The Activist's Handbook. Randy Shaw
assigned to serve on a government task force and hold him or her rigorously accountable for promoting the organization’s views.
Progressive social activists who enthusiastically participate on task forces usually argue, “If we don’t participate on a task force, it will come out with horrible recommendations.” I say, so what? If that happens, discredit the recommendations. Discrediting task force reports is a fairly simple exercise. One can point to the group’s biased composition, question individual member’s agendas, point to the heavy political pressures placed on the task force, or note its failure to consider vital information. In any case, after an initial splash, most reports from task forces, commissions, and the like are widely ignored. The task force tactic has become so transparent that it is a wonder that anybody outside the Official’s staff accepts its legitimacy.
Besides creating task forces, politicians also supplant activist groups’ agendas with their own by holding a public hearing to address an activist organization’s concerns. Public hearings may be more effective even than task forces in funneling activist energy into the politician’s agenda. Typically, the social change organization seeks a government response to a problem. A politician, seeking to play the white knight, announces a hearing to investigate the issue. Social change groups agree to the hearing because it gives them both a chance to mobilize their members and the expectation of tangible results. The organizers pack the hearing room, and the crowd cheers as speaker after speaker rails against the injustice in question. The Official who called the hearing plays to the crowd and shows that he or she is squarely in its corner. The media are out in force, and excitement is in the air.
There is only one problem. All too often, such hearings are held by Officials with no legal authority to address the targeted problem. Or the hearings occur prior to the drafting of legislation on the subject, whereas the real work for accomplishing change—through either legislation or public-pressure campaigns—occurs afterward. The politician accomplishes his or her goal through the hearing itself, gaining the audience’s loyalty and the general public’s approval for promptly responding to an injustice. After the hearing, the politician moves on to other issues, leaving the activist organization on its own. Social change organizations rarely achieve their goals through public hearings. Tactical activists can avoid this pitfall by making their agenda clear at the outset to the politician seeking involvement. If a politician is not committed to fighting beyond the hearing, do not allow said Official to reap the publicity benefits of the event.
Hearings can energize a constituency base, but this benefit will backfire if people see that nothing concrete has come from their trip to City Hall. Tactical activism requires that groups work only with Officials committed to fulfilling the social change agenda. The smart politician understands that working for the group’s agenda is also the best strategy for achieving his or her own political aims.
FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE ENVIRONMENTAL TRAIL
Since Earth Day 1970, the United States environmental movement has made tremendous gains. The nation’s air is cleaner, its waterways are less polluted, its communities are healthier, and a mass environmental consciousness has prompted mandatory recycling laws in cities large and small. But most environmentalists remain frustrated by the failure to accomplish more. Climate change threatens the future of species and the planet’s long-term survival, industry and business groups work overtime to subvert environmental health measures, and we are still engaged in the false choice between jobs and the environment that should long ago have been resolved.
Many grassroots activists blame the environmental movement’s failures on the strategic shortcomings of national environmental organizations. These groups are said to be so concerned with appearing “reasonable” to the Washington, D.C., establishment that they unnecessarily compromise on key environmental goals. They are also criticized for failing to hold politicians accountable. We saw a textbook example of both problems in the first year of the Clinton-Gore administration.
As Goes East Liverpool, So Goes the Nation
The battle waged by Greenpeace and residents of East Liverpool, Ohio, to force the Clinton-Gore administration to keep a well-publicized campaign promise to prevent the opening of a dangerous incinerator should not have been necessary. Rejecting a permit for the proposed Waste Technologies Industry (WTI) hazardous waste incinerator was easily justified: the proposed site was close to houses, churches, and schools, and the incinerator would emit such toxics as lead, mercury, and dioxin into a low-income neighborhood. During the 1992 Clinton campaign bus tour, Democratic vice presidential candidate Al Gore described the WTI incinerator as an unbelievable idea that highlighted the concrete differences between the parties on environmental issues. Speaking of the incinerator in Weirton, West Virginia, in July 1992, Gore said, “I’ll tell you this, a Clinton-Gore administration is going to give you an environmental presidency to deal with these problems. We’ll be on your side for a change, instead of the side of the garbage generators, the way [previous presidents] have been.”4
Because Gore’s environmental treatise Earth in the Balance attacked solid-waste incinerators and praised their grassroots opponents, environmentalists saw the election of Clinton-Gore as the death knell for the WTI facility. This expectation was heightened when the vice president issued a press release on December 7, 1992, stating that “serious questions concerning the safety of an East Liverpool, Ohio, hazardous waste incinerator must be answered before the plant may begin operation. The new Clinton-Gore administration will not issue the plant a test burn permit until these questions are answered.” Attached to Gore’s release was a letter to the comptroller general raising several questions about the impact of the incinerator and how it had been approved. Gore and six U.S. senators signed the letter. The New York Times interpreted Gore’s statement as “sending a clear signal” that the “new administration plans an aggressive approach to enforcing environmental laws.” Incinerator opponents had even greater reason to cheer when the new administration appointed Carol Browner to head the Environmental Protection Agency. In the early 1980s, Browner had worked on anti-toxic issues for Clean Water Action and Citizen Action.5
But the Clinton administration broke its pledge to environmental supporters by issuing a temporary permit in March 1993 that allowed the incinerator to begin commercial operation. It did so despite the Ohio attorney general’s assertion that the facility violated state law and the EPA’s own assessment that it could pose health risks 130 times above the agency’s acceptable level.6
The Clinton-Gore-Browner flip-flop on the WTI facility was an early test of environmentalists’ willingness to hold the new Democratic administration accountable. It was no different from San Francisco mayor Agnos’s asking his core rent-control supporters to meet with their opponents as a condition of fulfilling his promises to their constituency. Just as the tenants’ surrender early in Agnos’s term paved the way for four years of broken promises and political inaction, Clinton’s betrayal on the WTI project, if unchallenged, would set a precedent for future betrayals on other issues. Every major environmental group, along with grassroots activists, should have recognized Clinton’s agenda and demanded accountability. Clinton, Gore, and Browner should have been heckled and protested at every public appearance. This confrontational approach was essential because the response to the WTI flip-flop would determine environmentalists’ power during the balance of Clinton’s term.
But Greenpeace was the only major national environmental organization to join the East Liverpool struggle. Greenpeace recognized that “if Clinton-Gore can break their promise on WTI—their first environmental commitment after the election, their first promise to an individual community—they can break them all.” Rick Hind, legislative director of Greenpeace’s toxics campaign, has learned from experience that politicians “only give you attention when you blast them, and in some cases activists must use the equivalent of a two-by-four.”7
Greenpeace and East Liverpool activists used a number of confrontational tactics to pressure the Clinton administration. In March 1993, anti-incinerator leader Terri Swearingen and seven other East Liverpool residents took the public tour of the White House. Once inside, they refused to leave until they could speak to Clinton. The eight activists were then arrested. Following this action, Swearingen and her fellow residents joined