PETA and USAS are two organizations dedicated to social change that have employed dramatically different organizational structures. Comparing the structures sheds light on how effective social organization can occur, and demonstrates the power of history to shape the success of efforts to change society. I argue that centralized organizations are inherently limited because they have difficulty employing the agressive, novel, and effective collective tactics that have aided successful social movements in the past.
Cross posted from animalblawg.com
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) was founded in 1980 by Ingrid Newkirk and Alex Pacheco. Pacheco was a student at George Washington University, and he volunteered to work in a primate research laboratory to observe the animals’ treatment. He and Newkirk became famous when they spearheaded a criminal investigation against the researcher’s cruel treatment of the animals. The case received a great deal of media attention, and the animal advoctes had an unprecedented level of success, particularly during the early phases of the litigation. The attention garnered by the case provided a platform for Pacheco and Newkirk’s new organization, PETA, to gain national recognition.
United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) began in 1997-98, as a collaboration between a number of existing local student activist organizations. News reports during the mid-1990s about Nike sweatshops spurred the simultaneous formation of a number of student efforts (at UNC-Chapel Hill, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin - Madison, among others) to eliminate sweatshop labor from university apparel. "In the summer of 1997, interns at UNITE! designed the first organizing manual for this campaign and brought the idea to Union Summer participants and campus labor activists around the country." The next year, student activists from about thirty schools held a conference and formed USAS to function as an informal coalition to help coordinate campus organizing.
Since then, both organizations have grown dramatically. PETA now has a massive budget, numerous successful campaigns, and national prominence; USAS now includes hundreds of universities, a powerful international labor standards body (the Workers Rights Convention), and many successful living wage campaigns. However, the growth patterns, tactics, and organization of the two groups have differed dramatically. In many ways, these can be seen as continuations of the processes that formed the groups originally.
Throughout its existence, PETA has remained a centralized, top-down, issue-advocacy and fundraising organization. There are no local chapters and no grassroots affiliates. The founders continue to guide the organization, and in some ways PETA seems to be a very personality-driven organization.
USAS, on the other hand, has retained its decentralized and egalitarian structure. "Leadership" and staff are minimal, and rotate frequently.
While both organizations have had success with their models, the key difference is in the trajectory and ultimate social outcome that can be expected. At this point, PETA has very little capacity for growth. Even if it becomes a more powerful organization (say, AARP-level powerful), its tactical resources will be limited to standard interest group politics and isolated individual direct actions. It is hard to imagine PETA becoming a powerful social movement capable of fundamental change comparable to civil rights in the 1960s and labor in the 1930s. Fundamental restructuring would be required. USAS, on the other hand, has tremendous room to grow and tactical versatility because it is a truly grassroots effort. Even with a small staff, it has already demonstrated the ability (through the Workers Rights Consortium) to engage in standard political efforts, but it also has the ability to exert tremendous collective pressure through strikes, boycotts, sit-downs, sit-ins, etc. It is not hard to imagine that USAS might one day be seen as the SNCC of worker's rights for its role in the possible resurgence of labor activism in the early 21st century.
While this exploration is necessarily oversimplified, I think it is clear that PETA has adopted the wrong strategy; money and centralized organizing are inadequate to build a movement capable of the kind of radical change PETA envisions.
I think it's very important to understand the history and structure of social change if you're interested in making the world a better place. I recently read James Jasper's The Art of Moral Protest, and found it very interesting. (note that both USAS and PETA are post-citizenship movements!) My future explorations of this subject will use Jasper's book, as well as Tilly, Tarrow, and McAdam's Dynamics of Contention, as a lens to comment on Gary Francione's Rain Without Thunder and Peter Singer's Ethics into Action. Look for these discussions in future posts at animalblawg.
Edit:
Just to be clear, this diary is about the argument:
centralized organizations are inherently limited because they have difficulty employing the agressive, novel, and effective collective tactics that have aided successful social movements in the past.
Please focus comments upon that thesis.