https://commonslibrary.org/the-four-roles-of-social-activism/

The Four Roles of Social Activism by Bill Moyer

earn about the 4 different roles activists need to play in order to create social change: citizen, rebel, change agent & reformer. This comes from Bill Moyer’s Movement Action Plan which defines the different stages and roles in social movements.

The following excerpt from Doing Democracy: The MAP Model for Organizing Social Movements introduces the crucial four roles required for social movement success. Here is a pdf handout The Four Roles of Social Activism Handout by the Commons Library.

Citizen

Effective

• Promotes positive national values, principles, symbols, eg democracy, freedom, justice, nonviolence
• Normal citizen
• Grounded in center of society
• Promotes active citizen-based society where citizens act with disinterest to assure the common good
• The active citizen is the source of legitimate political power
• Acts on “confirmatory basis” concept
• Examples: King and Mandela

Ineffective

• Naïve citizen: Believes the ‘official policies’ and does not realize that the powerholders and institutions serve special elite interests at the expense of the majority and the common good

OR

• Super-patriot: Gives automatic obedience to powerholders and the country

Reformer

Effective

• Parliamentary: Uses official mainstream system and institutions, eg courts, legislature, city hall, corporations to get the movement’s goals, values, alternatives adopted into official laws, policies and conventional wisdom
• Uses a variety of means: lobbying, lawsuits, referenda, rallies, candidates etc
• Professional Opposition Organizations (POOs) are the key movement agencies
• Watchdogs successes to assure enforcement, expand success, and protect against backlash.
• POOs nurture and support grassroots

Ineffective

• Dominator/patriarchal model of organizational structure and leadership
• Organizational maintenance over movement needs
• Dominator style undermines movement democracy and disempowers grassroots
• “Realistic Politics”: Promotes minor reforms rather than social changes
• Co-optation: POO staff identify more with official powerholders than with movement’s grassroots

Rebel

Effective

• Protest: Says NO! to violations of positive, widely held values
• Nonviolent direct action and attitude; demonstrations, rallies, and marches including civil disobedience
• Target: Powerholders and their institutions eg government, corporations
• Puts issue and policies in public spotlight and on society’s agenda
• Actions have strategy and tactics
• Empowered, exciting, courageous, risky, center of public attention
• Holds relative, not absolute, truth

Ineffective

• Authoritarian anti-authoritarian
• Anti-American, anti-authority, anti-organization structures and rules
• Self-identifies as militant radical, a lonely voice on society’s fringe
• Any means necessary: disruptive tactics and violence to property and people
• Tactics without realistic strategy
• Isolated from grassroots mass-base
• Victim behavior: Angry, dogmatic, aggressive, powerless
• Ideological totalism: Holds absolute truth and moral, political superiority
• Strident, arrogant, egocentric; self needs before movement needs
• Irony of negative rebel: Negative rebel similar to agent provocateur

Change Agent

Effective

• Organizes People Power and the Engaged Citizenry, creating participatory democracy for the common good
• Educates and involves majority of citizens and whole society on the issue
• Involves pre-existing mass-based grassroots organizations, networks, coalitions, and activists on the issue
• Promote strategies and tactics for waging long-term social movement.
• Creates and supports grassroots activism and organizations for the long term
• Puts issue on society’s political agenda
• Counters new powerholder strategies
• Promote alternatives
• Promotes paradigm shift

Ineffective

• Too utopian: Promote visions of perfectionistic alternatives in isolation from practical political and social action
• Promote only minor reform
• Movement leadership and organizations based on patriarchy and control rather than participatory democracy
• Tunnel vision: advocates single issue
• Ignores personal issues and needs of activists
• Unconnected to social and political social change and paradigm shift