Somebody has said that half of activism is showing up. True enough. But then much of the other half is sticking around. A glaring strategic difference between conservative and progressive movements is longevity.
Conservatives stick around. Look at how long it took from the earliest days of the religious right (Reagan) until Trump’s fanatical fascism. Progressives get upset about something, have a demonstration, and then disappear. But unless progressivism can glow, and keep the home fires of change warm, it will be outplayed every time by conservatism that knows how to play the long game.
Pop-up groups and flash demonstrations are important. They do the essential things that short-order activism can do. Then, they dissolve until the next new configuration arises. A lot of activism reacts, as it should, to current events and flares up into public victories for the time being.
Organizational longevity is crucial to a healthy activist community. People newly arrived in a region, or newly awakened to an issue, want to know with whom they can join forces. They may turn first to the immediately like-minded, the way a lobbyist against fracking will reach out naturally to a carbon-capper or animal-rights advocate. Co-operation need not stop there, though. An activist alliance may go on to wider friendships with quite different citizen groups concerned about, say, income inequality or the global footprint of the Pentagon.
Mutual support of this lateral kind can and will arise spontaneously across the board of progressive activism. But it needn’t be left to chance.
Emergent activist groups can take advantage of older groups that have been around for a while. Activists that have stayed the course for years tend to know the local lay of the land. They know where the angels and skeletons are in institutional history and what wheels have been invented once or twice already.
How do you get there? Longevity in activist groups is promoted by the thoughtful articulation of principles that create institutional sustainability. An organization that lasts will have persistence built into its mission (statement), will provide (via bylaws or other means) for smooth succession in a working leadership that it recognizes must change over time. Such an organization will on a regular basis consider where it is coming from and where it is going – always including,an exit strategy for shutting up shop and handing off to its heirs – with a view to such changes in tactics as will let the mission, not just the organization, prosper.
In Charlottesville as well as throughout the US, we see a dwindling in progressive organizations. Groups that remained active through the Trump regime have become inactive.
That is exactly what the right wing wants.
Author: Chip Tucker is recently retired from the English Department at University of Virginia. He has been active in the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice since its founding in the 1980s. A devoted Quaker, he was one of the last conscientious objectors drafted into civilian alternative service by the US government.