Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask
yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs
is people who have come alive. --Howard Thurman
What Role Were You Born to Play in Social Change?
--by George Lakey, syndicated from opendemocracy.net, Jun 27, 2016
Bill
Moyer was a streetwise, working class white boy from row-house Philadelphia, who
— in the turbulence of the 1960s — went to Chicago to work for an anti-racist
housing campaign. He wound up joining Martin Luther King Jr.’s national staff as
an organizer.
I
played tag football more than once with Moyer, catching his grin as he
mercilessly overwhelmed his opponents through daring and smarts. He might have
been the most joyfully aggressive Quaker I’ve known. By the time he died in
2002, Moyer had given significant leadership on multiple political issues,
including the national anti-nuclear movement.
In
California, Moyer went to graduate school to study social movement theory and
indulge his love of analytical thinking. He became best known for identifying
eight stages of successful social movements, which he named the Movement
Action Plan, or MAP. I found activists using MAP as far away as Taiwan,
where they had already read it in translation before I got there.
Moyer
also invented a powerful tool that clarifies how we work for change on two
levels: individually and organizationally. Four
Roles of Social Activism, he called it, and right now the tool is helping
environmentalist organizations in the Philadelphia area clarify their
relationships to the new
campaign Power Local Green Jobs. The tool also empowers individuals to
become more effective. In this column I’ll describe the four roles so you can
notice their resonance personally for you and also for your group.
With
Moyer’s permission, I tweaked the names of three of the four roles, making the
differences sharper; you’ll get both names here. I call the roles advocate,
helper, organizer, and rebel.
The
advocate role
The
advocate focuses on communication with what Moyer called “the powerholders,” who
can change a policy or practice. Think of the civil liberties lawyer suing the
city for stop-and-frisk that profiles people of color, or the lobby group urging
city council to change that policy. Moyer calls this role the “reformer,” while
acknowledging that an advocate might urge changes that are radical in
content.
In
workshops, I invite people to scan their childhoods to recall whether they
usually turned to an authority to correct what they felt was an injustice or
problem. Maybe they went to the teacher after class to report bullying on the
playground, or told a parent that little sister was upset. I’ve found that many
adults who prefer to play the advocate role in social movements expressed that
preference early, often developing some skill and confidence.
The
helper role
The
helper is drawn to direct service, personally doing what they can to remedy the
situation. They address gender and racial discrimination in jobs by teaching how
to write resumes or initiating job training. They attack carbon pollution by
weatherizing houses or starting solar installation co-ops. Because much of
mainstream community life is marked by service, Moyer’s name for this role is
“citizen.”
When
adults known for playing helper roles look back on their childhood they
sometimes remember their own intervention to stop the bully, or their being the
first one to bring a band-aid when little brother falls off the bike.
The
organizer role
While
the advocate and helper who want to make a bigger difference may themselves need
to organize — by starting a nonprofit, for example — the organizing part is not
the most satisfying for them. The advocate is happiest when convincing the judge
that equal marriage is constitutional. The helper loves to witness the
graduating class that includes more people of color.
The
organizer, on the other hand, experiences joy from collecting people who may not
even know each other and turning them into a well-oiled team, or tripling the
attendance at the union local’s monthly meetings. Organizers often believe that
the sheer power of numbers will make change because powerholders are afraid of
alternative sources of power and may concede something to head off further
growth.
When
organizers were children they may have been the ones who revived the celebration
of Martin Luther King Day at school, or boosted the flagging morale of the drill
team. Moyer calls them “change agents,” and he himself was certainly that.
The
rebel role
The
rebel who sees a problem or injustice prefers to make a commotion of some kind
to force powerholders to make a change. Martin Luther King Jr. explained that a
campaign must create a crisis. Gandhi made so much trouble that he made India
ungovernable by the British. True, some famous rebels needed organizing skills
to scale up their commotion to the crisis point.
But
rebels look at numbers not for their own sake but to determine “how many people
will it take to create what degree of crisis?” Alice Paul left the mass movement
for woman suffrage in order to lead a smaller band of rebels willing to make
the nonviolent
trouble that forced U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to give in to justice.
Roles
can be played positively or negatively
While
some activists dismiss one or more of these roles as uncool — “the
nonprofit-industrial complex” or “sellout lobbyists” or “infantile protesters” —
Moyer found the record clear: Successful social movements include all four
roles.
He
acknowledged, though, that any of these roles can either assist or undermine a
movement, depending on how people play the role. Advocates, for example, can —
through communication with powerholders — find ways of framing demands that make
it more likely that the movement will take a large step forward. On the other
hand, they can get co-opted by the powerholders and undermine a campaign’s
clarity so it settles for less.
Rebels
can either generate drama that motivates the undecided to take the issue more
seriously and to side with the movement, or it can choose tactics that are so
self-marginalizing that the undecided lend their support to the
powerholders.
Helpers
can empower people who are feeling helpless by giving them skills and assisting
them to see that they can only get what they really want through solidarity with
others. Or the helpers can adopt the false belief that society changes through
individuals enhancing their lives one-by-one.
In
his book “Doing Democracy,” Moyer describes a number of positive and negative
ways each role can be played. Looking fearlessly at his analysis helps our
learning curve.
How
do you play your role?
I’ve
personally performed a lot of voluntary service, started and led new
organizations, and lobbied elected officials. In my heart of hearts, though, I’m
a rebel. To avoid burnout, I need to remember that. I’m healthiest, most
creative and productive when I’m in touch with my rebel self and find a group
that’s OK with that.
Becoming
self-aware is also helpful for organizations. They do best when they clarify
their mission, even when that means saying “No” to lots of otherwise good ideas
that are offered but aren’t really aligned with the essence of their role. Earth
Quaker Action Team, my primary affiliation, claims its rebel role in the larger
struggle for environmental, economic and racial justice. In our new campaign
Power Local Green Jobs, other groups we talk with expect that we will join with
them as they advocate, or organize, or do job training. We get to explain over
and over the advantages of a division of labor: “Do what you’re best at and
we’ll root for you while we do our rebel thing.”
A
group that embraces its particular role in the movement can also have a
diversity of roles within its membership. Within EQAT we have people who as
individuals shine as organizers, helpers and advocates and contribute quite a
lot to the group’s internal life. Within any group there is room for all as long
as they support the clear, overall mission.
Of
course a membership that includes multiple role identities will also experience
conflicts, and that’s a good thing — especially when hard choices must be made.
An organizer may object that a rebel’s tactical proposal is premature because
the group doesn’t yet have the resources to deal with the consequences.
A
helper may say that more solar installation training needs to be in place before
the utility yields and funds extensive rooftop programs, or else the poor and
people of color will be overlooked when workers start lining up for jobs. An
advocate may note that the opponent is for the first time engaged in serious
consideration of the demand, and argue that this is the wrong time for militant
action.
People
who face strategic hard choices are more likely to come up with creative and
wise next moves when the four roles fight it out — fighting fairly while
acknowledging differences. The research is clear: Over time, diversity actually
does produce the best outcomes. Or at least diversity works when everyone agrees
on the bottom line: The role the group plays in the larger movement.
This
illustration from Earth Quaker Action Team can be repeated for organizations
taking a different role: advocacy, say, or helping or organizing. The
combination of diversity of membership and unity of purpose is a winning
combination.
Bill
Moyer’s Four Roles is about effectiveness. Instead of one organization trying to
do many things and risking scatter, his vision was that of a proliferation of
groups, each maximizing strength through focus while networking and supporting a
broader sense of unity. That’s what a powerful movement looks like.
Syndicated
from the Transformation section of
openDemocracy where this article first appeared. George Lakey co-founded Earth
Quaker Action Group which just won its five-year campaign to force a major U.S.
bank to give up financing mountaintop removal coal mining.
Be The Change: This week initiate a conversation with friends,
colleagues or family about the four roles, and explore which role each person
resonates with most and why.
Sourced
From www.dailygood.org
