What is a Movement?

Movements - An Undivided Life

What is a Movement?

A Movement comes about when an individual recognizes and questions a wrong, a fault, or a premise about an institution or organization. Movements are about CHANGE. Movements can occur only when there exists resistance to CHANGE in institutions or organizations.

Previous and current Movements have been the result of resistance to the Vietnam War, resistance to civil rights, resistance to woman's equality, resistance to democracy, resistance to gay marriage, resistance to taxes without representation, resistance to tyranny, and resistance to the King of England.

Movements are ever changing and evolving, they begin with an inner conflict and unwillingness to continue to live divided. An individual's recognition that a wrong has been and continues to be perpetrated on those unable or unwilling to defend themselves, marks the potential beginning of a movement.

The following is taken from "The Courage to Teach" by Parker J. Palmer.

Four Steps in a Movement

Stage 1. - Isolated individuals make an inward decision to live "divided no more" finding a center for their lives outside of institutions.
Stage 2. - These individuals begin to discover one another and form communities of congruence that offer mutual support and opportunities to develop a shared vision.
Stage 3. - These communities start going public, learning to convert their private concerns into the public issues they are and receiving vital critiques in the process.
Stage 4. - A system of alternative rewards emerges to sustain the movement's vision and to put pressure for change on the standard institutional reward system.

Political change occurs when enough people decide to join the movement. These people must believe in the movement.