{"id":96013,"date":"2018-03-06T19:32:55","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T23:32:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=96013"},"modified":"2018-03-06T19:34:57","modified_gmt":"2018-03-06T23:34:57","slug":"guess-who-organized-the-parkland-student-anti-gun-activists-hint-it-wasnt-the-students-g-edward-griffin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=96013","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Guess Who Organized The Parkland Student Anti-Gun Activists? Hint: It Wasn\u2019t The Students.&#8221; &#8212; G. Edward Griffin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--more--><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Screen-Shot-2018-03-06-at-6.30.38-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-96014\" src=\"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Screen-Shot-2018-03-06-at-6.30.38-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"650\" height=\"441\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Screen-Shot-2018-03-06-at-6.30.38-PM.png 730w, https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Screen-Shot-2018-03-06-at-6.30.38-PM-300x203.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h2>Why Did It Take Two Weeks To Discover Parkland Students\u2019 Astroturfing?<\/h2>\n<p><em>The response was professionalized. That\u2019s not surprising, because this is what organization that gets results actually looks like. It\u2019s not a bunch of magical kids in somebody\u2019s living room.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>By David Hines<br \/>\nThe FEDERALIST<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCan you believe these kids?\u201d It\u2019s been a recurring theme of the coverage of the Parkland school shooting: the remarkable effectiveness of the high school students who created a gun control organization in the wake of the massacre. In seemingly no time, the magical kids had organized events ranging from a national march to a mass school walkout, and they\u2019d brought in a million dollars in donations from Oprah Winfrey and George Clooney.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Miami Herald<\/em>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.miamiherald.com\/news\/local\/education\/article201678544.html\">credited their success<\/a>\u00a0to the school\u2019s stellar debate program. The\u00a0<em>Wall Street Journal\u00a0<\/em>said it was because they were born online, and organizing was instinctive.<span style=\"font-size: 12px;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>On February 28, BuzzFeed came out with the actual story: Rep. Debbie Wassermann Schultz aiding in the lobbying in Tallahassee, a teacher\u2019s union organizing the buses that got the kids there, Michael Bloomberg\u2019s groups and the Women\u2019s March working on the upcoming March For Our Lives, MoveOn.org doing social media promotion and (potentially) march logistics, and training for student activists provided by federally funded Planned Parenthood.<\/p>\n<p>The president of the American Federation of Teachers\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/maryanngeorgantopoulos\/parkland-teens-organization?utm_term=.mqvB1QWj3q#.qsED9nodM5\">told BuzzFeed<\/a>\u00a0they\u2019re also behind the national school walkout, which journalists had previously assured the public was the sole work of a teenager. (I\u2019d thought teachers were supposed to get kids\u00a0<em>into<\/em>\u00a0school, but maybe that\u2019s just me.)<\/p>\n<p>In other words, the response was professionalized. That\u2019s not surprising, because this is what organization that gets results actually looks like. It\u2019s not a bunch of magical kids in somebody\u2019s living room. Nor is it surprising that the professionalization happened right off the bat. Broward County\u2019s teacher\u2019s union is militant, and Rep. Ted Lieu stated on Twitter that his family knows Parkland student activist David Hogg\u2019s family, so there were plenty of opportunities for grown-ups with resources and skills to connect the kids.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">THIS CONSPIRACY THEORY IS INSANE. Our kids know David Hogg. My wife and I know his mom, who taught at our kids&#39; elementary school before they moved to Florida. Although David is very articulate, he is not a crisis actor. <\/p>\n<p>He is a student who lost 17 of his classmates to bullets. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/V9gLgbbdpk\">https:\/\/t.co\/V9gLgbbdpk<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/tedlieu\/status\/966355177946071042?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 21, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s before you get to whether any of them had been involved in the Women\u2019s March. According to BuzzFeed, Wassermann Schultz was running on day two.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s striking about all this isn\u2019t the organization. If you start reading books about organizing, it\u2019s clear how it all works. But\u00a0<em>no journalist covering the story wrote about this stuff for two weeks<\/em>. Instead, every story was about the Parkland kids being magically effective.<\/p>\n<p>On Twitter, I lost track of the number of bluechecks rhapsodizing over how effective the kids\u2019 organizational instincts were. But organizing isn\u2019t instinctive. It\u2019s skilled work; you have to learn how to do it, and it takes really a lot of people. You don\u2019t just get a few magical kids who\u2019re amazing and naturally good at it.<\/p>\n<p>The real tip-off should have been the $500,000 donations from Winfrey and Clooney. Big celebrities don\u2019t give huge money to strangers on a whim. Somebody who knows Winfrey and Clooney called them and asked. But the press\u2019s response was to be ever more impressed with the kids.<\/p>\n<p>For two weeks, journalists abjectly failed in their jobs, which is to tell the public what\u2019s going on. And any of them who had any familiarity with organizing campaigns absolutely knew. Matt Pearce, of the\u00a0<em>Los Angeles Times<\/em>, would have been ideally placed to write an excellent article: not only is he an organizer for the\u00a0<em>Times\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0union, he moderated a panel on leftist activism for the LA Times Book Festival and has the appropriate connections in organizing. Instead, he\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/nation\/la-na-student-protests-20180220-story.html\">wrote about a school walkout<\/a>, not what was behind it. (In\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/nation\/la-na-delta-nra-20180226-story.html\">another article<\/a>, Pearce defined Delta caving to a pressure campaign\u2019s demands as \u201cfinding middle ground.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s not just a mainstream media problem. None of the righty outlets writing about Parkland picked up on the clear evidence that professional organizers were backing the Parkland kids, either. Instead, they objected to the front-and-centering of minor kids as unseemly, which does no good: Lefties aren\u2019t going to listen, and it doesn\u2019t educate the Right to counter.<\/p>\n<p>The closest anyone got was Elizabeth Harrington at the Washington Free Beacon,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/freebeacon.com\/issues\/george-clooneys-publicist-set-media-interviews-parkland-shooting-kids\/\">who noted that<\/a>\u00a0Clooney\u2019s publicist was booking the kids\u2019 media interviews pro bono, and said that a friend (not Clooney) had asked him to do it. The result of all this is that the average righty does not understand what\u2019s going on in activism, because all they see is what the press covers. The stuff that\u2019s visible. It\u2019s like expecting people in the Stone Age to grok the Roman army by looking at it. Conspiracy theorists happily fill this ignorance vacuum.<\/p>\n<p>On one hand, sure, the issue with people who believe in crisis actors and various other kinds of conspiracy theories is that they\u2019re susceptible. If they didn\u2019t believe in crisis actors, they\u2019d believe in something else (and they probably do). But on the other hand, I think one reason there\u2019s an opportunity for righty conspiracy types to get all hopped up on goofballs with respect to protests and such is the abject failure of the Righty establishment to explain to its people how protests actually work.<span style=\"font-size: 12px;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>This results in occasional hilarity when the Right tries to organize its own protests. For example, then-Internet celebrity Baked Alaska tried to create pro-Trump flashmobs in Los Angeles during the election. His efforts consisted of posting times and locations online. And that\u2019s it. You see this attitude often among Righties: \u201cWe have the Internet! We\u2019ll post a notice and people will show up!\u201d Well, no; they won\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not that Baked Alaska needed a magical kid, because there are no magical kids. There\u2019s just hard work, and our press and politicos do everyone a disservice when they pretend otherwise. Here\u2019s an example of how to turn out people, cribbed from \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Organizing-Social-Change-Bobo-Kendall\/dp\/0984275215\/\">Organizing for Social Change<\/a>,\u201d the activist manual published by the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.midwestacademy.com\/\">Midwest Academy<\/a>, which has been around since 1973 and has trained over 30,000 activists, some of whom went on to found their own training schools.<\/p>\n<p>Say you run an organization that wants to impress a city councilman, and you\u2019ve landed a meeting. You want your group to look bigger than it is. You\u2019ve got 15 dedicated people you know will go, but you want to show the councilman 60 people.<\/p>\n<p>The first thing you do is get 10 people from other groups (you do know other ideologically aligned groups in the area, right?). That leaves 35 people. To get them, you don\u2019t post an ad on Craigslist. You look in your database of people who\u2019ve signed your petitions or whatever. Call and ask them to come.<\/p>\n<p>If they say yes, call them again a day or two in advance to confirm. Of the people who say yes twice, only half will actually show up. So you need 70 people to say yes twice. Expect to make seven times that number of phone calls to get them. That\u2019s 490 five-minute phone calls, which breaks down to five people a night making phone calls for five straight nights.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"pull-right\" style=\"padding-left: 180px;\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">It\u2019s not magical kids,<br \/>\nand it\u2019s not George Soros<br \/>\nsprinkling money around.<br \/>\nIt\u2019s hard work by people<br \/>\nwho\u2019ve trained to do it.<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>That\u2019s a little more work than posting an announcement on Facebook. And that\u2019s organizing. It\u2019s not magical kids, and it\u2019s not George Soros sprinkling money around. It\u2019s hard work by people who\u2019ve trained to do it.<\/p>\n<p>Now that the organizations are more open about their involvement, at some point the Parkland kids will go into the background a bit in media exposure, the same way Deray and Linda Sarsour did. That\u2019s part of how organizing fame works these days: Two Minutes\u2019 Heroes, in frequent rotation. But the problem remains: until the press covers organizing campaigns accurately, organizers will be able to punch above their weight politically even if they don\u2019t win every election.<\/p>\n<p>In his excellent book \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Hegemony-How-Radicals-Jonathan-Smucker\/dp\/1849352542\/\">Hegemony How-To<\/a>,\u201d leftist organizer Jonathan Smucker wrote, \u201cPower tends to appear magical to those who have less of it, and mechanical to those who are accustomed to wielding it instrumentally.\u201d Or, for that matter, to even\u00a0<em>seeing<\/em>\u00a0it instrumentally.<\/p>\n<p>For two weeks, journalists treated power as if it were magical. It\u2019s not. It\u2019s mechanical. The people organizing the response to Parkland, and a host of other causes, know that. So should you.<\/p>\n<p>David Hines is a specialist in forensic science and international human rights, with an extensive background working in conflict zones. He tweets at @hradzka.<\/p>\n<p>___<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2018\/03\/01\/take-two-weeks-truth-emerge-parkland-students-astroturfing\/\">http:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2018\/03\/01\/take-two-weeks-truth-emerge-parkland-students-astroturfing\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=96013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=96013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=96013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=96013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}