How Grassroots Groups Lose Political Imagination

Abstract

New activist groups brim with big ideas, but the decisions they make quickly constrain which actions and activities are seen as possible.

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A new environmental group appeared in Pittsburgh in late 2004, prompted by headlines that the city’s air quality was the worst in the nation. I’ll call the group Clean Air, to preserve the privacy of its activists, and I’ll refer to its founder as Dave. The first meeting of Clean Air fit our image of grassroots activism. The handful of people who showed up were excited and optimistic. They listened carefully as Dave laid out the group’s mission, nodding in agreement as he described how grassroots action could end air pollution. When Dave asked for input, the gathering became even more animated. People talked over each other in a rush to propose new ideas. They were angry and indignant at the state of the environment, but also energized by the thought of working together. It was clear to everyone that Clean Air could make an impact.

By the end of the first meeting, ideas for what Clean Air should do and be far outstripped Dave’s initial ambition of curbing air pollution in Pittsburgh. People wanted to fight for all sorts of things: A national policy on wind energy. To end the culture of car ownership. To force industries to install air scrubbers. To make politicians take a stand for clean energy. To break the power of energy companies. And to convince everyone to take responsibility for the condition of planet Earth. The possibilities seemed limitless. Dave left with a heady sense of the group’s promise.

Almost overnight, Clean Air’s initial sense of limitless possibility collapsed. No longer were members talking about how they could save the earth. Environmental issues like habitat erosion, climate change, even water pollution fell away as they returned to Dave’s more limited goal of improving the quality of air in just one city. More surprisingly, even their discussions of air pollution narrowed. Just weeks before, the smokestacks that belched dirty air from the city’s remaining steel mills had been a point of great urgency in Clean Air meetings. Now, industrial pollution was off the table. So was the polluted air that drifted in from coal-fired plants in states to the south and west. Now the group only considered the pollution from automobile exhaust.

The tone of the meetings changed, too. The discussions were somber and flat. Members no longer felt pulled in many directions, like they were choosing among a multitude of possibilities. Now, meetings were spent working through a checklist of tasks. The activists ceased talking about confronting powerful companies and public officials to demand action on auto pollution, or even reducing the number of cars on Pittsburgh’s roads. Now Clean Air could only consider how to encourage people to use hybrid cars. When new members arrived and tried to raise broader issues about air pollution, they were met with indifference, even hostility. The group had set a firm boundary around what it would—and would not—talk about.

Curiously, the basis of grassroots activism—democratic engagement and its attendant wealth of new ideas and energy—collapses quickly in many groups. Why?

Narrowing and Silencing

What happened in Clean Air is not what we expect in activist groups. Since activism occurs when people want to change society, these groups should be bubbling over with fresh ideas. They should embrace new approaches, certainly more than established political parties and advocacy organizations that must worry about alienating voters and donors. Activist groups should nurture a wide sense of possibilities for what they could do. We assume, that is, that activists operate with what we sociologists term a political imagination.

When I studied over 60 early-stage activist groups in Pittsburgh, however, I found that political imagination doesn’t last long. Within a short time, most groups considered only a small range of options for what they could do (considerably fewer than when they began). This was true for all kinds of groups—from those supporting animal rights and same-sex marriage to groups organized for peace, against violence, and to oppose gun control. Their political imagination collapsed in two predictable ways.

In groups that should be bubbling over with fresh ideas, political imagination doesn’t last long.

One way that imagination disappeared was through strategic narrowing. Members realize that they can’t do everything and not all ideas will work out, so they decide to focus on a few efforts. They debate and argue, some members exert power and make alliances, and a plan of action emerges from the original, wider range of options. A women’s rights group initially talked about tackling many issues, from abortion to sexual harassment, before they settled on pay equity. Having decided to focus on pay issues, some options for action became more plausible than others. It now made sense to direct their message to politicians and employers, but not religious leaders or poor people. Peaceable rallies seemed a plausible tactic; flamboyant and violent rallies did not.

The other way that political imagination narrowed was through implicit silencing. Without explicit debate or decision, groups develop an unspoken sense of what they are: nonviolent, willing to be in coalitions, grounded in expert opinion, etc. A sense of the group’s character sets out what is permissible to talk about or do. A group that saw itself as nonviolent dismissed as irrelevant any consideration of violent tactics. One that identified itself as valuing coalition politics routinely sought out opportunities to make alliances with other groups. And in a group that saw itself as knowledgeable, assertions of external expertise fell flat. Defining group character makes some topics and ideas suitable, credible, imaginable, and others inappropriate, ridiculous, unimaginable.

When it began, members of an animal rights group talked avidly about how a small group of nameless people exerted secret control over the direction of the world. Later, such ideas disappeared as the group began to see itself as more “serious.” Any hint of conspiratorial talk was now viewed as inappropriate. Another group, this one pushing to legalize same-sex marriage, started out convinced that accurate information could change minds. This gave them a wide window of possible actions: to distribute resource packets to school children, church members, and college students and talk to neighbors, work colleagues, family members. After a few meetings, however, their broad imagination gave way to a gloomier assessment as they began to define themselves as a group under siege. As an embattled group they could only consider other gay and lesbian groups as potential allies and they abandoned all wider outreach.

Options lost to strategic narrowing can be more easily restored than options lost to implicit silencing. Decisions to rule out options can be challenged and reversed through subsequent deliberations and decisions; options that disappear without intention and discussion are more difficult to recover.

Stifling Innovation

The collapse of imagination was surprisingly rapid in almost every group I studied. Within a couple of meetings, most groups were cutting off members who brought in new ideas. They only saw a few tactics as plausible, they were pulling in the same audiences over and over, and they stuck to one style of decision making, even when it was not working well.

Consider an anti-gun violence group I’ll call NO VIOLENCE. As they met to plan a rally, NO VIOLENCE activists tossed around various ideas, including some that were unusual in Pittsburgh activism (like staging multiple mini-rallies in the neighborhoods that were ravaged by gun violence). Very quickly, though, they gave up on these novel ideas and used their previous rally as the model for the next. They decided on a single big rally downtown, outside the residential neighborhoods, put together the same line-up of speakers, called the same people for endorsements, and distributed advertising flyers in the same places. They repeated the past, even as the group acknowledged that their earlier rally had failed.

Grassroots groups tend to start out with a plethora of creative ideas.

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Declining imagination shows up in how activist groups find new members. When they begin, groups typically have broad ambitions about who they can recruit, imagining untapped networks of people who could be convinced to become activists. But those ideas quickly drift away. Within a few weeks, a gay rights group fell into recruiting only people who were already active in other local gay rights groups, though once they imagined a broader coalition. Similarly, members of an antiwar group spent a good deal of time berating themselves for being a White-majority group, yet the only way they could imagine finding new members was by tapping their (majority White) networks of friends and acquaintances. A peace group initially considered recruiting a diverse set of people, from young anarchists and prominent businessmen. Eventually, though, its members only approached middle aged religious people like themselves.

This is not news to activists. Many grumble that their groups lack imagination, that they do the same things again and again. They talk of feeling “burned out” by activist politics that demand so much energy but head off in a direction they see no way to change. Their frustration is painful. As one transit activist put it, “when I walk into meetings … I almost feel like I’m going to the dentist office.” Some activists resign themselves to working within the options that the group sees as plausible. Others simply quit.

A Sense of the Group

Activist groups develop a particular character through small steps and almost imperceptible shifts in their discussions. It is not simply that members decide to focus on a narrow issue and head off any challenges to that decision. Instead, the narrowing of imagination is propelled by small actions and shifts in conversation that can be quite accidental. Activist group conversations take a direction—moving the group away from industrial pollution and toward auto pollution—that snowballs. No one openly says that they should shift direction. Rather, someone makes a comment that is reinforced by others until it becomes what the group simply is. Sometimes the comment comes from the group’s leader, founder, or central member, but as often it does not. Regardless of the speaker, a stray comment can change a group from one threatening to unseat the governor or storm corporate boardrooms to end industrial pollution to one intent on simply asking people to ride bikes to work. Random comments, as much as members’ debates and decisions, shape a group’s character and diminish its political imagination.

Over time, groups’ decisions whittle their options until they are locked into a single path.

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Small comments are particularly influential when activist groups are first forming. In an early meeting of another animal rights group, let’s call it Animals First, someone mentioned enticing people to vegetarianism by offering free samples of tofu hot dogs. Immediately, the group set off on a path of gentle persuasion that came to define their tactics and approach going forward. In a similar early group, Defend Animals, a member gave a graphic account of the demeaning way he was treated by a restaurant owner when he objected to the sale of foie gras, a goose liver appetizer produced through a controversial process of force feeding. The group rallied to his defense and declared the restaurant its enemy. Throwing rocks at the restaurant’s window became a plausible tactic for Defend Animals in fighting its enemies. It would never be considered in Animals First.

Random comments, debates, and decisions shape a group’s character and diminish its political imagination.

The subtle process that redirects activist groups can also be seen in Debt Free, formed to promote debt relief for the countries of Africa. Their original members came from all walks of life—college students, professionals, mothers who worked at home. When members introduced themselves at the first meeting, however, the first one stated her name but also, without prompting, the church she attended. Although there was no instruction to do so, the next person followed suit. By the end of the introductions, everyone was identified by religious affiliation. With no discussion, the group began to organize itself as a group of faith-based activists. They considered only places of worship when searching for a meeting place and only ministers when they needed a spokesperson. Debt Free’s religious basis became a taken-for-granted part of the group, its unspoken character. Anyone who came later to the group without a faith commitment would conclude that they didn’t fit in.

Once a group establishes a sense of what is appropriate and inappropriate, this notion is fortified by conversational cues and body language. Inappropriate comments may be met by a verbal retort, as when a new member proposed that an antiwar group break windows at a military recruitment center and was silenced with the retort that this couldn’t happen in this group. More often, people are guided by smaller cues. Ideas that are outside the boundaries are met with awkward silences, while those appropriate to the group’s character are reinforced with further ideas and examples. A mention of leader authority—in a group that sees itself as egalitarian—will prompt head shaking and sharp glances among members. In the same group, a suggestion about sharing decision making will be followed by a series of responses that elaborate just how this will work.

Why do these tiny gestures and comments matter so much? Once a group is more developed, they aren’t as powerful; by then, the group’s character will be well established and certain options will be clearly ruled out. A group that presents itself as determinately mainstream is unlikely to have retained or to attract new members who want to engage in property destruction. In a group that sees itself as committed to feminism, members will not suggest recruiting at evangelical revivals or beauty pageants. But in early activism, more is in in flux, less has been ruled out. Small pressures matter because they shape a common understanding of a group’s character. They define what can be considered and what should never be discussed. They make some ideas consider-able and others not. They shrink the group’s political imagination in ways that are particularly troubling for democratic activism, because they are so hard to perceive or resist.

Cultivating Collective Imagination

A few groups escape the trap of silencing options by constantly engaging in self-scrutiny and reinvention. An example is Allies 2007, which focused on violence in the African American community. Allies 2007 began each meeting by reviewing what they had talked about the past week and thinking about what they had failed to discuss. Members saw Allies 2007 as always evolving, reminding themselves of options that had slipped away and reconsidering these. They talked openly about how Allies 2007 was a homogenous group—most were middle-aged or older—and what other kinds of members would contribute. When younger people appeared at a meeting, members were careful to introduce everyone, explain the direction they had taken thus far, and encourage newcomers to voice any concerns about that direction. They made explicit what other groups left hidden.

Initially, it seemed that Allies 2007’s process was too cumbersome and would paralyze the group. Doubling back seemed to waste time and resurrect debates that would better be left alone. But its value became clear. By constantly reinventing itself, the group kept open a wide range of options. It was able to preserve the invigorating vision that brought it together, while also forging the sense of common purpose that collective activism requires.

Over the course of the study, Allies 2007 continued to function while other groups dissolved. Its actions took longer than those created by other groups; for example, it took them months to craft a statement on the causes of violence and steps to reduce it. Yet, the group emerged with its membership more intact than other groups. And it was able to continue to recruit new members long after that possibility had collapsed in similar grassroots efforts.

Activist groups keep their political imaginations alive when they encourage their members to think broadly, not settle for the group as it is. They avoid the trap of diminishing possibility when they continually remind their members to be explicit about what they regard as plausible and what they do not and when they criticize behaviors (say, private exchanges of snickering or exasperated sighs) that unthinkingly shape a group’s character. Groups with expansive political imaginations remember that they have thought differently in the past and could do so again. They reflect on alternative ideas and plans they did not pursue. It is not common for new activist groups to preserve an expansive political imagination. But the ones that do enhance the democratic character of grassroots activism.