 November 2004
American Friends Service Committee Peacework Magazine Sara Burke, Managing Editor Sam Diener, Editor Pat Farren, Founding Editor 2161 Massachusetts Ave. Telephone number: Fax number:
pwork@igc.org Peacework has been published monthly since 1972, intended to serve as a source of dependable information to those who strive for peace and justice and are committed to furthering the nonviolent social change necessary to achieve them. Rooted in Quaker values and informed by AFSC experience and initiatives, Peacework offers a forum for organizers, fostering coalition-building and teaching the methods and strategies that work in the global and local community. Peacework seeks to serve as an incubator for social transformation, introducing a younger generation to a deeper analysis of problems and issues, reminding and re-inspiring long-term activists, encouraging the generations to listen to each other, and creating space for the voices of the disenfranchised. Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC. |
Resisting "Protest Management" Michael Kiesow Moore is an award-winning writer who has published short stories, poetry, and essays and received his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Hamline University. A long-time activist, he lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.
All machines have their friction; and possibly
this does enough good to counterbalance the evil. At any rate,
it is a great evil to make a stir about it. But when the friction
comes to have its machine, and oppression and robbery are organized,
I say, let us not have such a machine any longer. -- Henry
David Thoreau, Chances are good that the last time you participated in a protest, you and your fellow activists were being "managed" by the very organization that you were pro-test-ing against. Do terms like "designated protest area," "free speech zone," and "rules of protest" sound familiar?
Corporations, universities, and government offices now have, as part of their crisis management plans, strategies to deal with what they see as "inevitable" protests. Thanks in part to the massive demonstrations that have attended meetings of the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund in recent years, corporations now plan for these events. A burgeoning industry is helping corporations handle what it calls "zealots" who have a tendency to garner media attention corporations prefer to keep for themselves. You can actually hire someone to do the protest management for you. Here's how Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer sells itself for this purpose: "We have extensive experience dealing with unlawful protester action campaigns, including advising on crisis management techniques, strategies for liaison with law enforcement agencies, and implementing early warning systems to deal with possible protests." To best understand this new industry, it is important to be clear as to what it is that corporations wish to manage. On the surface it may look like they want to keep windows from being broken, and they themselves may say they manage protesters so that no one gets hurt. But make no mistake about it. All their efforts have one single purpose: to manage the message. Any time a protester is quo-ted in the media, when images of an organized crowd appear on TV, when a newspaper story gives more space to the protest than to the corporation, the message has gotten out of the corporation's control. Thus "protest management" is another term for "message management." For corporations, a message out of control can end up in diminished profit gains.
An inside look at Let's look at how protest management works. The following notes from PowerPoint slides on managing "zealots" are from the crisis communications plan of a major university, and are typical of the general blueprint that most corporations and companies now use:
Increasing the cost For organizers, the most enlightening item in this list is "a badly managed protest will become the story." For all of us so-called "zealots" -- who demonstrate publicly because we care about issues like protecting the environment, advancing workers', civil, women's, and LGBT rights, demanding universal health care and access to AIDS drugs, and ending poverty -- the lesson in this is that a well-coordinated protest should become the story.
In another article, LaMure caps the discussion with a succinct analysis that clearly explicates the corporate point of view, and is particularly informative about how corporations describe us: "…Do not underestimate the power, influence, and tenacity of NGOs. In many cases, they are just as well organized and adamant about an issue as a firm is about maximizing shareholder value. Second, firms might consider areas of overlap between NGO issues and firm behavior. Where can a firm maximize shareholder value and appease (or even advance the cause of) an NGO? Finally, firms might consider how they can preempt, or proactively engage, NGOs and activists before an issue enters the public spotlight." Finally, Spar and LaMure make an interesting observation: "The greater value a firm places on its brand, the more susceptible its managers will be to activist pressures." Saul Alinsky, one of the great activists of the 20th century, said, "Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have." If activism is now considered just another cost of doing business in the corporate calculus, then I posit that we should use our power, and especially the power they think we have, to increase the cost of doing business. Here are a few basic precepts to keep in mind as we plan protests in the era of "protest management":
The history of protest movements illustrates the power that can be wielded by nonviolent demonstration. Unarmed Indians led by Gandhi threw the British Empire out of India. Civil rights demonstrators in the US used Gandhi's tactics, ending legal segregation in the United States. We who protest today are part of the next movement.
For it matters not how small the 
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