I think I somewhat agree that these hunger strikes will not shut down the companies or cause major public outcry.
I think that there is definitely something to be said that potentially our society is very poor at doing real protesting, and will just do haphazard things and never do anything goal-directed. That’s potentially a pretty fundamental problem.
But setting that aside (which is a big thing to set aside!) I think the hunger-strike is moving in the direction of taking this seriously. My guess is most projects in the world don’t quite work, but they’re often good steps to help people figure out what does work. Like, I hope this readies people to notice opportunities for hunger strikes, and also readies them to expect people to be willing to make large sacrifices on this issue.
People do in fact try to be very goal-directed about protesting! They have a lot of institutional knowledge on it!
You can study what worked and what didn’t work in the past, and what makes a difference between a movement that succeeds and a movement that doesn’t. You can see how movements organize, how they grow local leaders, how they come up with ideas that would mobilize people.
A group doesn’t have to attempt a hunger strike to figure out what the consequences would be; it can study and think, and I expect that to be a much more valuable use of time than doing hunger strikes.
I’d be interested to read a quick post from you that argued “Hunger-strikes are not the right tool for this situation; here is what they work for and what they don’t work for. Here is my model of this situation and the kind of protests that do make sense.”
I don’t know much about protesting. Most of the recent ones that get big enough that I hear about them have been essentially ineffectual as far as I can recall (Occupy Wallstreet, Women’s March, No Kings). I am genuinely interested in reading about effective and clearly effective protests led by anyone currently doing protests, or within the last 10 years. Even if on a small scale.
(My thinking isn’t that protests have not worked in the past – I believe they have, MLK, Malcolm X, Women’s Suffrage Movement, Vietnam War Protest, surely more – but that the current protesting culture has lost its way and is no longer effective.)
I am genuinely interested in reading about effective and clearly effective protests led by anyone currently doing protests, or within the last 10 years. Even if on a small scale.
“Protest movements could be more effective than the best charities”—SSIR
About two weeks ago, I published an article in Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), a magazine for those interested in philanthropy, social science and non-profits. … Although my article is reasonably brief (and I obviously recommend reading it in full!) here’s a quick summary of what I spoke about, plus some nuances I forgot or wasn’t able to add:
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There is a reasonable amount of evidence that shows that protest movement can have significant impacts, across a variety of outcomes from policy, public opinion, public discourse, voting behaviour, and corporate behaviour. I’ll leave this point to be explained in greater detail in our summary of our literature review on protest outcomes!
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3. A summary of Social Change Lab’s literature reviews, who we are, and our next steps
We’ve recently conducted two literature reviews, looking over 60+ academic studies across political science, sociology and economics, to tackle some key questions around protest movements. Specifically, we had two main questions:
What are the outcomes of protest and protest movements? - Literature Review
What factors make some protest movements more likely to succeed relative to others? - Literature Review
(Would be interested in someone going through this paper and writing a post or comment highlighting some examples and why they’re considered successful.)
I think I somewhat agree that these hunger strikes will not shut down the companies or cause major public outcry.
I think that there is definitely something to be said that potentially our society is very poor at doing real protesting, and will just do haphazard things and never do anything goal-directed. That’s potentially a pretty fundamental problem.
But setting that aside (which is a big thing to set aside!) I think the hunger-strike is moving in the direction of taking this seriously. My guess is most projects in the world don’t quite work, but they’re often good steps to help people figure out what does work. Like, I hope this readies people to notice opportunities for hunger strikes, and also readies them to expect people to be willing to make large sacrifices on this issue.
People do in fact try to be very goal-directed about protesting! They have a lot of institutional knowledge on it!
You can study what worked and what didn’t work in the past, and what makes a difference between a movement that succeeds and a movement that doesn’t. You can see how movements organize, how they grow local leaders, how they come up with ideas that would mobilize people.
A group doesn’t have to attempt a hunger strike to figure out what the consequences would be; it can study and think, and I expect that to be a much more valuable use of time than doing hunger strikes.
I’d be interested to read a quick post from you that argued “Hunger-strikes are not the right tool for this situation; here is what they work for and what they don’t work for. Here is my model of this situation and the kind of protests that do make sense.”
I don’t know much about protesting. Most of the recent ones that get big enough that I hear about them have been essentially ineffectual as far as I can recall (Occupy Wallstreet, Women’s March, No Kings). I am genuinely interested in reading about effective and clearly effective protests led by anyone currently doing protests, or within the last 10 years. Even if on a small scale.
(My thinking isn’t that protests have not worked in the past – I believe they have, MLK, Malcolm X, Women’s Suffrage Movement, Vietnam War Protest, surely more – but that the current protesting culture has lost its way and is no longer effective.)
Caveat that I don’t know much more than this, but I’m reminded of James Ozden’s lit reviews, e.g. How effective are protests? Some research and some nuance. Ostensibly relevant bits:
(Would be interested in someone going through this paper and writing a post or comment highlighting some examples and why they’re considered successful.)