The Battle for Official Recognition

This essay is a part of the Plan for Action essay series.

By the time there is a revolution, there was already an evolution.

The revolution is merely the finalization of a change that has already taken place.

    It is tempting to dismiss changes of names or adoptions of codes of conduct with SJW content as unimportant, but regarding the Plan for Action, we have to recognize these symbolic moves as important in the larger battle for official recognition. Once an official recommendation is in place, a number of things start to work in favor of those who put it there:

 > Institutional funds are directed toward implementing the recommendation.

 > In education, a recommended product is taught over others, and so the students become salesmen.

 > Anything contrary to the recommendation can be targeted for exclusion.

    This is, I believe, one of the main ways the SJW crowd was able to gain its influence. Gaining official recognition requires relatively few people, so long as those people are able to consistently show up to club and board meetings, and so long as they play nice until they gain their official position.

Where recognition happens

    Official recognition happens in any organization, and the impact of it depends on the size of said organizations. It might be as simple as a local club where people pay 20 bucks a year in dues, it could be a regional or state association of professionals, or it could be a university or government.

    In all of these organizations, there are going to be positions, committees, elections, and meeting times when someone either becomes the official, or can influence an official to decide one way or another. Again, it could be something as simple as a scholarship fund deciding how to give out scholarships, or it could be a curriculum board deciding on what students learn.

Getting Recognized

    One serious path to activism is to pick your field, and then write down every such location and date. Then you arrange your schedule to be at as many of these gatherings as possible. Your main goal is to be helpful. Volunteer for whatever you can, do it to maximum quality, and use the favor you win to meet more people. Eventually you will see the path to being able to pitch your idea.

    And when pitching, we are not necessarily looking to say "you have to change everything all at once," but we might instead start with "we have a new way of doing things, and we want it to be recognized as one of the solutions." Or, "excluding actual contributors has hurt this organization, and we represent those hurt. We don't want to leave, but we will leave if you don't stop playing the 'get woke go broke' game." The change has to move the needle, but do expect this to be incremental for a long time, only getting a little of what you asked. The sudden lurch forward is at the end, after many small victories.

Competing Institutions

    In the Competing Institution Strategy I talked about going around some institutions by creating your own. If so, why bother with official recognition?

    The reason why is, for as long as possible you want your institution to either be left alone to grow, or if you are up against another institution, you will want other institutions on your side. If you look at the BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) movement for example, you see this strategy in place. One company may not care about a political issue, but if that company loses an investor, vendor, or major customer over that issue, they can be strongarmed into compliance. And "strongarm" here means, the company must hire some activists, who will use company resources to start implementing their programs. This allows a tiny number of activists to have tremendous reach.

    We must learn from the activists who have done this effectively, if we want to have any chance of successfully fighting back. Excluding SJWs from influence is a victory, of course, but we want to go a step farther. I think that decentralization, open source, and moving to voluntary standards and localism will both reduce the power of the SJW and the technocrat, as well as provide built-in resistance should they try to build centralized institutions again.