Another Recommended Book: The Underdog Edge
Another Recommended Book: The Underdog Edge: How Ordinary People Change the Minds of the Powerful…and Live to Tell About It, by Amy Showalter
A Theory of Social Change to Make Sense of this Book
One of my long-held theories of social change is that it’s easier to influence the power structure, and accomplish change within it, if you’re seen as the rational and reasonable negotiating partner. And in order to be perceived as a good negotiating partner, there has to be someone more extreme, who can be dismissed as the lunatic fringe, but who actually makes space for your demands to seem like a compromise.
Examples:
• Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement were able to make more progress because Malcolm X and the Black Panthers existed (very publicly).
• George W. Bush was forced to endorse same-sex civil unions even though the idea was anathema to his Fundamentalist “base”—because the alternative was same-sex marriage (this example also shows how society can evolve very quickly sometimes—we’ve moved way past civil unions now).
• Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, a radical restructuring of capitalism, was more palatable to the business/financial world because massive unrest made Communism (the destruction of capitalism) somewhat likely.
• My own outsider candidacy for my local City Council, many years ago, gave space for a more moderate progressive to win in a four-way race, and then go on to serve four terms as Mayor.
A Book for More Moderate Activists
Through this lens, I view Amy Showalter’s book, The Underdog Edge: How Ordinary People Change the Minds of the Powerful…and Live to Tell About It. Showalter targets those who want to be seen as the reasonable and rational alternative. Those who want to meet with powerful politicians and heads of corporations, and get them to change their actions.
And thus, her message about dialing down the passion makes sense. Big dogs try not to negotiate with (or concede points to) those they find threatening. But I believe that seeing the threat out there in the distance makes them more willing to come to the table with those who are more persistent than passionate, those who’ve done their homework, and those who can articulate a change program that leaves the top dog feeling he or she did the right thing.
Without that lens, the book would leave me confused, because I can point to hundreds of examples throughout history where loud, passionate, angry people made big, sweeping changes. But in many of those cases, it was a symbiosis between the loud and angry in public view and the quiet, warm and friendly, but very persistent negotiators in the background; each needed the other to succeed.
However, reasonable doesn’t mean passive. The more vivid you make your case, the more likely you are to succeed, Showalter says. And this is true whether your cause is liberal, conservative, or nonideological.
While charisma makes the struggle easier, Showalter says a much more essential quality is grit: determination, doggedness—not going away. Proximity, which she sees as the key element of vividness, is a big part of winning, because you’re much harder to ignore if you’re right there.
From “Underdog” to “Sled Dog”
But it’s not enough if you’re so ego-involved that you make it all about you. Showalter has examples that take the “dog” metaphor from underdog to sled dog. Success, she says, depends on the pack leader being collaborative and encouraging of the entire group.
Not surprisingly, those underdogs who succeed in persuading their big dogs have often built relationships with them years before they ever tried to sway them or gain a favor. Not that it’s impossible to do it cold, but it’s much, much easier if you have an existing relationship based in mutual respect.
And it is helped, as she points out, if you can win over sincere and influential converts who can be seen by your opponents as one of their own, and pave the way for a change of heart by documenting their own impetus to change.
Social change theory also says that if you start to experience heavy repression, it means the power structure is scared of you and thinks you need to be crushed. If you can hang on through the crackdown, you succeed…eventually. As Gandhi said, “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Can Social Media Spark Social Change
Gandhi, like most successful revolutionaries throughout history, did not have access to Twitter and Facebook. Showalter is highly skeptical of the role of social media in fostering change, pointing out that even Egypt’s much-celebrated revolution was primarily offline—in the streets. She notes that only a quarter of Egypt’s population even has Internet access.
I believe social media—like TV during the civil rights and Vietnam struggles, and like printed publications of an earlier era—is crucial for bringing awareness of the struggle into the public eye.
The election protests in Iran are an obvious case, even though they failed to bring about regime change. Revolution is not always quick; Gandhi’s revolution in India took decades, Ireland’s, centuries.
However, as she points out, that awareness must be accompanied by action—and action is a lot more than signing a petition or posting a status update.
And where am I on the continuum? I’ve been all over it. I’ve risked arrest several times for what I believe in, and was actually arrested once. I’ve been the militant marcher shaking my fist into the TV camera—but I’ve also negotiated privately with a developer to create a compromise that allowed him to build after failing to gain a yes vote three times, once he agreed to protect a bunch of farmland and granted other concessions to the activist community. Both approaches are effective, in their time.
