Models for Grassroots Social Movements

In my politics class, we are attempting to form an environment committee in our school so we can enact environmental reforms around the school. The problem is a lot of our ideas are controversial, especially considering we are a rural school and a lot of people care more about their pick-up trucks than parts per million CO2. What we want to do is not simply force change upon our peers but to get them to buy into it. We want our peers to demand environmental action. So our job is to research Grassroots movements. From what we've read, its necessary to have passionate people on the bottom, and strong, supportive leadership on the top (the sandwich theory). So clearly education is needed to get the students to be passionate and demand environmental change. And maybe the questions been answered on its own, but there are few other places better suited for talking about grassroots movements. What do you guys think? What can we do in our school? Have you seen any cool models for grassroots social movements? The best thing I can think of right now is a town-hall model.

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Permalink Reply by Nicholas on December 1, 2009 at 8:46pm

You could do what were doing in my school, start a student government that can deal with that sort of thing, since it's made of students we would have much more influence then just some old crusty teacher talking in the auditorium or the intercom, right? You guys could maybe take some posters and put it up, get people excited about wanting to change the way things are around there, and do their part to make change! -Nick from New England

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Permalink Reply by Trevor Dowling on December 1, 2009 at 9:21pm

Hey Nick, thanks for the suggestions. Yeah we have a student government, which I'm actually the head of, still it is hard to get the rest of the student government on board, and also the rest of the student body. So, I'm planning to put together an environment committee to help drum up support and excitement for out ideas. Its actually incredible the response we've gotten on all levels. We have a lot of interested students, dedicated teachers, and even the administration is on board. Its funny because the student government is the most resistant. One of our ideas is charging a yearly parking fee to encourage alternative transportation and the Student government is more concerned about remaining popular with the students than doing something important which is weird because a lot of students seem to back the idea. I guess its always fear of trying new things that stops people.

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Permalink Reply by Nicholas on December 15, 2009 at 10:18pm

well I have a student government meeting tommarow, first meeting, this should be interesting to see how well they adapt to new ideas

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Permalink Reply by Nicholas on December 29, 2009 at 9:39pm

ok btw this is a rant kind of

/start rant/
Gahh why does this always seem to wwith things like this, the student government for my school was my idea, my old social studies teacher stepped down from leading the movement, which left just the other teacher behind in charge, however since he was the main driving force who got things done, and the other teacher more or less organized the events ect. and we are divided between two buildings, her in one, him in the other, there was no way this could work well because she can't control two groups in seperate buildings with any certian amount of success at it. On top of this, there doesn't seem to be that much of a student backing behind it, which I think is because of the fact we didn't really "advertise" it as something fun, we had the crusty old secretary say "Do you want to be part of a fun exciting new after-school program?! Then come to room 416 after school on wednesday for more information!" Only 5 students showed up ( 6 including me ) to the meeting. THE BOTTOM LINE it seems that programs like this can never stay together, and something always happens, that seems to be why there are no changes at all, nothing is ever done, it's horrible, there needs to be some way I can get this back going again, I WILL find a way to get my social studies teacher back into the program, he said that he respects and likes me enough that I could convince him to get back into the student government.

/endrant
just thought I'd throw this out there, BTW I may just put this in another thread, idk though, also the fact that my local street team (Providence, RI) doesn't do a damned thing at all, I want to start one in my town.

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Permalink Reply by Trevor Dowling on December 30, 2009 at 5:38pm

For student governments to be successful you have to make it legitimate. You need to organize school-wide elections to elect Executives (president and vice, or co-presidents, secretary, treasurer) and Representatives from each grade. You also need to have a written constitution and you need to have an effective succession process so when you and your peers leave the student government will continue.

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Permalink Reply by Nicholas on January 3, 2010 at 11:47pm

Exactly, we were going to do that, but the problem is it all seems to fall apart before it can even get started! We were on out way to being able to do everything we needed to get this running, elect the right people, ect but something always seems to go wrong/prevent us from venturing forth with our project :(

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Permalink Reply by Trevor Dowling on January 5, 2010 at 5:16pm

How long have you been doing this? Because it definitely has to be at least a two year project. This year you have to get support from your administration to run school-wide elections, so that you can run them next year. It will take a lot of organization to begin with but once you have a dedicated staff and administration it will become a self-sustaining project that will carry over year by year.

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Permalink Reply by Nicholas on January 6, 2010 at 7:39am

it has been about two years in a few weeks the problem is that there isn't any interest by the students, and the leader of the project stepped down, without him nothing CAN be done to ask the administration to be allowed elections ect, anyway next year I'll be in the high school, so I won't be able to back it up as fully as I'd like.