Randy
Shaw will be speaking at Powell's
on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard at
7:30 pm Wednesday, Sept. 22.
Bastard
Nation's third annual conference,
"Bastards on the
Boardwalk," will be held Oct.
8-10 in Atlantic City, N.J.
Most Portlanders have probably
never heard of Randy Shaw, but the
author's two books have strong Oregon
connections. One spawned a
revolution. The other chronicles a
corporate titan's downfall.
Shaw was the
inspiration behind the voter-approved
Ballot Measure 58, which (if it ever
gets out of court) will open birth
certificates to adult adoptees. His
1996 book, The Activist's Handbook,
is considered a bible of activism by
Bastard Nation. It's the
definitive book on running
grass-roots campaigns--a step-by-step
guide for legislative strategy,
ballot initiatives, direct action and
dealing with the media. Helen Hill,
chief petitioner of Measure 58, says
she was spurred to launch the
campaign after hearing Shaw speak in
1997.
In his new book, Reclaiming
America: Nike, Clean Air, and the New
National Activism, Shaw points to
Bastard Nation as a model of modern
activism--ballsy, organized and
wired--and to Nike as having been
brought to its public-relations knees
by a savvy grass-roots campaign.
Reporter Patty Wentz interviewed him
prior to his upcoming visit to
Portland.
Willamette Week:
Your new book is another call for
activism. Why did you single out
Nike?
Randy Shaw: The whole
purpose of the book is to show people
models of what can work. People too
easily give up and say they can't
fight big companies or big money in
government. Nike was the pinnacle--it
had the most positive image of any
corporation, and the success of the
campaign shows you can take on any
corporation and win.
In spite of Nike's
great advertising campaigns, the
company was ill-equipped to deal with
attacks against its carefully
cultivated image. Why?
A lot of what
happened during that campaign was
directly linked to Phil Knight's ego.
They could have doubled wages in
Indonesia and it wouldn't have made
any difference in their bottom line.
Nike could have been, and could still
be, a great hero. People would have
wanted to buy Nike because they're so
public-spirited. Instead,
Knight's ego got in the way. He
insisted everything was fine in these
factories even when there was
evidence to the contrary. It was as
if by raising wages he would have
given in to his critics. He just
wouldn't do it, and that hurt them.
You call the
campaign a success, and yet you
report that workers in Indonesia and
Vietnam are still not getting a
living wage. Where's the success?
The main impact of
the campaign has been to change
Americans' views on free trade. When
people think "free trade,"
they now think sweatshops, and they
oppose it. Also, public perception of
Nike is permanently changed. When
people talk about image problems,
Nike is now always used as an example
and they now represent the negative
side of the global economy. That's a
different symbol than they used to
be.
Let's talk about
Bastard Nation. No one had heard of
adoptees' rights, adoptees had never
been organized politically before,
yet these "bastards"
managed to win a ballot measure.
You've said that initiatives never
win the first time out.
It was amazing that
they pulled it off. It was an idea no
one had ever thought of, and they got
55 percent of the vote. This is a
group that didn't even exist before
1996. This puts them out in front of
so many other groups who think in
their first few years they have to go
slowly. They took an issue that
wasn't on the plate at all and won.
How did they do
it?
First of all, Bastard
Nation used the Internet to mobilize
people who weren't already organized.
Theoretically, that should be the
greatest strength of the Net, but I
haven't seen too much of it. Second,
they have no problem fusing Internet
activism with grass-roots activism.
Too often people think all they have
to do is monitor their electronic
mailing lists and dash off protest
e-mails, but they aren't willing to
stand on the street corner and pass
out literature.
In that respect, it
was enormously helpful with this new
issue to have a signature-drive
campaign. That meant 85,000 people
heard BN's side and signed the
petition.
In your book you
talk about how people are giving up
national battles and focusing on
local issues. Why's that?
People feel they
can't win nationally, that big money
always wins. There is a lot of
evidence of big money controlling
politics, but big money can be
overcome. In 1997, environmentalists
were able to mobilize nationally and
get stricter clean-air standards out
of Congress. The opposition spent $30
million in a four-month period and
they lost. Big money doesn't always
win, but it's guaranteed to win if
there is no local grass-roots
organizing.
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Willamette
Week | originally published September
22, 1999
|
