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I've spent my career working in public policy circles, and this rings true to me. > At most, working-class voters can cast their ballots for an “unacceptable”

I've spent my career working in public policy circles, and this rings true to me. > At most, working-class voters can cast their ballots for an “unacceptable” candidate, but they can exercise no influence on policy formation or agency personnel, much less on governance areas that have been transferred to technocratic bodies. > Unlike the working class, the professional managerial class is still capable of, and required for, wielding political power. I've never seen actual grassroots activism accomplish much, if anything. Protests in DC are like rain; bring an umbrella, but no need to pay it much attention because it will blow over in no time. It's always insiders who make a career out of policy that ultimately shape it. Hill staff, think tank wonks, professional bureaucrats, etc--it's that professional Washingtonian class that really shapes the government's policy, because they are the ones that show up to do that work every day.

jbattle 7y ago
> because they are the ones that show up to do that work every day Because someone is motivated enough to pay them every day to do that work
a3n 7y ago
> because they are the ones that show up to do that work every day As I used to say back when I was a programmer, often in the context of fads like "quality is free," nothing gets done unless you do that thing on purpose.
viburnum 7y ago
Gay people can get married in America, which was completely unthinkable a generation ago. 100% due to activists, many who risked their lives to make it happen.
- ameister14 7y ago
  Activists, yes - but not really through marching. Money, judicial challenges and coordinated political action to promote marriage equality as a goal were the key. The debate was reframed, messaging was crafted carefully and the groups organizing and paying for it all were extremely organized and cohesive. The Proteus fund and specifically the CMC did a heck of a lot here.
  - ryanong 7y ago
    Marching is the first necessary step to get people organized. It is the lowest bar for starting to organize and to participate. It is where people can drum up support, awareness and donations.
    - jimbokun 7y ago
      Is this demonstrably, empirically true, or is it something you are just telling yourself because you desperately want it to be true?
      - mturmon 7y ago
        I listened to an hour-long podcast in which Chris Hayes interviewed Alicia Garza, who co-founded Black Lives Matter (BLM). They talked specifically about this question and since you're interested, perhaps it would be one place to go to hear informed organizers/activists discussing it. It aired on June 4. Besides BLM, one other recent place in which this question of "are demonstrations enough" comes up is, of course, Occupy. (In that case: no, demonstrations were not enough.) One thing I remember Garza saying is that the ability to organize a large, nationwide march on Washington showcases the scope and depth (down to the grassroots level) of a movement. If your movement isn't broad and organized, your nationwide march will not succeed. But that's a necessary condition for political action, not a sufficient condition. A movement can't let marches be the endpoint, and in the interview, Garza emphasized this. Clearly the organizers of the 1993 "March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation" (which I attended) did not view the march as an endpoint. Many of the roughly 600K (+/- 300K) people present had a lot at stake, including their jobs, at that time. The march was more of a focal point, a coming of age. A constituency made visible. But not an endpoint. For more: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/how-black-lives-matter-evolved https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/how-black-li...
        dredmorbius 7y ago
        Other notable protests in the past 20-30 years, in the US and elsewhere: - Anti Iraq War movement (2003-4), mostly US. - Anti WTO movement (1999-2010) global (US, Canada, Japan, Europe). Eventually blended into / surpassed by the Occupy movement. - ACT UP: Gay rights / HIV/AIDS awareness. (1987 - 2000) Those are the major causes of which I'm aware. Of the set, ACT UP was arguably the most successful, and probably deserves much of the credit for mainstreaming gay / nonbinary gender culture. The WTO protests are more mixed, but put a damper on the Washington Concensus / Neoconservative Agenda movement. Global trade meetings are no longer casually-hosted affairs, and now tend to be in remote / secluded locations. The Iraq War protests were arguably the least effective, though massive in many cities. They simply disappeared off news coverage though. Clearly they didn't stop the war or lessen the catastrophic impacts of it, though they did help cement a strong political divide over it in the US. Whether or not more recent movements, particularly on the right, could be considered mass / popular uprisings is a fair question. I'd be inclined to say "no", but a case might be made for the Tea Party and alt-right movements.
- username90 7y ago
  Gay marriage was also prevented in America for hundreds of years 100% due to activists. There is no money for or against gay marriage, it was always only activists on both sides so it isn't a good example of a class war.
  - Miner49er 7y ago
    I'm not so sure, gay rights intersects with the class war in at least a couple of ways: - Dividing the working class on the issue of gay rights is an effective way for the elites to get the working class to ignore the class war. - Control of reproduction offers some control over labor.
    - LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
      Gays where used for centurys as a third "power" pillar, forced into by relgion, which is basically a instituionalized thread and protection guarantea, in trade for contract insurrance. The reason gay rights became possible, was because the state took over contract social security (to be competitive agaisnt socialism) and what is basically a new , partially more liberal, church formed (the rainbow movement). If the main benefactors of the third power pillar (woman) would not have found social security outside of marriage, the gay freedom movement would have failed. Tl, Dr; Slaves they where, slaves they are. But for a good cause.
    - sujNansnam 7y ago
      Can you elaborate on the second point? I don’t understand how banning gay marriage controls reproduction.
- war1025 7y ago
  Gay people are distributed throughout the various ranks of American society. No one really gives a care at a broad level about the rights of a poor gay person. What actually brought about the change was that due entirely to the fact that people in power had relatives that were gay, or were gay themselves. And these people turned the wheels of society toward making it accepted.
  - alasdair_ 7y ago
    >What actually brought about the change was that due entirely to the fact that people in power had relatives that were gay, or were gay themselves. The people in power had gay relatives or were gay themselves a century ago and yet nothing changed without activism.
    - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      A century ago those people were in the closet so nobody knew and those that did didn't say anything. People had to come out in order for their acceptance to be possible. It's really easy to justify not caring when the group you don't care about seems other. When they're people you know it's much harder to justify not caring.
- buboard 7y ago
  The gilettes jaunes are on the streets, nobody cares to make them cultural icons. Gays had very visible and generally disproportionate (compared to population) media coverage of their rights. Was it really 100% due to activists on the street, or very influential but high profile gay people who helped build one of the few successful rights movements of our times?
  - chongli 7y ago
    high profile gay people When I read this the first person I thought of was Alan Turing [1]. His was the fate of high profile gay people until the grassroots movement sprang from the Stonewall riots [1]. It was these activists who took the first steps to even make it possible for a high profile gay person to come out in public. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots
    - pyuser583 7y ago
      Do you seriously believe that upper class gays/lesbians and lower class gays/lesbians was the same? In order for Alan Turing to be charged with “gross indecency”, he had to go the police himself, inform them he was gay (without being asked or prompted), and affirm it in a statement signed under penalty of perjury. The only reason he did that was because he was so accustomed to people not caring, he didn’t think he was in any danger. Being privileged has its privileges.
      - katet 7y ago
        I just had to look up that claim, and it seems that Turing admitted a homosexual relationship during a police investigation about his house being burgled, seeing as that relationship was with the accused burglar. That's slightly different to the implication that he walked into a police station of his own free will and promptly signed his own castration order. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Conviction_for_indecency https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Conviction_for_i... (I'm aware of wikipedia fallibility but I'm on mobile and will generally trust in the citations for this particular individual)
- larnmar 7y ago
  The elites have always tolerated homosexuality while the masses have always been creeped out by it. This particular change just looks like another case of the elites getting their way at the expense of the masses.
- mayniac 7y ago
  100% isn't quite right. I think the parent comment applies to gay marriage as well. Federal recognition of gay marriage eventually occurred in America due to a gay widow who took the government to court over a $300k inheritance tax bill on her wife's estate [1]. Of course the changing cultural attitudes towards LGBT people is overwhelmingly due to grassroots activism, but this shouldn't be overlooked. For LGBT rights, money has played a factor. If wealthy, upper-class Americans did not also suffer from anti-LGBT laws, I'm not sure we would have made the same progress. There are also financial incentives for LGBT acceptance [2]. A more cynical view might be that acceptance of gay marriage was accelerated due to increasing anti-capitalist sentiments within the LGBT community in the 20th century [3]. The continued oppression of gay people might have led to uprisings far worse than Stonewall. Legislative acceptance of LGBT rights has weakened the link between LGBT activism and anti-capitalist ideologies, to the point that nowadays gay pride parades are turning into a parade of adverts for corporations. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Windsor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Windsor [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_money [3] https://aeon.co/essays/the-radical-roots-of-gay-liberation-are-being-overlooked https://aeon.co/essays/the-radical-roots-of-gay-liberation-a...
- Aperocky 7y ago
  I think a good litmus test for a political issue to gain brownie points on is this: Does it affect the politician, themselves? If a politician is straight, what does two gay persons marrying have to do with him? It’s thus a brownie point issue, same goes with pot. Once it start affecting their bottom line, i.e. there’s money involved, watch them and the media skirt around the issue carefully.
  - gurumeditations 7y ago
    That’s ignorant. There was and still is for Republicans a very high cost for supporting romantic equality.
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
  It's interesting (and sad to me) how popular this article is on here when it exclusively describes our current political climate in terms of economics. It seems like social issues are front and center more than ever at the moment. I think economics can largely explain the divide, but it's interesting for the author to talk at length about the top 10% and leave this out -- as if the top 10% is filled with Econs who vote solely on what they think is best for them economically, and not based on how they feel about social issues. I think the reason the current climate feels so "divided" is because it's more of a social divide than before. I think it's easier when it's just a class war. But this is a human rights war. When your basic rights feel threatened, it gives you a little more skin in the game.
- pyuser583 7y ago
  Federal judges, not activists. Federal judges care little about mass opinion, but a great deal about elite opinion. Roe v. Wade had nothing to do with feminism, and everything to do with the positions of the American Medical Association, the Mayo Clinic (formerly represented by Blackmun), and academic researchers at elite universities. Not a terribly important distinction if you’re pro-gay rights or pro-choice. But give credit where credit is due.
snowwrestler 7y ago
Have you never heard of the labor movement? The grassroots activism by working class people that forced the federal government to develop an entire arm of federal law, with its own Cabinet-level agency, to protect them from the professional managerial class? How have you spent your career working in public policy circles and come away with so little understanding of what grassroots activism is, and the impact it has historically had?
- macawfish 7y ago
  For the same reason that Hillary Clinton got nominated in 2016. Because too many politicians are completely out of touch with the movements, conditions and perspectives of working people. Where I live, grassroots organizers are doing all the hard work. I'm not talking about protesters. I'm talking about people who are building and connecting organically, who are facilitating workshops and popular education sessions, who are raising awareness about what's going on in local government to enable democracy to happen. Democracy doesn't function without grassroots participation. This country would be a hell hole without the hard work of local organizers everywhere.
  - marktangotango 7y ago
    > This country would be a hell hole without the hard work This country is not a hell hole? That's a tough argument to make for a lot of people!
    - mensetmanusman 7y ago
      Volunteer in Haiti for a month.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
  - 7y ago
motohagiography 7y ago
To +1 one this: Having spent a great deal of time consulting to government, in addition to working in media, but with a deep background in tech, the managerial class of people making policy have a revolving door to the universities, which are seized by faddish ideas as often as the elected representatives. Many of these policy people actually come to hate technologists because they find their more chauvinistic plans are thwarted by the privacy and security people who are at the table because of competence that can't be ignored, and not elite credentials. As a result, the managerialists double down on what makes them different from techs, which means being extra airy, vague, political, and what most working people interpret as untrustworthy. It's practically a shibboleth, as if to say they don't need to seem honest because they are powerful. I don't think this managerial class is as necessary as people who are a part of it think. The class disconnect is more pronounced in recent years because of the stark differences in physical competence and the precarious status of people who imagine themselves as "elite." What they deride as populism is much more complex than they perceive. Working people expect their elites to at least be somewhat noble, and when they aren't, history is the story we tell about what happens to them.
- rehasu 7y ago
  My impression in recent years is that the middle class has real value in almost any society we had until now. They are the glue that brings stability to any organization, they are what keeps to energetic lower layer people from gaining power from crazy ideas, and they are the first to get blamed when a crazy idea from the top management layer fails. Do you see differences between that statement and your experience? And the real question I want to ask: Do you feel that especially the middlest of managers have to fear AI the most, because AI could theoretically replace exactly that middle layer and do it even better than a human could?
  - malandrew 7y ago
    > My impression in recent years is that the middle class has real value in almost any society we had until now. The middle class really isn't any less powerful today. Near as I can tell what happened isn't that the middle class became less powerful, but that journalists in particular no longer find themselves in the upper middle class so they spread the perception that the middle class has lost its power because they themselves feel like they have lost power, especially economic power. I suspect that society is most likely perceived as most stable when those with megaphones and that buy ink by the barrel feel most stable. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/06/the-middle-class-is-shrinking-because-many-people-are-getting-richer.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/06/th...
malandrew 7y ago
> I've never seen actual grassroots activism accomplish much, if anything. > it's that professional ... class that really shapes the government's policy, because they are the ones that show up to do that work every day. Yup. "Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole." – Thomas Sowell
specialist 7y ago
Look harder. My friends have worked on marriage, marijuana, human trafficking, consumer protection, etc, etc. (My own efforts weren't as potent. At the time. Though I'd like to think my cohort moved the needle on election integrity issues. All the "radical" stuff we pushed 10 years ago is now received wisdom.) In fact, I'd argue that most progress is bottom up, happening locally. I highly recommend Camp Wellstone training for activists. Of course there's many others. On the left. The political right has no shortage of resources for their activists.
vanusa 7y ago
I've never seen actual grassroots activism accomplish much, if anything.... It's always insiders who make a career out of policy that ultimately shape it. Did the Vietnam War end because the Washington insiders (who were, if you'll recall, the ones who started it) had a change of heart, got together one day and decided to stop it? Or because the country threatened to become ungovernable if they didn't? Really, the blithe dismissal of the impact of public protest expressed in your statment is astounding.
- rout39574 7y ago
  I'm 50, and it'd be a stretch to say I "saw" that happen. I was in high school before I realized that the Vietnam war had happened while I was alive. I think the point is that grassroots activism has been effective once upon a time, but has not been effective for decades.
DenisM 7y ago
> I've never seen actual grassroots activism accomplish much Eh... Martin Luther King Jr?
paggle 7y ago
Hard to say this when the entire immigration and trade policy of the US veered into an extremely unlikely configuration on the back of a candidate universally loathed by the establishment on both the left and the right.
Iv 7y ago
I used to diss protests that accomplish nothing but then I realized what their real use was: to connect people into doing actual stuff. To open a place for discussion on a specific issue, sometimes in the media, but at least in the street, for few hours, with like-minded people. If you are rich serious people concerned over an issue, you create a forum or gather a summit. If you are poor, or rather, let's be realistic, middle-class, then you do a protest. It's rent-free, it filters out people who can't be bothered to move from the couch and the nay-sayers, it shows a wide range of groups with varied interests. Protests are the first step in making policy change, but it takes several bounces before it affects people in DC.
- thu2111 7y ago
  Are there many examples of that happening? The biggest counter example I can think of was Occupy Wall Street. AFAIK nothing ever came out of it, not even a small organised group. Most protests I've seen have actually been the other way around. They were organised by pressure groups or unions and the protesters were already members of those groups. They existed primarily as a chest-beating exercise to show politicians their power. A few protests are more spontaneous especially the sort when democracies get overthrown or established. But in the west protests don't ever seem to create new organised movements.
  - Iv 7y ago
    That's how it worked for me (privacy advocacy protests in France). But now that I think about it, it makes sense that big protests are actually more of a recruiting tool for already established organization than a way to know each others. My example may be marginal in that it was on a small subject that did not bring a lot of big names.
  - te_chris 7y ago
    You're missing the forest for the trees on Occupy. Loads of people and groups active today found each other through that or got their start there.
    - 7y ago
coretx 7y ago
If you want a policy proposal to be burned to the ground; organize grassroots support for it. The following PR disaster angry mob will set it on fire for you without you getting your hands dirty.
gorgoiler 7y ago
What are some good theories on how to break up these over-empowered groups?
adultSwim 7y ago
How about the end of apartheid in South Africa?

jbattle 7y ago

> because they are the ones that show up to do that work every day Because someone is motivated enough to pay them every day to do that work

a3n 7y ago

> because they are the ones that show up to do that work every day As I used to say back when I was a programmer, often in the context of fads like "quality is free," nothing gets done unless you do that thing on purpose.

viburnum 7y ago

Gay people can get married in America, which was completely unthinkable a generation ago. 100% due to activists, many who risked their lives to make it happen.

ameister14 7y ago
Activists, yes - but not really through marching. Money, judicial challenges and coordinated political action to promote marriage equality as a goal were the key. The debate was reframed, messaging was crafted carefully and the groups organizing and paying for it all were extremely organized and cohesive. The Proteus fund and specifically the CMC did a heck of a lot here.
- ryanong 7y ago
  Marching is the first necessary step to get people organized. It is the lowest bar for starting to organize and to participate. It is where people can drum up support, awareness and donations.
  - jimbokun 7y ago
    Is this demonstrably, empirically true, or is it something you are just telling yourself because you desperately want it to be true?
    - mturmon 7y ago
      I listened to an hour-long podcast in which Chris Hayes interviewed Alicia Garza, who co-founded Black Lives Matter (BLM). They talked specifically about this question and since you're interested, perhaps it would be one place to go to hear informed organizers/activists discussing it. It aired on June 4. Besides BLM, one other recent place in which this question of "are demonstrations enough" comes up is, of course, Occupy. (In that case: no, demonstrations were not enough.) One thing I remember Garza saying is that the ability to organize a large, nationwide march on Washington showcases the scope and depth (down to the grassroots level) of a movement. If your movement isn't broad and organized, your nationwide march will not succeed. But that's a necessary condition for political action, not a sufficient condition. A movement can't let marches be the endpoint, and in the interview, Garza emphasized this. Clearly the organizers of the 1993 "March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation" (which I attended) did not view the march as an endpoint. Many of the roughly 600K (+/- 300K) people present had a lot at stake, including their jobs, at that time. The march was more of a focal point, a coming of age. A constituency made visible. But not an endpoint. For more: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/how-black-lives-matter-evolved https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/how-black-li...
      - dredmorbius 7y ago
        Other notable protests in the past 20-30 years, in the US and elsewhere: - Anti Iraq War movement (2003-4), mostly US. - Anti WTO movement (1999-2010) global (US, Canada, Japan, Europe). Eventually blended into / surpassed by the Occupy movement. - ACT UP: Gay rights / HIV/AIDS awareness. (1987 - 2000) Those are the major causes of which I'm aware. Of the set, ACT UP was arguably the most successful, and probably deserves much of the credit for mainstreaming gay / nonbinary gender culture. The WTO protests are more mixed, but put a damper on the Washington Concensus / Neoconservative Agenda movement. Global trade meetings are no longer casually-hosted affairs, and now tend to be in remote / secluded locations. The Iraq War protests were arguably the least effective, though massive in many cities. They simply disappeared off news coverage though. Clearly they didn't stop the war or lessen the catastrophic impacts of it, though they did help cement a strong political divide over it in the US. Whether or not more recent movements, particularly on the right, could be considered mass / popular uprisings is a fair question. I'd be inclined to say "no", but a case might be made for the Tea Party and alt-right movements.
username90 7y ago
Gay marriage was also prevented in America for hundreds of years 100% due to activists. There is no money for or against gay marriage, it was always only activists on both sides so it isn't a good example of a class war.
- Miner49er 7y ago
  I'm not so sure, gay rights intersects with the class war in at least a couple of ways: - Dividing the working class on the issue of gay rights is an effective way for the elites to get the working class to ignore the class war. - Control of reproduction offers some control over labor.
  - LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
    Gays where used for centurys as a third "power" pillar, forced into by relgion, which is basically a instituionalized thread and protection guarantea, in trade for contract insurrance. The reason gay rights became possible, was because the state took over contract social security (to be competitive agaisnt socialism) and what is basically a new , partially more liberal, church formed (the rainbow movement). If the main benefactors of the third power pillar (woman) would not have found social security outside of marriage, the gay freedom movement would have failed. Tl, Dr; Slaves they where, slaves they are. But for a good cause.
  - sujNansnam 7y ago
    Can you elaborate on the second point? I don’t understand how banning gay marriage controls reproduction.
war1025 7y ago
Gay people are distributed throughout the various ranks of American society. No one really gives a care at a broad level about the rights of a poor gay person. What actually brought about the change was that due entirely to the fact that people in power had relatives that were gay, or were gay themselves. And these people turned the wheels of society toward making it accepted.
- alasdair_ 7y ago
  >What actually brought about the change was that due entirely to the fact that people in power had relatives that were gay, or were gay themselves. The people in power had gay relatives or were gay themselves a century ago and yet nothing changed without activism.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    A century ago those people were in the closet so nobody knew and those that did didn't say anything. People had to come out in order for their acceptance to be possible. It's really easy to justify not caring when the group you don't care about seems other. When they're people you know it's much harder to justify not caring.
buboard 7y ago
The gilettes jaunes are on the streets, nobody cares to make them cultural icons. Gays had very visible and generally disproportionate (compared to population) media coverage of their rights. Was it really 100% due to activists on the street, or very influential but high profile gay people who helped build one of the few successful rights movements of our times?
- chongli 7y ago
  high profile gay people When I read this the first person I thought of was Alan Turing [1]. His was the fate of high profile gay people until the grassroots movement sprang from the Stonewall riots [1]. It was these activists who took the first steps to even make it possible for a high profile gay person to come out in public. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots
  - pyuser583 7y ago
    Do you seriously believe that upper class gays/lesbians and lower class gays/lesbians was the same? In order for Alan Turing to be charged with “gross indecency”, he had to go the police himself, inform them he was gay (without being asked or prompted), and affirm it in a statement signed under penalty of perjury. The only reason he did that was because he was so accustomed to people not caring, he didn’t think he was in any danger. Being privileged has its privileges.
    - katet 7y ago
      I just had to look up that claim, and it seems that Turing admitted a homosexual relationship during a police investigation about his house being burgled, seeing as that relationship was with the accused burglar. That's slightly different to the implication that he walked into a police station of his own free will and promptly signed his own castration order. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Conviction_for_indecency https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Conviction_for_i... (I'm aware of wikipedia fallibility but I'm on mobile and will generally trust in the citations for this particular individual)
larnmar 7y ago
The elites have always tolerated homosexuality while the masses have always been creeped out by it. This particular change just looks like another case of the elites getting their way at the expense of the masses.
mayniac 7y ago
100% isn't quite right. I think the parent comment applies to gay marriage as well. Federal recognition of gay marriage eventually occurred in America due to a gay widow who took the government to court over a $300k inheritance tax bill on her wife's estate [1]. Of course the changing cultural attitudes towards LGBT people is overwhelmingly due to grassroots activism, but this shouldn't be overlooked. For LGBT rights, money has played a factor. If wealthy, upper-class Americans did not also suffer from anti-LGBT laws, I'm not sure we would have made the same progress. There are also financial incentives for LGBT acceptance [2]. A more cynical view might be that acceptance of gay marriage was accelerated due to increasing anti-capitalist sentiments within the LGBT community in the 20th century [3]. The continued oppression of gay people might have led to uprisings far worse than Stonewall. Legislative acceptance of LGBT rights has weakened the link between LGBT activism and anti-capitalist ideologies, to the point that nowadays gay pride parades are turning into a parade of adverts for corporations. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Windsor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Windsor [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_money [3] https://aeon.co/essays/the-radical-roots-of-gay-liberation-are-being-overlooked https://aeon.co/essays/the-radical-roots-of-gay-liberation-a...
Aperocky 7y ago
I think a good litmus test for a political issue to gain brownie points on is this: Does it affect the politician, themselves? If a politician is straight, what does two gay persons marrying have to do with him? It’s thus a brownie point issue, same goes with pot. Once it start affecting their bottom line, i.e. there’s money involved, watch them and the media skirt around the issue carefully.
- gurumeditations 7y ago
  That’s ignorant. There was and still is for Republicans a very high cost for supporting romantic equality.
onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
It's interesting (and sad to me) how popular this article is on here when it exclusively describes our current political climate in terms of economics. It seems like social issues are front and center more than ever at the moment. I think economics can largely explain the divide, but it's interesting for the author to talk at length about the top 10% and leave this out -- as if the top 10% is filled with Econs who vote solely on what they think is best for them economically, and not based on how they feel about social issues. I think the reason the current climate feels so "divided" is because it's more of a social divide than before. I think it's easier when it's just a class war. But this is a human rights war. When your basic rights feel threatened, it gives you a little more skin in the game.
pyuser583 7y ago
Federal judges, not activists. Federal judges care little about mass opinion, but a great deal about elite opinion. Roe v. Wade had nothing to do with feminism, and everything to do with the positions of the American Medical Association, the Mayo Clinic (formerly represented by Blackmun), and academic researchers at elite universities. Not a terribly important distinction if you’re pro-gay rights or pro-choice. But give credit where credit is due.

snowwrestler 7y ago

Have you never heard of the labor movement? The grassroots activism by working class people that forced the federal government to develop an entire arm of federal law, with its own Cabinet-level agency, to protect them from the professional managerial class? How have you spent your career working in public policy circles and come away with so little understanding of what grassroots activism is, and the impact it has historically had?

macawfish 7y ago
For the same reason that Hillary Clinton got nominated in 2016. Because too many politicians are completely out of touch with the movements, conditions and perspectives of working people. Where I live, grassroots organizers are doing all the hard work. I'm not talking about protesters. I'm talking about people who are building and connecting organically, who are facilitating workshops and popular education sessions, who are raising awareness about what's going on in local government to enable democracy to happen. Democracy doesn't function without grassroots participation. This country would be a hell hole without the hard work of local organizers everywhere.
- marktangotango 7y ago
  > This country would be a hell hole without the hard work This country is not a hell hole? That's a tough argument to make for a lot of people!
  - mensetmanusman 7y ago
    Volunteer in Haiti for a month.
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- 7y ago

motohagiography 7y ago

To +1 one this: Having spent a great deal of time consulting to government, in addition to working in media, but with a deep background in tech, the managerial class of people making policy have a revolving door to the universities, which are seized by faddish ideas as often as the elected representatives. Many of these policy people actually come to hate technologists because they find their more chauvinistic plans are thwarted by the privacy and security people who are at the table because of competence that can't be ignored, and not elite credentials. As a result, the managerialists double down on what makes them different from techs, which means being extra airy, vague, political, and what most working people interpret as untrustworthy. It's practically a shibboleth, as if to say they don't need to seem honest because they are powerful. I don't think this managerial class is as necessary as people who are a part of it think. The class disconnect is more pronounced in recent years because of the stark differences in physical competence and the precarious status of people who imagine themselves as "elite." What they deride as populism is much more complex than they perceive. Working people expect their elites to at least be somewhat noble, and when they aren't, history is the story we tell about what happens to them.

rehasu 7y ago
My impression in recent years is that the middle class has real value in almost any society we had until now. They are the glue that brings stability to any organization, they are what keeps to energetic lower layer people from gaining power from crazy ideas, and they are the first to get blamed when a crazy idea from the top management layer fails. Do you see differences between that statement and your experience? And the real question I want to ask: Do you feel that especially the middlest of managers have to fear AI the most, because AI could theoretically replace exactly that middle layer and do it even better than a human could?
- malandrew 7y ago
  > My impression in recent years is that the middle class has real value in almost any society we had until now. The middle class really isn't any less powerful today. Near as I can tell what happened isn't that the middle class became less powerful, but that journalists in particular no longer find themselves in the upper middle class so they spread the perception that the middle class has lost its power because they themselves feel like they have lost power, especially economic power. I suspect that society is most likely perceived as most stable when those with megaphones and that buy ink by the barrel feel most stable. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/06/the-middle-class-is-shrinking-because-many-people-are-getting-richer.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/06/th...

malandrew 7y ago

> I've never seen actual grassroots activism accomplish much, if anything. > it's that professional ... class that really shapes the government's policy, because they are the ones that show up to do that work every day. Yup. "Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole." – Thomas Sowell

specialist 7y ago

Look harder. My friends have worked on marriage, marijuana, human trafficking, consumer protection, etc, etc. (My own efforts weren't as potent. At the time. Though I'd like to think my cohort moved the needle on election integrity issues. All the "radical" stuff we pushed 10 years ago is now received wisdom.) In fact, I'd argue that most progress is bottom up, happening locally. I highly recommend Camp Wellstone training for activists. Of course there's many others. On the left. The political right has no shortage of resources for their activists.

vanusa 7y ago

I've never seen actual grassroots activism accomplish much, if anything.... It's always insiders who make a career out of policy that ultimately shape it. Did the Vietnam War end because the Washington insiders (who were, if you'll recall, the ones who started it) had a change of heart, got together one day and decided to stop it? Or because the country threatened to become ungovernable if they didn't? Really, the blithe dismissal of the impact of public protest expressed in your statment is astounding.

rout39574 7y ago
I'm 50, and it'd be a stretch to say I "saw" that happen. I was in high school before I realized that the Vietnam war had happened while I was alive. I think the point is that grassroots activism has been effective once upon a time, but has not been effective for decades.

DenisM 7y ago

> I've never seen actual grassroots activism accomplish much Eh... Martin Luther King Jr?

paggle 7y ago

Hard to say this when the entire immigration and trade policy of the US veered into an extremely unlikely configuration on the back of a candidate universally loathed by the establishment on both the left and the right.

Iv 7y ago

I used to diss protests that accomplish nothing but then I realized what their real use was: to connect people into doing actual stuff. To open a place for discussion on a specific issue, sometimes in the media, but at least in the street, for few hours, with like-minded people. If you are rich serious people concerned over an issue, you create a forum or gather a summit. If you are poor, or rather, let's be realistic, middle-class, then you do a protest. It's rent-free, it filters out people who can't be bothered to move from the couch and the nay-sayers, it shows a wide range of groups with varied interests. Protests are the first step in making policy change, but it takes several bounces before it affects people in DC.

thu2111 7y ago
Are there many examples of that happening? The biggest counter example I can think of was Occupy Wall Street. AFAIK nothing ever came out of it, not even a small organised group. Most protests I've seen have actually been the other way around. They were organised by pressure groups or unions and the protesters were already members of those groups. They existed primarily as a chest-beating exercise to show politicians their power. A few protests are more spontaneous especially the sort when democracies get overthrown or established. But in the west protests don't ever seem to create new organised movements.
- Iv 7y ago
  That's how it worked for me (privacy advocacy protests in France). But now that I think about it, it makes sense that big protests are actually more of a recruiting tool for already established organization than a way to know each others. My example may be marginal in that it was on a small subject that did not bring a lot of big names.
- te_chris 7y ago
  You're missing the forest for the trees on Occupy. Loads of people and groups active today found each other through that or got their start there.
  - 7y ago

coretx 7y ago

If you want a policy proposal to be burned to the ground; organize grassroots support for it. The following PR disaster angry mob will set it on fire for you without you getting your hands dirty.

gorgoiler 7y ago

What are some good theories on how to break up these over-empowered groups?

adultSwim 7y ago

How about the end of apartheid in South Africa?

I've spent my career working in public policy circles, and this rings true to me. > At most, working-class voters can cast their ballots for an “un­acceptable”

I've spent my career working in public policy circles, and this rings true to me. > At most, working-class voters can cast their ballots for an “un­acceptable”

I've spent my career working in public policy circles, and this rings true to me. > At most, working-class voters can cast their ballots for an “unacceptable”

I've spent my career working in public policy circles, and this rings true to me. > At most, working-class voters can cast their ballots for an “unacceptable”