A revolution comes in stages — Occupy or otherwise. (FULL ARTICLE)
All of us hold an idea about how progressive change might happen, whether or not we spell it out explicitly. For some it’s an elaboration of grassroots alternative-building, for others it starts with flooding legislators with advocacy. One way or another, we all have one. But, while reading Nathan Schneider’s important recent piece on the Occupy movement in The Nation, I was reminded of the power of a theory of change to shape our actions.
Nathan — who is also an editor at Waging Nonviolence — turns to the theory of change developed by my friend Bill Moyer, the late civil rights organizer who went on to influence a number of social justice campaigns. Bill identified a series of eight stages that successful movements tend to go through on their way to victory; he called his theory the Movement Action Plan. Nathan finds that Bill’s fifth stage helps us understand Occupy in the past year or so, when a lot of participants have felt discouraged. Bill found that successful movements usually go through a let-down after the adrenalin rush of sudden growth in stage four, only to recover in stage six and have a chance of winning.
The eight stages of the Movement Action Plan: (source: Wikipedia)
- Critical social problem exists
- Prove failure of official institutions
- Ripening conditions
- Take off
- Perception of failure
- Majority public opinion
- Success
- Continuation…
Related articles
- Memo to Washington: The Occupy Movement Lives (rinf.com)
- Two Years After Occupy Wall Street, a Network of Offshoots Continue Activism for the 99% (familysurvivalprotocol.com)
- Searching for Sustainable Models of Activism, Two Years After the Occupy Movement (truthdig.com)
- Occupy and Academia (locatingthesocial.wordpress.com)
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