In the mid-1990s, the British Columbia environmental movement was in its chronic fractious mood, split by in-fighting, competition over funding, and divergent social and political analyses. At that time, Bill Moyer was invited to the province and to the BC Environmental Network to give his Movement Action Plan (MAP) workshops. Although it proved to betemporary, the mood among the eco-warriers improved noticeably and, for a short period of time, hurtful words decreased and co-operation increased.
Over the course of four decades, Bill Moyer gave his social movement training to a wide range of groups, from peace activists to gay rights groups, and his handouts consisted of two tabloid newspapers. Now, his work is accessible through his book, Doing Democracy: The MAP Model for Organizing Social Movements. The following excerpts can only convey the broad strokes of the MAP analysis.
Excerpted by Delores Broten
Nonviolent social movements are based on the people power model. Not only is placing power in the hands of the people their ultimate goal, but they are also dependent on the power of the people to create social change. The strategy in a social movement is to mobilize ever-larger numbers of ordinary citizens to assert their power and influence on the corporate and state institutions and also to create alternatives themselves. The Movement Action Plan strategy is based on the people power model which holds that power ultimately resides in the mass populace. This model is represented by an inverse triangle, with the people at the top and the power elite at the bottom. This is an ideal that has not yet been attained as an ongoing political arrangement (though it has often been achieved during social activism), but even in societies with strong power elites, whether the United States or a military dictatorship, the powerholders’ power is dependent on the cooperation, acquiescence, and tacit support of the great majority of common citizens.
This is based on four underlying assumptions.
1. A chief cause of social problems is the concentration of political and economic power in a few elite individuals and institutions that act in their own self-interest.
2. Participatory democracy is a key means for resolving today’s awesome societal problems and for establishing a just and sustainable world for everyone. The resolution of today’s problems, therefore, requires an informed, empowered, and politicized population that assertively participates in the political and economic process to demand democracy, justice, security, equality, human welfare, peace, and environmental sustainability. Hence the basic theme of MAP is people power, a theme that is being sounded around the world.
3. Political and economic power ultimately rest with the majority population; the powerholders in any society can only rule as long as they have the consent or acquiescence of the people.
4. The most important issue today is the struggle between the majority of citizens and the individual and institutional powerholders to determine whether society will be based on the power elite or people power model.
This struggle, between a belief in superiority and a belief in equality, is going on at all levels of life in the political, economic and social spheres of both democratic and totalitarian societies. It is also taking place in interpersonal relationships at work, in the community, or at home, and within social activism itself.
If a nonviolent social movement is to successfully address critical societal issues and create social change, it must be solidly based in participatory democracy, with a clear understanding of power — and of how to create people power that can withstand the onslaught of powerholder attack and counter-attack. The strategic requirements for social movements described by MAP run counter to the views held by some of today’s activists. Organizing an effective social movement requires an understanding that social movements work as open-ended holistic systems with positive and negative feedback loops. What every component part of the movement does affects the entire movement, either negatively or positively, depending on how it fits into the overall strategic requirements for the movement.
The Four Roles of Social Activism
We all play different roles in life. We are children to our parents and parents to our children. Sometimes we are conscious of the shift in roles and sometimes not. Activists need to become aware of the roles they and their organizations are playing in the larger social movement. There are four different roles activists and social movements need to play in order to successfully create social change: the citizen, rebel, change agent, and reformer. Each role has different purposes, styles, skills, and needs and can be played effectively or ineffectively.
Social movement activists need first to be seen by the public as responsible citizens. They must win the respect and, ultimately, the acceptance of the majority of ordinary citizens in order for their movements to succeed. Consequently, citizen activists need to say “Yes!” to those fundamental principles, values, and symbols of a good society that are also accepted by the general public. At the same time, activists must be rebels who say a loud “No!” and protest social conditions and institutional policies and practices that violate core societal values and principles. Activists need to be change agents who work to educate, organize, and involve the general public to actively oppose present policies and seek positive, constructive solutions. Finally, activists must also be reformers who work with the official political and judicial structures to incorporate solutions into new laws and the policies and practices of society’s public and private institutions. Then they must work to get them accepted as the new conventional wisdom of mainstream society.
Both individual activists and movement organizations need to understand that social movements require all four roles and that participants and their organizations can choose which ones to play depending on their own make-up and the needs of the movement. Moreover, they need to distinguish between effective and ineffective ways of playing these roles. This is especially important because many of the ineffective ways of performing these roles have been accepted as normal and acceptable social movement behaviour. The Four Roles Model provides activists with a basis for choosing appropriate roles, evaluating their behaviour, and holding themselves, as well as other activists and organizations, accountable for their actions.
Understanding a social movement’s need to have all four roles played effectively can also help reduce antagonism and promote cooperation among different groups of activists and organizations. Rebels and reformers, for example, often dislike one another, each thinking that their own approach is the politically correct one and that those playing the other role undermine the success of the movement. However, when activists realize that the success of their movement requires all four roles, they can more easily accept, support and cooperate with each other. There is no end. There is only the continuing cycle of social movements and their sub-issues and sub-movements. The process of winning one set of demands creates new levels of citizen awareness, involvement, and empowerment that generate new demands and movements on new issues. This process requires each role of activism and is why, although some roles are more prominent in some stages, all the roles are necessary and important. The longterm impact of social movements is more important than their immediate material successes. The 1960s civil rights movement, for example, not only achieved a broad array of immediate rights, but also created a new positive image of blacks among themselves and in the eyes of the rest of society. It established nonviolent action as a method for achieving people power and inspired new social movements around the world, including the student, women, and anti-Vietnam War movements.
Finally, people’s social movements advance the world further along the path of meeting the spiritual, material, psychological, social, and political needs of humanity. Regardless of the material results, mere involvement can contribute to people’s personal fulfillment. The emerging people power movements around the world today might well be transforming themselves and the planet from the present era of superpowers, materialism, environmental breakdown, disenfranchisement, abject poverty amidst opulence, and militarism to a new, more human era of democracy, freedom, justice, self-determination, human rights, peaceful coexistence, and ecological sustainability.
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Reprinted with thanks to New Society Publishers
