If the Audience Decides … Who Are We Talking To?
Debates among progressives, it seems to me, are more animated by philosophy, the right and wrong of things, than by the practical, how do we get this done.
We spend more time arguing over whether health care or housing is a “right” than debating the most effective ways to deliver housing and health care in the neighborhood. The practical actions that would have to be taken regardless of who “wins” the philosophical debate.
I got the feeling again in the wake of recent demonstrations by supporters of Roe v. Wade and the right of women to have an abortion that included vigils in front of the homes of Supreme Court Justices.
Commentary fixated on the philosophical. Is this legal? Moral? Appropriate? Justified? Permissible? Acceptable? Those were the questions asked and debated.
The one question not asked is the one that should have been first. Will it be effective? We need to know what we are trying to accomplish and will a particular action help get us there. Where does the power lie? Who makes the decisions? Who do they listen to? What will persuade? Answers to those questions provide a framework for action.
I saw that focus with professional lobbyists when I was an Illinois legislator. As soon as a new member is elected, lobbyists begin asking each other and anyone else who might have knowledge, “What do you know about him or her?” What they want to know is how to get to you. What are your motivations? What are your interests? What kind of person are you? Who influences you? Who do you listen to? Where are your levers? Who can pull them? How hard? Are you susceptible to favors?
The effort to overturn Roe v. Wade has been intentional, planned, and carried out over several decades. The focus has been on changing those with the constitutional and legal authority to make the decision.
Who is the audience for our action? Who are we trying to influence? Ultimately it is voters. All voters. Our neighbors. How are these onlookers going to respond to what I am doing?
Political office holders have a keen sense of who is for them and who is against them. Demonstrations and petitions by opponents they know will never vote for them are dismissed. It is only when the action starts to change the minds of ordinary voters that they begin to pay attention.
Protest is theatre. Those on stage in the play get caught up in the conflict and argument forgetting it is the audience that has to be engaged and persuaded. The audience decides if the play is successful or not.
The marches and demonstrations two years ago after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer had wide support when focused on police violence against citizens. The support waned when the focus shifted to “defund the police”. People who want better police behavior are not necessarily ready to dismantle police departments.
When President Biden refused to endorse defunding the police, supporters complained that he should have “challenged Americans to grasp what it really means” because “when the specific proposals behind the slogan were explained, people supported those proposals.”
Political theatre doesn’t work that way. If you have to explain, you have already lost the audience.
The civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s were successful because the message was embodied in the action. There was identification with the audience. Young black college students sat down at lunch counters where all the rest of us could sit. Rosa Parks sat in the front of the bus where everyone else sat. The march from Selma to Montgomery was about being able to vote, like everyone else.
The audience responded. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 became law.
Reflecting on those events, Rep. James Clyburn, now Democratic Whip in the US House of Representatives, said “we lost that movement” when “burn, baby, burn” became the slogan. He expressed the same concern over “defund the police” and its effect on the Black Lives Matter movement.
“We can’t pick up these things just because it makes a good headline. It sometimes destroys headway. We need to work on what makes headway, rather than what makes headlines.”
That advice is difficult. We live in a culture where expressing oneself is good. Say whatever is on your mind. Act out your feelings. Don’t hold anything back. As one headline put it, “It is time to rage.”
The temptation is strong. As actors on stage, we get caught up in the conflict with each other. Everything is disputed. The rhetoric intensifies. Too much and the audience begins to walk out, having heard it all before.
I may not be typical, but I have abandoned what used to be a habit of checking in regularly with CNN and MSNBC. My neighbor, who is not political but pays attention, is frustrated with the tone and the back and forth. The clerk at the liquor store decided to postpone the purchase of a television because it was an election year. The headline on a New York Times opinion piece detailing polling data and research on medical and social trends: “If There’s a Loud Fight About Roe, ‘Centrist America Will Just Turn Down the Volume’”.
Change doesn’t come from feeling strongly about something. It begins when the conversation shifts to engaging the audience, those who might be persuaded and who, if persuaded, have the power to make change.
Douglas Kane is the author of "Our Politics: Reflections on Political Life" published in 2019 by Southern Illinois University Press
[subscribe2]