by David Michelson
“Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." - Harold Whitman
A supporter of the campaign recently shared with me an article titled “Winning is underrated in grassroots movements”, written by James Özden, and asked if I had any thoughts. As I started reading I noticed quite a few thoughts coming up, and I felt inspired to write them down. It is my hope that by sharing them here they continue the conversation and spark insights into both the Yes On IP28 campaign strategy and social change tactics more broadly.
At the start of the article, Özden shares the quantitative results from a survey of over 100 political scientists and sociologists—which are being given as support of his main argument: that grassroots campaigns are more effective when they are specific, achievable, and have a defined endpoint. While I do have some thoughts about the specific survey he reports on, I’d prefer to come back to those later after first going through why he advocates for goals that are time-bound, followed by the risks he believes may come from having goals that one might describe as broad and bold (two words which admittedly are often used to describe our campaign) rather than clear and achievable.
For Özden, the benefits that come with goals that are time-bound (e.g. due to an election, fiscal year, legislative session, etc.) are the naturally built in periods of rest and intensity. The benefits of facilitating these alternating periods were further developed by the Ayni Institute, which Özden referenced as being the inspiration for this section of the article. As they articulate it, Spring is about opening up and experimenting, Summer is for giving it your all, Fall is when we reap our successes and break things down, and Winter is when we rest and reevaluate our efforts. The Ayni Institute’s discussion of winter held particular resonance for me: “Winters done with intention force us to be vulnerable—a practice that is not usually welcomed or received within the confines of our dominant culture. We fight against the winter, we feel ashamed about it, but we forget that winters are actually as critical as those times where new leaders, new projects, new revolutions are born.” Over the four years since I began work on our ballot initiative in Oregon, which was started in November of 2020, I have mourned, on multiple occasions, not entering both literal and metaphorical winters with intention to rest and reflect. What I have observed is that the seasons will come regardless of whether or not we want them to, and all we can do is choose to either resist or lean into them. But rather than the 4-15 year seasonal cycles that are proposed by the Ayni Institute, I have noticed our campaign in Oregon goes through this cycle annually; our springs, summers, falls, and winters haven’t been solely figurative. I agree with Özden that it would benefit us to plan for these seasons, but I maintain that it is usually my attachment to winning—something Özden advocates for in the rest of the article—and being judged favorably by others that stimulates me to fight against those winters. In our dominant culture, we are taught to focus on winning and losing, on what’s right and wrong, rather than maintaining our attention on our needs. It is from this perspective, of placing greater value on connecting to our needs rather than attachment to the strategy of winning, that I continue to approach the rest of the article.
Özden’s next concern is that having goals that are broad and bold may lead to fewer wins, and that the lack of wins would be demotivating, thus leading activists to leave a campaign—or worse, the movement at large. Özden traces this feeling of demotivation back to our unmet need for competence, or to be able to achieve the desired outcomes of our actions. While I agree that we can often feel motivated when our need for competence is met, I do not see “winning” as a helpful strategy to meet that need for competence. In fact, I worry that this focus on winning and losing is actually what may be contributing to it being so difficult for many people to get their need for competence met to begin with. I find that my need for competence is most often met when I believe I have articulated myself skilfully, when I feel assured that I have connected with someone in a way that allows them to see what my vision of the world looks like and, importantly, when I take the time to reflect, express gratitude, and celebrate these moments of skillfulness. My need for competence is also met when I can see how, by engaging in whatever action I am taking, I am helping to meet the needs of others—particularly when I am meeting their need to be seen and heard. This need is quite frequently met when working on our ballot initiative in Oregon (IP28), which proposes to end the slaughter, hunting, and experimentation of animals statewide. When I am discussing our campaign with the public, I get to communicate in clear terms what my vision of the world looks like. And when I hear from activists that they feel a sense of validation knowing that we are promoting the kind of change they too would like to see in the world, this also leaves me feeling motivated to continue the work I have been doing. I further believe our feeling of motivation (which I agree with Özden is critical to engage in social change sustainably) can come from meeting more needs than just competency, but also solidarity, companionship, rest, and many others (all of which I am convinced are made more difficult to meet in our atomized environment, particularly without physical spaces in which individuals can cooperate and cohabitate in). I worry that it is our mindset and attachment to what we define as progress that is contributing to us feeling demotivated, in tandem with a set of impoverished environmental circumstances; and that the path to recovering that motivation is in making sure our goals are in harmony with our needs, rather than tethered to the strategy of winning. We have the opportunity to meet our needs in every moment, but we can not always win.
"What I have observed is that the seasons will come regardless of whether or not we want them to, and all we can do is choose to either resist or lean into them."
If a lack of wins, according to Özden, leads to individuals leaving a campaign, he is also concerned that a lack of wins decreases the likelihood that individuals will join them. I am again not in agreement that a record of wins is a principal factor that leads people to join a movement or not. Anecdotally, I can think of many “winning” campaigns I have not joined. Sometimes, I chose not to join them because—in light of them winning—I assumed they would no longer need my help or that my contribution would not be as substantial as it might be for a campaign with fewer wins. Other times, I chose not to join simply because I did not feel their cause was in harmony with my values and objectives, regardless of their winning status. (Despite the cliche that those on the “right side of history” will always win, those on the implied “wrong side” do sometimes have a winning streak. The republican party has had quite a winning streak when it comes to rolling back reforms of previous decades, and yet I have not once considered joining the republican party). In this section of the original article, Özden cites as support for his concern a study that claims to show “that if people are told that more and more people are going away from eating meat, this is an effective way to encourage reduced meat consumption.” I do not believe this supports the claim being made that people like joining winning campaigns, so much as it shows people are encouraged to change their own behavior when they see others’ similarly changing their behavior (perhaps because such behaviors are now more acceptable and less risky, or because seeing others engage in behaviors different from our own increases our introspection). What I find more compelling, is the research showing that “You’re More Likely to Protest if Your Friends Are Protesting, Too.” Regardless of whether we are winning, we will join a campaign if it meets our needs—like those of community, play, and connection—to do so. The question then becomes, how can we get our movement to be a place where people can go to meet their needs? And to perhaps risk redundancy, I am not confident “winning” is what will meet our needs.
Before finally returning to the data presented at the start of the article, I also want to express a related concern I have with using broad and clear as antonyms. I would say IP28 is both clear, in that it quite simply criminalizes the intentional injury of animals, and is quite broad, in that it applies to all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish—thus impacting a wide range of institutions that currently rely on injuring animals. As an antonym for clear, I would use opaque, confusing, or incoherent, rather than broad. I share the concern that when our goals are unclear it becomes difficult to tell whether such goals have been achieved, but I am even more concerned that certain goals can obscure the needs we are attempting to meet by such goals, which I worry will interfere with our ability to create the kind of change we would like to see. I care not just that the goal itself is articulated in a way that is easy to understand, but that the goal makes clear the needs behind it. With this in mind, a goal that one person might consider to be clear, I might argue is opaque. For example, does someone who wants the goal of converting poultry slaughterhouses from using water-bath stunning to controlled atmosphere killing also want to create a world without slaughterhouses, or not? Is someone interested in reducing the number of civilian casualties from drone strikes also interested in ending warfare altogether, or not? I worry if our goals don’t make clear what our vision of the world is or what needs motivate us, then we will be less likely to achieve that vision. What I like about IP28 is that our goal makes patently clear what our vision is—what motivates us. An initiative to ban slaughter wants to see a world without slaughterhouses. Our goal does not obstruct or obscure what our future vision of the world looks like (albeit, we can't always prevent people from misperceiving our intentions, which is why there are still a few who believe our campaign is secretly attempting to lay the groundwork to repeal the 2nd amendment).
"Regardless of whether we are winning, we will join a campaign if it meets our needs—like those of community, play, and connection—to do so. The question then becomes, how can we get our movement to be a place where people can go to meet their needs?"
Although the insights presented in Özden’s original article do not depend on the validity of the survey data presented at the beginning, I’d now like to revisit them because I am concerned they do not actually show that experts believe clear and achievable goals are one of the most important factors leading to success. What Özden presents is the results of two questions, both of which ask a group of political scientists and sociologists to evaluate a series of factors as to whether they are “Very Important,” “Quite Important,” “Moderately Important,” “Somewhat Important,” or “Not Important,” with respect to being successful. According to the quantitative results, 61% of the panel said that “a focus on achievable demands” is at least quite important, and 78% said that “having clear political goals” is similarly at least quite important. This is then explicitly presented by Özden as evidence that the “right” goals are those that are clear and achievable. The panelists were, however, able to leave qualitative responses after each question as well—and when I dug into those, I came away with an altogether different and much more ambiguous picture.
Nearly all of the open-ended responses I saw expressed criticism of the question itself or at least conveyed a lack of confidence in their response:
“It is impossible to answer these questions with regard to an entire social movement.”
“Success in terms of what? Many of these depend on what the goal is.”
"These are difficult questions, and my confidence is quite low for some of them. I don't know whether the chance of success is optimised by having strong leadership rather than decentralised decision making, only that I have a personal preference for the latter (which is a different question).”
“One has to consider each context of each movement. The context matters very much to what strategies and tactics that will be useful and/or successful.”
“I feel like the concept of success in this question needs a lot of unpacking: what is a win to some people in some contexts is a failure to others. Also, are social movements here being equated with protest?”
“I ranked all movement strategies as "moderately important" since strategy is highly contextual and I do not believe it is possible to point out strategies or tactics that are universally preferable to others. Their effectiveness depends on a combination of resources, the character of the issue, political opportunities, discursive opportunities etc.”
“This just seems to vary so much contextually that I marked almost everything "somewhat".”
“The subtext of some of these questions seems to be whether movements should do what Democratic Party strategists tell them to do which is focus on small, "winnable" issues at the expense of having a bold vision of change. It is my opinion that adherence to this conventional wisdom often touted by experts has contributed to the left losing consistently on pretty much every issue even though public opinion is favorable to most of the left's positions.”
“Researchers here are making a mistake that is quite common in academic research on social movements in this country; and that is that you assume any social movement is a given. The work of the late Alberto Melucci shows that the important part is to understand the process by which a social movement emerges. Creating a social movement is a PROCESS, not just an existing "fact."”
“Again this so issue dependent, a relatively small number of ActUP activists made a huge impact; a larger (by numbers) protest like Occupy Wall Street did not achieve policy success but did introduce a generation of trained activists and organizers into the larger movement fields”
“I think it really depends on the context.”
“Again, it depends on the context, and the issue. These things are constantly in flux. It is difficult to evaluate these different elements 'in general'.”
“There are tradeoffs between some of these options, so it is impossible to judge their importance in general, as opposed to in a specific context.”
“Again, the above is conditional on the nature of the issue.”
“A lot of these really depend!”
“I confess my bias toward caring about activist unity/cohesion as someone whose scholarship focuses on that issue.”
“The answers vary by national or regional context. Provide a reference such as, when thinking about social movements in your country in the last decade... or let the respondent inform about this after the responses - e.g. I was referring to environmental protest in Europe, or signal exceptions - e.g. This is different for labour movements.”
Others expressly mentioned contexts in which broad and bold goals may be advantageous to, or at least supportive of, goals that are clear and achievable:
“Just like I think a mix of more radical and moderate flanks can be beneficial to a movement, so can using a range of tactics (e.g. some more disruptive than others) and having both attainable tangible goals and a more ambitious/lofty vision guiding the movement. In other words, diversity in all these areas can be beneficial to a movement.”
“Successful movements both need to think big, envisioning deep social change, while also being able to develop a strategy to get there through a series of significant reforms.”
“It's likely that "success" in narrow terms is optimised by focusing on narrow, concrete demands, rather than system transformation. But I don't think it follows that social movements should not seek the latter.”
There were also two comments that stood out to me as being particularly relevant to our campaign in Oregon:
“What is important for a movement that seeks to raise awareness in the face of apathy is not the same as what is important for a movement that is facing a mobilised counter-movement.”
“I think you have your causality backwards in your questions. Your question states, "By success, we mean a continuum from tangible, measurable success such as policy wins, through to longer-term changes such as public discourse or public opinion which may have second-order effects which are hard to measure." While you may get policy wins without cultural shifts in discourse and public opinion, those are unlikely to be long-lasting if you haven't shifted the consensus on an issue.”
Given the seeming apathy of the public regarding the issue of animal liberation, which appears present even among many vegans, I would argue that our movement would benefit now more than ever from the bold ask of our campaign. I also believe our campaign can help create the cultural shift that is a prerequisite to long-lasting success (and in my last article, “Lessons from Luxemburg’s ‘Reform or Revolution,’” I discussed how—without a revolutionary cultural shift—success can be easily undone).
Lastly, two more comments pointed towards what, to me, is one of the limits of looking at the past to identify effective strategies for the present. Past strategies are conditioned by the world in which they took place, and if our hope is to transcend the society we are in now for an idealized one of the future, it may not be clear what tactics are ideal for achieving it because no prior movements have been totally successful in bringing about such transcendence.
“A social movement can win by persuading the government or by defeating it. We aren't used to the latter possibility in modern parliamentary democracies but perhaps, with regards to climate and ecology, it's the only way to avoid catastrophe. These two routes work in very different ways and this makes it very hard for me to answer the questions.”
“You only queried on avoiding violence, but whether we like it or not, the history of social change is also a history of political violence and disruption. As that is often the most potent way [under present conditions] to receive attention and visibility”
When examining these qualitative statements, what appeared certain from how the data were originally presented seems much more ambiguous. I believe this is all the more reason why, rather than trying to adjust our goals to be the “right” ones or the “winning” ones, we would be better served by making sure our goals are aligned with our needs and that we keep our attention on those needs as we engage in social change work. The ambiguity of what may or may not be effective in a given context need not hinder us. To quote Simone de Beauvoir: “the man of action, in order to make a decision, will not wait for a perfect knowledge to prove to him the necessity of a certain choice; he must first choose and thus help fashion history. A choice of this kind is no more arbitrary than a [scientific] hypothesis; it excludes neither reflection nor even method; but it is also free, and it implies risks that must be assumed as such.”
I’d like to end this article similar to how Özden ended his. In the conclusion, he gave the following example to illustrate what role big, bold movements have in social change: “once groups like Extinction Rebellion have done the groundwork of establishing climate change as a key issue in the UK and shifting discourse, Just Stop Oil can step in to achieve some tangible legislative victories.” Looking around, I unfortunately see very few people who view the liberation of animals—by which I mean the abolition of slaughter, hunting, experimentation, and other forms of exploitation—as a key issue. It is my aspiration that IP28 will help establish this as a key issue, among both the general public and other animal advocates.
Özden then leaves the reader with four questions that he advocates we ask ourselves. I will share his original four, followed by how I believe the first three might be reframed in light of what I have shared above.
Can we clearly articulate what winning looks like? 1’. Are our goals a clear reflection of our vision for the future?
Do we have meaningful milestones along the way? 2’. Are we meeting our needs in the present moment as we engage in social change?
Are our goals ambitious enough to inspire but achievable enough to maintain momentum? 3’. Are we building the relationships and expressing the gratitude needed to maintain momentum?
Have we built in natural periods for rest and reflection?