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Category: Theory

What does “Campaigning” really mean?

November 20, 2017

How Plato can help us redefine campaigning

Article from the Sheila McKechnie Foundation
September 29, 2017 SMK Team

We all know that campaigning has been going through a bit of a rough patch, with the lobbying act and all. However, I was still taken aback when someone referred to campaigning as the “C” word. A little strong, maybe. However, as I go round the country talking to people as part of the foundation’s Social Change Project, it becomes increasingly clear just how much of a problem language can be.

A woman in Manchester, who has an incredible track record of combating gun crime in her community, says she didn’t know what to call herself for a long time. She resisted the tag “community activist” because it made her sound angry and confrontational, and she isn’t. In fact, she is a highly sophisticated change-maker.

Another woman, this time in the Midlands, leads a charity for vulnerable adults. She doesn’t recognise the term “campaigning” because she understands it to connote challenging power from the outside. She works closely with her local authority – a relationship not without its trials – but she is on both the inside and the outside. She is, if anything, a negotiator.

The people who seem most comfortable with the term “campaigner” are those who work in professional roles for charities. They like the term and want to own it. Their gripe is that their organisations don’t understand campaigning and don’t give them the permission and space they need.

The Social Change Project has an ambition to detoxify the language around campaigning: to “reframe” the word, if you will, and consider new terminology and positioning that can make all parties feel more comfortable with campaigning and able to support it. Few would argue that people shouldn’t have voice and agency, and be able to shape their world. But what can we call this important endeavour?

Our early conclusion is that terms such as “activist” and “campaigner’” seem too oppositional and confrontational: spirited but unsophisticated. Meanwhile, being a “social entrepreneur” or “innovator” feels too passive politically, too commercial. Do we go for the neutral territory of “change-agent” or “change-maker”? Does anyone really use such language or know what it means? And sometimes campaigning isn’t about change. Sometimes campaigners are trying to maintain the status quo. Think Remain.

I was pondering this with a friend, who came up a nice idea. Campaigners should think of themselves as modern philosophers, he proposed, in line with the model of philosopher kings in Plato’s Republic. Plato believed political office should be held by philosophers, who are defined as having knowledge, not power, and whose role it is to ask questions in pursuit of what is good. I like it: rather than thinking of campaigning as speaking truth to power or pursuing change, we should think of it as being about asking questions.

Recognising that change is about us all the time, our job is to ask “is this change good, right and fair?” Of course, this will entail holding those with power to account, but it moves the core purpose of campaigning upstream. We are not pursuing change or opposing things for the sake of it. We’re not just angry people. We are asking questions in the interests of making society better. And what on earth can be wrong with that?

How pledging to act with other people could change the world

July 1, 2017

We wanted to share this very interesting article that offers valuable suggestions on how we can create stronger movements, without needing to form bigger organisations, nor formal alliances (which always get bogged down in internal politics, ego issues, etc.).

The suggestion developed here is to invite collective pledges on a specific action. The “if you will I will” approach leaves everyone free to choose the rest of the tactics deployed by each. It also is a very clever way to activate the “social proof bias”, which suggests that people’s attitudes and behaviors are mainly modeled on what they see happening in society.

A good food for thought for LGBTQI activists!

 

By Gail Bradbook

This piece was originally posted on Compassionate Revolution in June 2016:

Compassionate Revolution was launched in summer 2015 as a grass-roots run platform for hosting pledges of collective action- “I will if you will”. The pledges can be acts of art (like mass graffiti), acts from the heart (like group meditations or modelling kind behaviour in politics) and acts of civil disobedience (like tax or rent strikes, work to rule, blockades etc). Here’s why this initiative is so vital at this time.

According to political theorists like Hannah Arendt and Gene Sharp, power is always located in the collective – i.e. amongst all of us ordinary folks. This is true, despite the fact power may seem to be centred in Whitehall or in the billionaire owned media, or in the City of London or any other places we feel we have no power over. Since we are being pushed around by an Establishment, increasingly disdainful of true democracy and definitely without our or the planets interests at heart, the fact that we don’t wield our power as a collective can be a real stick to beat ourselves with! Over inability to assert our power implies that it is our collusion with or passivity which allows the system to stay in place…

We hear “Why aren’t people on the streets” when the latest scandal erupts. And “People are so apathetic, nothing will ever change”.  These statements presuppose two things:

– that actions, demonstrations, blockades and so forth emerge spontaneously, when in fact they are always organised. When Rosa Parks sat on the “white” part of the bus in segregated America, spurring a wave of similar acts of defiance, the event was carefully orchestrated by the civil rights movement- it was no spontaneous act. Campaigns for change need to be organised, this doesn’t imply central management, but it does imply a body of people committing to an action and calling for others to join in. The “system” has worked hard over many years to erode the organisations that are able to mobilise people, like trade unions. Fortunately the internet offers new mechanisms for more nimble, grass roots organisations to mobilise people. Horizontal, distributed networks have increased power.

– that people are passive because they don’t care. The passivity of the population is ensured by a number of mechanisms – sure it includes distraction through mind numbing media and socially acceptable drugs. Passivity can also be maintained by providing a vested interest in the status quo, however this is constantly being undermined through economic forces and the erosion of public services. Gene Sharp, in Power and Struggle, argues that obedience is often merely habitual and sharing examples of disobedience will encourage others to join in.

The civil rights movement in the US mobilised only 1% of the US population. A recent university study shows that when 3.4% of a population rises up a revolution is possible. This is about 2.2million people in the UK, (bear in mind around 10 million people vote Labour or Green and that beyond party politics many movements have a complaint about neo-liberal capitalism at their heart (the environmental, peace, anti-austerity and economic justice movements for example).

So the question is, if we argue that 2.2m people in the UK would like a rapid redistribution of wealth and power (a revolution) how are we to go about organising that?

Tim Gee, in Counterpower suggests that social change happens through the 4C’s:

The raising of Consciousness about an issue, the Coordination of different organisations, a stage of Confrontation (civil disobedience) and Consolidation of gains by having detailed policy solutions ready and energy to drive them home.

Within the current landscape we possibly have too much consciousness raising – the echo chamber of sharing on social media, of this issue and that disturbing fact and so on. The solutions offered are generally to pay an organisation some money and to support the re-sharing of information (what I call, tongue in cheek, the pyramid selling of sh*t information!). Perhaps 2.2m already know enough but need encouragement and example to act? Coordination amongst groups can be weak, as is the spreading of confrontation, despite incredible efforts by some amazing campaigners, in the face of media lock down, on reporting successful actions.

So how does the “ordinary, progressive, left leaning” individual decide to get involved in an action and commit to doing so? How could organisations best coordinate and share resources, without needing to form coalitions, requiring the merging of cultures and detailed agreements? Conditional commitment- the use of pledges “I will if enough others will” offers a simple way forwards.

Pledging to join collective action is not new. The labour movement transformed when wild cat striking was replaced by organised unionism “I will strike if you will” is the basis of a strike ballot.

The successful rent strikes of 1915, through “Mary Barbours Army” involved the pre-agreed actions of groups of women in tenement blocks. Those involved placed their pledge ‘RENT STRIKE. WE ARE NOT REMOVING.’ in their windows. “This is how they organised the resistance: one woman with a bell would sit in the tenement close, watching while the other women living in the tenement went on with their household duties. Whenever the Bailiff’s Officer appeared to evict a tenant, the woman in the passage immediately rang the bell, and the other women put down whatever work they were doing and hurried to where the alarm was being raised. They would hurl flour bombs and other missiles at the bailiff, forcing him to make a hasty retreat.”

The Women’s Tax Resistance League (part of the movement of suffragettes), formed in 1909 with the slogans ‘No taxation without representation’ and the more direct declaration: ‘NO VOTE, NO TAX’. 100 members were willing to take up this form of protest. A two-tier approach was adopted, which meant that some took action immediately (40), while others declared they were willing to become tax protesters once the total number of members reached 500. (However, the total never exceeded 200 – this was before the days of social media!)

The current successful rent strikes in UCL have been designed and organised by conditional commitment expert and activist Roger Hallam. First it focused on one hall, through face to face contact, by asking people how they felt about rent and the condition of the hall and whether they would strike if 100 people did it together. By the deadline 150 had agreed to strike and the story went viral (35,000 shares of a Guardian article). Then numbers increased to 700, half through online sharing.

The Keystone Pipeline pledge of resistance is possibly the most successful current example of conditional commitment. By March 2014 there had been 398 arrests of peaceful protestors who had pledged to undertake acts of civil disobedience in their opposite to the Keystone Pipeline, which would transport the dirtiest tar sands energy across North America. A further 162 were arrested in 2015 and by June 2015 over 97000 people had pledged their willing to participate in peaceful actions which might lead to arrest.

The current challenge is to get pledging / conditional commitment at the forefront of our collective psyches. Organisers of actions could spend time considering how to mobilise a greater number of people. For example those at home can support a Direct Action against an organisation (for example by participating in a telephone blockade of the organisation targeted). Roger Hallam encourages organisers to think about escalating their actions to achieve greater outcomes each time and involve more people. He has given detailed information about what supports this process. Dissent can be designed!

As grass roots movements and organisations gain confidence in conditional commitment, it will be possible to agree “cross fertilisation” of movements – encouraging those focussed on one action to support the simpler pledges of another, building cooperation and numbers. This itself can be done as a conditional commitment- “We will involve our network in your action if you will involve yours in ours” or “we will work together on a joint action if 6 other organisations agree to be involved”.

In this way, escalating actions and mobilising across networks, in a joined up but loosely held strategy, could be the process for seeing the big changes required.

So the Compassionate Revolution website can host pledges of action – we are trying to offer a range of pledges so that people can exercise their muscles of “peaceful mischief” and feel part of a collective (not all actions are illegal and we de-risk for the majority). A new action can be advertised to those who have already joined another actions. If we demonstrate the viability of this approach maybe Avaaz and others will step up to offering civil disobedience to their bigger databases. We need to normalise these approaches and we have social media on our side to reach the numbers. Join a pledge or several?:

Food for Thought: “Why Street Protests Don’t Work”

March 2, 2017

This interesting OpEd appeared in The Atlantic

It dates back to April 2014 but most of the analysis would still be the same today. Brexit and Trump election have probably even driven the nail further. Or have things changed? Your comments are most welcome !!

Why Street Protests Don’t Work

How can so many demonstrations accomplish so little?

A Bank of India worker watches from a window as Occupy Wall Street protesters march along 47th Street in New York in September 2013. Joshua Lott/Reuters
Street protests are in. From Bangkok to Caracas, and Madrid to Moscow, these days not a week goes by without news that a massive crowd has amassed in the streets of another of the world’s big cities. The reasons for the protests vary (bad and too-costly public transport or education, the plan to raze a park, police abuse, etc.). Often, the grievance quickly expands to include a repudiation of the government, or its head, or more general denunciations of corruption and economic inequality.Aerial photos of the anti-government marches routinely show an intimidating sea of people furiously demanding change. And yet, it is surprising how little these crowds achieve. The fervent political energy on the ground is hugely disproportionate to the practical results of these demonstrations.

Notable exceptions of course exist: In Egypt, Tunisia, and Ukraine, street protests actually contributed to the overthrow of the government. But most massive rallies fail to create significant changes in politics or public policies. Occupy Wall Street is a great example. Born in the summer of 2011 (not in Wall Street but in Kuala Lumpur’s Dataran Merdeka), the Occupy movement spread quickly and was soon roaring in the central squares of nearly 2,600 cities around the world.

The hodgepodge groups that participated had no formal affiliation with one another, no clear hierarchy, and no obvious leaders. But social networks helped to virally replicate the movement so that the basic patterns of camping, protesting, fundraising, communicating with the media, and interacting with the authorities were similar from place to place. The same message echoed everywhere: It is unacceptable that global wealth is concentrated in the hands of an elite 1 percent while the remaining 99 percent can barely scrape by.

Such a global, massive, and seemingly well-organized initiative should have had a greater impact. But it didn’t. Though the topic of economic inequality has gained momentum in the years since, in practice it is hard to find meaningful changes in public policy based on Occupy’s proposals. By and large the Occupy movement has now vanished from the headlines.

In fact, government responses usually amount to little more than rhetorical appeasement, and certainly no major political reforms. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, for example, publicly validated the frustrations of those who took to the streets of her country, and promised that changes would be made, but those ‘changes’ have yet to materialize. The reaction of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the protests in his country was more aggressive. He accused the opposition and protesters of plotting a sophisticated conspiracy against him, and tried to block Twitter and YouTube. Earlier this month, Erdogan scored a huge victory in Turkey’s local elections. The same dynamic has played out during demonstrations against violence in Mexico City and corruption in New Delhi: massive marches, scant results.Why? How can so many extremely motivated people achieve so little? One answer might be found in the results of an experiment conducted by Anders Colding-Jørgensen of the University of Copenhagen. In 2009, he created a Facebook group to protest the demolition of the historic Stork Fountain in a major square of the Danish capital. Ten thousand people joined in the first week; after two weeks, the group was 27,000 members-strong. That was the extent of the experiment. There was never a plan to demolish the fountain—Colding-Jørgensen simply wanted to show how easy it was to create a relatively large group using social media.

Anti-government protesters wake up in their encampment in Bangkok. (Reuters/Damir Sagolj)

In today’s world, an appeal to protest via Twitter, Facebook, or text message is sure to attract a crowd, especially if it is to demonstrate against something—anything, really—that outrages us. The problem is what happens after the march. Sometimes it ends in violent confrontation with the police, and more often than not it simply fizzles out. Behind massive street demonstrations there is rarely a well-oiled and more-permanent organization capable of following up on protesters’ demands and undertaking the complex, face-to-face, and dull political work that produces real change in government. This is the important point made by Zeynep Tufekci, a fellow at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University, who writes that “Before the Internet, the tedious work of organizing that was required to circumvent censorship or to organize a protest also helped build infrastructure for decision making and strategies for sustaining momentum. Now movements can rush past that step, often to their own detriment.”

There is a powerful political engine running in the streets of many cities. It turns at high speed and produces a lot of political energy. But the engine is not connected to wheels, and so the “movement” doesn’t move. Achieving that motion requires organizations capable of old-fashioned and permanent political work that can leverage street demonstrations into political change and policy reforms. In most cases, that means political parties. But it doesn’t necessarily mean existing parties that demonstrators don’t trust to be change agents. Instead, as I have written elsewhere, we need new or deeply reformed parties that can energize both idealists who feel politically homeless and professionals who are fully devoted to the daily grind of building a political organization that knows how to convert political energy into public policies.

As many have noted, social media can both facilitate and undermine the formation of more effective political parties. We are familiar with the power of social media to identify, recruit, mobilize, and coordinate supporters as well as to fundraise. But we also know that clicktivism and slacktivism undermine real political work by creating the feel-good illusion that clicking “like’’ on a Facebook page or tweeting incendiary messages from the comfort of one’s computer or smartphone is equivalent to the activism that effects change.

What we’ve witnessed in recent years is the popularization of street marches without a plan for what happens next and how to keep protesters engaged and integrated in the political process. It’s just the latest manifestation of the dangerous illusion that it is possible to have democracy without political parties—and that street protests based more on social media than sustained political organizing is the way to change society.

Preparing the ground for a campaign launch: lessons from This Girl Can

February 16, 2017

Tanya Joseph, director of business partnerships at Sport England, wrote this great article for the Charitycomms.org website. It offers great insights into what you can (and should) do before you launch a campaign, to ensure it kicks off nicely. Remember a few campaign principles:

  1. No one likes a ghost town. So you need a good ground of supporters before you start so that the campaign already looks active and popular.
  2. Critiques and trolls are on the lookout, watching every move you make and desperate to jump on you, so make sure you occupy the ground and have a great crowd of supporters ready to shoot off. If you don’t, your campaign might kick off with a horde of wolves on its heels.
  3. Hit the ground running. Once the campaign starts, you cannot afford to loose the momentum. So galvanizing energy beforehand to create momentum and support will free your time and energy to reach out strategically to this “second tier” of supporters, which you could not reach out to earlier. This time is precious, so don’t waste it by using it to get your fans on board. They should already be there.

 

Preparing the ground for a campaign launch: lessons from This Girl Can

Image: This Girl Can

Launching a new campaign is always stressful. Is our creative right? Do we have the right media strategy? Have we got the tone right? Is the call to action clear? These were among the hundreds of questions we were asking ourselves in the weeks before we launched This Girl Can.

At the CharityComms Developing behaviour change campaigns conference, we explained how we used insight to ensure we were able to say yes to all of these questions and inspire millions of women and girls to get active.

But let’s be honest. Although you may tell yourself (and your boss or board) to have confidence in the insight, that won’t stop you fretting. If you are anything like me, you prepare the ground so that when you do go live, your campaign gets the best possible reception.

Getting our ducks in a row

Before the This Girl Can TV ad hit the airwaves in January 2015, we spent two months getting our ducks in a row. We wanted to make sure that when This Girl Can leapt into living rooms up and down the country, there was a welcoming committee ready to embrace it.

I was as sure as I could be that if the women we were targeting saw it, they would be positive about it. But I was also nervous that some people wouldn’t get it.

As part of our preparations, I wanted to gather some allies. We needed to have enough people out there who knew what we were trying to do and who would support us should we come under attack.

Talking to influencers

In the last eight weeks of 2014, a small team of us met with dozens of people we had identified as being influential on our audience – journalists and producers, politicians, industry leaders, bloggers and vloggers. Instead of seeking immediate coverage, we wanted them to understand the rationale for the campaign, the insight that lay behind it and the approach we would be taking. Rather than sharing all the creative, the team relied on facts, stats and pure passion for the campaign. I am pleased to say it worked.

Broadcaster Clare Balding loved the idea of the campaign and immediately asked to be involved. In fact, she loved it so much, she offered to host the screening we did for key stakeholders and talked about the campaign on every TV sofa she sat on in January 2015.

Talking and listening to women on Twitter

As well as building our coalition of influential supporters, we also wanted to recruit some regular women too. Again, we wanted to make sure we had a small cohort of well-informed women online.

We started with Twitter. We didn’t post much to begin with; we were very much in listening mode. Then we started to jump into conversations. A woman might tweet that she had intended to go to the gym but ended up in a coffee shop and @ThisGirlCanUK would come back with “at least the intention was there, better luck next time”. She might then respond and some of her followers might get involved in the conversation. I have to admit that I was very apprehensive about this. I really didn’t want people thinking we were spying on them but it worked because we got the tone right and only got involved where we added value.

By the time we went live with the ads, we had around 2,000 Twitter followers. The day before the ad was aired we encouraged our followers to watch out for it. And they did. The amazing 90 second version of our ad burst onto our screens in the first ad break of the 7.30 episode of Coronation Street on Monday 12 January 2015. Our 2,000 followers loved it, tweeted about it and within 12 hours that number had increased ten-fold and our online community continues to grow.

Reaping the rewards

Our strategy to create a community of advocates worked – we have built an incredibly engaged group of supporters who love the campaign and get what we do. They are like family. And we treat them as such – we talk to them and listen, share experiences with them and tell them about things before we tell others.

It was hard work doing the ground work, especially when we were trying to get ready for the actual launch, finalising creative and doing PR to generate post-launch coverage. But it was worth it.

More like this
Find out more about the This Girl Can campaign from the presentation at Developing behaviour change campaigns conference

Break the law!

October 18, 2016

The article below, reproduce from Wagingnonviolence.org opens interesting discussions on how to use legal breach for campaigning purposes.

Applied to LGBTI, this tactics of explicitly and visibly transgressing the law you want to see abolished has been used quite extensively in times and places where anti-LGBTI laws were still on the books but not enforced.  This is somewhat different to strategic litigation cases,where you challenge a law in a legal battle, but can be combined.

This issue is certainly worth opening a chapter on.

—————

About 100 Danes, young and old, stood outside Copenhagen City Court in the chilly seaside winds last Tuesday to show their solidarity with four activists alleged to have illegally assisted refugees in their trek across the waters from Denmark to Sweden.

While only two of the accused are Danish citizens, all are members of MedMenneskeSmuglerne, or “Those who smuggle thy neighbor” — an outgrowth of the more broad-based initiative Welcome to Denmark, which welcomes migrants and refugees into the country.

Last year, over one million migrants and refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea and other unstable nations endured the risks of exodus to Denmark and other parts of Europe. Many died during the journey or ended up in refugee camps for prolonged periods. This migration wave correlates directly to the growing xenophobia and shift to the right in many European countries, including Denmark.

“Pretty much all leftist organizations in Europe neglected to consider the refugee influx on their agendas,” said Mimoza Murati, one of the non-Danish activists facing criminal charges that day. “We should have been prepared because we know the political landscape.”

While Danish prosecutors may not have agreed, their case was ultimately dismissed for lack of substantial evidence. The four members of MedMenneskeSmuglerne were met with victorious applause by their Welcome to Denmark cohorts outside the court building.

Providing hospitality for asylum seekers

When Trine Simmel, a young Danish activist from Aarhus, saw the masses of migrants on television pouring across the German border into Denmark’s Jylland peninsula around September 2015, she connected with her friends to figure out what they could do to provide basic needs to the newcomers.

The migrants were being escorted by policemen into Jylland, so the youth initially planned to wait at an overpass, where they could drop care packages full of warm clothes, hygiene products and other essentials. The migrants, however, had become suspicious of being escorted by state authorities and dispersed themselves into the forests, which made tracking them much more difficult.

“The young people residing in Jylland called their parents to convene four or five cars, so shoes and related items could be distributed,” Simmel explained. “When drivers would come across migrants, they would offer the care package and ask them where they wanted to go within Denmark.”

A good number of the refugees decided to go to Copenhagen, just across the sea from Sweden, where some already had family members.

Danish activists stage a scene depicting a dead boat of refugees next to The Little Mermaid Statue in Copenhagen. (Twitter / @FlygtningeInfo)

“Many apolitical people stepped up to help drive those walking on the railways,” Simmel said. “Many of these people had family backgrounds as immigrants and felt empathetic, but were not usually active in political issues.” An informal hospitality network known as Venligboerne, which includes over 150,000 members across Denmark, helped facilitate the volunteer effort.

Activists like Simmel felt this crisis presented an opportunity to get away from the typical activist duties of meetings and demonstration, and provide a direct service. The influx of refugees tugged at their consciences.

“Just like my grandfather, I had to decide which side of history I wanted to be on,” Simmel said. “Politicians demonized us for posting pictures on Facebook of immigrants being helped, but even [Danes] during World War II were demonized and in violation of the law [for helping Jews].”

Reviving a tradition of refugee smuggling

Denmark was the only country in Europe to reduce the size of its armed forces at the beginning of WWII, yet it was undoubtedly among the most effective in resisting German occupation.

Shortly after an overnight invasion of Denmark on April 9, 1940, 17-year-old Slagelse schoolboy Arne Sejr became frustrated at Danish passivity toward foreign rule. He returned home from school and used his typewriter to print 25 copies of his“Ten Commandments for Danes.” The last of these commandments read, “You shall protect anyone chased by the Germans.”

Danish youth discretely produced fliers of this kind over the course of the German occupation. Groups like the Danish Youth Association under the guidance of theology professor Hal Koch and the Churchill Club in Alborg sabotaged German authorities on a regular basis, sometimes destroying vehicles carrying weapons and munitions.

Christian communities circulated messages against the German occupation through their homilies. This led to the murder of Kaj Munk, who was among the most outspoken clerics advocating for Danish self-rule.

Jewish refugees were ferried out of Denmark aboard Danish fishing boats bound for Sweden. (US Holocaust Museum Memorial / Frihedsmuseet)

Among all of the tactics employed, the WWII-era Danes are perhaps most remembered for their effective smuggling of refugee Jews across the border into Sweden. During the course of a few months in 1943, 7,220 Jews — almost the entire Jewish population in Denmark — managed to escape to Sweden with the help of their Danish comrades. Only 472 were captured in early October during raids by the Nazis.

“Early on, we used this history of direct service to refugees as our inspiration,” said Welcome to Denmark organizer Søren Warburg.

Providing a warm bed, an underground route to Sweden, warm clothes and a key to one’s house: These are tactics literally cut from WWII memory and pasted upon today’s context of migration in Europe. Even while Denmark’s present government has intentionally made itself unattractive to asylum seekers, Danes themselves — strengthened by a history of unions and community organizing — are providing the services their elected representatives in the welfare state are refusing to provide.

Reflecting on the history of Danish aid to Jewish refugees, Welcome to Denmark spokesperson Line Søgaard said, “We had a sense that something historical was happening again.” According to her, 500 Danes initially responded to the call to action and formed working groups, focusing both on a political campaign and direct services.

Sailing in solidarity

Since Copenhagen is situated about 20 miles across the Öresund Strait from Malmö, Sweden, members of the sailing community who wanted to help refugees find family members or friends in Sweden decided to take action. In October of 2015, they gathered a list of nearly 20 names of allied boat owners and organized the transport of migrants as a public act of defiance.

“At the beginning, we did not think anyone was going to get prosecuted,” Søgaard said. “There are real human traffickers they could go after, but instead leaders are saying that we are the ones betraying the nation.”

Getting in a boat again is no easy task for refugees who have survived the crossing of the Mediterranean Sea. “Many of the migrants we helped to reach Sweden would send us audio messages once they were relieved to have reached their family members,” Søgaard said. “There was this sense that we were continuing the [WWII] legacy of assisting refugees, which some of our family members had started. We had stuck to our sense of morals and ethics even when the [anti-smuggling] law is wrong.”

Crossing by sea, however, wasn’t the only way to reach Sweden. Calle Vangstrup, one of the other four activists who faced criminal charges, worked with his movement members to provide around-the-clock assistance at Rødby, Padborg and Central stations — three major meeting points where migrants who are usually not conversant in Danish or able to understand the transportation system could depart for Sweden by train.

“There were groups of people who were willing to help within the law and those willing to break the law [prohibiting transportation assistance across the border],” Vangstrup said. “Thankfully, the Swedes are more receptive these days, unlike during WWII when they would often send the smuggled Jews back and put them at risk again.”

Vangstrup believes members of Danish Nazi groups and the populist Danish Peoples’ Party were the ones who saw MedMenneskeSmuglerne on the news and reported them to the police.

“As a socialist and as a human being, I feel I should not enjoy so many rights when the refugees have none,” Vangstrup said.

Welcome to Denmark activists march in Aarhus on October 7. (Facebook / Welcome to Denmark)

Although the police carried out investigations leading to the charges against Vangstrup and his fellow activists last spring, police have not always perpetuated the xenophobia that characterizes the growing right-wing political ideology of Denmark.

During WWII, thousands of police officers were arrested by German authorities. Danish cops had developed a reputation for being unreliable, often deliberately overlooking the acts of sabotage committed by Danish youth against the occupiers.

This kind of humanity among the police resurfaced during the recent migrant influx in Denmark. “Many people were asking police what they could do to help the refugees,” Søgaard said. “The police did not even know how to advise people, so some looked the other way as the transporters continued their work.”

After the four activists accused of human trafficking were relieved of their charges, they spoke at a press conference, encouraging those directly aiding migrants and refugees to continue their work.

“We are not even a radical group,” Søgaard said. “We are just saying the same things that groups like the United Nations are saying [about the migration crisis]. Yet, there is still resistance to our efforts.” At the end of the day, these so-called human traffickers were just helping others in need with a lift to wherever they were going.

“We all have a right to security and a safe place for us and our children,” she continued. “We can’t just close up our borders and live comfortable lives.”

How effective is “blaming and shaming” in campaigning?

January 8, 2016

This article provides useful insights into shaming as a strategy to influence States. While it does not particularly focus on public campaigning and in spite of its exclusive focus on the EU States and EU institutions, it still provides useful food for thought on this strategy, which is often used without the background research to ensure its effectiveness.

From Global Public Policy Institute

Can Shaming Promote Human Rights?

Publicity in Human Rights Foreign Policy

by Katrin Kinzelbach, Julian Lehmann               European Liberal Forum

Executive Summary

NGOs and states alike can publicly criticize repressive governments. Such “shaming” serves to attract attention to actions perceived as wrongful. Shaming seeks to increase the costs for offenders and thus acts as a deterrence mechanism. In the international political arena, it needs an audience to function; therefore, by definition, it is public. Shaming can work as a megaphone to build up pressure from “above” and “below.” It can also serve as one of several mechanisms of human rights change, including dialogue, deliberation, capacity building, persuasion, incentives and coercion.

There is robust academic evidence that shaming can have a positive impact on the human rights situation in targeted states. Both qualitative and quantitative research points out that the success of shaming hinges on the health of the domestic opposition, but that shaming by international actors is also an important remedy against deadlock when the space for domestic opposition shrinks. When domestic actors coordinate with international actors, shaming is most effective. Shaming works for economically weak and strong states alike, suggesting that most states care about their reputation rather than only about the immediate economic effects.

Human rights shaming carries risks. Shaming can backfire when shamed states develop effective counter-frames that challenge the legitimacy of criticism, such as by pointing to neocolonial interference. Governments may strategically make concessions out of concern for human rights, only to clamp down on other rights. Shaming may also have detrimental economic side effects, though there is no academic evidence of such effects being long-term.

Academic findings on the effectiveness of human rights shaming are largely echoed in the experiences of practitioners in liberal political foundations, as indicated by a perception survey on shaming that was kindly distributed for the purposes of this study by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FNF) through its country offices. Respondents answered in a personal capacity and on an anonymous basis. Because of the snowball sampling approach, the survey results do not provide conclusive evidence. Nevertheless, they indicate that staff members of liberal political foundations and their NGO partners expect the effect of domestic criticism to increase if an individual European Union member state echoes that criticism. More important is shaming by multiple EU governments, particularly by governments of bigger EU member states. In follow-up interviews, respondents stated that local actors are mostly better suited to shame, unless there is no space for them to do so. Likewise, they stressed the need to complement shaming with other measures, such as incentives and coercion, and deplored the lack of EU coordination.

A small sample of shaming practice in the EU indeed raises the question of to what extent shaming by the EU and member states is consistent. EU member states regularly coordinate on human rights issues in the human rights working group of the council of the EU. However, with some exceptions (i.e., joint shaming in response to prominent individual cases), shaming practice appears to be erratic.

What is the best way towards a more consistent practice? While academic research on the effectiveness of shaming can inform policy, there are limits to this. Because the effectiveness of shaming is highly context-specific, there cannot be a universal protocol for when – and when not – to shame. Authoritarian states seek to remain unpredictable. Given such uncertainty, predictions about the effectiveness of shaming are important but cannot be the only consideration that determines when to shame. Ultimately, at least keeping the human rights discourse alive and on the international agenda can be a legitimate consideration for whether to shame.

Against this background, the present study proposes a “principled pragmatism” informed by research. Such an approach needs strategic, coordinated action. Effective shaming requires clear strategizing about the vulnerability and potential counter-discourses of the targeted state, as well as the alliances that need to be built. It also necessitates closely coordinating with local actors and, where possible, synchronizing the actions of international actors more so than what seems to be the case today. The EU has great potential for such coordination and synchronization, but it should not seek to centralize human rights criticism. Because EU actors in Brussels are not perceived as being as powerful as the member states on issues of foreign policy, they should encourage and support member states to shame in a coordinated manner. Without a concerted effort across all European capitals, perpetrating states can easily dismiss human rights criticism as a concern of a Brussels apparatus that is out of touch with the member states, and opponents of more-consistent shaming can point to the EU’s responsibility in order to justify their own inaction.

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The full report is available for downloadundefined.

Introduction to Queer Theory

November 28, 2015

Understanding theories of oppression and marginalization can help you link your campaign to those of others fighting for different causes but against the same systems, structures and intricate complexities of how power seeks to divide and rule us. This can enable us to build broad, emancipatory and inclusive movements fighting for the empowerment of everyone rather than excluding potential allies.


The slogan “The personal is political” which was first used 1960s and one of the defining characterizations of the student and feminist movements of the 60s and 70s, remains just as important today as it was then. It reminds us that just because we build campaigns against oppression and discrimination (by authorities, institutions, or businesses), we are by no means outside these frameworks and our actions should be mindful of oppressive behaviour and patterns at all times. We have to continuously address and analyse how we as individuals and groups are subject to and perpetuate multiple and intersecting forms of oppression, privilege and power. These will often lead us to reproduce discriminatory, exclusionary and dehumanizing behaviors, structures and language which limit our capabilities to achieve real freedoms and emancipation.

In order for our activism and daily lives to be truly mindful of others and intersectional in our approach, we need to understand the basics of the academic theories and political movements that have shaped present-day socio-political rhetoric and help determine the types of actions and tactics taken on by queer organizers globally. Here, we have compiled summaries of theoretical frameworks to keep in mind and further links to guide you through your readings:

Privilege: What is it and How do you Keep it in Check?

November 26, 2015

Check your Privilege:

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What does it mean when someone remarks on your ‘privilege’ or asks you to ‘check your privilege’? Privilege in this instance refers to the multiple ways that institutions and society automatically favor you as a result of your race, class, gender, sexuality and other classifications based on systems of oppression. It is not about you personally but about the advantages you may have over others because of a history of institutional power and subjugation of certain communities or groups of people.

This doesn’t mean that you haven’t suffered or experienced disadvantages or particular forms of systematic violence in life. It just means that in specific instances, we all are more privileged than some depending on the topic at hand and it is important to accept this, just listen to, and understand those that have experience and lived a form of systematic violence that we have not. 

Buzzfeed has provided a simplified test to understand where you fall on the spectrum and why:

How Privileged Are You?

Homonationalism and the Creation of “Executive LGBT”

November 26, 2015

Homonationalism

Jasbir Puar’s book Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times introduces readers to the notion of homonationalism which is a coupling of Lisa Duggan’s Homonormativity. Homonationalism however differs in that it is poststructural critique of nationalism and develops a conceptual framework to analyze and understand how “acceptance” and “tolerance” of lesbians and gay men becomes the litmus test for neoliberal economic and racial practices in the West and a way of rereading national sovereignty, sexual rights, and democracy in the 21st century.

Further Reading:

Jasbir K. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: homonationalism in queer times (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2007). See also her collected writings at http://www.jasbirpuar.com/.

No Homonationalism – A Collection of Active Writings and Resources for Organic Intellectuals

Gay Rights as Human Rights: Pinkwashing Homonationalism

Problematic Proximities, Or why Critiques of “Gay Imperialism” Matter

Homonormativity

November 26, 2015

Homonormativity

Homonormativity was first coined by Lisa Duggan in her work The New Homonormativity: The Sexual Politics of Neoliberalism where she describes “the new homonormativity – it is a politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions [such as gay marriage or the right to serve openly in the military] – but upholds and sustains them while promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privatised, depoliticized culture anchored in domesticity and consumption” (Duggan).

Further Reading:

Duggan, Lisa – The New Homonormativity: the Sexual Politics of Neoliberalism

Mapping US Homonormatives

Homonormativity, Homonationalism and the ‘Other’

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