Title: How Protests Become Successful Social Movements
Headings: How Protests Become Successful Social Movements
Economics & Society
How Protests Become Successful Social Movements
Step 1: Define the change you want to see
Step 2: Shift the spectrum of allies
Step 3: Identify the pillars of power
Step 4: Seek to attract, not to overpower
Step 5: Build a plan to survive victory

Content: Colonel John Boyd, the military reformer who helped change the way the Pentagon functions, pursued a similar path, first preparing briefings for junior officers, and then congressional staffers, and then elected officials, and finally the top generals. The path to victory is not to create a coalition through awkward comprises, but rather to expound on your values with such clarity that you persuade others to join your cause. Empires fall not because people oppose them, but because they find their support eroded. To win, you need to convince others to defect. Step 3: Identify the pillars of power
While it is crucial to recruit allies from up and down the spectrum of support, it is also important to identify the institutions that have the power to implement the change you seek. These “pillars of power” can be the police, the media, the education system, government agencies, or other organizations. As important as popular support is to a movement, without institutional support, little is likely to change. In Serbia, the revolutionary group Otpor saw arrests not merely as an act of defiance, but as an opportunity to build positive relations with the police. In fact, protesters were trained to defend officers from any provocation within their own ranks.