This original blog by Jane Anne Morris was published on her website, DemocracyThemePar
There are two kinds of activist groups, equally (in)effective. Which are you? And why?
Pop-up activists tend their topiary and anguish over bathroom fixtures until… a Big Bad Issue pops up and invigorates them.
Permanent Waves — the second kind of activist group — inhabit longstanding, institutionalized power zip codes nestled among other shrubbery in the nonprofit landscape.
Pop-ups are amateurs. Though their acute focused activism seldom succumbs to mission statement mission creep, they are often denigrated as single-issue groups by people who have forgotten that many citizen activists got startled (sic) and awakened by a single issue.
Permanent Waves are pros. Not just in the sense that they “know the ropes,” but that they keep stables of well connected, highly credentialed, (well-paid) staff, who are invested in professional entanglements, hoary institutions, and relationships with funders. Mission creep often leads them to the nowhere land of Activism Without Borders (aka “public education”), which unfortunately, tends to lack not only borders, but focus, strategy, and effectiveness as well. But those Permanent Wavers put out a great magazine. (A must for the coffee table.)
In their initial naivete, the Pop-ups often think that the Permanent Waves are there to help them, a notion quickly enough dispensed with after First Contact. The Permanent Waves, whose strategies and lifestyles most resemble those of other corporate lobbyists, generally find the Pop-ups to be unpredictable, off-script, and liable to fly off the handle or otherwise misbehave in public. These Pop-up traits can, however, be overlooked long enough to recruit potential members for the Permanent Wave groups. (Then these new members can get the magazine, too.) MORE…