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Ottawa, Sept. 2003 — Monia Mazigh holds a procession for the return of her husband, Maher Arar. She's joined by their two children, Barâa (to her side) and Houd (in stroller), her own mother (left) and Maher Arar's mother (right). Photo: Philippe Duhamel.
When I met Monia Mazigh in 2003, she was a dignified, immensely worried lone campaigner for her husband's release.
On September 25, 2002, Maher Arar left his wife Monia, their 5-year old daughter Barâa and 7-month baby son Houd in Tunisia, where they were vacationing on her side of the family. He had to return to work in Canada. The rest of the family would return later. They bade him farewell and he took a taxi to the airport.
This was the last time Monia and the kids saw him for over a year.
So you've taken the time to survey your social landscape. Your organization has figured which constituencies are your natural friends and which are your opponents, and the various groups in between. You have run the Spectrum of Allies. Now what?
How do you decide what to do? How do you identify the key constituencies on which to focus your limited energies? If winning means moving different segments in your general direction, however slightly, how can you collectively develop tailor-made arguments and tactics that target these particular slices of the social pie you want to pull over to your side?
Here's a recently developed workshop exercise, a shiny new strategy tool to help your gang define next steps in campaign design. It includes step-by-step instructions, so you can facilitate the tool with some confidence in your group.
Click for full view. Original graphic from Movement for New Society.
"It might have been prudent at the beginning to identify potential groups that would oppose the movement, and solicit their support, but we did not anticipate such opposition."
— Emile Short in Powerful Persuasion
“The media”, I asked, “where should we put the media?”
“Somewere in the middle”, said someone in the group. “No, the media's more like a hostile neutral”, said another.
As I moved the marker across a crescent shape drawn on the flip chart, we settled on a wedge between Neutrals and Opponents.
photo: Guerilla postering by Amnesty International in Belarus.
While everything and everyone ages all the time, new people come into this world every day. This is why every movement will need to rejuvenate its membership and tactics, eventually.
How do you appeal to a younger generation? What can you do to actively reach out to the youth of today?
"The essence of the communication strategy is to recognize that people are very sensitive not only to what your message is, but to how it is communicated, and, perhaps most importantly, to who is transmitting it."
— Emile Short
Today, we return to the tools of persuasion. This is the last instalment in this blog's trilogy on the super yummy tactical notebook, Powerful Persuasion, by Emile Short.
Persuasion is an inexhaustible theme in human rights and social change work, because it is such a needed skill. After exploring more in depth the "What" and the "Who" of persuasive communication, we now turn to the "How" in the delivery of your message, especially in face-to-face encounters.
In his notebook, Emile Short shows at length how much effort went into setting up respectful encounters that would allow change to really work its way in. As Short says: "It was essential to avoid taking a moral high ground. We could not be too critical, because in the end we knew any change of mind had to be voluntary."
In this spirit, I offer you the following tips for one-on-one persuasion.photo cc Dave Bezaire & Susi Havens-Bezaire
In his tactical notebook, Powerful Persuasion: Combating traditional practices that violate human rights, Emile Short describes a campaign that allowed many thousands of women and girls escape religious bondage. This being NewTactics, and a blog aimed at finding methods behind effective change, I latched on a few techniques used in this campaign to engage allies and opponents alike in the successful challenge of an unjust practice.
Here are 8 potent persuasion tactics. I believe their use to be of almost universal value. See if you can apply these to your current work.
How do you eradicate an age-old abusive practice so entrenched it has become woven into a people's identity?In this notebook, we learn about some of the most difficult human rights violations to eradicate–customary or traditional practices based on deep-seated beliefs, particularly those with a spiritual dimension. Respected leaders–at local and national levels–engaged in direct dialogue with perpetrators, victims, other community leaders, and the community at large to facilitate understanding of the practice, while providing alternatives and avenues for abandoning the practice without losing status.
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