How a Healthy Movement Ecology Can Help Us Win Animal Freedom
The health of the whole movement, with all its parts and the relationships between them, is vital to its success. This is what we call…
The health of the whole movement, with all its parts and the relationships between them, is vital to its success. This is what we call movement ecology. When different parts of a movement can support one another, coordinate their actions and effectively communicate, the power of the whole system increases exponentially.
Often, however, different organisations, groups and change-makers fail to see eye to eye, even when dedicated to the same issue. We all hold slightly different ideas about how to make change, what will work and what doesn’t, as well as who we think is ‘right’ and who is ‘wrong’. Understanding the importance of movement ecology teaches us that there is no one ‘right way’ and that multiple ideas can work together — and are in fact essential if our movement is serious about creating change.
Historically, movements have succeeded when their ecologies are healthy
The Suffragettes, the US Civil Rights Movement, the Indian Independence Movement, the ex-USSR Colour Revolutions, and many more have all depended on people power, and this was a key part of their ecology. Within the Animal Freedom movement, there is a gap in our ecology of social movement ‘mass mobilising’ and people-led ‘structured organising’. To fill this gap, and ensure our ecology is thriving, Animal Think Tank’s aim is to launch and lead a grassroots social movement to change dominant institutions from the outside.
Change happens in many ways — and each approach complements others. One way organisations and activists can embrace this idea is to think of what they are bringing to the movement, how they are innovating on what is already happening or where they are adding needed capacity. Essentially: what gap are you filling and why?
A movement ecology can be divided into three broad elements
Personal empowerment:
We can work to transform individuals through things like education and outreach, and then they will influence people and organisations within their social networks. The idea here is that through taking personal responsibility for the issue, and encouraging others to take on that responsibility as well, we will then create change.
Many of us have already taken this step, e.g. going vegan, posting on social media, changing purchasing habits, treating animals with greater care and respect, unlearning our problematic attitude towards animals, and speaking to friends and family about all of these topics.
Building Alternatives:
Rather than just changing existing institutions, we need to create alternatives that model how we want the future to be e.g. animal sanctuaries and shelters, vegan farming, alternative protein, animal-free research labs, cruelty-free products etc. The idea is to build spaces where new norms and cultures can flourish, and real alternatives to the status quo can exist and thrive. Change also happens on the edges so we have to start creating alternatives to the system to can increase the amount of people who don’t have to rely on that system.
Changing dominant institutions:
We can transform the dominant institutions across all layers of society, including large corporations and governments. Making structural and systemic change in society is key, and this involves two approaches: the inside and outside game:
Inside game players include lobbyists, policy-makers, strategic litigation, political parties etc. Inside game players are interested in using established channels to get their issue addressed. In our movement, examples of organisations that pursue this approach are The Humane League, Mercy for Animals and Compassion in World Farming.
Outside game players utilise mass mobilisation, organising, demonstrations, protests and cultural change-making tools like the media, literature, film, television and art. This helps to create drama, spread big ideas, shift public opinion and create pressure. Examples of organisations in our movement that do this are Animal Rising, Animal Think Tank and DxE.
The importance of unity and organisation
As this structure shows, no one organisation or person creates change by themselves — it is always a collective effort. It is only the actions of many different organisations and people combining over time that creates durable shifts in the systems.
This structure also shows that organisation is power. It allows many people to come together around an idea and work towards a common goal. It helps to capture people and resources, and direct them somewhere useful. A movement is a network of social relationships, and organisation provides a means to strengthen these relationships and turn them into real power.
A healthy ecology is the main vehicle for building a broad-based movement, which
means organising different kinds of people across society. Healthy ecologies show good coordination between different areas, and even though they all hold varying ideas about how change will happen, all their strategies actually complement each other.
For example, people who are drawn to strategic litigation are likely very different to people who engage in civil disobedience. While they might disagree over their approaches, the public controversy that civil disobedience creates helps to add pressure and influence decisions in the courtroom. Inside game players can help carry the movement’s narratives into ‘the inside’ and represent them there.
Movements are made up of all kinds of different people with diverse skills and abilities, which makes them stronger. There are 4 dominant types of roles in a movement, identified by Bill Moye in his book Doing Democracy.
These are:
Citizens
Change agents
Rebels
Reformers
Citizens
In order to win, movements must reach and engage the majority of the public. And the public must perceive advocates as ‘good citizens’ that hold mainstream values. They provide the movement with legitimacy and are a buffer between it and ordinary people.
Martin Luther King was a prominent example of a ‘good citizen’ — while advocating for racial equality he remained tied to the American dream and communicated that the cause aimed to fulfil it, not abandon it.
Change Agents
Change agents have the role of involving big parts of society in the work of creating change. They highlight how current practices and actions violate everyone’s widely held values and promote alternatives. This involves work like education, outreach, training, campaigning, organising people for power, negotiation and dialogue etc.
Rebels
Rebels do the work of putting critical social problems in the public spotlight and keeping them there. They use methods outside of existing political channels to achieve this, like peaceful resistance. They use their bodies to halt the system, often through controversial and dramatic actions.
Reformers
Reformers do the work of converting the shifts in public opinion and growing acceptance into tangible policies, laws, practices and structures that society can adopt. This means that they work within legal, political, social and economic systems with the aim of creating change with existing strategies.
Collaboration
Fostering collaboration across a movement can be hard,and it takes commitment from everyone. Fundamentally, the strength of cross-movement relationships is the bedrock from which coalitions, collaborations and collective strategies can emerge.
Have a think about what sort of role that you play in the movement, as well as what camp you are in: personal transformation, building alternatives or changing dominant institutions. Perhaps you are in all three. Promoting a diversity of strategies and tactics, as well as fostering good communication between sectors of the movement, is a sure way of facilitating success in the movement, at all different levels.