How to make sure your disruptive protest helps your cause

This article How to make sure your disruptive protest helps your cause was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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[Editor’s note: This article is the second in a two-part series about how movements can understand and harness the polarizing effects of protest. The first part looked at why disruptive protest is inherently polarizing — and how movements can win in a polarized context. This second part breaks down some of the factors that shape the public response to disruptive actions.]

In one of the most famous protest speeches of the 20th century, Berkeley Free Speech Movement leader Mario Savio stood before a crowd of several thousand on Dec. 2, 1964, and delivered an impassioned defense of disobedience: “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part,” Savio insisted. “You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus — and you’ve got to make it stop.”

Perhaps now more than ever, recognizing the grave and even existential challenges we face in the world around us, people are following Savio’s advice and putting their bodies upon the gears. As a result, our society has witnessed in recent years a great wave of disruptive protest.

We have previously discussed how such action inevitably has a polarizing effect on the public.

Movements can no more avoid this than one can have the ocean without the roar of its waves, as abolitionist Frederick Douglass memorably put it. Disruptive protests draw attention to crucial issues that might otherwise be ignored and elevate them as topics worthy of an urgent response by those in power. As they do this, they polarize the public by compelling previously undecided observers to choose which side they are on. Although protest-shaming pundits may dislike it — chiding activists for working outside of the established channels of mainstream politics — this is critical to the process of social change. 

Rather than fearing polarization, organizers should seek to understand how they can use it most effectively. This involves recognizing that, while collective action undertaken in pursuit of a good cause typically results in positive outcomes, not all protests have identical effects or produce equal benefits.

Central to harnessing the power of polarization is appreciating that, by its nature, it cuts both ways: the same actions that create positive polarization — drawing more active supporters into movements and convincing previously neutral or undecided observers to at least passively sympathize with the cause — will also have negative effects, turning off some people and firing up the opposition. The goal of movement participants is therefore to make sure that the beneficial results of their actions outweigh the counterproductive ones, and that they are shifting the overall spectrum of support in their favor.

So how, then, can movement participants predict how a given protest will polarize? And how can they work to improve their skills in designing effective actions?

When managing the polarizing effects of civil resistance, there are five factors that play key roles in determining the extent and quality of the public response that an action is likely to generate. Although activists never have complete control over this response, they can optimize their chances of success by thinking carefully about these factors.

1. The framing of the cause through a movement’s demands

More than any other factor, the public response to an act of disruptive protest is shaped by how well onlookers can understand and relate with the righteousness of a movement’s cause. Because the tactics that disruptive protesters deploy are often unpopular, it is crucial that people perceive them as being used for a good reason. Thus, how organizers convey the justice of their aims becomes absolutely critical in whether the polarization their actions create will, on balance, be good or bad.

The primary means through which movements do this is through the framing of their demands.

A movement’s demands need not be overly technocratic. Often, media pundits will express frustration that protests have not rallied around a specific piece of legislation or produced an easily enacted five-point plan for reform. But, while such specific demands may be important in long-term negotiations over how a campaign plays out, they are often beside the point in terms of the dynamics of public polarization.

Previous Coverage

How did Gandhi win?

Far more important is that the movement presents its cause in a sympathetic way by appealing to widely held values and making clear the moral stakes of the struggle. Along these lines, we have written extensively in the past about how, in mass protest movements, the symbolic dimensions of an activist demand — “how well a demand serves to dramatize for the public the urgent need to remedy an injustice” — often outweighs its instrumental qualities, or the ways in which it might translate into short-term public policy impact or immediate concessions at the bargaining table.

To take on British colonial rule India, Gandhi elevated the issue of the salt tax — a particularly hated levy imposed by the imperial regime — because he knew that the same public that might be divided over various schemes for independence or home rule would eagerly support opposition to the tax, the injustice of which was keenly felt. Likewise, for the civil rights movement, desegregating bus service in the South may not technically have been the most important step in dismantling the Jim Crow order. And yet it became a critical symbolic demand because both the immediate community and outside observers could immediately understand why it was just, and it therefore effectively conveyed the legitimacy of the movement’s wider ambitions.

Using demands in this way is a critical part of the art of framing. Protesters may find that, in some respects, their cause is an unpopular one. For example, if they are seeking to win cuts to the military budget, they may see that many groups feel supportive of the armed forces and that opposition is perceived as unpatriotic. However, antiwar forces might nevertheless make inroads by taking on the corruption of military contractors, shining light on the wastefulness of wanton defense spending (exposing infamous expenses such as “$37 screws, a $7,622 coffee maker, $640 toilet seats”), dramatizing the unpopularity of particular foreign interventions, or elevating the opportunity costs of war and militarism. By providing a sympathetic entree into their wider set of goals, protesters present their cause in a manner that allows them to build momentum and sway targeted constituencies.

Prior to an action, organizers can study how different constituencies have responded when a given topic is discussed by politicians or otherwise enters into public debate. However, the most surefire predictor of how the public will polarize when their protest forces more people to take sides is not how these people feel about a general issue (such as climate change), but rather whether they sympathize with the demand a movement puts forward (be it the denial of a permit for pipeline construction, a tax on carbon emissions, the creation of new public transportation, or an agenda like the Green New Deal).

Some advisors in the worlds of media and narrative strategy get wrapped up in discussing finer aspects of talking points and messaging around an issue. But the element that protesters have most control over when they undertake collective action is how they present the basic idea of what they are there for. If someone is sympathetic to the movement’s demand, even if they do not particularly like its tactics, they will likely polarize in the right direction.

Protesters convey their intent not only through signs, banners, chants and speeches, but also through the nature of their protest itself — its action logic. This is a concept innovated by Patrick Reinsborough and Doyle Canning of the Center for Story-based Strategy.

“Your action should speak for itself,” the writers at Beautiful Trouble explain. “With good action logic… an outsider can look at what you’re doing and immediately understand why you’re doing it. For example, people doing a tree-sit so the forest cannot be cut down — the logic is clear and obvious.” If a movement’s demand is to shut down an oil refinery, and activists have locked themselves to the facility’s gates to prevent entrance, the action logic is once again transparent. If the goal is to desegregate lunch counters, having interracial groups sit down and demand service is an act of defiance that requires little additional explanation.

Yet the objectives of civil resistance are not always so evident. As an example of protest in which the action logic was considerably less coherent, climate protesters recently disrupted a Broadway performance of a classic Ibsen play starring actor Jeremy Strong. Ironically, as the New York Times reported, the play “was already intended to shed light on the climate crisis, in the eyes of its creative team and stars,” who were sympathetic to the cause of climate justice. Audience members and the media alike struggled to understand why the protest was taking place, and if it might have even been a planned part of the show. Explaining their action, protesters expressed a desire to impede business as usual to dramatize the threat of a warming planet, even if that meant shutting down artistic performances that they liked. Needless to say, this intent was not readily apparent to most observers.

When any disruptive protest takes place, dismissive pundits will ask with exasperation, “What do they want?” Movements need not answer these detractors on the terms they demand. But, for the public, they must make their answer as self-evident and compelling as possible.

2. The balance of disruption and sacrifice

The second most important factor that shapes how the public polarizes in response to protest is the balance of disruption and sacrifice present in the action scenario, or the plan for the protest and how it unfolds in practice.

Previous Coverage

What makes nonviolent movements explode?

Social movement theorist Frances Fox Piven emphasizes that while protests have a communicative function, they are not merely a form of communication. They are more than theater, “showmanship,” or “noise,” Piven argues. Rather, protests exercise disruptive power when people stop obeying rules and cooperating with the orderly functioning of the status quo: Workers decide not to go to work. Renters refuse to pay rent. Students stop going to school. Consumers cease spending their money at a business. People expected to wait in line, fill out paperwork, and comply with bureaucratic processes decline to do so. In some cases — including sit-ins, land occupations, factory takeovers, and various types of blockades — these people go beyond passively withdrawing cooperation and instead choose to actively prevent the system from functioning.

Such disobedience creates crises, large and small, that cannot be easily ignored by those in positions of authority. And so the level of disruption in a given protest is a central component in determining how significant a response it will generate.

Yet in terms of how disruption might polarize the public, there is a problem here. When movement participants stop doing their part to grease the wheels of the established order and instead throw their bodies on the gears of the machine, their actions can interfere with accustomed routines and end up inconveniencing other people. Because of this, activists risk turning bystanders against their cause.

A key factor in winning sympathy in the face of such inconvenience is the level of sacrifice on display in the action. As scholar and writer Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor recently noted with regard to campus sit-ins: “Students who engage in civil disobedience do so with the expectation of some reprisal. That is, after all, the moral imperative at the heart of this particular form of activism: self-sacrifice in the name of a higher political goal.” Such can be said of acts of protest more broadly: participants who put themselves on the line expect that they will bear a cost. They face firing or expulsion; they encounter the prospect of arrest and legal consequences; they may even risk bodily harm.

The willingness of protesters to bear these sacrifices has significant effects. For participants themselves, it can clarify their values and strengthen their resolve. For the undecided public, seeing high levels of sacrifice invites an empathetic response. And for passive supporters, the courage and moral seriousness on display can convince them that they, too, should be taking a stand. Witnessing high-sacrifice actions, it is common that friends, family members, co-workers, and neighbors are moved to act in myriad ways — to deliver food, donate money, write letters, join boycotts, use their professional influence, appeal to politicians, or show up in support.

Every tactic involves a combination of disruption and sacrifice, working in tandem. In the early 1970s, Gene Sharp, a pioneering theorist of civil resistance, famously published a list of 198 methods of nonviolent action, cataloging approaches that ranged from picketing and musical performances, to walkouts and rent strikes, to “protest disrobings” and “politically motivated counterfeiting,” to pray-ins and land seizures. The point of Sharp’s tactical inventory was to illustrate the expansive array of options that dissidents might choose from in crafting their protests.

Pulling from this list, it is possible to place each of the tactics on a chart measuring, on one axis, the level of disruption it creates, and, on another, the level of sacrifice it entails. Based on their placement, the tactics on the chart would fall into one of four quadrants:

Each quadrant offers different strengths and weaknesses, and the tactics found in different locations can be used by movements for different purposes.

In the lower-right quadrant are low-sacrifice, low-disruption actions. These include many of the most common forms of collective protest, such as permitted rallies and marches, the signing of petitions, and the display of banners. These can be useful as low-risk ways of engaging wide swaths of supporters, demonstrating unity, and recruiting participants for future stages of struggle. The danger is that these protests can simply be ignored both by people in power and by the public at large.

The lower left quadrant features actions that involve high sacrifice but low disruption. These often involve small numbers of people making isolated but quietly heroic stances: They may be individuals who maintain long vigils, serve a lengthy jail sentence, fast for extended periods, or undertake a coast-to-coast pilgrimage, speaking to local communities about their issue along the way. Through selfless acts of bearing witness, those adopting these tactics can serve as inspirational gateways into learning about an issue for the people who discover them. Some become revered figures in their communities. Yet, because the level of disruption is low, they too risk being easily overlooked and relegated to the margins.

High-disruption, low-sacrifice actions — which fall in the upper right quadrant — can be more effective at drawing public attention. But this is also the quadrant at the greatest risk of provoking public backlash and courting negative polarization. A single person laying on a highway can snarl traffic for miles around, creating considerable havoc. And while that person may face legal consequences for their acts, the sacrifice is limited when measured by the scale of the whole movement. A similar balance appears when someone interrupts a public event, or during strikes that involve small numbers of workers but suspend services for large numbers of consumers. Such disruption usefully gets the activists noticed and forces a response. But it also has downsides in terms of polarization.

The upper left quadrant contains high-disruption, high-sacrifice tactics, which include many of the great hallmarks of civil resistance. These include major strikes, multi-site occupations, protests with large numbers of arrests that flood the legal system, and community-wide acts of non-cooperation (the Montgomery bus boycott being one example).

Issues of scale are inherent in creating situations of great disruption and sacrifice. When large numbers begin investing themselves in collective action, putting their professional comforts, legal freedoms or personal safety on the line, the scope of collective sacrifice expands and the likelihood of significant disruption increases. A single person walking off the job may be only a nuisance for a local shift manager; tens of thousands doing the same can paralyze an entire industry. One person going on hunger strike might be an isolated martyr; but when dozens upon dozens of imprisoned suffragists in Britain adopted the tactic before the First World War, the women sparked public sensation and created a troubling dilemma for the government. Even a mild tactic such as a march can become a major phenomenon if hundreds of thousands join in. Although rare, it is when such scale is achieved that protests are most likely to result in a “moment of the whirlwind” — or a breakthrough period when an issue goes viral and the ordinary rules of politics seem to be suspended.

Moreover, it is during high-disruption, high-sacrifice actions that attempts by authorities to quell protest are most apt to end up working in favor of the movement — a critical phenomenon that scholars of civil resistance refer to as the “paradox of repression.” While significant disruption forces a reaction from authorities, high levels of sacrifice help to ensure that onlookers sympathize with protesters if that response is violent.

As sociologist Lee Smithey explains, citing examples ranging from the use of police dogs against civil rights protesters to the British government’s massacres of civilians in colonial India, “the use of coercive force against dissidents often backfires, becoming a transformative event that can change the course of a conflict.” Smithey adds, “Rather than demobilizing a movement, repression often ironically fuels resistance and undercuts the legitimacy of a power elite.”

Not only are there countless examples of the paradox of repression historically, the phenomenon has been clearly visible with regard to pro-Palestinian encampments on university campuses this spring. Protests at Columbia University had attracted only limited media coverage prior to April 18, when university President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, fresh from being grilled by Congressional Republicans, moved to arrest more than 100 students who had pitched tents on campus the day before. After the arrests, public attention devoted to student protests increased exponentially. Within days, the Economist ran a story with the headline “Efforts to tackle student protests in America have backfired badly,” explaining that police intervention both “inflamed” the situation and served as “the trigger” for a nationwide expansion of student occupations that would dominate the news cycle for weeks.

“The irony is that in trying to quiet things down and assert control over the encampment, the administration unleashed this firestorm,” stated Columbia Law Professor David Pozen.

In the New Yorker, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor noted that “an overwrought and violent attack by the state can quickly turn a marginal movement into a central one, pulling in people who might otherwise not have paid attention or would have remained on the sidelines.” Taylor quoted a student at SUNY New Paltz who watched riot officers with police dogs sweep up some 130 students who were seated on the ground and refusing to leave. “I wasn’t too involved in what was going on,” the student remarked. “I saw what happened last night, and it was completely unnecessary and disgusting. Now I feel like I need to get involved.”

Reporting on how arrests at Dartmouth University in January ended up fueling a wider encampment, the New York Times quoted a student who argued that the arrests had “turbocharged” campus activism. Likewise, with regard to the initial arrests at Columbia, the Times reported on April 20 that “The aggressive response left students shaken  —  but also, they say, energized.”

As one protester explained, “Everybody is invigorated.”

3. Sympathetic actors and unsympathetic targets

A third key factor of polarization relates to the “heroes” and “villains” put forward in a protest scenario. In some cases, the presence of highly sympathetic protagonists or greatly disliked antagonists can be decisive in shaping how the public responds to an action — particularly when ordinary people might perceive the movement’s issue to be a complex one, or when they are unclear about what groups might be impacted by an injustice.

Previous Coverage

Would Saul Alinsky break his own rules?

Saul Alinksy counseled organizers to “pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it,” emphasizing the importance of making an issue less abstract by assigning clear responsibility to an adversary. Likewise, in their rich discussion of how framing works, Reinsborough and Canning of the Center for Story-based Strategy write that sometimes “the messenger is the message” — the characters that movements put forward in their action “embody the message by putting human faces on the conflict, and putting the story in context.”

Along these lines, the civil rights movement famously took advantage of having hot-headed law enforcement chief Bull Connor as an adversary, knowing that he could be relied upon to discredit the genteel and paternalistic self-image of Southern segregation. With Connor acting as villain, the true violence of the Jim Crow system was laid bare before the public.

More recently, with Occupy Wall Street, which erupted into news headlines in the fall of 2011, public anger at the wealthy bankers who had sparked a global recession, causing mass foreclosures and spikes in unemployment, overshadowed many other aspects of the encampments. In that instance, the protesters’ target was ultimately more important than their specific demands. Given the public’s palpable sense that Wall Street executives were not being held accountable, an outraged demonstration on their doorstep seemed eminently sensible. And Occupy’s framing of the top “1 percent” versus the inclusive “99 pecent” of society painted the movement as representative of large majorities.

From their launch, Occupy’s encampments benefited from being associated with a set of issues that enjoyed widespread public support: A Time Magazine poll released in October 2011 showed that twice as many respondents held favorable views of Occupy than of the conservative Tea Party, and that of respondents familiar with the protests, “86 percent  —  including 77 percent of Republicans  —  [agreed] with the movement’s contention that Wall Street and its proxies in Washington exert too much influence over the political process.” Furthermore, Time reported, “More than 70 percent, and 65 percent of Republicans, [thought] the financial chieftains responsible for dragging the U.S. economy to the brink of implosion in the fall of 2008 should be prosecuted.”

Such sentiment allowed the movement to overcome the dismissive attitudes of media elites and help observers make meaning of the protests. In a speech delivered at an Occupy general assembly that fall, journalist Naomi Klein quipped that, upon seeing the demonstrations, “baffled pundits on TV” asked “Why are they protesting?” Meanwhile, the rest of the world asked, “What took you so long?”

Unusually sympathetic protagonists can have a similarly powerful effect. In early 2005, the movement against the Iraq War was dispirited and demobilized by the narrow loss of Democratic candidate John Kerry in the 2004 presidential contest and the re-election of militarist-in-chief George W. Bush. To reanimate the movement, it took Cindy Sheehan, a Gold Star mother whose son Casey had been killed in the war.

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In August 2005, Sheehan erected a camp outside Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. In light of the administration’s lies about the need for an invasion of Iraq, she demanded a meeting with the president to have him explain why her son had died. Sheehan dubbed her protest site “Camp Casey,” and as her stand there extended over several weeks, it produced a compelling dilemma action: By refusing to meet with Sheehan, Bush came off as a callous leader who was out of touch with families that had made harrowing sacrifices; however, if he did grant her an audience, the president risked creating a major media event during which his conduct of the war would be harshly criticized.

The result was a perfect storm for the movement. As the Nation reported: “Bush declined to chat. The media did not. Reporters descended in droves to speak with this woman who had the audacity to mourn so publicly on Bush’s doorstep. Suddenly, Sheehan’s exhausted, sunburned face flashed across TV screens and into nearly every living room in the country — and around the world.” The magazine further quoted Institute for Policy Studies fellow Karen Dolan: “As a mother myself, the first time I heard Cindy speak I was in tears,” Dolan commented. “She was so poignant and touching that I was sure the average American, regardless of their political views, couldn’t help but be moved by this mother who lost her son in Iraq.” NBC News ran a story reporting on “The Cindy Sheehan effect,” featuring presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin remarking on the vigil’s rare potential to earn the movement sympathizers from outside its usual constituencies. And, in the end, Sheehan’s action galvanized a new wave of peace protests across the country, with antiwar military veterans and family members at the fore.

Another example of when atypical protagonists have shaped the reception of protest has recently taken shape in Europe. There, farmers and truck drivers in several countries — including Germany — took to the streets earlier this year to express anger about government taxes and environmental regulations. In many cases, the farmers have deployed the exact same tactics as climate protesters, such as blocking highways. But while politicians denounced the climate youths as terrorists, many have hastened to cozy up with the disgruntled farmers and truckers, even when their blockades have resulted in sometimes fatal traffic accidents.

Important here is that the farmers and truckers were not seen as the “usual suspects” who would be expected to join in street protest, but rather long-suffering, “forgotten” laborers whose grievances finally became intolerable. The use of 18-wheelers, tractors and farm machinery to close down highways became an important part of the protests’ action logic, spotlighting the unexpected and sympathetic character of the participants.

4. Media and public relations capabilities

Of all the factors that contribute to how movements polarize the public, the fourth category is the most straightforward: the movement’s public relations capacities.

Having good action logic allows organizers to “show, not tell” the message of their protests, giving them a leg up in shaping narrative. But telling is important too. And this means engaging with the media.

In the past generation especially, study of the media arts has become widespread — and thus today’s activists have no lack of available resources on the subject. Yet in spite of the increasing sophistication of the most well-run political operations, a dismaying number of grassroots campaigns still fail to take basic, tried-and-true steps such as choosing spokespeople who are well prepared for their roles, crafting coherent written statements that clearly explain a protest’s purpose, and cultivating media contacts over time.

Sometimes this is the result of simple oversight. Because the internal demands of organizing a group and planning potentially high-risk collective action are so intensive, it can be easy to forget external communications. Other times, however, lack of public-facing messaging stems from more than benign neglect. Some radicals see media relations as distasteful and even ideologically offensive; they criticize those concerned with public image to be “playing for the cameras” and suggest that appeals for popular sympathy are antithetical to serious resistance. In this vein, pacifist Catholic Workers have opted not to send press releases about their protests out of the belief that seeking attention would interfere with the purity of their moral witness; meanwhile, anarchist insurrectionists march under intentionally incendiary banners (“Bring Back the Guillotine”), then yell “no cameras!” at news crews that take interest in their provocations.

Certainly, it is valid to deplore mainstream tendencies to reduce politics to image and “spin,” neglecting the deeper forces of moral principle, political consciousness, solidarity and organizational strength. That said, the all-too-common rejection of public-facing communication on the left is an invitation to marginality and self-isolation. It represents a failure to accept the radical responsibility of contesting for hegemony in society at large — that is, making a serious effort to influence the dominant worldview that most people use to make sense of social and political issues.

Some methods for creating change may not rely much on the mass media: traditions based on patiently building up organizational structures, creating alternative institutions, undertaking inside-game lobbying and legal maneuvering, or working one-on-one with individuals to promote spiritual awakening or personal transformation often do not need or even desire press coverage of their efforts. But unlike these other segments of a healthy social change ecosystem, mass protest and civil resistance rely significantly on public communication.

The consequences of refusing to relate effectively with the public can be stark. In principle, tactics such as workplace strikes or mass refusal by tenants to pay rent do not depend on a public response to be effective. Employers whose businesses are shut down for lack of workers may recognize that they cannot function without making concessions, or a landlord may cede to tenant demands in the face of lost income. Some theorists even define “direct action” in this way, as defiance that immediately challenges a powerholder, without relying on outside intermediaries. But in the modern world, the war of public opinion is often decisive, going far to shape the resolution of disruptive breaks brought about by social movements.

The level of popular response and intervention by “indirect” actors — the outpouring of protective support by co-workers, neighbors, friends, organizational allies, aligned politicians and members of the wider community — can make the difference in whether overwhelming military and police repression will be brought to bear on strikers, occupiers and other dissidents, and whether this repression will ultimately be successful in quelling resistance. It can also be key in determining whether movement participants will subsequently face harsh legal sanctions. And much of that support is mediated through mass communications.

Public relations capabilities can involve movements creating their own media, as well as engaging with existing progressive magazines, websites and alternative media outlets. In general, the left has been far less successful than the right in creating its own media universe with significant reach, failing to match the popular penetration of networks such as Fox News. Lacking such venues, leftists have spent significant energy analyzing the limitations and biases of the corporate media. But like it or not, movements must nevertheless reckon with these institutions. On the plus side, even modest efforts to engage can bear real fruit. Locally, one individual relationship with someone in the media can make a huge difference in both the amount and quality of news coverage a struggle receives.

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In the past two decades, social media has drastically changed the media terrain, creating a means to circumvent traditional press and communicate directly with wide audiences. This has given rise to a next generation of media strategists from across the political spectrum offering training and guidance on how to maximize the potential of new platforms. Sometimes the mainstream media can fixate on how movements use fresh technologies and overstate the significance of whatever latest apps seem trendy — dubbing fresh waves of mass demonstrations “Twitter Revolutions” or heralding the launch of a “TikTok Generation” of protest. Activists, meanwhile, are well aware that billionaire-owned, corporate-controlled platforms are not neutral venues, and that they come with pitfalls of their own.

Still, it is also true that organizers must make the most of whatever tools are at their disposal. In the case of the media, that means both adapting to new technologies and learning from the insights the political public relations industry has produced in recent decades, without succumbing to the soulless spin cycle of mainstream politics. It means finding ways to do popular communications effectively while also maintaining one’s integrity.

5. Timing and intangibles

A fifth and final category of factors that determine how a protest will polarize is made up of intangibles. Admittedly, this constitutes a somewhat amorphous, catch-all classification. Nonetheless, it is true that a collection of small external conditions — generally outside the control of protest organizers — can end up having an important influence on how an action is received. Although they tend to be less important than the movement’s demands, the protest’s action scenario, the heroes and villains of an action, or the movement’s ability to handle the press, these factors can, in certain instances, be decisive.

A lot of intangibles relate to questions of timing. Occasionally a natural disaster or breaking news event unrelated to the organizing of a protest will greatly affect how the public views the action. For example, if an oil rig explodes, creating an environmental crisis, a protest planned for the next day that targets fossil fuel executives may draw exaggerated attention — even if the rig was located hundreds or even thousands of miles away. Conversely, if a series of actions seek to shame a celebrity spokesperson for an exploitative corporation, and that targeted celebrity suddenly announces that they have a grave disease, the protests, which now appear irredeemably mean-spirited amid a wave of public compassion, can be sunk.

Another intangible that occasionally appears, related to the paradox of repression, is that reporters, camerapeople, or other members of the media may get caught up in a police crackdown on a protest. After getting harassed, jailed or beat up, these reporters sometimes become very invested in the story — leading to coverage that is significantly more sustained and supportive than organizers would have any right to expect. In this case, what amounts to a quirk in the course of the day’s events ends up having an outsized impact on how a protest polarizes.

Sometimes a movement’s reputation from previous actions becomes decisive. Negative feelings leftover from actions that were clumsily deployed in the past can work against future protests, no matter how well-planned. Or, to a movement’s credit, the positive perception that it is on a roll and gaining momentum can give credibility that might outweigh flaws in the design of a current protest.

Many of these intangibles lay beyond the immediate control of movement activists. And yet, protest participants can work to make skillful reading of the conditions before them, undertake conjunctural analysis, and always be on the lookout for possible “trigger events” that affect the public’s sensitivity to their cause.

In other words, organizers cannot always control the hand that they are dealt. But they can know good luck when they see it — and they can play accordingly.

Polarization as a craft

As comprehensive as Gene Sharp may have aimed to be, his catalog of 198 tactics could never exhaust the full range of options open to social movements. In the decades since it was first published, new technologies and the inventiveness of on-the-ground organizers have added many more “methods” to the list of nonviolent interventions that activists can consider. Indeed, in 2021, Nonviolence International Director Michael Beer produced a revised database that expanded Sharp’s original list to a full 346 tactics, almost doubling the number of possibilities included.

If these many tactics have a common trait, it is that, to varying degrees and in varying ways, they polarize. By elevating a conflict that otherwise might be overlooked and using the power of non-cooperation and sacrifice to interrupt the normal routines of society, protest actions compel people to take sides. They allow movements to build their base of active supporters, and they provide an opportunity to win over those who may previously have been indifferent or unaware. As these movements begin to organize at greater scale, putting bodies on the gears of the machine offers those with little sway within the mainstream channels of political power a means to nevertheless exercise profound influence.

There is no single “right” answer to what tactics movements should choose at a given time, how they should shape the narrative of their action, or what the best balance of disruption and sacrifice might be for a particular protest. The list of methods is best seen as an invitation to creativity, reminding organizers that they have many tools in their collective toolbox — or many weapons in their tactical arsenal — each with distinctive properties and powers.

But while movements have many options available to them, participants can always refine their skills in predicting how each may be likely to move different constituencies. In doing so, they improve their ability to ensure that they gain support from more people than they turn away, increasing traction for their cause over time. Although there are limits to what groups engaging in disruptive action can control, the five factors of polarization provide guideposts for anticipating how a protest may be received and how they can work to shape this response. In other words, they encourage movements to approach polarization as a craft — and to do their best to master it.

This article How to make sure your disruptive protest helps your cause was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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