You can’t build a movement without numbers. If anyone understands that, it’s 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben.
Standing in front of an estimated crowd of 50,000 people gathered for the Forward on Climate rally yesterday on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. he said, “All I ever wanted to see was a movement of people to stop climate change, and now I’ve seen it.”
Billed as “the largest climate rally in U.S. history,” the event was intended as one final push to convince President Obama that his environmental legacy hinges on whether he rejects the Keystone XL pipeline — a conduit to what has been called by NASA scientist James Hansen “the world’s largest carbon bomb.” To underscore this point, 350.org has consistently made an effort to quantify its achievements into superlatives, ready-made for headlines.
Yet, had they not put so much effort into creating the perception of a powerful movement, they might not have ever built one. According to political scientist Erica Chenoweth, co-author of Why Civil Resistance Works, “There is power in numbers, and the more people participate, the more likely the movement is to effect real change. Interestingly, this may lead more people to participate because they want to join a movement that will ultimately be successful.”
Patrick Reinsborough of the Center for Story-Based Strategy (formerly smartMeme), which trains activists to use narrative as a tool, agrees. “The most important thing to communicate is that this movement is growing, and that everyday citizens are willing to step out of their comfort zone in order to be seen and heard,” he said.
For more than six years, McKibben has been at the forefront of efforts to create a broad-based movement that can create the pressure for policies that would bring carbon emissions to a safe upper limit. According to James Hansen, that limit, which was long ago surpassed, is 350 parts per million — a number so important to McKibben, he named his group after it.
While this decision has led some to criticize 350.org for having a name that’s too ambiguous or scientific for the average person, McKibben has long argued, “Arabic numerals are the one thing that cross globally.” This fact seems to be guiding his broader belief in the power of numbers as well.
“The hardest thing about climate change is the sense that one is too small to make a difference,” McKibben told Waging Nonviolence. “So we’ve helped people to understand that they’re part of something large, maybe large enough to matter. That helps them feel engaged, I think, and has the advantage of being the truth.” McKibben’s feature article for Rolling Stone last summer — one of the most-read in the magazine’s history — and his recent 21-city sold-out speaking tour had the word “math” in the title.
Even before the debate over its name, when 350.org was just six students and a professor at Middlebury College in Vermont, the focus was on numbers — numbers that set records, showed the scale of an action or quantified an achievement.
For instance, in 2006, the group successfully pressured Middlebury to commit to carbon neutrality by 2015. Soon after that, it organized a five-day march across Vermont to demand action on global warming. Nearly a thousand people took part, and many newspapers called it the largest climate change demonstration in America. Then, in 2007, with a campaign called Step It Up, which sought to visually depict the concept of an 80 percent carbon reduction by 2050, 350.org organized a day of action that netted 1,400 demonstrations across all 50 states, calling it, “the first open source, web-based day of action dedicated to stopping climate change.”
Since becoming 350.org a year later, the group has had a string of even more impressive achievements. In 2009, it organized 5,200 actions in 181 countries for “the most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history.” The following year saw two other landmark actions: the Global Work Party and 350 EARTH. The former generated more than 7,000 climate solutions projects in 188 countries and has been called the most widespread day of climate action in history. Meanwhile, 350 EARTH, which took place a month later, managed to gather tens of thousands of people for several of the biggest art projects ever seen — so big they could only be seen from space.
If there was any criticism of 350.org at this point, it was that the organizers were having too much fun. During those two years of dramatic actions, Congress and the United Nations failed to pass binding climate legislation. Many activists were beginning to wonder whether the impressive showing by 350.org was anything more than just a show.
Leading voices within the climate movement, such as Tim DeChristopher — who famously disrupted an oil and gas lease auction in 2008 and spent the last two years in prison as a result — wanted to see the group leverage the power of its growing base by engaging in civil disobedience. McKibben eventually heeded the call and in August and September of 2011, 350.org — under the guise of Tar Sands Action — held two weeks of sit-ins outside the White House, calling on President Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline. Despite some initial uncertainty about whether arrests would scare people away, the campaign proved to be yet another historic moment for the climate movement. Over 1,200 people were arrested and McKibben called it “the largest civil disobedience action on any issue in 30 years.”
Since then, there has been a boom in civil disobedience and nonviolent direct actions against the pipeline, from grassroots activists in Texas and Oklahoma to mainstream environmentalists like Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune. McKibben has also recently hinted at another mass civil disobedience, possibly this summer, telling a crowd of students in New York City a couple weeks ago to “keep an eye on 350.org and save up bail money.”
In order to get to this point, 350.org has had to slowly build upon action after action, finding the right way to frame its accomplishments for maximum effect. Other successful movements have done the same, such as the Serbian student movement Otpor!, which started with just 11 people and used graffiti and small, clever actions that never revealed their numbers until they had grown enough to topple dictator Slobodan Milosevic.
More recently, in Egypt, says Erica Chenoweth, “groups of activists would deliberately make their way down small alleyways to give the impression that there were many more people participating. It created something of an optical illusion — a small number in a small space looks bigger than a small number in a big space.”
While the climate movement may be close to toppling a pipeline, it’s far from toppling the dictatorship of the fossil-fuels industry. Chenoweth has a number of her own for what major systemic change requires. “If you buy the 5 percent rule — that if 5 percent of the population mobilizes, it’s impossible for the government to ignore them — then in the U.S. context it would mean mobilizing well over 15 million people in a sustained way,” she surmises.
When asked what he thought winning would require, McKibben said, “I’ve got no idea. It will take more than any of us can imagine.” That might be surprising coming from a man so concerned with numbers and so good at making them compelling. But right now, the only math that seems to matter to him is how long it has taken to get to this point. And for that reason, he’s savoring the moment.
“I waited a quarter century since I wrote the first book about all this stuff to see if we were going to fight,” McKibben told yesterday’s crowd. “And today, I know we are going to fight. The most fateful battle in human history is finally joined, and we will fight it together.”
Todd Gitlin (Author of Occupy Nation) estimated 2012 Occupy “membership” at 60,000, so kudos to 350.org for turning out a presumably larger, but related, movement.
Chris Hedges last chapter in Days of Revolt gives more of a feel that successful movements have a nonlinear growth model, hitting tipping points that movement leaders do not see coming. So Hedges has a more optimistic message about the sudden explosion in numbers that a relatively small (compared to 15M) movement can rapidly grow to.
More details on the Chenoweth 5% theory: http://kerrigon.blogspot.com/#!/2012/09/needed-5-participation-to-overthrow.html
I was at the Forward on Climate rally and it was indeed nice to see so many people there. I’ve been going to D.C. protests since the big anti-war demonstrations in the late 60s and don’t think that numbers are what’s most important. Further, numbers certainly don’t guarantee that a movement’s goals will be achieved. Perhaps I’m a little jaded after more than 40 years of protests large and small. On May 3, 1971 there were a hundred-thousand people engaging in civil disobedience with over 12,000 arrested. Other “peaceful” anti-Vietnam war protests numbered closer to a million. Despite all these numbers, over all these years, when it comes to war – on other peoples, on other Americans, on women, on the Earth’s web-of-life and even environmental support systems – things appear to be getting worse not better. Numbers just haven’t made that much of difference in the long run.
I didn’t go to the rally because I thought that the number of people there would substantially influence let alone determine what Obama will do on the KXL pipeline. If someone had asked me why I was going, I would have said I don’t know. But, listening to the some of the speakers that day, I realized why I was there. The men who spoke were all about the numbers and egos – theirs and those of the crowd. They spoke about “the movement,” their successes and how the numbers were what were going to make a difference. Then there were the indigenous speakers – all women. What they spoke about had nothing to do with egos and numbers but the connections between all life and the spirits of our Mother Earth. When I heard them I knew why I was there protesting and why no matter what happens with KXL, I am part of “the movement.”
Ed, what a beautiful reflection on the women’s speeches. I was also there (shivering!) and struck by the power of their words. I have a question for you and others about this issue of numbers. As a relative newcomer to the social justice world, what do you think makes the difference if not number of active participants? Do you have a sense of what other factors contribute to movements’ success?
I worked for many years for D.C. environmental nonprofits and there was widespread recognition that Americans’ support for the environment was broad but shallow. For most Americans it is the human society rather than the natural environment that sustains them. This profound disconnect leads people to regard the capitalist industrial growth society as essential and the natural world as expendable when push comes to shove. The words of the indigenous women were so powerful because their consciousness represents the fundamental paradigm shift necessary for “the movement” to grow and be successful. The “number of active participants” is a reflection of a peoples’ consciousness not the determinant of the necessary paradigm shift.
By putting the patriarchal economic hierarchy rather than the Earth first, Americans condemn themselves to lives of colonial dependency. And, it is this colonial dependency on the capitalist system for their basic needs that greatly limits their political options and effectiveness. As Gandhi has shown us effective political action must be based on a viable constructive program. That is why the Occupy “movement” had such a meteoric impact. Rather than focus as almost all U.S. social movements do exclusively on political action, it was primarily a constructive program. Unlike the environmental movement, Occupy focused on autonomy (self-rule), self-sufficiency and resilience together (self-reliance), empowerment (liberating education), and solidarity (uplifting of all). As long as the U.S. environmental movement continues to focus exclusively on political action directed at the patriarchal shamocracy, the numbers will be a temporary ephemeral thing. Look at what happened to the U.S. anti-war movement before and after the war of U.S. aggression on Iraq. It is widespread paradigm shifts and constructive programs that make a difference and provide the necessary foundation for changing the world without taking power.
I think your argument about the need for a fundamental paradigm shift rather than ephemeral mobilizations around a particular piece of legislation makes a lot of sense, Ed.
These sentences really struck a cord with me:
“The words of the indigenous women were so powerful because their consciousness represents the fundamental paradigm shift necessary for “the movement” to grow and be successful. The “number of active participants” is a reflection of a peoples’ consciousness not the determinant of the necessary paradigm shift.”
I wonder if this requires a new way to “quantify” the number of people engaged in movements, perhaps through the numbers of people engaged in continuous education programs, or something like that. Because I think that this new paradigm requires unlearning the one we’ve grown up in as Americans.
How did you come to undergo this paradigm shift yourself?
I’m not sure how I came to undergo the paradigm shift but I do know when it happened. Shortly after I started college in 1968. Ironically, it was the big anti-war protests that really facilitated the paradigm shift. I remember one in particular, May Day – May 3, 1971 -, the largest civil disobedience political action in U.S. history. Over 100, 000 people in the streets that day, more than 12,000 people arrested. But it wasn’t the numbers, nor the protests that “caused” the paradigm shift.
If I was to try and come up with the main reason for my paradigm shift, it would be my father and the way I was brought up. For me a paradigm shift was just a natural extension of the very non-patriarchal, horizontal structure of our family (and extended family). The root of the needed change is about shifting from a hierarchical social structure to a horizontal, egalitarian one. And, this begins with the family and way we are raised from birth.
The key to this paradigm shift from a vertical to a horizontal social structure is the patriarchy, with the father at the head of the family, and men on top of every level and institution of social and economic structure. In regard to patriarchy, particularly its relationship to the environmental movement, my current thinking has been most shaped by Vandana Shiva and her seminal book, “Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability and Peace.” In short, when it comes to the necessary paradigm shift and accompanying social movement(s), I believe that she is “our Gandhi.”
Thanks for sharing your experience, Ed. I certainly understand your pessimism. And I think the kind of principled activism you are talking about is often overlooked when we talk about numbers and what it takes to win. Ultimately, it starts with standing up for what’s right, because that’s the right thing to do — not simply for the glory that comes with winning. And no one made that message more clear than the indigenous women speakers.
At the same time, we should want to win. We owe it to them and to ourselves to win. And we should be doing what we know it takes to win. And the research shows that more than anything else, mass participation is the single biggest factor in a successful movement. Beyond that, though, it’s what you do with the mass participation. For instance, having a million people on the streets for one day isn’t going to stop a war — as was the case with Iraq. You have to use that mass participation to make business-as-usual impossible. Just today, for instance, Bulgaria’s entire government stepped down after protests against austerity measures could not be calmed.
The climate movement is not there. But it will have to go there. And after after seeing Sunday’s turnout, there’s more hope for that than ever. We’re nearing the end of the mass movement building stage. The bigger question is when will that mass movement be ready to shut down DC until the pipeline is rejected, and until Congress passes real binding climate legislation?
Finally, I recommend reader Eric Stoner’s interview with Erica Chenoweth (quoted in my article) about her incredible research into the power of numbers. You might not feel so pessimistic about where we’re at with things. For instance, she says:
http://dev2.wagingnonviolence.org/feature/participation-is-everything-a-conversation-with-erica-chenoweth/
Really nice article and analysis, Bryan. I’m especially intrigued by the idea of the 5% rule, and can’t help feeling it’s not a coincidence that 5% is about the portion of the US population that mobilized for the first Earth Day in 1970. Since, arguably, most of our major national environmental laws were passed in the fallout from that event, this seems consistent with the 5% rule. While it’s daunting to think we need to mobilize 15 million people in the US to pass meaningful climate legislation, I hope we are on our way to building a movement of that size.
Thanks Nick. Your mention of the first Earth Day is really intriguing. I would agree that it is probably no coincidence that some of our most important environmental laws came in the wake of Earth Day, 1970. It’s also heartening to know that 15 million people actively engaged for the environment is not an impossible number to reach. The real challenge — and I think this speaks to what happened in the years and decades after 1970 — is to keep those numbers engaged beyond a single day. We have lessons to learn about organizing from the early environmental movement — both positive and negative.