by Jonathan Krall
Recently, a friend observed that politicians seem to dig in their heels whenever activists like us pressure them to act. She asked, “does pressuring these people actually work?” I’ve spent plenty of time pressuring politicians. At my worst, I not only hit my head against a brick wall, I also seem to be helping them build the wall (as I persist, they become better at resisting). At my best, I’m delivering a cogent message while giving one of my politician friends an opportunity to do something positive. Be caring. Be heroic. Share a vision. I now refer to this win-win engagement as “positive pressure.”
Do something different
Sometimes, we take our case to a politician and seemingly fail to be heard. Afterwards, we ask ourselves what to do next. The answer is always the same: “something different.” If talking didn’t seem to work, we try a petition. If our petition is ignored, we seek publicity. If they don’t respond to me, I introduce them to a neighbor. It is one thing to think up yet another engagement strategy. It is quite another entirely to be sure that the strategy du jour is contributing to a positive future instead of simply turning politicians into enemies.
If we directly attack, they will want to resist. This is human nature. If we insult them, especially if the insult is not accurate, refusing us becomes an act of justice, even heroism. For this reason, positive engagement and indirect pressure are likely to work better.
If we truly expect a decision-maker to act on our request, our first option is positive, win-win engagement. This is especially true when delivering a difficult or discomfiting request for action. On its surface, this “win-win” approach seems to contradict Frederick Douglass’s observation that “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” Frederick Douglass was correct. However, because a demand is simply a request backed up with power and because any demonstration of power contains an implied threat, decision-makers tend to react by heroically (in their mind) digging in their heels. The challenge, therefore, is to make effective demands in ways that minimize the tendency of decision-makers to tell themselves heroic stories of resistance.
To engage positively, we need to do something they like. Here are some things that politicians like: taking action (when they’re sure it is safe to do so). Meeting constituents they don’t talk to often. Showing off their kindness and compassion. Showing off their knowledge and skill. They also like receiving campaign contributions, but we won’t talk about that. That would be too direct.
Perhaps a story will help
Once upon a time, for a price (less than $1 million/year), Alexandria agreed to let Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) place people in our Alexandria jail. For short periods of time, ICE was using our jail as an immigration detention center. Because legal immigration can be inhumanely convoluted, because deportations cruelly separate families, and because Alexandria is a community full of compassionate people, Alexandrians didn’t want to be a cog in the ICE deportation machine. Members of Grassroots Alexandria and Tenants and Workers United wrote to the sheriff to ask that this “intergovernmental agreement (IGA)” with ICE be dropped. He didn’t budge.
So we reached out to talk to him. Like most activists, I am aware that politicians prefer to ignore me. They tell themselves that I am not a typical person with a typical opinion. In their view, I am very easy to dismiss.
Do you know who isn’t easy to dismiss? Some middle-aged women who scan as “normal,” who aren’t experts, who know right from wrong, and who aren’t afraid to speak up. It helped that one of our group was a neighbor of the sheriff. He seemed happy to talk to a constituent and a neighbor. But, as the conversation progressed and she didn’t back down, he became visibly uncomfortable. This, I suggest, is an example of positive direct pressure. On the other hand, in retrospect, I was overly relentless. Even now, I struggle to know when to back down from a fight.
The Sheriff changed his policies, reducing the amount of extra time he held people in custody to give ICE time to pick them up. It wasn’t enough.
We tried indirect pressure. We reached out to the city manager, who is a party to the IGA, presenting him with an opportunity to do something positive for Alexandria’s immigrant communities. He did so, in a small way, when he told us that Alexandria could easily afford to drop the IGA and that he wouldn’t stand in the way. He helped us by contributing to the story of this unnecessary (and harmful) collaboration with ICE.
We also reached out to City Council, who controls a small part of the sheriff’s budget. As with the city manager, we presented them with an opportunity to do something positive for Alexandria’s immigrant communities. This expanded the conversation, giving City Council members something new and important to talk to the sheriff about at community gatherings.
To be clear, indirect pressure can be enraging. We’re pretty sure the Sheriff didn’t want to hear about ICE every time he attended a community gathering. But he couldn’t get angry with the City Council members who control his budget or the City Manager whose staff handles IGA paperwork. He didn’t get angry at his neighbor, who spoke up.
While the sheriff didn’t budge on the IGA, he did reduce his cooperation with ICE in other ways. And the next sheriff quietly dropped the IGA soon after he was elected.
Tell a story they want to hear
Power is the ability to convince a person to act when they are otherwise hesitant to do so. In old-fashioned coalition politics, groups, such as Grassroots Alexandria, the Alexandria People’s Assembly, etc., gather together around a specific request for action from a specific decision-making body. Working together, they create a situation where each decision maker finds that they are more comfortable with action than inaction. And so, it might seem, it is the job of the coalition to deliver so much discomfort that decision-makers will act simply to make it stop. While this is not terribly inaccurate, there is a pitfall that must be avoided. In all cases, we must avoid the situation where a politician finds comfort in saying “no.”
Always, we create opportunities to realize a positive vision. The story of Alexandria’s many immigrant communities is a story of kindness and compassion in the face of significant economic and political challenges. It is a story of a community working together towards a better future.
As we add more signatures to a petition, as we talk to community members, as we write letters to local newspapers, as we speak at public hearings or at teach-ins, we tell a story. Every time we send a message to City Council to update them on our petition numbers or show them photos of a public event, we are sharing news and delivering our story. Politicians like useful information, such as the number of constituents who attended a rally, even more than they dislike demands.
Demonize with care
When telling a story in which we are all together the heroes, it is tempting to create a villain. After all, we in Alexandria didn’t colonize Palestine. Our City Council isn’t creating reservations and forcing entire Palestinian villages into them. But it is our job to make connections between the local and the global. Fortunately, there is no shortage of powerful corporations or oligarchs to pick on. With so many villains to choose from, we are free to choose wisely.
In the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Martin Luther King, Jr. acted in conflict with southern sheriffs and governors, creating stories of righteous citizens being attacked by the forces of evil. All the while, he was cozying up to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson. Today, these men are considered civil rights heroes.
Where does this leave us? Must we always jump from strategy to strategy to hit our local decision-makers from all sides? Do we need to continuously reread Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals in search of yet another creative attention-getting public spectacle? Must we somehow find yet another creative way to tell everyone how wonderful we all are and so of course we will (once again) act with kindness and compassion? Can we keep doing this without making ourselves crazier? Must we exhaust ourselves with mental gymnastics to keep positive in the face of low graduation rates, police foot-dragging, housing inequality, re-emerging fascism, increasingly violent weather, multiple humanitarian crises, and ongoing extinction? Must we always dance faster?
Of course not. We can’t help others if we don’t help ourselves. Self-care is the first imperative of first responders. Fortunately, creativity is endlessly renewing and rewarding. As imaginative activists, we can create moments of grace. Earlier this season I had the pleasure of marching with my Palestinian friends behind a living nativity scene depicting Mary, Joseph, and Jesus in Bethlehem, Palestine. The mood was somber even as the crowd cheered this resilient vision of Palestine. It was beautiful.