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We live in an age of protest.
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On campuses and public squares,
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on streets and social media,
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protesters around the world are challenging the status quo.
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Protest can thrust issues onto the national or global agenda,
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it can force out tyrants,
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it can activate people who have long been on the sidelines of civic life.
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While protest is often necessary, is it sufficient?
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Consider the Arab Spring.
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All across the Middle East,
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citizen protesters were able to topple dictators.
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Afterwards, though,
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the vacuum was too often filled by the most militant and violent.
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Protest can generate lasting positive change
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when it's followed by an equally passionate effort
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to mobilize voters,
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to cast ballots,
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to understand government,
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and to make it more inclusive.
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So here are three core strategies for peacefully turning awareness into action
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and protest into durable political power.
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First, expand the frame of the possible,
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second, choose a defining fight,
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and third, find an early win.
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Let's start with expanding the frame of the possible.
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How often have you heard in response to a policy idea,
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"That's just never going to happen"?
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When you hear someone say that,
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they're trying to define the boundaries of your civic imagination.
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The powerful citizen works to push those boundaries outward,
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to ask what if -
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what if it were possible?
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What if enough forms of power -
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people, power, ideas, money, social norms -
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were aligned to make it happen?
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Simply asking that question
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and not taking as given all the givens of conventional politics
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is the first step in converting protest to power.
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But this requires concreteness about what it would look like to have, say,
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a radically smaller national government,
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or, by contrast, a big single-payer healthcare system,
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a way to hold corporations accountable for their misdeeds,
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or, instead, a way to free them from onerous regulations.
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This brings us to the second strategy, choosing a defining fight.
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All politics is about contrasts.
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Few of us think about civic life in the abstract.
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We think about things in relief compared to something else.
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Powerful citizens set the terms of that contrast.
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This doesn't mean being uncivil.
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It simply means thinking about a debate you want to have on your terms
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over an issue that captures the essence of the change you want.
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This is what the activists pushing for a $15 minimum wage in the U.S. have done.
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They don't pretend that $15 by itself can fix inequality,
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but with this ambitious and contentious goal,
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which they achieved first in Seattle and then beyond,
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they have forced a bigger debate about economic justice and prosperity.
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They've expanded the frame of the possible, strategy one,
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and created a sharp emblematic contrast, strategy two.
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The third key strategy, then, is to seek and achieve an early win.
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An early win, even if it's not as ambitious as the ultimate goal,
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creates momentum,
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which changes what people think is possible.
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The solidarity movement,
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which organized workers in Cold War Poland emerged just this way,
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first, with local shipyard strikes in 1980 that forced concessions,
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then, over the next decade,
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a nationwide effort that ultimately helped topple
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Poland's Communist government.
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Getting early wins sets in motion a positive feedback loop,
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a contagion, a belief, a motivation.
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It requires pressuring policymakers,
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using the media to change narrative,
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making arguments in public,
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persuading skeptical neighbors one by one by one.
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None of this is as sexy as a protest,
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but this is the history of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement,
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of Indian Independence,
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of Czech self-determination.
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Not the single sudden triumph,
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but the long, slow slog.
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You don't have to be anyone special to be part of this grind,
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to expand the frame of the possible,
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to pick a defining fight,
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or to secure an early win.
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You just have to be a participant and to live like a citizen.
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The spirit of protest is powerful.
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So is showing up after the protest.
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You can be the co-creator of what comes next.