The following is the work product of Dr. Michael Young. These are notes and outlines used by him in his talk to the Texas Moratorium Network's 2005 Alternative Spring Break participants on March 12, 2005 in Austin, Texas. For further information please contact Dr. Young directly. Michael P. Young Assistant Professor of Sociology University of Texas Austin, TX 78712-1088 512-232-6331 direct 512-471-1122 department 512-471-1748 fax INTRODUCTION I’m going to talk a little about what we might learn from how movements of the past have made an impact with an eye toward what this might mean for the anti-death penalty movement. I’m going to touch on the experiences of a handful of momentous social movements in US history in order to draw some possible lessons. In particular, I’m going to talk about The antislavery or what was in the 1830s called the immediate abolitionist movement and its eventual impact on slavery. The women’s right movement and in particular the suffragette phase and its impact on winning the right to vote The temperance and prohibition movement and its impact on public opinions toward drinking and its victory in 1919 with the 18th Amendment and a cautionary tale about its victory And a little about, the Gay and Lesbian Movement, CR movementand the Christian Right. In short, I want to sample on the left and right side of the political spectrum to boil down some strategies and circumstances that we should pay attention to when we try to understand how movements make an impact. Richard Rorty, one of America’s leading philosophers, echoed what I think a lot of people believe that social movements in this country, ---i.e movements for social change and social justice--- have to focus, above all else, on legal matters ---on changing the law. Our political institutions are set up such that real change comes through the law. And if any movement would seem to fit this bill, it is the anti-Death Penalty movement. My contentious point today is to disagree---well kind-of!!! As you’ll see. CONFESSION Before I go into some concepts to help us think about movement impacts and before I go into some historical examples that I think justify my general claim about how movements make an impact, I should start with a confession and a bit of a caution. First, I have not been particularly active in the Anti-Death Penalty movement. I keep track of it in the news, support politicians who are against capital punishment, have written some letters to politicians about particular cases, and see my self as a supporter or fellow traveler in the movement. But I have not been an activist, until maybe today. I do not have particularly close knowledge of the movement, so I am NOT going to draw explicit parallels between the historical movements I discuss now and the anti-death penalty movement. Instead, I’m going to suggest some general implications and let you, who know more about the anti-death penalty movement, draw what you think are the important implications, or disregard what you think is useless. Second, with regard to idea of lessons from the past, as phrased in the title of this talk, I do not think the history of American social movements teaches clear lessons about how to make an impact. It seems to teach, at times contradictory lessons. Historical events and movement outcomes are often contingent on complex social factors that are specific to a time and place and very hard to predict. The impact of a particular movement may depend upon idiosyncratic combinations of groups, interests, and happenings that may never reproduce themselves. That said, I do think an understanding of the past experiences of activists, arms us as strategic actors with advantages that may make a difference. So maybe, in a modest way, with the research and reading I’ve done in past social movements I can help in this way. CIVIL SOCIETY, CHURCHES, AND CULTURAL FRAMES My primary emphasis about how movements make an impact may, at first, be counter-intuitive. State executions are clearly a political and legal issue. The state, as the German sociologist Max Weber famously said, has a monopoly on the “legitmate” use of violence, and in the death penalty the state is exercising this ultimate power. So the anti-death penalty movement would seem at first glance to be above all else a state-centered movement, or in lay terms a movement targeting political and legal institutions. And this is, of course, largely true, but let’s take a step back and think about how we influence these institutions. My first main argument is 3-fold and I’m going to illustrate it primarily with the antislavery movement, but I think it is amply evidenced by all the movements I’ll discuss. Never ignore the importance of CIVIL SOCIETY Within American civil society, CHURCHES hold very influential positions AND Within CIVIL SOCIETY and within CHURCHES actors and institutions understand issues and are motivated to act on them through CULTURAL FRAMES. I’ll develop each of these three connected ideas soon, but the corollary to this insight links-up with my contentious claim, do not become overly fixated on political institutions, legislative powers, and even courts. Again THAT may seem counter-intuitive to a movement that seems to be precisely about the power of the courts and politicians, but hopefully my history lesson will make this point clear. To be sure, all of the movements I will talk about engaged in pressure tactics focused on the law, judges, and legislators, and these tactics were central and essential---but this is only part of the story of movement impact. And as social movements become increasingly more and more professionalized and led by legal experts and lobbyists---there is a risk that we lose sight of the historical importance of civil society, churches, and cultural frames. 1. CIVIL SOCIETY. Let me give a very quick outline of what social scientists typically mean by civil society. Civil Society is typically defined by what it is not: It is not the arena of institutional politics (the state, political powers, legislative bodies, courts). And it is not the arena of economic markets, or for-profit organizations and the pursuit material interests. It is the space in between the political and the economic that extends from hobby clubs, to reading groups, to fraternal organizations, to adult soccer teams, like the one I play in. It also involves meet-up about anything from parents who are having twins to people who own Airdale Terriers; and of course it includes social movements. movements like the Anti-death penalty movement. These are all part of the fabric of civil society and they provide individuals with social networks of trust---people and places they can go to for information, resources and advice. It is a space where people with their personal and moral sensibilities come into contact with others and are shaped by larger public issues through interaction with people they trust or are drawn to. Take the following mundane experience. My soccer team, after almost killing ourselves on the field, we go out for beers and a guy who works for Dell, sits next to the Editor of the Austin Chronicle, and me a sociologist trying struggling to get tenure at UT strike up a conversation about recent decisions of capital punishment and juveniles. Civil Society is made up of these kinds of spaces and places of interaction where we meet with people we learn from and debate with about larger public, political, and economic issues. 2. CHURCHES. In the US, because of the early separation of church and state, religion has for a long time been a big part of civil society. This is not the case in all nations, but religion has been in America one of the most forceful and dynamic players, for better or worse, shaping public opinion in this space between politics and economics we call Civil Society. American churches have proved very creative and entrepreneurial in drawing congregants. They are receptive to peoples needs and they can at times exercise great influence over peoples moral sensibilities. And of course, of late evangelical and conservative Catholic churches have played such an influential role in politics because of the influence they first gained through churches in civil society. But hardly a major American social movement did not use churches as a launching pad. Churches therefore can’t be, and of course they have not been, ignored by the Anti-Death Penalty or any movement for that matter. Now I don’t want to suggest that churches are alone in Civil Society---Colleges and Universities are important players in civil society, so is the arts community is important, and so are other social movements. All of these, along with the more apolitical ones I was just talking to can be central to how a movement makes an impact if we know how to reach these institutions, how speak to them and how to motivate them we may have the keys to how to make an impact. Political, legal and economic change are of course central to social movements, but what I’m arguing is that to achieve these goals, movements must speak to the actors in Civil Society, in a way that resonates with their institutions, and touches their consciences. SO how to reach them and to touch their hearts? Here’s where an idea from sociology comes into play: FRAMING. 3. FRAMING: Now the issue of framing, was in the early 1970s a rather esoteric social theory first articulated by Erving Goffman, but through the research of a UT professor who has now moved on, David Snow, it became central to social movement research, and today it is gaining a wider currency outside of the ivory towers of academe. Just a few weeks ago I got emails about meet-ups organized by MoveOn.org or maybe it was from the Dean machine to talk about framing. The idea was that the Democratic Left was not wrong about the issues that Americans care most about they just were not framing them correctly. The idea of framing is rather simple, but doing it well is rather difficult. At the risk of getting to abstract, let me say that you and I confront a complex and confusing world and frames punctuate, highlight, and simplify what is important, what demands attention, what should be noticed, what we should care about, and what we must act-on. We can’t take everything in, we can’t act on everything that affects us, so frames push some things to the side and center other things. If you think about the voters in the last election who voted for Bush because of the Abortion issue, the fact that the pro-life issue trumped all other issues is proof of a strong frame. To use the title of Thomas Frank’s widely read book: What’s The Matter With Kansas? Has a lot to do with the RIGHT and what it has done RIGHT in the Framing of issues and concerns. Or even voters who saw the war in Iraq as the issue that trumped all other issues, they were framing the political landscape in a particular way, or those who were afraid of terrorism, that frame of fear motivated made them to see the political choices in a certain light. All this is about framing. And successful movements---particularly successful moral movements---are typically very good at framing. Making people pay attention to an issue, see it in a certain way, and see that it demands action Strong movements that make an impact typically articulate frames that RESONATE. Women have the right to control their bodies, slavery is sin, gay pride, culture of death, pro-life, pro-choice. All of these slogans have caught because they resonate with larger issues and concerns. For many movements, the challenge has been to think about how to frame their cause within Civil Society so that it resonates with Americans and their cultural institutions, including American churches ANTISLAVERY EXAMPLE Possible the best historical example of this came in the 1830s with the movement to abolish slavery---or the immediate abolitionist movement. So let me go into my first sustained historical example: It links together the emphasis on civil society, churches, and framing that I’m making here. The Abolitionist movement emerged in the US in the 1830s as a campaign of what activists termed “moral suasion.” Then, as now, there were many who opposed anything that smacked of the union of state and church. Most abolitionists were evangelicals, most of their early leaders were ministers. Quakers had initiated the issue and kept it alive for decades after the American Revolution when most had let the evils of slavery escape their consciences. BUT When the movement became a true popular force starting in the 1830, it was evangelicals that were the driving force, and their opponents were quick to cry foul that they were designing to unite Church and State. Because of this criticism, immediate abolitionists promoted their cause for the first decade as one directed at the consciences of the men and women of the country, and not meddling in the state’s rights of the South. They avoided politics and stuck to pressuring the churches to expose slavery as a sin and demand immediate repentance from their congregants. That is they stayed within civil society, focused primarily on churches, and constructed a frame that had wide resonance---a frame of sin and confession. Now I’m not arguing that party politics and legal battles were not important, but first and foremost the impact of the abolitionist movement must be traced to how it forced Americans to reconsider what it thought about slavery. And this was accomplished in civil society and through the churches and a powerful cultural frame In the North, before the 1830s, most Christian Americans thought slavery was wrong, maybe an evil institution, but more something like a curse that had been visited on the nation by earlier generations. They did not see it as a sin for which God judged individual men and women who continued to hold slaves or for which God judged the nation as a whole because it supported the system. They certainly did not think that Northerners who did not hold slaves but were buying and selling and using cotton and voting for politicians who supported the institution were sinning. In the 1830s, immediate abolitionists started an intellectual, moral, and emotional revolution that would change how most northern Americans would think of slavery. They claimed that slavery was everywhere and always a sin; a sin that demanded immediate repentance and redress. William Lloyd Garrison and his paper the Liberator relentlessly made this point for 30 years, Theodore Weld, the assistant to the great revivalist Charles Grandison Finney, the Billy Graham of his day, took the religious revival and directed it against the sin of slavery. He demanded that everyone even indirectly connected to slavery confess and bear witness against the sin immediately. Garrison, Weld, the Grimke sisters and others hammered home the frame that “Slavery was man stealing and therefore a sin.” Anti-slavery publications presented woodcuts of shackled slaves, and asked the rhetorical question “Am I not a Man and a Brother”. Once the frame stuck it was transparent that to hold a brother in chains was a sin and demanded immediate emancipation. Of course, emancipation did not happen immediately, it took many years for this idea, this frame, to change the way whites in the North thought about slavery---it had little impact in the South, but in time it had changed enough opinions that in combination with other factors it contributed to emancipation. By the time abolitionists were done, few Americans could pass slavery off as something unfortunate or a problem that should be addressed gradually. They had made it a sin that demanded urgent repentance and reform. In the beginning, churches were there main targets. By the 1840s, immediate abolitionists splintered. Some continued to agitate in the churches, some moved to a kind of moral perfectionism that made them marginal but placed them as a kind of radical conscience within the movement, and some moved pragmatically into politics. Of those that moved into politics some eventually become part of a radical wing of the new Republican Party. They gained a political foothold by making partnerships with temperance politicians, nativists, and free soilers to build a northern political bloc that could win a national election. When the Republican Party seized this victory, the country headed into civil war. Abolitionists within the party pushed for emancipation. In short, abolitionists were not a sufficient cause, but many historians argue a necessary cause for the end of slavery. This is an important point that I’m going to touch on next---the consequences of intra-movement splinters and inter-movement alliances. BUT LET me now raise one cautionary tale that I’ll return to in my discussion of the temperance and women’s rights movement. As abolitionists turned toward specialization in political and legal arenas to win important victories, some of them lost their handle on the moral argument within civil society that made the legal/political victories possible, and in some sense was the higher purpose of the movement. When slavery ended, many Americans turned away from the moral frame and challenge: “AM I NOT A BROTHER” and allowed Jim Crow to replace Slavery SPLINTERING AND SPLITS AMONG RADICAL, MODERATE, AND CONSERVATIVE FACTIONS MAY NOT BE ALL BAD AND STRANGE BED-FELLOWS CAN LEAD TO IMPORTANT VICTORIES NOW my second big point has to do with the role of splits within movements and alliances across movement and the impact these have. First of all, I think a common sense assumption is that movements that stay unified are more forceful. And certainly, if a movement could speak consistently with one voice, act consistently and in agreement about what lines of action should be taken, they would indeed be a powerful movement. They might also be a little scary. That kind of uniformity is usually the product of a kind of authoritarianism. Any way, movements rarely do act this way because they bring together creative, independent minded people who are going to disagree on things like tactics, the priority of goals, the style of leadership and participation. Movements chronically suffer from splits between radical and moderate factions. These splits are often seen as weaknesses and something that the opposition can exploit to undermine the movement. And this may come to pass, but if dialogue remains open between the splintered factions and there’s a degree of respect for differences in opinion and strategies and moral calling, the radical and moderate split can have its advantages. Take the women’s movement in the early-1900s. The women’s rights movement main organization was the NAWSA. In the early twentieth century it was run by a rather moderate leadership that instituted a political strategy to win the right to vote state-by- state starting with western states with had much more open political institutions. They also made alliances with WCTU who under Frances Willard had decided to back cause of the women’s suffrage as a way to win a more important victory, at least in their minds, the legal prohibition of alcohol. The moderate tactics of the NAWSA and its alliances with women’s groups that were not feminist and even anti-feminist led to internal schism as radicals question the tactics and principles of the main organization. The radicals split off, forming the Congressional Union. This split actually freed the more moderate group to build bridges with groups like WCTU with less contention and it also had what social scientists call the radical flank effect. During WWI when political authorities were clamping down on dissent of all forms, NAWSA rejected picketing, but CU continued to organize aggressive pickets and marches. On was in front of the White House where they referred to President Wilson in chant: “Kaiser Wilson.” As political authorities were aggressively attacked by CU, they became more amenable to do business with NAWSA hastening the coming of the national victory of the right to vote. In short, it can be argued that the radical/moderate split helped strategically. Also, the WCTU and NAWSA cooperation is worth thinking about. Like the abolitionist and Nativist alliance, this made many within the movement uncomfortable. The radical/moderate split actually made these alliances possible without the movement as a whole losing its conscience. I can imagine this has important implications for the anti-Death penalty movement. There are some in this room no doubt who are uncomfortable with idea of reaching out to Pro-life forces of the Christian Right, but opinion polls clearly show that for example among Conservative Catholics, the message of Bishops for a “Consistent Life Ethic” makes them strong supports for the anti-Death penalty movement. Radical/Moderate splits may actually facilitate reaching and mobilizing broader alliances. Take for example the very charged issue of racism—it has been compelling argued that capital punishment is deeply marked by racism, that the disproportionate role of former slave states in taking the lead in executions is no accident. This is a very serious charge that the movement cannot ignore; it is also a charge that some who will make business with white southern politicians may need, for pragmatic purposes to temper. Radical/Moderate splits can help this. So in short, I’m saying that the lessons of past movements suggest that we should not necessarily fear them. Let honest and authentic motives and purposes take different activists, where they may. BUT now if you frequently have radical moderate splits within movements, uncomfortable alliances across movements that are in other ways quite different, what keeps the movement together, what holds it together, what makes it still a coherent movement that we committed to a cause might still want to join. Here I come back to frames and a possible framing lesson that comes from a score of movements in America’s past HOLDING IT TOGETHER WITH A RESONATING FRAME WITHIN CIVIL SOCIETY A very common frame to American movements---indeed a cultural frame that you could argue invented the modern social movement in the US with the Antislavery and Temperance Movements of the 1830s is Bearing Witness Against Sin. What these movements and countless other American movements share: Is Wintnessing Against Sin or shall we say today Injustice: Sin being a contentious term on the LEFT and maybe out of fashion for some. What do we mean by Bearing Witness---Being called to testify against a wrong. Called by who? Leave that open, leave that broad, many can interpret it within their own religious and cultural traditions. Also, how exactly to testify to witness, leave that open too---this allows for strategic pluralism. But, in no uncertain terms, people across political and religious spectrums can understand the power and need to witness against injustice. It resonates widely Bearing Witness is not just an evangelical or Christian frame. I’m Jewish and Isaiah 58, a verse abolitionists in the 1830s loved, provides a wonderful challenge to bear witness by breaking every chain. The Gay and Lesbian liberation movement may ultimately achieve liberation through legal rights to marry and other rights, but the movement began with “coming out”---with witnessing---they made claims to their human dignity, exposed injustices or evils, you pick your favorite words, and put those who judged them harshly, those who would throw stones, in a position of doubt, by publicly bearing witness to their own humanity. In Montgomery in 1955 as the bus boycotts took hold, Martin Luther King held forth at meetings that were like religious revivals and he expressed that what the protestors were doing was bearing witness against hate and that they would use love to redeem their whites and white America. The Four Young Men who sat down at that Woolworth’s counter in Greensboro North Carolina in 1961 put their bodies at risk to bear witness against injustice. They did not even need to say a word to testify against segregation. Key to witnessing is redeeming. People across strategical differences and ideological differences can get together behind the idea of witnessing against an injustice and redeeming those who are caught up as victim or as perpetrator in the injustice. It is a extensive but intensive frame, a broad but deep idea. Because the frame resonates widely and it can link a movement to other movements, it can bridge communities and cultural differences Because it moves individuals deeply it can motivate strong commitments to sacrifice. SOME PARTICULARS ABOUT WITNESSING Testimonies from within the injustice are particularly valuable---Abolitionists relied heavily on former slaveholders like the Grimke Sisters and James Gillespie Birney to testify against slavery. To come full circle, churches are responsible to this line of discourse. If they can see an issue as immoral and hear the call to witness, they cannot in good conscience ignore it. Bearing Witness as a cultural frame identifies a problem as immoral and compels action. It compels others to bear witness. For the anti-Death penalty movement what might this mean. Now here I’m no expert, but I think it means more of what the anti-Death penalty movement has already done: Shining a bright light on innocents who have, who might have been, or who were almost executed. I.e., frame the injustice Publicize botched executions or problems during executions and the suffering they caused Publicize testimonies from the loved ones of those who have been executed. Publicize testimonies from parents and loved ones of victims of murder who have doubts about executions. And, particularly powerful, publicize, if you can, the testimony of those involved in the executions who have doubts. NOW LET US DARE TO THINK FORWARD. WHAT IF WE WIN? If capital punishment is abolished, strategies to change political and legal institutions will be central. With all I’ve said about civil society, churches, frames and bearing witness, I’m not naïve. To ultimately end capital punishment, political and legal actions will be instrumental What does history teach about an event like this. Let me take one last historical detour to temperance and the women’s rights movement in the early 20th century and tell a cautionary tale. Suffragettes---women’s rights, win the vote and movement for egalitarianism collapses. Temperance wins Prohibition and then lose the cultural battle over lifestyles and principles of gender equality. In both cases, I would argue that as the movement became focused on its legal and political battles it lost its handle on the moral struggle within civil society. As a result these victories were followed by very difficult times for the movements. Take the Anti-Saloon league, one of the initiators of the professional social movement organization. It was run like a bureaucracy. It had multiple departments: a public relations department; a legal department; and enforcement department; fund raising department, and administrative department. It was amazingly effective in getting county and state governments to go dry. Even before the 18th amendment it had succeeded in turning much of the country dry. But Temperance was always a broader movement. It was a movement about Protestant middle-class values and lifestyle. It was a rural opposition to urban and immigrant ways of socializing. By the time of its greatest victory, national prohibition, the movement had become so specialized, it had become a political and legal action committee. Its victory was followed by the 1920s and the Jazz age and arguably Temperance was never weaker in terms of its moral influence over Civil Society. Indeed it would take Conservative Christians years to regroup. And when they did in the 1970s and 1980s, I would argue that once again it was influence within Civil Society that was most important to their overall strength as a movement. Similarly with the women’s movement. It collapsed after winning the right to vote. And did not regroup for forty years. What’s the point? THE LESSON IS NOT TO RESIST SPECIALIZATION AND PROFESSIONALIZATION AND A FOCUS ON LEGAL GOALS. But it is not to forget the base if you will. The moral framing of the cause within civil society will not only pave the way to political and legal victories, but protect the movement from disillusionment if it wins significant battles along the way. After all, most of you here are probably concerned with a movement that is broader than capital punishment. This may be the centerpiece, but concerns about prisoner rights, incarceration rates, racism in the judicial system are also of moral significance. Broad and resonant frames that take hold in civil society will make the broader movement strong and the chances for legal and political victory greater. [to top]