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Something's been bothering me

...since my post last week about the anti-Rove protest on campus. A bit of an identity crisis. Here I am, someone who has had major life-altering experiences (drug-free, thank you) at a May Day protest years ago, putting down activists I agree with. Have I become cold and heartless?

Well, no. I realized early on that protests and radical actions were not my thing. But they work for some people, and I was assigned an article for a class that reminded me that even if they don't directly affect change, radical actions do have reasons:

Activist organizations use disruptive image events, which are highly charged protests that involve visuals such as people being buried up to their necks in roads and grandparents chaining themselves to trees (DeLuca, 1999). Such events rarely put an immediate stop to the things activist organizations protest; however, according to a Greenpeace campaigner, success is judged by the protestors’ abilities to reduce complex issues to symbols that disrupt people’s comfort with the status quo.

The article, "Radical activist tactics: Overturning public relations conceptualizations" from Public Relations Review (Vol. 31 2005), goes on to talk about how militant tactics give energy to a lagging movement and diminishes the middle ground, making people pick sides on an issue:
By making demands that powerholders are unlikely to accept, radical activist organizations stay faithful to their vision and redefine what people consider moderate by moving the ends of the spectrum. By arguing for much more radical demands than mainstream activist organizations request, they increase the reasonableness of mainstream activist organizations’ demands. According to a Sierra Club representative, “It makes us look moderate. We can ask for so many acres and look reasonable.”
Okay, I've been a good Freirian here, combining theory and praxis: can I have my street cred back?

Comments

I'm impressed Erin. Someone did her reading assignment for Hayes this week! I always print them, but forget to read.
Erin Elizabeth said…
There's always a first time...

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