Turning the Tide Taster Sheet
HOW CHANGE HAPPENS
EmpoweredPEOPLE in
STRONG
communities
taking effective
ACTION
Turning the Tide Taster SheetHOW CHANGE HAPPENS |
Empowered PEOPLE in STRONG communities taking effective ACTION |
The tactics we might use in a campaign - for example,
leafletting, letters to the government and the press, public
meetings, demonstrations, Non-Violent Direct Action - are based
on assumptions about how change happens. Most of them are
intended either directly to persuade the government (or another
elite which 'has' power) to change course, or to stir up public
opinion so that the government is pressured into making a change.
After a preliminary step of identifying who the elite is (it's
not always obvious), the different ways that change can be made
to happen can be summarised as:
| Persuade the elite | letters, delegations, information-giving |
| Coerce the elite | boycotts, demonstrations, non-cooperation |
| Replace the elite | vote another party in, dubious as people in power tend to fall into the structures and patterns of behaviour that they inherit |
| Become the elite | get elected, palace coup, but there is always the danger of being co-opted |
| Ignore the elite | direct action, just do whatever it is for yourselves, Gandhi's 'constructive programme' of making village India self- reliant and self-governing |
| Abolish the elite | revolution, restructuring society to disperse the power |
How deep a change?
When we embark upon action to bring about social, political or economic change, we need to know how deep a change we are seeking - the more it requires people to change their deeply held beliefs and attitudes, or to change their behaviour, the more difficult it will be.
The change may be quite small and simple things like lead-free petrol: life goes on just the same but people put lead-free in their cars.
| Requires: | 1) people to believe that lead does harm
(education) - does not require them to take painful action or
change their worldviews in any major way 2) public pressure on politicians to counter the car lobby (letter-writing, lobbying, demos, visibility for the campaign) - not too threatening to the car manufacturers |
| in order: | 3) to get government legislation or fiscal action (dialogue with government and civil servants) - some cost to the government in lost revenue - but they get brownie points for being green |