Will the buds of social
improvement flower? There are promising signs. People are speaking out for
respectful behavior in workplaces. Others are adamant about equal treatment
under the law. Some desire better attention to mental health and addiction; still
others are sensitive to food and product safety. To turn these and other initial
bursts of interest into meaningful social change means avoiding pseudo-change;
those activities that feel like social change but only approximate genuine
politics.
Discussion
groups, for example, are not change agents. Consciousness-raising is not politics.
Oh yes, our society benefits from book clubs. Roundtable discussion groups that
meet over drinks and a topic are important. These and other modes of intellectual
sharing assist those who advance the common good.
It
sometimes happens, however, that participants in a discussion group assume that
they are thereby tackling a social problem. A parish group, for example, forms
around shared concern over opioid addictions. They read and discuss Dreamland, a terrific book by Sam Quinones (Bloomsbury, 2016). They
subsequently invite the entire congregation to a couple of presentations,
including a well-attended one with the local sheriff. The parish group
accumulates a referral list for families dealing with addiction. All of this is
good, noble and necessary. It is not yet social change. An opening must be
found into the pain treatment industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the
nursing home industry, the criminal justice system, the social service
bureaucracy and the like.
The
parish group itself does not have to be a change agent; in fact, it probably
should not be. But the group can perhaps find ways that its members can get
inside the problem from within their workplace, their college, their professional
association or their union. Plus, the small parish group can perhaps coalesce
with other church groups in their denomination or across denominational and
religious lines and then join even bigger circles of influence.
A key to
social change behavior is the understanding that outsiders must get to the inside.
This journey requires sophistication and some tradeoffs, including serious
attention to core principles.
Here is
one example of outsiders getting to the inside. Globalization has many
unfortunate side-effects. But globalization by definition is huge and seemingly
amorphous. Sweatshops in Bangladesh are a
bi-product of globalization. But there’s nothing one can do about them. But
wait. Some students have found a clever way to break into the seemingly
impenetrable harshness of the global economy. First students at one school and
then students at the next school went to their college bookstore. They asked
the store manager to name the factory that produces the school’s sweaters,
shirts, jackets and the like. They simultaneously pushed the college
administrators to require that bookstore vendors have humane labor codes. The
students, who communicate with those at other schools through United Students
Against Sweatshops (www.usas.org), got their school to sign-on with an apparel
monitoring organization, Worker Rights Consortium (www.workersrights.org). Guess what? Some major apparel retailers
and clothing brands met with student representatives. The companies now expect
their overseas sub-contractors to observe humane working conditions.
Is the problem of sweatshops
solved? Not yet. Some apparel lines want to do their own monitoring of the
overseas suppliers; the student groups want independent monitoring. So, the
students have to get further inside some apparel companies. In doing so, the
students have to consider their principles: Is half a loaf acceptable or do we
push for three-quarters of a loaf? Is the credibility of the students enough or
would a celebrity endorser help? Maybe a bigger presence on social media is the
answer? What else is involved in social change? To be continued…
Droel edits INITIATIVES (PO Box
291102, Chicago, IL 60629).
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