Tag: safe energy

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Peace and War, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Lifelong activist Emily Levy made a short video outlining 10 reasons why protests matter. In less than 15 minutes, she explores these benefits of participating in protests. Protests:

  1. Raise the cost to politicians of doing the wrong thing
  2. Heighten awareness both of the issue and that the issue has a constituency of people who care about it enough to take time out of their day
  3. Build momentum toward change, even systemic change (she notes Erica Chenoweth’s research that shows that a government will crumble if just 3-1/2 percent of the population engages in nonviolent resistance)
  4. Help participants feel less isolated
  5. Inspire others to show up, especially if you carry signs about why you’re marching
  6. Provide cathartic release: what she calls “a national scream”
  7. Create opportunities to get involved with organizations working on causes that matter to you
  8. Offers a voice to oppressed and powerless groups that would risk to much if they were actively protesting
  9. Allow even very small numbers to bear witness (I personally have conducted some one-person protests, so this resonates deeply with me)
  10. Facilitate ways to harness your skills, beliefs, and connections to make bigger and more lasting change

It’s a great list, but it’s only the beginning. Here are ten more that I came up with very quickly. I’d love you to add to the list as well:

1) Sometimes, demonstrations and protests actually change things. A few among many examples:
• The 1963 civil rights March on Washington (the “I Have a Dream” march, which my late mother attended)
• 1977’s occupation of the Seabrook nuclear plant construction site, which birthed the modern US safe energy movement. I participated, and I wrote extensively about HOW this action changed the world (that link takes you to part 1 of a 5-part series I wrote about it, and each one links to the next installment at the end)
• Arab Spring brought down multiple repressive governments within just a few months
• The Save the Mountain movement I co-founded resulted in thirteen months of continuous public opposition to a development project–and succeeded! I expected to win, but even I thought it would take five years.
2) Not only do protests show the demonstrators we are not alone, but it emboldens sympathizers who have not taken action before to do so.
3) We don’t always know the effects of our actions in influencing others until afterwards–but later we may have found that we created a shift in public opinion and in willingness to take action.
4) Demonstrations offer chances to learn about not-very-visible parts of your own community–some disenfranchised and needing to tell their stories, others doing great work but out of the limelight.
5) Protests reinforce the idea that powerful, well-thought-out nonviolent action can create sustained change.
6) Sometimes, amazing performers and speakers participate. I have heard John Lennon and Yoko Ono Lennon (several times), Paul Winter, Stevie Wonder, Holly Near, Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul & Mary, Orleans, Jackson Browne, and many others. I learned news and ideas from speakers that changed my way of thinking. In fact, at my very first peace demonstration on October 15, 1969, 12-year-old me heard a speaker say that the Vietnam war was undeclared. When I discovered he was correct, it changed my whole way of looking at the world and turned me into an activist–because everything I’d been led to believe about the US system of checks and balances came crashing down around me.
7) Participation is empowering! You know you’re working for peace, justice, a green planet, etc.–and you feel ready to take on the world.
8 ) You get to enjoy the creativity of signs, puppet shows, songs and chants, etc. that spotlight the issue of the day.
9) It’s a way to build your personal community. If you’ve been doing this a while, you get to catch up with your friends. If you’re new to protesting, you can make new friends.
10) More often than not, participating in a protest is actually fun.

While Emily wrote her list back in 2019, it’s all still not only true but relevant. A few things have changed, though–some good, some bad:

  • Dozens of new ways of protesting were invented or popularized during the pandemic, adding to more than 200 we already had
  • Repressive right-wing governments have been forced from power in countries such as the US and Brazil–but took or consolidated power in Israel, Hungary, Turkey, and India
  • Putin has started a criminal and brutal war against Ukraine
  • In the US, the ultra-right has taken over the Supreme Court and several state legislatures, catalyzing a whole new generation of activists–and in election after election, progressives are winning big in places they weren’t expected to
  • Black Lives Matter and reproductive rights protests reached critical mass
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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Peace and War, Politics, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Often in this space, I talk about my work to bring social change and environmental responsibility to the business world. But that comes out of my advocacy for wider social change outside the business community. I’d like to take a moment to reflect a bit more on the activist side.

Sign by Nancy Hodge Green, used at Seabrook by Shel Horowitz, 1977. Photo by Shel Horowitz
Sign by Nancy Hodge Green, used at Seabrook by Shel Horowitz, 1977. Photo by Shel Horowitz

As a 12-year-old, I went to my first Vietnam War protest on October 15, 1969–a national day of protest called the Moratorium. One of the speakers said it was an undeclared war–and that one sentence changed my whole worldview. The house of cards that I’d learned in school about checks and balances, electoral democracy working for the people, etc. came tumbling down. I started questioning, learning, organizing.

Since then, I’ve been involved in many movements and participated in hundreds of actions, dozens of sustained campaigns. Many were unsuccessful, but I can point to quite a few where the world changed because of a movement I was part of–and a smaller but still significant number (at least 20) where I feel I personally made a difference. The five I’m most proud of are:

1) Founding Save the Mountain, which created a successful movement to protect a threatened mountain in Hampshire County, Massachusetts (where I’ve lived since 1981). We reached out across all sectors of the community, organized on many fronts, and had the mindset that we would win. And win we did–in just 13 months! I always thought we would win–but even I thought it would take five years.

2) Organizing around safe energy for decades, and especially participating in the 1977 Seabrook Occupation that took the safe energy movement national. I’ve written a five-part series on how this action changed the world. Part One is at https://greenandprofitable.com/40-years-ago-today-we-changed-the-world-part-1/ , and each part links to the next one.

3) My current work on immigration justice through a specifically Jewish lens, as part of a tiny but powerful affinity group. We’ve been working for two years and have created enormous awareness of the issue in our area, coalitioned with many other groups on this and related issues such as prison reform and the welcoming of Jews of color into traditionally white Jewish settings, and spent a week on the border witnessing, listening, organizing, and even teaching two writing workshops for some of the residents of the refugee camp: one for children and one for adults.

4) Roughly 15 years doing extensive LGBT liberation work, working in conservative areas like Georgia and Ohio as well as liberal ones like NYC, Providence, Northampton (MA), and Providence–and seeing attitudes change.

5) Defending democracy and retaking two municipal governments from the conservatives (in my current town, we’ll be doing that again this spring; we lost control because we couldn’t field any candidates last year).

It’s been a wild ride–and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Energy & Sustainability, People Helping People, poverty, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , ,

At a recent conference, Jane Goodall said,

We are repeatedly told to ‘think globally, act locally’ but it should be the other way around. If you think globally first, you’ll get depressed. But if you think about what you can do locally, if you take action with friends and find that you’re making a difference, that’ll give you more hope and make you to take more action.

I love the idea of acting locally and have done it (and written and spoken about it) for decades. My biggest success in 50 years as an activist was a local campaign that saved a threatened mountain. Your chances of winning are often higher, it’s easy to reach those most affected, and you can parley your success into much greater influence on the future direction of your community. And yes, it can be empowering.

BUT…we also have to do the long, hard work on the big-picture stuff. It took 100 years of hard organizing to end legalized slavery for non-criminals in the US (and by the way, the exemption for convicted criminals has been used shamefully in too many instances). It took decades to get national civil rights legislation, the right of women and people of color to vote, the right of same-sex couples to marry…pretty much anything worth fighting for. And sometimes, even large-scale victories happen surprisingly quickly. As an example, the safe energy movement took only five or six years to make nuclear power unbuildable.

And those local victories can inspire the national and international work–which often gets done most effectively at the local level, by existing organizations and coalitions.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Are big protests a waste of time unless they’re part of an overall strategic plan? Nonviolent social change theorist George Lakey and I have been discussing this.

After my February post about Lakey’s idea that DT is creating enormous opportunities for social change workers, I got an interesting response from George (which I only just saw, thanks to a quirk in the WordPress interface). Please go read the original post and his response.

I believe my settings close comments after two weeks, and I couldn’t find a way to turn that off temporarily for this one post). So just to make sure there’s a way to keep the dialogue going, I’m posting my response here, as a new post, starting just below:

Marching at the Women's March on Washington with my wife and children
Marching at the Women’s March on Washington with my wife and children (from left: son-in-law Bobby, daughter Alana, wife Dina, me, son Rafael)

I agree with most of what you’d laid out here, George and certainly the key kernel that mass action makes the most sense as part of a well-thought-out and multidimensional campaign. And yet, I’m more optimistic than you about the power of a one-off mass action to build momentum for change. It has to be sustained, of course—but it can play a key role.

  • My own involvement with the Movement began because I attended a mass rally about Vietnam, at age 12 (1969). One of the speakers said something that was life-changing for me. But it was not until I was in high school that I began to realize that the real work of social change happened in the meetings to plan those marches, more than the marches themselves—and to participate as other than a drone showing up to other people’s events.
  • The reason all those no-nuke Alliances sprang up was because of what we did at Seabrook, a mass action.We inspired many other groups around the country to borrow our strategy, process, tactics, and even nomenclature, to organize affinity groups as we did, to educate about the issues around nuclear power and the safe-energy alternatives, and to be trained in nonviolent civil disobedience. And the reason we heard about Three Mile Island in the news two years later when we hadn’t heard about the earlier accidents at Enrico Fermi, Browns Ferry, and elsewhere was because of this national/international mass movement that started at Seabrook. It was having thousands at the site and 1414 arrested that pushed the issue into America’s consciousness. The first two Seabrook occupations almost a year earlier, much tinier, had almost no impact outside the local area.
  • Occupy could have been much stronger with leadership and goals, I agree. But still the movement had a great deal of impact. Like Clam, some of its process innovations have become part of the Movement. You talk about those turned off by Occupy, but what I saw was a generation of young people who moved from inaction, maybe even apathy, to deep, personal, and highly inconvenient action. They made sacrifices for social change. And I think a lot of them moved into actual organizing after the camps closed.
  • The recent Women’s March had very little strategy behind it but sparked the immediate and clear message that resistance is mainstream, that DT does not represent normal, and that oh yes, there was something we could do. And of course, it provided yet another opportunity for DT to make a fool of himself saying ridiculous things about the protests. I don’t remember another time when nonviolent protests unscrewed the legs of legitimacy from a government less than one day old. And again, a lot of folks who had never done anything political went from the march to the meetings. The thousands of hives of the resistance were enormously strengthened by that unstrategic mass event.

I’m glad you brought up the business community. This is where I have very strategically placed most of my own organizing in recent years: showing that business can create meaningful social change, not out of guilt and shame but out of enlightened self-interest: the profit motive. This is the subject of my 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, as well as my “Impossible is a Dare” talks. It’s the opposite of mass organizing: small groups and even one-to-one conversations.

So yes, let’s incorporate big protests into a wider strategic view, as the Civil Rights organizers did. Let’s read Alinsky and Gene Sharp, MLK and Gandhi, Barbara Deming and Dorothy Day, and of course, George Lakey. Let’s study the successes AND weaknesses of all these movements including Occupy, BLM, and the current resistance. And lets create strategies that keep the needle moving, both publicly and behind the scenes, toward the world we want. Outside of my social change work through my business, I’ve been focusing my own parts of the resistance on the amazing opportunity to get people who haven’t been talking to each other not just talking but supporting and acting in solidarity. I see this work—and especially the chances for Jews and Muslims to work together in solidarity—as deeply strategic based on seizing the moment where a conversation is much easier to have under the lens of both groups being under threat.

PS: George, I apologize for the late reply. WordPress only showed me your waiting comment last night. I approved it immediately but wanted to bring my much clearer early-morning thinking to my response. [end of my quoted response]

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