Recently, there\u2019s been a lot of attention being paid to a group of high school students who were survivors of a horrific gun attack in Florida. While they\u2019re not the first students to suffer from such a crappy situation, what made this tragedy even more significant was that the students didn\u2019t remain the backdrop of the event but have now taken front stage and are literally the movement itself.<\/p>\n
This has resulted in a number of unexpected outcomes. First, the \u201cusual\u201d response of \u201cthis isn\u2019t the time\u201d to discuss gun violence was completely drowned out by the survivors themselves who refused to allow pro-NRA pundits to dictate the terms of the conversation. And the opposite side, the political operatives who have been screaming into the wind for decades about gun violence, were also taken a bit by surprise because as much as they have wanted to do so, they\u2019re not dictating the message but having to listen alongside everyone else who is seeing this dynamic group of young people demand and focus attention.<\/p>\n
And this is part of the problem that I fear because as Mancur Olson pointed out in \u201cThe Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups\u201d (1965) and reinforced by Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward in \u201cPoor People\u2019s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail\u201d (1977), getting a movement started is a lot easier than sustaining one over time. The reasons are varied, but there\u2019s both a free rider problem (people think others will do the work for them so they sit out the movement, convinced someone else will take up the slack) and an age problem, which I\u2019ll talk about it a moment here.<\/p>\n
The first problem is not easily overcome. People organize because of personal motivations, and they quite often are faced with the belief that they\u2019re climbing a mountain that has no footing. When they realize there\u2019s a group of others with similar goals, they become motivated and feel the sense of belonging that makes them put themselves out there for hopes of a solution. What can often happen is that solidarity may actually lead to a limited success because their opposition is also overwhelmed by the numbers gathered in such a short amount of time. So, they go home, armed with the knowledge that they succeeded. But they don\u2019t often get everything they wanted, so when they take to the streets again to achieve the rest, they find that a fraction of their comrades appear the second time around due to that pesky free rider problem.<\/p>\n
Which brings me to the second problem: age. One of the advantages of the current movement is also its biggest liability: Children eventually stop being children. Right now, young high school students are rallied around the idea of wanting to fix things for the youth of America. But there\u2019s a time stamp on how effective they are going to be because of the fact that once they stop being high school students and are then perceived to be adults, their message practically disappears overnight. People tend to care when children are affected, but when those children grow up into adulthood, it\u2019s amazing how society quickly turns their backs on those same people.<\/p>\n
Which means, if anything is going to happen, it\u2019s going to have to happen really soon. The NRA, conservatives and those who like the status quo are very, very good at kicking cans down the road. This is kind of the origin of the phrase \u201cthoughts and prayers\u201d. The term \u201cthoughts and prayers\u201d has only recently been debunked to reveal it means \u201cwe\u2019re not going to do anything about this now, so all we\u2019re willing to do is pretend we\u2019re thinking about it, but we\u2019re not.\u201d Historically, they\u2019ve been really good at ignoring huge calamities with infamous responses of \u201cnow\u2019s not the time\u201d and all sorts of other bags of wind, knee jerk reactions. Therefore, if anything is going to happen, it\u2019s going to have to happen during the next few weeks, or at least before the next atrocious event occurs because once the next geographically named event occurs, Florida will be yesterday\u2019s news, and those who want to do nothing will breathe a sign of relief that they never actually had to do anything to make things better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Recently, there\u2019s been a lot of attention being paid to a group of high school students who were survivors of a horrific gun attack in Florida. While they\u2019re not the first students to suffer from such a crappy situation, what made this tragedy even more significant was that the students didn\u2019t remain the backdrop of … Continue reading The Problems of a Young People’s Movement<\/span>