Background
Significant changes in society do not come from people who accept the world for what it is but from those who have a vision for what the world should be and strive to make that vision a reality. It is vision that propels us – like a guiding star that sets the course for activism and advocacy. Without a shared vision, a social movement has nothing against which to set its compass.
The United States today is ripe with social movements and mobilizations – for example, in the fields of criminal justice, immigrant rights, global economic justice and media reform. Yet unlike successful social movements in the past (including Right wing movements) each of these single-issue movements lacks vision – a shared understanding of the world they are trying to create. The organizations that comprise these movements often haven’t articulated their own visions – and so there has been no exchange and debate about vision within each larger field. As a result, organizations that are supposedly part of the same “movement” rarely coordinate their goals for greater impact – or worse, can be working at cross purposes. A shared vision can unite organizations toward a common purpose and common direction, so the movement becomes more than the sum of its parts. It is not about unanimous agreement – some organizations in a movement may never agree on everything. But if they can figure out what they do agree on, they can be more effective in achieving those goals together than they would be working alone.
Shared vision among single-issue movements would be a huge accomplishment in any political climate. But the recent ascent of conservative forces in the United States over the last 40 years sets the bar for vision even higher. Many political, economic and social forces aligned in the 1960s through the 1990s to give rise to today’s conservative climate, but the power of the unified conservative vision to capitalize on and crystallize that potential cannot be understated. Differences of opinion and perspective still bubble underneath – as they necessarily should with any movement – but the conservative movement (and now the neo-conservative movement) has been able to articulate an overarching vision for the society it wants to create. That vision – family values, small government, free markets – connects with and compels the hearts and minds of the public. And why shouldn’t it? There is no other coherent counter-vision.
The challenge posed by the lessons from the right is not just for individual, single-issue movements to articulate a shared vision but for those visions to add up to something even larger: a broader, multi-issue progressive movement. If related single-issue organizations working toward the same long-term goals would be more powerful, imagine the power of even more organizations, working across issues for the same ends. Certainly the issues are intersectional – foreign policy is inextricably intertwined with economic development policy; abortion rights and reproductive freedom intersect with criminal justice. Our solutions must intersect as well.
The potential for a broader progressive movement is immense – as the public witnesses the failure of conservative ideas and hungers for alternatives. But the concept of movement does not mean any movement. It means movement in the same direction. If movements are to unite for broader change, they need to identify their commonalities and hammer out their differences. Only then can they articulate a common, positive vision – that pulls their work forward like a magnet, and draws society with them.
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