The Art of Effective Activism: Advice from an International Trainer!

Obviously, they worked. The reason: "People need solutions"- said the activist trainer. "The crowds are demotivated by depression."-

 So one key activist strategy is to provide hope. This is terribly important for spawning proactivity, pointed out the activist trainer. "Sometimes urgency can spawn proactivity, but more often it's the hope that works,"- She said.

EXAMPLE OF PROVIDING HOPE: If the mainstream news won't print protest activity, ask organizers to urge participants to bring their cellphones with them. Participants photograph the activity, post it to the web, and bingo! You've got coverage. What a handy little tool in our hot little hands, eh? Perhaps it's no coincidence that the German word for cellphones is "handi"-.

Here's why, according to the activist trainer, "preaching to the choir" works:

"It's been studied. You create a wave among those who already are sold on your cause. The wave gathers momentum, people talk and inform each other which gives backbone to their presentation, word spreads, and that's how the wave grows."- She added that preaching to the choir actually works better than trying to recruit newbies! Surprise, surprise! The beauty of it is that life is often easier than we think.

 Letters to the editor are, according to the ACLU and Moveon.org, the most-read pages in the newspaper, a perfect vehicle for expressing opinion and which indeed are read by politicians who want to know what sentiments are pulsating through the veins of the crowds. To reach out to the public cross-sector and get them to think for themselves, submit a letter to the editor in which you identify and rebut thought models such as those exemplified above. In so doing, you can help to spawn thinking and research on the part of your readers, especially if you reference superbly credible sources.

College newsletter editors may be a very smart strategy where submitting letters to the editor are concerned. The reasons are simple: Kids are very proactive, and they not only talk with each other, but they also talk to their parents. Many parents who are politically asleep at the wheel are "awakened"- by their kids, whom they love and therefore will listen to. I can testify to this truth first-hand: One of my neighbors formerly accused me of Being A Liberal, saying "you just don't take events like 911 lying down without a fight."- Now he has turned around 180 degrees, thanks to the fact that his daughter is in college and reading the Web. Sometimes, that's all it takes. Therefore, if the mainstream editors refuse to print your letter, Don't Get Sad, Get Glad! Move on to the college and local newspapers. They work!

The ACLU's website is the best political education there is, on the web or otherwise. At least, that's my opinion: When you read the Congressional voting record, look at declassified FBI documents, become informed about current legislation, the impact thereof, read statistics, watch videos, read the current civil liberties-oriented news on the front of the website page, etc. then Democracy Now! Becomes confirmation instead of news. The beauty of it is that the ACLU also is good at understating the facts, is expert at marketing themselves with imagery as well as words, and is a really good way to study the art of self-presentation without turning off the crowds to the truths.

And that is exactly why understating the facts is terribly important: So as not to risk losing credibility with the public. Belief spawns proactivity. Disbelief and lack of credibility result in just the opposite, simple as that. And that's where studying the ACLU's methods can be very instructive to all the rest of us activists, world-wide.

EXAMPLE:

I organized a booth at the County Fair for the local Chapter of the ACLU. When posting written material such as FBI documents, nobody read them unless I pointed out the intrigue of what they were (surely most people don't see an actual FBI document every day?) And in fact, once I pointed it out, everybody wanted to see it. But the fact is that the crowds continued to just walk by. However, once we photocopied poster-sized photos seen on the ACLU's website, suddenly people stopped. And looked. And talked. Then we got their attention. People are visually oriented, not reading oriented. Use images and symbols when doing a boothing presentation, not written material. A hand held up as if to say "stop"-, a face, that's all it takes. Any written material should be no longer than one sentence long, preferably only two words long, just as with the wordsmith's art, pointed out above. The short phrases and pictures will capture peoples' attention. Then we can steer people to longer presentations, if they are interested. (And some intellectual types will want to read further).