On The Big March

From: "Zwarich" (arm@americanrm.org)
Subject: Re: [MPC] Mainstream Press is Reporting it: Anti-War MajorityDate September 24, 2005 12:20.47PM
Considering 'Mass Actions' in the Cold, Hard Light of 'Scientific' Reality

Thanks to Mark H for posting his thoughts (copied entirely below) in anticipation of today's events. I hoped that a constructive consideration of Mark's comments might be of interest to folks on other list-serves that are, like MPC, keenly focused around an anti-war perspective.

It is early Saturday morning and I am eager for the sun to rise. It's already 7:30 in DC, and I'm imagining the nervous anticipation among the many who worked so long and so hard to make this day unfold in DC according to their will.

I thought of going. I have in-laws I could bunk-up with about an hour out of DC. But the gas alone would cost almost $300, and even the bus is what, $100 or so? Four days solid sitting on a bus, (it's right at 48 solid hours round trip), would mean another $50 to $100 eating highway fast food.

I've thought of going to each of the seven or eight (I've lost the exact count) 'major national mass actions' we've 'held' now since the first in October 2002. I attended three of them, two in NY and one in DC, because they roughly coincided with my own travel schedule, but I've passed on the others, and tried to learn what I can from the experience by avidly sampling the effects that our 'mass actions' have on the grass roots of the citizenry, the 'mainstream citizenry', out here in the day to day 'real world'.

My experience has been that our 'mass actions' are virtually ignored by the mainstream media, and amount to distressingly little more than a large 'celebration among the choir'. Since the definition of these media as 'mainstream' derives from the fact that they are the primary conduit to the attention of the mainstream of the general citizenry, if our 'mass actions' are ignored by the mainstream media, they are not likely to make much of an impression on the mainstream consciousness.

But THIS TIME might be different. Sheehan's efforts were spectacularly successful in forcing the media to point their cameras and microphones at her. Maybe that will carry over. We'll see. I'm excited to find out, and wish the sun would rise and the day would unfold.

I remain concerned, however, that we often make the mistake, (as Mark seems to have made in his comments), of assuming that the powerful message that Sheehan has delivered to 'us', (to 'the choir'), in the 'underground', or 'independent', (or whatever we want to call it), Internet Press, has also been delivered to the people whose only impressions of Sheehan are those they get from mainstream media.

Sheehan accomplished a brilliant flanking maneuver and caught them up in their own game, ('hoist in their own petard' is an old expression that pertains here), but they not only absorbed the blow, they were already steadily and patiently using their power to communicate (The Means of Communication are the means of power) to turn the tables on Cindy, when Katrina hit. We 'had them where we want them' for a few brief days, but even so, they were already starting to play their skillful tune, through the media they own and control, when a 'new subject' came up to divert everyone's attention entirely.

We can rail all we want against their 'swift boat' tactics, but the truth is that they are very effective. (Another truth is that they are also sometimes true. Much of what the actual 'swift boat veterans' were saying about Kerry was actually true, and his disingenuous denials only emboldened the 'swift boaters' in their own sense of 'righteousness' in stretching the truth themselves). Another truth is that another 'new subject' ALWAYS comes along, and when you 'own the press', you control which stories 'get written', (and about what). (If only some celebrity would murder his wife again, they could go full bore into 'hog heaven' mode).

Mark cannot restrain himself from interpreting polls in a manner that is most advantageously flattering to his position. This is very counterproductive to his own cause. Any competent officer knows that to interpret intelligence in any manner except through the cold hard eyes of scientific skepticism is to invite disaster. Many an army has suffered severe loss (or even annihilation) because they interpreted information according to what they WANTED to hear, as opposed to considering it in the glaring light on no-nonsense reality.

Opinion polls are what they are. They give us a certain amount of information that is very useful in real but distinctly limited ways. We will be led astray in our assumptions unless we consider this poll information carefully. Mark's assumption, when he says that:

" Of course, don't hold your breath in terms of seeing any great coverage for the big protests tomorrow, but they are at least communicating that the populace as a whole has had it with the war. "

..he is making an unfounded claim that the 'mass demonstration' speaks for the percentage of the populace that he (falsely) interprets the polls to have reported that they "have had it with this war". This demonstrates a very poor understanding of the nature of polls. All that these polls tell us is that a certain percentage among a completely random sample of individuals who are interrupted from their daily life as 'Americans' to answer certain questions that the pollster has devised, answered those questions in the manner that the poll reports. Mark is representing that a majority have answered 'yes' when asked 'have you 'had it' with this war'? If you look at the specificity of the polls themselves, at the actual questions asked, you will see that this is not the case.

I have presented this argument in the past, and it is tiresome that we have to keep coming back to the same place over and over, but this is the result we have when we decline to discuss these subjects with any sincere purpose in order to build our own understanding. Rather than challenge each other to defend our arguments, in a reasoned exchange, we are inclined instead to ignore each other, and even to scold others for taking the time to present their thoughts via this powerful technology. Or else, of course, we are innclined to play our favorite game, and 'put down' people who say things we don't like. If we don't like the message, we attack the messenger, rather than de-construct the message with our own Resaon.

Anyway...I will watch eagerly today to gauge the impact of today's 'mass action'. With the stark fact in mind that even if each and every 100,000 attendees spent only $50 on this action, (I personally think $100 is more realistic, but let's say $50), that is $5 MILLION dollars per each and very 100,000 attendees. Say the organizers claim, (after the fact), that 600,000 attended. Well, if you assume, for the sake of analysis, that half, or 300,000 traveled some long distance to attend, (and spent $50 to do so), then this 'mass action' cost $15 MILLION dollars to stage, before we even talk about the organizational costs themselves. If you plug in $100 in travel expense per attendee who traveled, that is $30 MILLION dollars.

Whatever numbers you plug in, it is obvious that we are investing a huge degree of resources into these 'mass actions'.

Are they worth it? THAT's the most relevant question, and it is the VERY one that those who organize 'mass actions', (mass actions are their 'rice bowl', as it were), are most eager to ignore.

Whether or not 'mass actions' are 'worth their cost' is really not so easy to determine. If I were a polling company I could try to measure the efficacy of a 'mass action' by conducting a poll after the fact. (I wonder how much it costs to hire a polling company to run a national poll? Does anybody know?)

1000 is the 'magic number' in polling. 1000 is the sweet-spot of 'sample size'. Extensive experiments have been conducted (for decades) that have thoroughly shown that once you get near the 1000 sample size, increasing the sample size does not increase the accuracy of the poll. A poll of 20 people is MUCH more accurate than a poll of five, and a poll of 100 is much more accurate than one of 20, but when you get to 1000, a sample size of 10,000, or 10,000,000, is not appreciably more accurate in scientific terms. I could call 1000 American citizens at random and ask, 'What did you think of the big demonstration?'And the answers they had to choose from could be a) what demonstration?; b) it pissed me off c), I supported it, etc etc, and so on, and if I had an agenda, I coulds skew the poll by asking the 'right questions', (or asking them in the right way). I could ask other questions as well, such as, Did you think that the speakers at the rally reflected your point of view? Do you wish you could have attended? Did you think that most of the signs that you saw demonstrators carrying expressed how you feel about the war Etc? Etc? But THE most basic and important question would be, 'Were you even aware that the 'big demonstration' happened? a) yes, or b) no.

To sink tens of millions of dollars into a demonstration that would communicate a powerful message to tens of millions among the citizenry would, at some level, be worth it'. Say you spend $30 million, (which is a very realistic figure), and then by your poll you learn that you communicated with 30 million people. That might very well be 'worth it'. (A dollar a pop). But if that $30 million only reached 5 million with your message, that is $6 a pop. Is it still 'worth it'?

If we were to look at the field of 'mass communications' as a science, and apply what we know and can observe, to learn more, (which we will then apply to learn even more, which is how this thing called 'science' works), we could evaluate the efficacy of 'mass actions', compare them to the efficacy of say, 'signature ads in newspapers', or 'distribution of video through email', or 'TV advertising', or many other vehicles of communication we might think up. If we discovered that we could get better penetration per dollar, (access people's attention at $.10 a pop say), then we might think we are being foolish to continue to sink resources where they are doing little, or less, good.

Take a signature add for example. If we spend $25,000 to buy a full page in a paper that has a circulation of 350,000, our ad would have to be seen by 4167 people to match the $6 per pop of our theoretical analysis of our 'mass action' reaching 5 million people for $30 million. If our ad 'talks to' 25,000 people (out of the total circulation of 350,000), that matches the 'pop' of our mass action reaching 30 million for $30 million. One dollar a pop.

And so on...If an ad on the Super Bowl costs two million per minute, then we could buy 15 minutes with the $30 million we chose instead to invest in our 'mass action'. Hmmm... 15 minutes on the Super Bowl, (hefted carefully in one hand), compared with the impact we are going to get from today's 'mass action', (hefted in the other). Hmmm...

'Hefting' is not scientific sampling, of course, but common sense decrees that putting our message on a program that is watched by hundreds of millions of Americans is going to 'reach' a significant number of them. We could measure that number, compare it with our measurements of how many are going to be 'reached' by today's 'mass action', (for the same cost), and have some REAL information to use, rather than fantasmagoric rhetoric and wishful thinking. We could then use this 'real information' as the basis for our decisions and judgments about how and where we should spend our resources and time.

(Again, this is called 'science', and it is a method that has been used with much success, including by our opponents).

But we don't do that. We just do what we WANT to do, and bend the facts at our whim and capricious will to conform to what we WANT to believe. (Desire gloats as it proves yet again that Reason is no match for its power.

There is much with which I enthusiastically and wholeheartedly agree in Mark's analysis. When he says that:

" Our other task is one of getting to the roots. We need to make it as clear as we possibly can, to as many people as we possibly can, including all those within anti-war ranks, that the Iraq War is a symptom, not a disease. This is a matter of getting the populace to understand the nature of the situation. We need to be calling U.S. foreign policy by its rightful name: imperialism. We must work to facilitate a true paradigm shift, moving our country away in as thoroughgoing fashion as possible from the role of globaldominator."

....he is making a very eloquent statement of a message that I could not possibly agree with more enthusiastically. But he is giving us a message with no media through which to communicate it to the mainstream citizenry. A message with no media simply has no power. (My basic thesis here).

Rather than look at our predicament through the hard and calculatingly disciplined eyes of Reality, he would rather look at objective data, such as polling information, and bend it into an interpretation that is favorable to him, but is just NOT supported by actual facts.

There has simply been no indication yet that a majority of Americans are even aware enough of the real issues on the ground in Iraq to have arrived at any significant conclusion. Approximately half still believe that Hussein was behind 9/11, etc, etc....Americans simply do not like to hear about losing, and it is becoming more apparent that we are indeed losing. If the US captured bin Laden, and a new constitution was passed in Iraq, such a 'one two' punch would likely cause the polls to spike back in favor of the war. That is the nature of capricious public opinion. It was only just ast March that the purple fingers we saw at every angle had many people who had opposed the war saying, "maybe Bush was right".

Perhaps Mark's most powerful statement is that:

" Large demonstrations will help get attention, but we also need to work on creating a climate in which opinion leaders--clergy, academics, elected officials, labor activists, community leaders, etc.--will take principled anti-war stands. We must expand our grassroots organizing and bring more people into our ranks, and then mobilize them to go out and reach the people their lives touch. We need to encourage anti-war people to run for office at all levels, and especially to challenge those in Congress who support the war. We need to encourage candidates running for office to make unequivocal their opposition to the war, and to support withdrawal, not a "negotiate now" or a "set the date" position."

But here he is indulging himself in empty self-serving rhetoric with phrases like: 'expand our grassroots organizing', or 'mobilize (people) to go out and reach the people their lives touch'.

This is the same old tired, (long-tried and long-proven to be woefully ineffective), strategy of 'word of mouth', face to face, 'organizing'. The general population is highly and intensely focused on the most powerful Means of Communication that have ever existed, and our 'best idea' is to 'organize' people to attend our 'mass actions' that most people don't even know about after they happen, and then to talk to their friends and neighbors.

We gotta do better than that, guys. Believe me, if we expect to win, (as i absoluterly DO!), we just GOTTA do better than that. It's just that simple.
We've already been following Mark's 'program' since the sixties, folks. That's almost forty years, and all the while we've been doing this, we've watched the right wing grow in power. How has the right wing grown in power? By analyzing what works and what doesn't, and doing what works after discarding what doesn't. What do we do? We do what we WANT to do, with no attention paid to whether or not it is actually 'working'.

Anyway...I'm excited about this day. I am hopeful that Sheehan's success will be translated into more attention given to this 'action'. So I'll watch and see. How serious are these rumors of planned nvcd? (non-violent civil disobedience). That could be VERY interesting.

Let's watch and see. Let's report back tomorrow.
Zwarich

Mid-Missouri Peaceworks
Sent: Friday, September 23, 2005 6:21 PM
Subject: [MPC] Mainstream Press is Reporting it: Anti-War Majority

Hello friends,
As activists from all over the country converge on Washington, and communities everywhere are holding demonstrations in solidarity, at least some segments of the mainstream media are reporting what all the polls are saying, that opposition to the war is now a majority sentiment. I found the on-line post by Dan Froomkin and its links, sent by my friend Catherine, to be interesting and worth the read.
What may be as interesting as the content is the source, washingtonpost.com. The links are also all to very mainstream sources, USA Today, NYT and LA Times. The establishment press, which functioned as a servile stenographer for Bush and Company's war-justifying lies and fear mongering, is now, many tens of thousands of deaths later, whistling a different tune. Of course, don't hold your breath in terms of seeing any great coverage for the big protests tomorrow, but they are at least communicating that the populace as a whole has had it with the war. This, at least, is good.

While we still have many people to reach, the real challenge for us in the movement today is not simply convincing people to oppose the war. There are, rather, in my opinion, two critical tasks for the movement.

First we need to empower the majority sentiment so that we can actually get our government to abandon their failed imperial adventure in Iraq. This is no small task given that not only the vast majority of Republicans, but also very many of the so-called "opposition" Democrats who back the war and support its objectives.
Large demonstrations will help get attention, but we also need to work on creating a climate in which opinion leaders--clergy, academics, elected officials, labor activists, community leaders, etc.--will take principled anti-war stands. We must expand our grassroots organizing and bring more people into our ranks, and then mobilize them to go out and reach the people> their lives touch. We need to encourage anti-war people to run for office at all levels, and especially to challenge those in Congress who support the war. We need to encourage candidates running for office to make > unequivocal their opposition to the war, and to support withdrawal, not a "negotiate now" or a "set the date" position.

Our other task is one of getting to the roots. We need to make it as clear as we possibly can, to as many people as we possibly can, including all those within anti-war ranks, that the Iraq War is a symptom, not a disease. This is a matter of getting the populace to understand the nature of the situation. We need to be calling U.S. foreign policy by its rightful name: imperialism. We must work to facilitate a true paradigm shift, moving our country away in as thoroughgoing fashion as possible from the role of global dominator.

For many decades there has been a bipartisan consensus that it is an appropriate role for the United States to have global military hegemony, to maintain a vast network of military facilities on every continent, to station U.S. forces on every ocean, and in the skies everywhere. For far too long we've let our so-called leaders hoodwink us into worrying about a nascent WMD program somewhere in the less developed world, while virtually forgetting the existence of the vast, unrivaled arsenal in the hands of the Pentagon. Far too few people are asking why the United States, with 4.5 percent of the world's people, spends 48 percent of the world's military expenditures, or questions why our government is moving full speed ahead to weaponize space and dominate the so-called "high frontier."

It is essential for us in the movement to be asking these questions. The > NYT and Washington Post won't do it for us.
With prayers for all those in harm's way--those with a massive hurricanebearing down on them, as well as those facing the bombs and bullets--I wish you all well. I hope to see many of you who are here in mid-Missouri at the big Rally & March Saturday (1 p.m., Peace Park). I hope the rest of you are either on your way to Washington or hooking up with folks in your area to make some noise.
All the best,Mark Haim

Can You Marginalize a Majority?
By Dan Froomkin

804-C E. Broadway
Columbia, MO 65201
573-875-0539
E-mail: peacewks@coin.org
Web site: http://peaceworks.missouri.org/
"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism" --Thomas Jefferson