The Women's March

In our latest journey into the realm of political advocacy our class focused on protests and their ability to (or to not) enact change in the system. From our readings, class discussions, and our guest speaker, who is an organizer herself, we’ve learned that protests can be effective. This effectiveness comes as the results of specific steps taken to organize and tactics used to spread the message and reliant on a few key components of any protest. It is the spirit of this understanding, that protests are powerful political tools, that I examine the Women’s March: what did they do right, what did they do wrong, and what’s next for the movement. 

The analysis, “Do Political Protests Matter?” from Madestam, Shoag, Veuger, and Yanagizawa-Drott, found that political protests can “build political movements that ultimately affect policy.” While their analysis focused on the Tea Party, their examinations could be applied to many large protests due to the nature of their experiment (the rain). One important aspect Madestam, et. al. evaluated was the impact of a protest’s size - considering the Women’s March was one of the largest political protests (over 400,000 people in D.C. alone, and over 600 sister marches) maneuvered in modern history, we can hope that the impact is similar or greater than what the study found from the Tea Party movement. The impact of a protest’s size will most likely be perceived through political action or on election day as the study found that larger protests usually lead to incumbent representatives voting more conservatively, increased voter turnout, increased strength of movement, and higher chances of incumbent party leaders resigning. We’ve already seen some of the repercussions of the Women’s March in this past month’s elections, with multiple women being elected, including the first openly-transgender woman, and higher turnout from many minority groups. And as we’ve all learned, the election of Trump and the Women’s March inspired thousands of women to run for their local government office.

The sheer size of the protest in D.C. alone is enough to strengthen a political movement, but as Corrine McConnaughy noted in her article, “4 Lessons for Today’s Women’s Marchers from the Suffrage Movement,” it is the 600+ sister marches across the country and around the world that may be more politically important. The sister marches in local communities also reflect Madestam, et. al’s findings that “personal interaction within small groups of citizens serves as a crucial channel for the transmission of new political views leading to increased political activism.”

As we discussed in class, protests are effective in building awareness or making a statement before energy can gather, addressing a problem before change can happen, and demonstrating public opinion in a loud manner. Shom Mazumder argues in his Washington Post article, that a successful movement has three “crucial factors in common,” of which the Women’s March has incredibly displayed two: messaging and nonviolence. The messaging began with a meme that spawned a worldwide movement and produced some very iconic images, specifically the Pink Pussy hats, and many creative posters. This creativity, our speaker mentioned, is critical to secure an enduring message, and helps to bring home ideas in a powerful and meaningful way. Our speaker made a strong point in acknowledge that a protest’s leverage is people power; she also mentioned that protests are only “one tool in the toolbox.”

And that’s what a protest is, a tactic, not the end all of a campaign. This brings us to exploring what the Women’s March did wrong in their protesting spirit. One of the biggest issues with the Women’s March was that they did not have a game plan beyond the protest and their platform was not released until a couple days before the march took place. McConnaughy argues that it’s okay not to know exactly what the policy objectives are yet and that gorals and a policy agenda will reveal itself, but Mazumder and our speaker contend that organization is key, and is the missing “crucial factor” all successful movements have in common. Our speaker was very adamant that when organizing a protest, one must have a ‘game plan’ and must design a strategy that sets goals and finds targets, while inspiring a base. I would agree that simply protesting without the next steps in mind is harmful to the overall accomplishments of a march. Even one of the march’s founders, Carmen Perez, admitted that “" we didn't necessarily have a lot of time to think about next steps."

Without the organization in place the messaging can be thrown off. Our speaker made it clear that mobilizations designed smartly are the most effective. So, what went wrong with the Women’s March in terms of organizing and messaging? For one, inclusivity was a huge issue and barrier for many participants. Our speaker acknowledged that in creating a mobilization, one must create a narrative of support, but this narrative fell short for many women who did not join because of the lack of intersectionality presented in what most people call “white feminism.” The organizers themselves were an intersectional group of strong women, but due to a lack of organization and messaging, many people did not realize this until afterwards, or they did realize and still felt a lack of support among their peers. The Women’s March might have been one of the largest in history, but does it count if we forget a large number of the population? Another issue with inclusivity could be the very liberal messaging and manner of protest - although the movement’s platform and beliefs are obviously more liberal ideas, Republican women who voted against Trump did not feel as though they could support the movement. Our speaker also brought up the issue of classism and elitism in protesting - there is a large population of people who don’t have time either physically or mentally to care about the issues because they are more focused on keeping the lights on and food on the table.

Without organization, the follow-up is non-existent or useless. Our speaker acknowledged that follow up from a protest is key in retaining engagement with participants. Her suggestions: have fieldwork/canvassing teams in the moment to connect with participants at the height of their political action, respect people’s time, keep in touch through meetings and town halls, and master the art of the one-on-one. All of these suggestions should be included in the game plan - which was not made. The Women’s March inspired thousands of women the day of and kept the momentum going for a few months after that. However, their efforts fell short - on their website, the Women’s March Global has a “10 Actions in 100 days” plan that would include writing to your Congressional representatives, attending town halls, or participating in the “Day Without Women” demonstration. Nevertheless, only three plans are listed on the website and many were not followed through within the “100 days.”

So, what’s next for the Women’s March? It’s been almost a year since the pinnacle moment - what do the organizers do from here? How do they re-engage the population and sustain the energy from the original movement?

The Women’s March group has released an extensive platform of ideas and beliefs that share their focus and policy agenda. Carmen Perez noted that the movement does not focus on any single issue, but instead the “focus was to make sure that [the movement was] intentional, intersectional and made sure that people feel heard.” This increases the inclusive intentions of the movement, and as our speaker noted there is currently an opening in social movements for anyone to become involved. Our speaker also stressed the importance of making sure communities are being heard as organizers and in solidarity with those who need the most support - it’s about building connections between communities. Organizing shifts communities from where they are to where they need to be - the Women’s March has all the resources, people, and potential to accomplish this.

It’s important to remark that policy achievements take time and energy, and that sustaining the energy from a large protest may be difficult to do, but it is what keeps the agenda moving. The movement will need to engage as many people as possible on as many of their ideas as they can - not every woman/ally can be focused on every aspect of the agenda, but if you garner enough support for each one from different groups, the coalitions will help to make a difference. One coalition that the Women’s March is working with right now is the Women’s March Youth EMPOWER coalition with Peace First, Rise to Run, Teen Vogue, The Justice League NYC, The Gathering for Justice, and Rock the Vote. The program upholds the Women’s March values and platform, and its goal is to provide young people with the tools needed to create high school and college chapters that guide students in making a positive impact in their communities. As McConnaughy mentioned, coalitions are hard, but necessary movement work.

The Women’s March was symbolic of so many ideas and emotions that our country is feeling. With the proper work and motivation, it can continue to make waves and hopefully, one day, enact change.

{Sources for Women's March information!}

https://www.womensmarch.com/global/

https://www.womensmarch.com/mission/

https://www.npr.org/2017/04/28/525764938/100-days-in-womens-march-still-inspires-but-can-the-enthusiasm-hold

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/womens-march-organizers-address-intersectionality-as-the-movement-grows_us_5883f9d9e4b070d8cad314c0

All These Polls

The impact of public opinion on policy has been a hot topic of debate since the conception of the democratic government system. Another concept up for debate: whether polls are effective in determining the public’s opinion on policy and whether these should be used to determine policy. As for the latter use of polls, it is clear from the knowledge available, common sense, and our speaker’s comments that polls should not influence policy. I question the fairness and usefulness of polls in light of our speaker’s concerns regarding the changing attitudes, motivations, and tactics pollsters are using today, as well as various issues surrounding the concept of polls in general. I personally have been skeptical of polls from studying them throughout my undergraduate career and have tried to better understand how they work and what influence they have on portraying the public’s mindset to the politicians. Are polls being utilized properly and effectively, or are polls simply a cover to convince the public that their opinions matter?

Polls can be effective in understanding the public’s “complex” opinion – this is something that I agree with, our speaker agreed with, and our readings agreed with. However, I agree with a few conditions attached. I agree that the polls can be helpful in gauging the public’s perspective but only when they are created and understood in context and in weariness of the public’s fragile mindset. I believe that it is essential to gauge polls based on the demographic context of the group being asked – for example, we discussed in class how the terms “illegal alien” vs. “undocumented workers” would be interpreted depending on which group you were asking. One can assume that if you’re asking a group of anti-immigrant sentiment, they would react negatively to the former or both. In this case, word choice becomes the biggest advantage or drawback to a poll depending on what result a pollster is trying to achieve. The public will interpret questions in a variety of ways, so polls must be made to eliminate as much confusion and bias as possible. It is entirely too easy to change and manipulate opinions if demographic context and word choice is not taken into consideration before distribution, collection and analysis.

The continuity of polls helps to boost credibility and a pattern of public opinion, however, the public’s compound mindset can throw patterns off or skew polls in different ways. For example, our speaker spoke about the impact of contradictory opinions, such as the abortion debate. She also made an excellent point in that people tend to pull away from controversial issues and disengage because they don’t want to resolve their own problems. This is evident in many highly controversial areas including abortion, gun control, and even the 2016 election. How can we comprehend the political behavior of the public if we do not consider the various thought processes that occur in everyone’s minds? Beyond this, polls need to care about the audience, an aspect that our speaker and I both believe to be disappearing in today’s political climate. Pollsters are moving away from understanding ordinary life which is often more telling of the people’s ideas and thoughts than direct questions about policy.

It is in the milieu of these changing attitudes, motivations, and tactics of pollsters that I question the usefulness and fairness of polls. “Pollsters have lost their souls.” This quote from our speaker spoke volumes to me because I feel that it is quite reminiscent of the entire political world currently. Politics suck the soul out of the representatives, the people who study it, and the people it effects. Our speaker mentioned that she does not believe polls to be “left-leaning” as the President claims, nor does she deem them to be biased in any way overall. However, she did argue that the media is influencing polls in a sometimes negative or biased way – polls are often connected to media partners and may follow the media course. For example, one could argue that Fox News polls are probably skewed in the favor of conservatives and MSNBC polls are skewed in the favor of liberals. Besides the media’s polls having an agenda, media also influences polls in the amount of attention they provide – a pollster wants their poll to be shown and analyzed, they are “desperate for attention” and today’s media coverage has resulted in “overkill.” This media coverage and bias was quite evident in last year’s presidential election: polls were used to determine the outcome of the election and the public’s feelings about the candidates, and although they appeared to be wrong in many circumstances, they garnered a lot of media attention and scrutiny which led to more polls regarding similar topics.

I question the usefulness and effectiveness of polls because it is a topic that is under-studied and hard to grasp. Their usefulness could be proven or disproven, but I believe the debate would still exist. The government, especially at the conception of our country, has very rarely trusted the public’s opinions, hence the many different types of government structures that emerged since “demokratia” was introduced in Athens. It is easy to understand why leaders would be wary of the public’s opinion today – as we’ve discussed in class, the public often lacks the knowledge to truly engage with a poll. As our speaker mentioned, there were multiple polls gauging opinions on Hope Hicks, but unless you’re a diehard consumer of politics, the average person would probably not know who that was. Or even in our class example, I had no idea what the Kingdom of Bhutan was. I also wonder the effectiveness in light of historical context – our speaker told us that FDR was the first president to use a public opinion poll to measure the public’s thoughts on the war, and even though the public was very much against US involvement, we went to war. We know that polls should not influence policy, but I believe they should at least be taken into consideration when making decisions that impact the entire country.

Considering all of these aspects of polls and their lack of impact on influence, Burstein’s argument that the public does influence policy needs some embellishment as to how. Gillens and Page argue that the upper class and interest groups have more influence on policy than the average citizen, and this would make sense considering all we’ve learned about “mobilized bias” and the need for resources to have an effect in the grand scheme of things.

These issues with polls make it hard for me to believe that polls are effective in understanding the public’s political opinion. We've seen them fail - the 2016 election and even the 1948 election come to mind. However, polls can be useful in other ways – in Season 1, Episode 7 of the West Wing, the administration believes that polling and sampling would produce more accurate census results. They are likewise effective in understanding ordinary life such as figuring out the public’s favorite color, favorite sports team (not the Dallas Cowboys, by the way), or which guy the Bachelorette should choose. Polls can even be fun - we've all posted a poll on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram about whether we should get a haircut, order takeout, or whatever else we can't make up our minds about. How much do polls really engage the public though? 

So, are polls actually impactful and useful for pollsters, politicians, and the media or are the simply a show for the public to think their opinion matters?