

Small Change - Why the revolution will not be tweeted - dsplittgerber
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell

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skmurphy
Key graf:

What makes people capable of this kind of activism? The Stanford sociologist
Doug McAdam compared the Freedom Summer dropouts with the participants who
stayed, and discovered that the key difference wasn’t, as might be expected,
ideological fervor. "All of the applicants--participants and withdrawals alike
--emerge as highly committed, articulate supporters of the goals and values of
the summer program," he concluded. What mattered more was an applicant’s
degree of personal connection to the civil-rights movement. All the volunteers
were required to provide a list of personal contacts--the people they wanted
kept apprised of their activities--and participants were far more likely than
dropouts to have close friends who were also going to Mississippi. High-risk
activism, McAdam concluded, is a "strong-tie" phenomenon.

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smashing
The revolution will not be led by Harvard grads.

