detail the strategies and tactics that activists in diverse fields have found necessary for success. I focus on winning campaigns and show how losing efforts might have been victorious had the proper tactics and strategies been used. I also analyze why a particular tactic was successful and why it was preferable to other approaches. By discussing the strategic and tactical choices faced by activists, I take the reader inside the thought processes of experienced activists in the midst of their struggles.

Central to all social change activism is the need to engage in proactive strategic and tactical planning. Activists must develop an agenda and then focus their resources on realizing it. Unfortunately, many activists have failed to establish and implement their own agendas and instead have focused on issues framed by their opponents. Although the contemporary political environment frequently requires activists to respond to threats or defend past gains, these defensive battles cannot be waged at the expense of proactive campaigns for change. Social change activists can avoid fighting battles on their opponents' terms by establishing a broad, realizable program for fulfilling their goals. The means of carrying out the program will often be the subject of lengthy meetings and internal debate. Once they have agreed upon an agenda and endorsed tactics and strategies, activists should expend their energy primarily on implementation, responding to the opposition's campaign solely within the framework of furthering their own programs. This proactive approach ensures that the social change organization will set the public debate,

forcing the opposition to respond to the unceasing drive for progressive reform.

Against the backdrop of proactive agenda setting, particular tactics and strategies have consistently maximized the potential for achieving social change. These tactics include creating what prominent Texas community organizer Ernesto Cortes, Jr., has described as a "fear and loathing" relationship toward elected officials to ensure political accountability; forging coalitions with diverse and even traditional opposition groups; harnessing the mainstream and alternative media to the social change agenda; and effectively using sit-ins, "die-ins," and other forms of direct action.

Through a discussion of current political issues and events, I will analyze the impact of particular strategies and tactics on the outcome of campaigns around homelessness, crime, tenants' rights, the environment, AIDS policies and programs, disability rights, neighborhood preservation, and school reform. These issues serve to illustrate the diverse avenues activists use to achieve social change: state and local ballot initiatives, electoral politics, grassroots lobbying and advocacy, direct action, media events, litigation, and local and national forums and conventions. Participants in these struggles range from the Hasidic Jews of Brooklyn to the Latino parents of Milwaukee, from the urban poor of San Francisco to the rural environmentalists of the Pacific Northwest. These diverse constituencies have not always complied with the popular chant that activists are involved in the "same struggle, same fight," but they have used similar tactics and strategies to achieve their goals.

Though my analysis covers local, state, and national battles, I place greater emphasis on local battles for two reasons. First, most progressive activists are involved in struggles in the geographic area in which they live; second, local grassroots groups increasingly represent the greatest prospect for achieving significant progressive change at the national level. One way local activists can influence federal policy is by becoming part of a national coordinated strategyb witness such examples as direct action by local chapters of ACT UP (a national grouping of organizations fighting the AIDS epidemic) and disabled activists' occupation of a federal office building. In other cases, such as the Montgomery bus boycott and the fight to stop a hazardous waste incinerator in East Liverpool, Ohio, a well-fought battle with local significance can come to have great national significance. Activists do, in fact, think globally and act locally; this book reflects that adage.

Bookstores and libraries typically contain dozens upon dozens of

business-oriented "how to" books. There exists a virtual industry of works designed to assist people's skills in management, negotiation, sales, communications, networking, and media relations. These volumes emphasize the tactics necessary to defeat in-house competitors, overseas competitors, and any other competitor who stands in the way of business success. People in the business of seeking social change, however, have few such resources to turn to for guidance. This book is meant to provide such guidance, particularly to a younger generation that has exhibited strong interest in fights for social and economic justice. Although the media often depict today's young people either as "slackers" or as being less interested in political activism that in acquiring a high-paying job, these individuals actually have a tremendous desire to work for progressive social change. For example, participants in the struggles of ACT UP in the late 1980s were overwhelmingly in their twenties, and they exposed themselves to risks of arrest and violence that marked earlier generations as heroic. Young people want to address poverty, environmental racism, and other forms of social and economic injustice but often lack the vehicle and the tactical skills necessary. This lack is partly attributable to the elimination in the early 1980s of federal programs such as VISTA, in which committed young people worked as organizers and activists in low-income neighborhoods. These positions provided an instant connection to community organizations fighting for social change and acted as an "alternative" career path for recent college graduates. The defunding of grassroots activists' jobs in the 1980s has left today's young people with a dearth of mentors among their generational elders.

The Republican Party's current strategy of channeling the public anxiety about the future into attacks on immigrants, racial minorities, welfare mothers, feminists, and gays and lesbians is ominous but can be overcome. Rather than simply oppose the right-wing agenda, activists must advance and frame issues that unify people around objection to social and economic unfairness rather than hostility toward others. This essential resurgence of social activism necessarily requires the significant participation of young people. From the Freedom Rides of the civil rights movement to the "no business as usual" actions of ACT UP, social activism has relied upon the energy, idealism, and broad participation of young people. To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the demise of progressive social change have been greatly exaggerated. A generation of activists that understands the tactics and strategies essential for success can create a new political environment for a new century.

Continues...

Excerpted from The Activist's Handbookby Randy Shaw Copyright © 2001 by Randy Shaw. Excerpted by permission.
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Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520229282
• ISBN 13: 9780520229280
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 326