Top Quotes: “Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap For Radicals” — Jonathan Smucker
Background: Smucker is an organizer with decades of experience in leading movements for social justice and he shares lessons he’s learned over the years in this book. He focuses his lens particularly on the Occupy Wall Street Movement — sharing his thoughts on why it wasn’t ultimately sustainable or as impactful as it could have been. It’s a great read for anyone involved in a nonprofit or organizing space or who hopes to make an impact on some form of inequality.
Introduction
“The likeminded clustering of activists fits into a broader trend in advanced capitalist nations: individual self-selection into values-homogeneous communities, especially apparent within the middle class of post-WWII American society. Thus, it is a relatively recent phenomenon, partly the result of tectonic cultural shifts in patterns of identity and social organization over the past half-century (atop major structural & economic shifts). In broad strokes, society has become more individualistic and self-expressive, as civic involvement has declined. With this backdrop, it is as if activism has morphed into a specific identity that centers on a hobby — something akin to being a skier or a ‘theater person’ — rather than a civic or political responsibility that necessarily traverses groups and interests. In a society that is self-selecting into ever more specific micro-aggregations, it makes sense that activism itself could become one such little niche; that activism would become its own community of interest, which self-selecting individual activists join. The problem is that, when it comes to challenging entrenched power, we need more than little niches and self-selectors. We need much larger swaths of society to get involved.”
“A fledgling movement that attempts to attract only individuals as individuals, one at a time, will never grow fast enough to effect big systemic change. Powerful political challengers have never built their operations entirely from scratch, but rather by means of politicizing, activating, and aligning existing social blocs and institutions. Participation in the civil rights movement, for example, was hardly an individual matter; it tended to arise in relation to already established membership in black churches, historically-black colleges, and chapters of the NAACP. This is the basic formula for how movements gain the kind of leverage they need to contend politically.”
“The spheres of everyday life are certainly not easy to engage politically, let alone organize into a political force. There are plenty of legitimate and understandable reasons why many social justice-oriented people gravitate toward spaces where we feel more understood, and why we choose the path of least resistance in other spheres of our lives. However, the slow work of contesting and transforming such messy everyday spaces is the essence of grassroots political organizing. When we do not contest the cultures, beliefs, symbols, narratives, and common sense of — and from within — the existing institutions and social networks that we are part of, we also walk away from the resources and latent power embedded within them. This is not a winning trajectory. In exchange for our shabby little activist clubhouse, we give away the farm. We let our opportunists have everything.”
“Our work is not to build from scratch a special sphere that houses our socially enlightened identities (and delusions). Our work is, rather, to contribute to the politicization of presently de-politicized everyday spaces; to weave politics and collective action into the fabric of society.”
“Revelations of misdeed of the powerful induce only popular resignation if there is no viable counter-power to seize the opening. The threat comes when, at a politically ripe moment, the terrain of power itself is revealed — when knowledge concerning how to contend effectively is made accessible to ‘the wrong people at ‘the wrong time.’”
Initiating a Movement
“The primary tactic of Occupy Wall Street (physical occupation of public space) could be considered enormously successful. We subverted the decades-old hegemonic conservative narrative about our economy and our democracy with a different moral narrative about social justice and real democratic participation. As a result, we are arguably better positioned than before to make bold demands, as we can now credibly claim that our values are popular — even that they are common sense — and connected to a substantial social base. With a new broadly resonant vocabulary, we are now better positioned to organize popular social bases to take more powerful political action. Such a shift in the constellation of popular meaning is among the central operations required in a long-term hegemonic struggle.”
“Occupy Wall Street served as something of a floating signifier, amorphous enough for many different kinds of people to connect with and to see their values and hopes within the symbol. Such ambiguous symbols are characteristic of popular challenger alignments.”
“In oppositional struggle, it is critical to maintain the initiative, to keep one’s opponents in a reactive state.”
“To build a movement is to listen to people, to read the moment well, and to navigate a course that over time inspires whole swaths of society to identify with the aims of the movement, to buy in, and to take collective action.”
Leading Activists
“Movements need some people who are heart-and-soul dedicated to the cause, flexible and free from other commitments or distractions. Yet, critical as these people are, they comprise a very small percentage of any successful social movement. To be successful, most movements (at a national scale) need tens of thousands — if not hundreds of thousands or even millions — of people are willing to give something of themselves.”
“There have been hundreds of group polarization experiments, all finding that like-minded groups over time, grow more extreme in the direction of the majority view…people are constantly comparing their beliefs and actions to those of the group. When a person learns that others in the group share his or her general beliefs, he or she finds it socially advantageous to adopt a position slightly more extreme than the group average. It’s a safe way to stand out from the crowd…Everyone wants to be a member in good standing with the dominant group position. It’s counterintuitive, but people grow more extreme within homogeneous groups a way to conform. In other words, there is a tendency within groups for members to kind of out-’group’ each other; to take the essence of the group — its distinctive culture, values, and rituals — to new heights; to become more hardcore.”
“Good leaders anticipate the emergent desire for escalation — for being hardcore — and they own it. They model it themselves. And they make sure that the hardcore expression is designed to strengthen bonds between the group’s core members and its broader political base. This should feel hardcore to the participants, but it must also look like moral leadership to the political base and to allies and potential allies within the broader public.”
“Hegemony as I use the term is leadership or predominant influence exercised by one particular group within national, regional, or local political spheres.”
“The spectrum of allies is 1) Active Allies 2) Passive Allies 3) Neutral 4) Passive Opposition 5) Active Opposition”
“Shifting the spectrum of allies is about moving people and groups — leaders, influentials, social bases, institutions, polity members, new and hitherto unmobilized actors, etc. — over just one notch closer to your position.”
“Groups working on specific campaigns can use the ‘spectrum of allies’ as a strategy tool, by identifying (and then writing into ‘pie slices’) specific social bases, institutions, and leaders that could potentially shift the balance of power. Perhaps the most crucial category shift is the pulling of passive allies into the active allies category, as this brings an influx of volunteers and resources, substantially increasing the alignment’s immediate capacity for collective action. For example, when pre-movement civil rights leaders and their small nascent orgs pulled (i.e. activated) black churches, students, barber shops, etc. from the passive allies to the active allies category, suddenly with all of the pre-existing infrastructure, resources, and social capacity of those constituencies and institutions went to work for civil rights, dramatically boosting the burgeoning movement’s capacity and reach.”
“Probably the next most important shift is in winning over neutrals, thereby pulling them into the passive allies category. The Freedom Rides were designed precisely with this in mind. SNCC leaders knew that many students in the north were sympathetic but inactive (passive allies). By creating a way for hundreds of those students to become actively involved — by riding in integrated buses to segregated southern states, and then lending a hand to voter registration drives — they not only increased the civil rights movement’s capacity by bringing in more active participants, they also caught the attention of the families, friends, and broader social networks of those northern students, thereby pulling many thousands of people — including many ‘politically connected people’ — form the neutral to the passive allies category.”
“It’s one thing to take time away from my family and my busy schedule if I think we can make an impact; it’s another thing entirely if we’re just shouting at the wind together. To mobilize beyond the dedicated ‘usual suspects,’ we have to articulate not only the reasons why an issue is important, but also how our plan of action is strategic — how we have a believable chance of making a difference.”
“We ask people to join our group, campaign, or action because ‘they should care about this important issue.’ Millions of Americans already think the issues are important. Often the problem is not that they don’t care. The problem may be that they don’t think our actions are effective. And they may be right!”
“We always have to be on the lookout for new openings and opportunities. Whether we’re talking about a local, regional, or national scale, long-haul organizers know that unanticipated events can quickly and dramatically shift the political landscape. From economic downturns to the blunders of powerful politicians — or even the unexpected success of our own actions — unforeseen factors can suddenly open up new possibilities for challenger movements. When the landscape dramatically shifts and people can intuit potential political openings, the thick fog of popular resignation can evaporate in an instant — and challenger movements may suddenly find themselves inundated with new volunteers and institutions clamoring to join the burgeoning effort. Within such moments and between them, it takes work to plug newcomers into tasks and roles that build our political force.”
“In early 2003, during the lead-up to the US military invasion and occupation of Iraq, something big started happening in cities and towns across the US. Only a year and a half after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration seemed to have spent most of its political capital and was now shamelessly milking the tragedy to lead the nation into an unrelated war of aggression. The lead-up to the invasion provided circumstances that encouraged a lot of people to act on their dispositions to try to stop an unpopular war before it started. People who were generally hesitant or disinclined to participate in street protests did so anyway, hoping that a large showing might make a difference at a critical moment. We certainly did turn out in big numbers. The global antiwar demonstrations on February 15, 2003, marked the largest coordinated protest in world history.”
“Volunteers are best served by specific ongoing tasks that that fit their availability, skills, and interests. I aimed to design roles that would not be too overwhelming, so that people could more easily sustain their involvement. With this set-up, volunteers were able to plug in meaningfully, and they weren’t just another body to add to the mass. They usually found ways to take some creative autonomy in the particulars of their roles.”
“It’s good to provide opportunities for volunteers to increase their contribution and to step up to take greater responsibility. Sometimes it makes sense to explicitly ask and encourage them to do so. On the other hand, it’s all too easy to unintentionally overburden volunteers. An unsustainable workload sets volunteers up to fail or to flee — they may end up flaking on their tasks or burning out and dropping out entirely. Paying attention to such concerns is part of the work of a leadership core of any organization. Leaders can check in with active volunteers about how they’re doing with their workload. Counter-intuitively, it’s sometimes even necessary to encourage people to do less, in order to set them up to do more in the long term. In my role as coordinator, I’d sometimes some this explicit to volunteers, saying, ‘You’re doing a really great job. I’d love to see you still involved 2–3 years from now. So I want to make sure the amount of time and energy you’re giving is sustainable for you. If you find that you’re doing too much, let’s talk about it and figure out how to adjust.”
“In the first few months of [my local social justice nonprofit], when people would ask me how to get involved, I would just invite them to attend our monthly business meeting. Sometimes those invited would attend and sometimes they wouldn’t. When they did, they often didn’t come back. Then one day it suddenly stuck me how ludicrous it was that our primary recruitment strategy was ‘come to a meeting.’ The thing is, all groups develop some level of internal culture that can be alienating or intimidating to newcomers, and this is always on display in a group’s meetings. Certainly, this can be mitigated by groups that make a conscious effort to be more welcoming and to refrain from jargon. Yet, the primary purpose of a meeting is to discuss and make decisions about the group’s ongoing work and mission, and this is not always conducive to providing an accessible or appealing first impression to newcomers.”
“I decided to start taking time to sit down one-on-one with individuals who expressed interest in [my nonprofit[. We would meet for coffee for about an hour. First, I would ask them about themselves — their interests, experiences, talents, and skills, and what had gotten them interested in it — and then I would tell them about some of our campaigns and projects. Together we would seek to find a good fit for them. I would also identify capacities that the organization was lacking that I thought they might be interested in working on. I encouraged volunteers to find or invent an ongoing role or task that they could sustain. One woman told me that she never ever wanted to come to a meeting, but that she loved to organize rummage sales and that she would do all the work to organize two of them for us annually. She did so, providing us with free publicity and several thousand dollars in funding.”
“It’s amazing what some people can get done when they feel a sense of purpose and are all facing in the same direction.”
“Posting a flyer — along with posting a Tweet or Facebook event — isn’t really a great way of ‘planting a seed’ to reach new folks. Seed work requires reaching people where they are, within the spaces and with the references to which they are accustomed. For example, getting an event listed in a church bulletin by finding an ally in the congregation will likely prove more effective than posting a flyer on the wall, because it will feel more familiar or legitimate to congregation members.”
“We also need to move beyond just promoting our own actions and events. It can be far more effective to bring the event to existing cultural spaces and institutions; to classrooms, religious congregations, neighborhood groups, and so on. I can easily spend 20 hours planning and promoting an educational forum at which I will feel pleased if even a few unfamiliar faces turn out. Alternatively, I can spend just two hours preparing to talk to a classroom of high school students, presenting a more in-depth critique on a given issue than any of them will have ever previously encountered. The latter option is part of what is meant by seed-planting work. It requires finding and maintaining allies within existing cultural spaces and institutions (e.g. the teacher who invites me to speak to their class).”
“The thing is, a lot of people may hold beliefs compatible with an organization’s or movement’s goals, but only a small percentage are likely to act on those beliefs. And a primary factor for why some people do take action is simply that they encounter opportunities provided by people close to them who are already active. Social proximity to political activity can activate people’s dormant beliefs.”
“Engaging with existing networks and institutions also allows the people within them to consider joining a collective effort without feeling that they would have to lose their existing identity in order to do so. They can take action as teachers, as union members, as students, or as members of a religious community. They do not have to become an ‘activist’ — a distinct identity that many people have misgivings about claiming — in order to take action. Instead, they can work for social justice as an expression of who they already are, alongside people they already know.”
“One of the biggest organizing lessons from US social movements in the ’60s is that when movements grow quickly in size and capacity it is usually not by building their own separate infrastructure from scratch, but by organizing within existing social networks and institutions until their members identify with the movement. Then the pre-existing infrastructure and resources of those institutions start to go to work for movement ends.”
“The problem is that you can’t persuade someone to see something your way when that person feels that their whole belief system — the narrative they rely on to make sense of the world — is under attack. A person in such an interaction is more likely to double down on their existing beliefs than to open themselves to considering new ideas.”
“As an alternative to narrative attack, we might consider an approach I call narrative insurgency. This latter approach requires us to examine the other person’s narrative framework, learning the component parts, and looking for points of connection — i.e., common ground between their belief system and yours. A ‘narrative insurgent’ starts with and emphasizes that common ground, using it as a base for fomenting ‘homegrown insurgency’ within the larger narrative. Rather than directly attack a creationist’s whole belief system, for instance, a ‘narrative insurgent’ looks to overcome or ‘outmaneuver’ the most problematic beliefs by identifying ally beliefs that already exist within the belief system, and seeking to reinforce those. When speaking to creationists about environmental issues, for example, an effective point of entry might be to emphasize humanity’s Biblical mandate to care for God’s creation. You might build upon that ground to win the person’s sympathy on the issue, perhaps eventually inspiring them to take action.”
“The Iraq Veterans Against the War carried out Operation: First Casualty in DC, NYC, and several other cities. Veterans put on their uniforms and staged reenactments of the kinds of combat operations they had carried out in Iraq. In NYC, I helped organize the ‘civilian’ actors, who would be detained, abducted, or ‘shot’ (with invisible weapons) in the presence of crowds of pedestrians in various public spaces, like Times Square. [Someone] remarked, ‘If they just saw a march, they probably wouldn’t have even seen veterans marching and wouldn’t have felt like they could relate to those people.’ IVAW’s action focused the attention on their greatest asset — their credibility and symbolic power as military veterans. Passersby were first jarred by the sight of faux military operations in the streets of major American cities, and then when they learned that the ‘actors’ were actual combat veterans, reenacting scenes they had themselves experienced. While people might easily dismiss generic ‘antiwar protesters,’ it isn’t so easy to dismiss a veteran who served in Iraq who is now telling you to your face that the war must end. This action profoundly ‘messed with’ the script. Another advantage of this tactic was that IVAW avoided having to invest the enormous resources that it takes to organize large demonstrations, and simultaneously avoided getting caught up in the ‘numbers game’ that is so often used to evaluate (or dismiss) public demonstrations.”
“Every group can assess and leverage their particular strengths. Who has credibility or symbolic power — either members of the group, or individuals that the group has access to — and how can a public action put those people front and center? How can props, visuals, messages, messengers, and venues all be aligned to carry a powerful story — one that connects with the positive values of our target audience, while dodging, or even undermining, the negative stereotypes that so often prevent people from even hearing us?”
“The officialization effect is typically wielded by elites to awe the masses. Those who already hold the reins of power also enjoy, as a perk of that position, an aura of presupposed competence. They are assumed to be legitimate, because they display all the signs, adornments, and official seals of legitimacy.”
“We pulled off a kind of ‘symbolic coup’ by sneakily securing city council chambers for our protest against the Iraq War. Again, we didn’t call our protest a protest — we called it a ‘Town Hall Meeting.’ The design of our window posters intentionally mimicked the aesthetics of mainstream community events. Everything reeked of the scent of official sanction, rather than marginality and impotence. Importantly, the name of our town and county was the first word of our organizational name. By usurping the ‘officialization effect,’ we were able to draw a lot of people who were not the ‘usual suspects’ — folks who might otherwise felt uncomfortable joining a fringe-seeming ‘protest.’”
“A political challenger must, whenever possible, refer to itself using the inclusive we. The audience should feel that — or at least wonder if — they are part of the we. With the slogan ‘We are the 99%!’ it is possible that the speaker declaring it is referring only to herself and her relatively small band of comrades who are physically occupying Zuccotti Park. But it is also possible — and the TV viewer at home might wonder — that the speaker is referring to the larger society; that she is inviting the audience member to identify as part of this broad we.”
