Now this is what a good protest looks like!

I’ve been among the people who criticize Occupy Wall Street for poor tactics, although I think their goals are overall good. By way of contrast, I want to put forth the local We Do campaign:

This campaign is very new, to be sure, but it has, AFAICT, the hallmarks of an excellent protest:

  1. It has a specific goal: legal same-sex marriages in North Carolina.
  2. It takes advantage of middle-class members of its constituency to promote the broadest possible appeal.
  3. It’s well-planned, with specific leaders.
  4. It’s media-friendly.
  5. The civil disobedience involved is carefully chosen to highlight the injustice of the current law.
  6. Religious leaders are actively encouraged to participate, again to symbolize the inherent justice of their claim.

I’m not at all opposed to protests; I think they’re grand, when correctly done. I’m not at all saying that protests must be loveless, joyless affairs; these folks are laughing and ferchrissakes trying to get married. I’m saying that a movement, in order to make a difference, needs to be well-directed, thoughtful, and able to take a clear moral high road.

Here’s the We Do Campaign’s website if you want more information about what they’re doing; I know that the blurb above was pretty short.

I suspect this campaign will be uncontroversial around here–rather than debating its merits, I’m interested in whether folks agree with me that it has several tactical advantages over OWS, and that if OWS could conduct itself similarly, it’d have greater chances of meeting success.

Full disclosure: I went to school with the We Do Campaign’s founder, and didn’t so much have a crush on her as existed in total awe of her awesomeness.

What’s either protest’s causal mechanism for influencing policy?

Jeez, you’d think if there were one place you could get gay-married it would be Buncombe County!

There’s an anti-gay-marriage amendment coming up for a vote in NC. This protest might influence that vote. It also might generate court cases. It also might, by arranging the issues in stark, easily-understood moral terms, influence enough legislators to effect a change in policy, over time.

So there is an anti-gay-marriage amendment up for a vote even though gay marriage is not currently legal?

You know how it works: those who are anti-marriage equality have seen marriage equality upheld by the courts in other states due to suitable vague language in the lawbooks, so there is a movement to specifically ban it and remove any chance that the law might be (as they see it) misinterpreted.

Yep. It’s pretty hard to read it as anything other than a red-meat-to-the-faithful move on the part of NC’s first Republican legislature in something like a century. But folks like my friends who, as a lesbian couple, are actually having to have one person sue the other in order to obtain shared custody of their son–they’re gonna be hurt by some of the amendment’s implications, inasmuch as it’ll make their family life that much more legally perilous.

That doesn’t always work. Just ask California!

I agree that this is a great campaign. In Iowa, couples went to the Registrar to get married and were denied, so they went the lawsuit route. It didn’t draw as big of a crowd, but I like the organization, clean message, and PR this group is doing.

Best of luck to them! <3