"I saw such a look of helplessness," Carol explained. "My own children's eyes are so bright and cheerful. Hers were equally beautiful, but so beaten down and clouded by despair. It's wrong for children to live like that--undernourished, without hope, literally chained to machines. She was just one young woman whose life was so blocked. If you multiply that by all the others, it's horrendous." It angered Carol that a child could be this abused for greed.
So every Saturday for two months Carol and her husband stood in front of a nearby Gap store, braving biting winter rain and freezing snow, and joined by a dozen others. Like citizens picketing the chain's stores throughout the country, they handed out literature and talked with customers. They helped promote a Long Island visit by a group of young women who worked in the factory and were touring the U.S. to tell their story. In the face of a growing public outcry, the Gap capitulated, pledging to ensure that contractors allow independent monitoring by churches and human rights groups and free access by unions. The campaign had won at least a beginning step.
Like the organizers who worked to tell the stories of the maquiladora workers, the most successful activists know the power of stories to move people's hearts, so weave the richness of personal example into their arguments. If particular institutions are exploitative, ecologically destructive, or otherwise oppressive, effective activists don't rely on mind-numbing rhetorical labels to arouse concern. Instead, they describe precisely how the institutions damage people's lives or degrade the environment. They frame policy proposals not in terms of arcane acronyms, bill numbers, or implementation details, but particular consequences. They continually link their arguments and visions to narratives that can touch people's hearts.
I saw this when Oregon state employees, who were predominantly female and universally underpaid, began fighting for a living wage. Their unions started the campaign by hiring experts to draw up more equitable pay schedules. The resulting task force surveyed every category of job, then presented an elaborate report in the most neutral technical terms. At the request of top-level managers, they added more data. Eventually the study became so unwieldy and abstract that ordinary workers felt it had nothing to do with their lives, or their gut sense that their labor was undervalued. "Most of those affected couldn't even talk about the proposals," recalled the economist who chaired the task force, "because they didn't know the language, all the personnel-oriented, management-oriented terms. It left them completely out of the discussion." Lacking popular understanding or support, the effort collapsed of its own weight, dead on arrival at the legislature.
Then the unions shifted strategy, arranging for public-sector employees to speak for themselves to the media, community groups, and their elected officials. They posed simple but very telling questions: Why did women who took care of children at university daycare centers earn less than workers monitoring animals at local private research labs? Why did public-sector secretaries earn less than mail carriers? Why did nursing-home aides earn less than entry-level workers at insurance companies and banks? Testifying before the state legislature, they explained that their jobs mattered greatly to them, as well as to the community. Then they asked the senators how much they thought they earned. Holding up pay stubs as proof, they shamed the legislators with the reality of their economic plight: Some made so little for full-time work, they needed food stamps to get by. The union won pay raises and other concessions that made working conditions more equitable. It triumphed by letting their members tell their own stories, in their own words, and by so doing going to the heart of their cause.
Adapted from the wholly updated new
edition of "http://www.paulloeb.org/soul.html"
target="_hplink">Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in
Challenging Times" by Paul Rogat Loeb (St
Martin's Press, $16.99 paperback). With over 100,000 copies in
print, "Soul" has become a classic guide to involvement in social
change. Howard Zinn calls it "wonderful...rich with specific
experience." Alice Walker says, "The voices Loeb finds demonstrate
that courage can be another name for love." Bill McKibben calls it "a
powerful inspiration to citizens acting for environmental sanity."
Loeb also wrote "http://www.theimpossible.org/">The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear," the History Channel and American Book Association's #3 political book of 2004. Huffington Post will serialize selected sections of --Soul" every Thursday. Click http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-loeb">here to see previous excerpts or be notified of new ones.
For more information, to hear Loeb's live interviews and talks, or to receive Loeb's articles directly, see http://www.paulloeb.org">http://www.paulloeb.org<;/a>. To sign up on Facebook visit http://Facebook.com/PaulLoebBooks">Facebook.com/PaulLoebBooks From "Soul of a Citizen" by Paul Rogat Loeb
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