How to turn protest into powerful change - Eric Liu [Video Content Summarized]

[fourthwall_dragon]

Here are three core strategies for peacefully turning awareness into action and protest into durable political power.

1. Expand the frame of the possible

How often have you heard in response to a policy idea, “That’s just never going to happen?”
When you hear someone say that, they’re trying to define the boundaries of your civic imagination.
The powerful citizen works to push those boundaries outward, to ask what if?-
what if it were possible?
What if enough forms of power --people power, ideas, money, social norms–

Refers to: How to understand power - Eric Liu -- 6 Sources of civic power

@fourthwall_dragon

• WEALTH:
  Money creates the ability to buy results and to buy almost any other kind of power.
• SOCIAL NORMS
  They operate in a softer way, peer to peer.
  They can certainly make people change behavior and even change laws.
• IDEAS
  An idea can generate boundless mounts of power if it motivates enough people to change their thinking and actions.
• NUMBERS
  A vocal mass of people creates power by expressing collective intensity of interest.
  And by asserting legitimacy.

were aligned to make it happen?
Simply asking that question and not taking as given all the givens of conventional politics is the first step in converting protest to power.

2 Choosing a defining fight.

All politics is about contrasts. Few of us think about civic life in the abstract. We think about things in relief compared to something else. Powerful citizens set the terms of that contrast. This doesn’t mean being uncivil. It simply means thinking about a debate you want to have on your terms over an issue that captures the essence of the change you want.

This is what the activists pushing for a $15 minimum wage in the U.S. have done. They don’t pretend that $15 by itself can fix inequality, but with this ambitious and contentious goal, which they achieved first in Seattle and then beyond, they have forced a bigger debate about economic justice and prosperity.

They’ve expanded the frame of the possible, strategy one,
and created a sharp emblematic contrast, strategy two.

3. To seek and achieve an early win.

An early win, even if it’s not as ambitious as the ultimate goal, creates momentum, which changes what people think is possible.

You don’t have to be anyone special to be part of this grind, to expand the frame of the possible, to pick a defining fight, or to secure an early win. You just have to be a participant and to live like a citizen.

The spirit of protest is powerful. So is showing up after the protest.

You can be the co-creator of what comes next.

[drea_m_r_76]

I love this!