Introduction: Strategy and Success in the Nuclear Disarmament Movement

Visible injustice and dangerous and provocative policies are sometimes met with large and powerful social movements that sometimes generate favorable policy responses. But, more frequently, recognized dangers or injustices do not generate mass responses. Figuring out how to recognize a meaningful opportunity for mass concern and how to put a consequential movement together have long occupied activist organizers and scholars. Of course, effective organizing entails elements of direct outreach, convincing citizens that something’s wrong, that it could be different, and that their efforts might matter. But the effectiveness of the pitch and the appeal of the proposal are mightily affected by the context. Organizing is likely to be more effective when the importance of a problem and authorities’ inadequate responses are clear. Recognition of a problem is a start to a much longer and more difficult project of building a social movement.