| Chapter : | Introduction |
environmental-justice values, and underrepresented populations were missing from SIU actions across the country. The authors suggest that collaborations with faith-based organizations might offer a social network that could be mobilized to advocate for justice in the climate movement.
Finally, chapter 7, “A Social Movements Success Story? Assessing a Self-Identified Movement for Climate Action,” applies an organizational lens to the same question explored in chapter 3 and comes to a somewhat different conclusion. The authors tackle the question of whether efforts to accomplish the ultimate organizational challenge—building a movement—were successful. They use a theoretical framework of the persuasive functions of movements developed by Stewart, Smith, and Denton (2007) to characterize SIU, situate SIU in ongoing efforts to address climate change, and discuss what types of mobilization will be necessary to address climate change.
Practices of Citizenship
In the final section, each of the chapters highlights a new way to practice citizenship in the twenty-first century. Examining the movement “cookbook” that national organizers offered potential grassroots organizers, chapter 8, “New Media, New Movement?” moves beyond the previous chapters on organizing to focus on how new media technologies, in particular, enabled and constrained action. Shifting from how local actions facilitate citizen action, this chapter considers the potential for relying on new media technologies to organize and practice activism. The analysis demonstrates that new media enabled a shift to local power that opened up the ways that individuals could participate in climate action.
Chapter 9, “Step It Up and Image Politics in the Pacific Northwest” applies the theory of image events—spectacles designed to gain media attention and disseminate visual messages (DeLuca 1999)—to examine actions in the Pacific Northwest. Citing research that creating image events to get media attention is an effective means of changing dominant discourse, this chapter offers practical lessons on how organizers might use image events effectively through the possibilities and challenges exemplified by SIU actions.