The 7 habits of highly effective activists

Just say no to “barf boy,” and other tips before you start your campaign -- by Andrew Fong, Harvard University

Not too long ago, one of our campus conservatives wrote an op-ed in the school paper comparing the local Living Wage campaign, an effort to increase pay for Harvard’s lowest-paid workers, to a Boston winter. “You know it’s going to strike,” he writes, “But wonder only when and how hard.” Arrogant tone aside, he does have a point. At Harvard at least, and probably at quite a few other “liberal” schools, campaigns for this or protests against that have proliferated exponentially. While some of them prove successful, many more often fail to gain traction and occasionally even embarrass the progressive community.

As one Harvard student describes it, “I walked past a protest in the Yard on my way to lunch. There were crowds, signs, cops posted, but maybe twenty minutes later as I went home from lunch, there wasn’t a single shred of evidence that anything had occurred on the spot where they stood.”

Our hearts and principles are in the right place, which makes our tactical failures that much more disappointing. The purpose of activism is change, but change is more than getting a crowd of like-minded students to wave signs and chant slogans together. It requires serious organization, planning, and reflection. With that in mind, here are seven things to consider while planning your next campaign for change.

1. Know what you want

It seems fairly obvious, but effective activism requires specific and achievable goals. While ranting about every pet peeve you have with Bush might be cathartic, for most people, it’s not an end in itself. Activism must be used as a means to something greater.

Along those lines, it’s important to organize your goals by scope and specificity. The aim of the Harvard Darfur Action Group , for example, is ultimately to stop genocide in Darfur. However, it was able to mobilize greater support among students by focusing on the very specific issue of the university’s investment in PetroChina , “a Chinese oil company whose financial dealings with the Sudanese government, human rights activists say, have funded that regime’s ongoing slaughter of its own people.” While stopping genocide is a daunting task, demanding that the university divest from PetroChina seemed doable and drew the support of students who could then be mobilized for other projects such as demanding that state pension funds divest from Sudan and contributing to the Genocide Intervention Fund .

It can go the other way around, as well. The goal for the Princeton filibuster , according to Asheesh Siddique , was, at first, “just some local media coverage and more importantly, provoking awareness and debate regarding the issue among students.” However, news of the filibuster soon spread to other campuses and Washington, D.C . Meanwhile, says Asheesh, the project added “more definite and cohesive organization to Princeton ’s progressive community.”

2. Stay on target, stay on target.

Part of maintaining an effective message is maintaining a coherent message. Last year, Harvard University President Larry Summers mused that the lower number of women in math and science could be because of innate differences between the sexes. In the uproar that followed, the protest outside his office quickly expanded to cover not only his views on gender equality but also the absence of a women’s center on campus, discrimination against gays and lesbians in ROTC, and the low pay of Harvard’s janitors. In the end, the message most people got was not that Summer’s comments were unacceptable but that life sucked and protesters enjoyed whining.

Alternatively, consider the case of another Harvard protest gone awry. Last April, protesters attended a CIA-sponsored counter-terrorism career panel and proceeded to disrupt the event . One of their members did his part by inducing himself to vomit. In the weeks that followed, discussion on campus centered not on the CIA’s questionable tactics but on the newly nicknamed Barf Boy , who then had to defend himself from the claim that his stomach contents had made a mess for Harvard janitors. In this case, the message was lost not because the protesters couldn’t pick one, but because it was overshadowed by the messenger.

Sometimes staying on message requires being selective in picking your allies. As Ben Adler points out , it’s hard to focus on a single issue like Iraq when a group like ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) wants to talk about everything from Afghanistan to North Korea. In the case of Barf Boy, his actions became associated with another more benign protest outside the event, thereby discrediting their event as well. While it’s hard to turn away potential allies, being selective in who you work with may ultimately result in more people on your side. The local BGLTSA , for instance, is making attempts to reach queer conservatives. While they might be inclined to support gay marriage, if they’re going to be participating in a protest with people advocating abortion rights and universal health care, their enthusiasm might decline.

3. Be mindful of your audience

Every year, the BGLTSA throws a month-long event known as Gaypril , designed to “promote the visibility and strength of a BGLTQ community on campus.” The events includes movie nights, gay pride celebrations, and campaigns to combat discrimination against the BGLTQ community. Then there are more interesting events – e.g. the panel of sadomasochism experts and the sex toys workshop. One of the critiques of the event was that such displays were actually counterproductive, running headlong into a gay rights campaign that was trying to convince the nation that gays and lesbians were as normal as anyone else. Mischa Feldstein, BGLTSA co-chair, counters by explaining that while “on a national level, that tension is very real, [… at] Harvard, though, for the most part we’re not dealing with people who don’t believe that queer people are people too.” While your principles remain consistent, your message can be tailored from audience to audience and indeed it should. (Though, of course, there should be a few communications pieces that remain consistent: logo, tagline, boiler plate “about us” paragraph.)

Take another BGLTSA issue – gender-neutral bathrooms for transsexuals. One of the approaches emphasized how the traditional system of restrooms for male and female creates an “oppressive” atmosphere of “hetero-normativity.” While such discourse might be interesting to some, most college students were slightly confused. Plus, conservatives had a field day ranting about how the supposed plot to eliminate gender would lead to pedophilia and bestiality. Most students however, had little problem with the actual issue itself. Removing gender signs from single-person restrooms? Sure. No big deal. After all, we’ve all had moments where we’ve had to trek halfway across campus to find a toilet of the appropriate gender even though there was an empty one for the opposite sex right down the hall. Mischa admits that, “Talking about heteronormativity, as it turns out, is not the most effect way of communicating one’s message (in case you had planned on doing that). Convenience is definitely something that [gender-neutral] single stall bathrooms have going for them.”

That’s not to say that student activists should always moderate their message, but finding ways to talk to and engage the widest possible audience and getting what you want along the way isn’t exactly a bad thing.

4. Hitler references make you look crazy. So brush up on your rhetorical skills.

“Well, that and the crazy hair,” says Jon Stewart . As Bryan Collinsworth notes , there are plenty of conservatives willing to attack progressives for everything from baby burning to Bible killing. There’s no need to make their job easier by sounding like a nut. The easiest way to avoid this is to simply not say anything that sounds extreme or just plain crazy. Calling Bush an international terrorist? Hailing Kim Jong Il as a hero? Claiming that the occupation of Palestine is equivalent to the Holocaust? Probably not a good or effective idea. (It’s true that when conservatives are alone, or nearly so, at right-wing conferences, especially youth-oriented ones, they do seem sometimes to revel in their extremism and make outrageous statements . But when campaigning publicly, they tend to dilute this stuff.)

However, if you do have to make a bold point (and often you do and should), make sure you know your stuff. Conservatives will accuse you of protesting for the sake of protesting. They’ll say you’re unaware of history or call you uniformed tools of the Democratic Party. Prove them wrong. Do your research. (Check out the crib sheet section of Campus Progress.) Even if you’re not planning a formal debate, practice your debating skills because you never know when someone will pick an argument with you. Have at least three strong, verifiable points that you are ready to discuss on the fly. And once you’re grounded in facts, develop your own arguments so you sound like an actual college student and not a shill parroting back talking points. Make sure your fellow activists do the same, because as an activist, you represent not only yourself, but your cause as well. Reflecting on the Princeton filibuster, Asheesh writes , “We were much more credible as protestors because we had taken the time to research both the history of the filibuster, and the mechanics and rules of how filibusters work in the Senate.”

5. Develop short slogans that work. Have a tight 30-second “elevator speech” prepared for when you get someone’s attention between classes.

More often that not, however, people won’t take the time to talk to you. They’ll only get a fleeting glance and that glance may be the only impression they get. Presentation counts. And yes, sometimes that means considering a clean change of clothing. Most people take hippies less seriously. That’s just the way it is.

6. Activists don’t do one-night stands.

Any serious campaign for change is not a one shot deal. The most successful events are the ones that fit in within a broader movement. If you’re going to hold a rally, follow it up with editorials in the school paper or distributing literature where appropriate. Try connecting to progressive groups on other campuses. Bring in big name speakers. Or if you’re filibustering at Princeton, keep it going for hundreds of hours, spread it to other campuses, and protest the nuclear option right outside the Capitol where the Senator can see you.

Even more importantly, work on building a coherent progressive community. In recent years, conservatives have created an effective political machine—corporate interests, the NRA, and the Christian right have managed to build a cohesive conservative movement. Progressives lack that, and one of the effects of progressive student activism can be to build that movement. In the aftermath of the Princeton filibuster, progressives there used their newfound unity to combine two progressive publications, establish a chapter of Drinking Liberally, and launch a new chapter of the Roosevelt Institution .

7. Every organization needs a cynical bastard.

You may hate them, but odds are you need one. Cynical bastards, by definition, lack the idealism necessary to create change, but they’re certainly more than aware of the pitfalls that idealists face. Student activism is built upon robust organization. That means clear lines of communication, responsible leaders, established procedures for dealing with uncertainties, and all sorts of things that don’t come to mind when we seek to “change the world.” Sometimes it’s easy to get so wrapped up in making the world a better place that we forget to pay the bills, reserve the rooms, clear things with authorities, and balance the checkbooks. Those things need to be done, however, and sometimes, there’s no better person than a cynical bastard.

8. If at first you don’t succeed …

Don’t make the same mistake the second time. Learn. Establishing benchmarks early on provides a way to assess what went right or what went wrong. Too often, activists say they’ve succeeded because they’ve “raised awareness” or “spoke truth to power.” Yet what does that mean? How do you measure that? Benchmarks are clearly defined objectives than can easily be measured. 300 people at a protest. 1,000 people emailing their legislators through your website. The enactment of a certain piece of legislation. Doubling voter turnout in a certain region. These are things that can be measured and provide a clear yes or no answer to the question of whether or not you met your goals.

Sometimes that means admitting that you haven’t succeeded. By admitting failure though, and being able to pinpoint exactly how and where that failure occurred, you’ll be in a better position to avoid making the same mistakes the next time around.

Most importantly, however, make sure there is a next time. There has to be.