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A healthy debate
within a movement is essential for it to progress and evolve
as new ideas and perspectives challenge the status quo. Some
of the most interesting articles we found involve dialogue,
conflict, and analysis within, or relating to, specific social
movements. In this section you will find resources that highlight
different perspectives within, and about, social movements.
The articles below demonstrate that a movement is neither
a unified, nor monolithic, group, but that it necessarily
involves a diversity of actors and voices.
Click to learn more about perspectives on:
In 2004, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus,
founders of the Breakthrough Institute, wrote The
Death of Environmentalism and made apocalyptic predictions
about the health of modern environmentalism, couched in a
larger critique of the state of the American “progressive”
movement. In the same year, Adam Werbach, a friend and colleague
of Shellenberger and Nordhaus, wrote Is
Environmentalism Dead? and came to the same conclusion:
the modern environmental movement has become a “special
interest”, divided from other “progressive”
issues such as gay rights or addressing the AIDS epidemic
in Africa.
These articles provoked an immediate debate
about the authors’ methods, motives and conclusions.
Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club, was one
of twenty-five people interviewed by Shellenberger and Nordhaus.
In December 2004 he wrote a public response to, and critique
of, The Death of Environmentalism called There
is Something Different about Global Warming.
These resources illustrate a recent, and
heated, debate about the environmental movement, but please
note that in highlighting these three resources we are not
suggesting that they capture the many nuanced views that exist
about the state of environmentalism in North America.
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There are a wide range of opinions on the
role that Foundations can play in supporting growing efforts
to fundamentally alter the society we live in. The financial
lifeline that foundations extend to their grantees affords
them extensive power. Many foundations are thinking about
innovative ways they can support, or lead, social change initiatives
and are engaged in a debate about the most effective ways
to fund progressive movement building efforts. We have highlighted
a sample of current and compelling thinking on foundation
leadership:
- Grantmaking
Leaderhip - Tim Brodhead, President and CEO of the
J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, suggests that the current
competitive contract funding structure for non-profits
has been detrimental to social change initiatives with
the long-term goal of improving Canadians’ quality
of life. He makes several recommendations for ways in
which foundations can work to address this problem and
support creativity, innovation and collaboration within
the sector.
- Leading
Boldly: Foundations can move past traditional approaches
to create social change - This article by Ronald Heifetz,
John Kania and Mark Kramer, was featured by the Stanford
Social Innovation Review in the winter of 2004. The authors
explore the difference between “technical”
and “adaptive” social problems and suggest
that while money may be enough to solve technical problems,
adaptive problems require a shift in social values, beliefs
and behavior. The authors explain how foundations can
work to lead “boldly” and address these complex
social problems.
- Standing
at the Crossroads - Emmett Carson makes it clear that
community foundations in America are at an important crossroads
and must decide whether they are a “field”
or a “movement”. He proposes that community
foundations take deliberate steps towards developing a
movement centered around social justice and points to
Community Foundations of Canada (http://www.cfc-fcc.ca/index.cfm)
as a best practice. Carson provides fuel for a debate
between community foundations worldwide by proposing four
“barriers” to building a progressive movement.
- 15
Minutes - Susan Berresford, President of the Ford
Foundation, shares her thoughts on several questions relating
to social change and foundation leadership. She briefly
discusses the Ford Foundation’s theory of change
and comments on topics such as the difference between
strategies for change and charity, multisectoral collaboration,
and venture philanthropy.
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The two articles highlighted in this section
were published in 1987 and may or may not be applicable to
the current Canadian Peace Movement. We have highlighted these
resources because they show deliberate attempts to address
controversial topics and stimulate debate within a Canadian
movement for social change.
- Peace
Movement Needs More Ambitious Strategies - Robert
Penner, a former coordinator for the Canadian peace Alliance,
suggests the peace movement needs more ambitious strategies
and discusses responses to the threat of “self-marginalization”
that the movement was facing in the late 1980’s.
Of particular interest is his discussion of the role of
debate in any movement. He explains: “it is through
debates between conflicting opinions that new opinions
are formed and forward motion is created.”
- Growing
Pains: The Maturing of the Canadian Peace Movement
- Canadian peace activist David Langille suggests that
although the institutionalization of the Peace Movement
in the late 1980’s made it more stable and powerful,
it may not be “winning”. Langille engages
the reader in an interesting discussion of the complications
associated with evaluating the effectiveness of a broad-based
national movement.
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- The
Unjust Society - Judy Rebick, publisher of Rabble.ca,
calls on Canadian activists to unite and broaden the scope
of their movements into a “frontal assault on the
idea that a privileged elite can run society in its own
interests with little care for those who get left behind.”
This article underscores the interdependence of movements
struggling to achieve social justice for marginalized
groups in Canada.
- How
to Build A Movement that Can Really Win - In this
article,
Jackie Downing, an activist with the School of the Americas
(SOA) Watch, provides a helpful example of how the SOA
Watch movement is striving to ensure that it is working
in ways that are consistent with the ends it is trying
to achieve. She describes the creation of the SOA Watch
Anti-Oppression and Accessibility Working Group and suggests
that if “what we want is to build a broad-based,
diverse and democratic movement that can win, we have
to get serious about fighting oppression within our own
groups.”
For more information on SOA Watch efforts to fight oppression
within their own movement click here.
- The
Revolution Will Not be Funded - Andrea del Moral,
an anti-globalization activist and organic farmer, explains
that charitable status for non-profits has made American
social justice movements dependent on government, foundation,
and corporate funding. Over time, she suggests these organizations
have become “ensnared” in a system that reinforces
and recreates the power imbalances that exist within society.
She poses a central question: “If social justice
movements are building foundations for a new society,
what are we doing in the cubicles and boardrooms of the
old?” This article is helpful because, as Canadian
social justice activists, it challenges us to think about
how the funding structures that we buy into affect our
work.
- The
Last Stop Sign - Gary Delgado, Executive Director
of the Applied Research Center, has been organizing around
social justice issues for over 36 years. In The Last Stop
Sign Delgado explains that traditional community organizing
must be reconceived in order to "proactively address
issues of race, class, gender, corporate concentration,
and the complexities of a transnational economy."
Delgado pinpoints critical areas for movement builders
to address: confronting "wedge issues" such
as race and abortion, having traditionally-marginalized
peoples in lead roles, assessing funder-grantee relationships,
and developing a larger vision for a society based on
social justice.
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-
What
Works to Better Society Can't Be Easily Measured - Authors
Lisbeth Schorr and Daniel Yankelovich argue that in order
to determine what social change initiatives “really
work”, we will have to develop new ways to identify
and evaluate social programs. In any effort to build, or
support, a movement for change, evaluation will inevitably
play an important role; however, creative and movement-specific
techniques may have to be employed to get a reliable measure
of success.
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