Major Social Transformation Is a Lot Closer Than You May Realize -- How Do We Finish the Job?

[Jackpine Radical]

10. Bill Moyer (not, incidentally, to be confused with Bill Moyers, who is still alive) is really worth

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/moyermap.html

The Movement Action Plan:
A Strategic Framework Describing The
Eight Stages of Successful Social Movements

The United States anti-nuclear energy movement was launched in the Spring of 1977, when 1,414 Clamshell Alliance activists occupied the Seabrook nuclear power site and spent the next 12 days in jail. During those two weeks, nuclear energy became a worldwide public issue as the mass media spotlight focused on the activists locked in armories throughout New Hampshire. Support demonstrations popped up across the United States, and in the following months hundreds of new grassroots anti-nuclear energy direct action groups started.

The Clamshell Alliance was considered a prototype of the new movement. Activists throughout the country idealized the accomplishments of the Clamshell activists. They had created a new nationwide uprising against nuclear energy, the powerful nuclear energy industry, and the national government's goal (set by "Operation Independence&quot of 1,000 nuclear power plants by the turn of the century. Until then nuclear power had the public's approval and had not been a social issue. We wondered howon Earth they did it. I eagerly looked forward to attending the strategy conference in February, 1978, with 45 Clamshell organizers from around New England.

That Friday night, I expected to meet a spirited, upbeat group that was proud of its accomplishments. I was shocked when the Clamshell activists arrived with heads bowed, dispirited, and depressed, saying their efforts had been in vain. After two years of hard effort, the Seabrook nuclear power plant was still being constructed, and Operation Independence was still going forward. Some people reported massive burnout and dropout; others spoke of the need for increased militant action, even violent guerilla actions. None believed they could rally even a fraction of the thousands of people they thought would be necessary to stop nuclear energy through the upcoming civil disobedience blockade at Seabrook in the Spring.