Social Tactic #1

Jerrod Goertzen

Soc 122

START

5/9/2014

 

Social Movement Tactic #1: Tabling

 

            Tabling was not a new tactic for me as I have done it several times. It can certainly prove as a useful tactic in spreading your word around but it relies a lot upon where and when you set up. Our Soc 122 class went out on a March for March 4th even and spent close to an hour working a table and discussing our issue with others. We set up a bill board with out group name on it, some information and statistical points, along with our major points and alternatives we would like to see against the rising cost of tuition.

            Considering the time frame that we did the tabling event, not too many people were around but sometimes there would be influxes of students going too and from classes. Considering this I felt our group did a really good job in grabbing many peoples attention and having general discussions with them over this injustice. I believe we managed a little over twenty people to sign our petition sheet in that short time out there and got our word out there at least. At a certain point we were also as a group up on a small stage giving our movement speech which I also felt resonated well. Our group was fairly organized and active in the event, this factor can be a big difference I have learned when it comes too people taking you seriously. Overall it was a very fun event to participate in along with the entertainment and food giving a nice touch on top of it all.

            Things I felt we could have done differently or better would have been making more that we could talked about periodically up on the stage, whether it would have been poems, funny readings or stories as a group. I honestly wish we could have managed the event in going on longer too cover a wider range of time as most of it was during a general class hour. Our group could have been a little more organized, we scrambled on some things getting them ready last minute with running into difficulties that could have been avoided and it probably cost us some ability to get more of our word and information out there, especially with our flyers. I felt like we could of condensed stuff, maybe used better material, information and sources instead of having a large amount of sheets to hand out to each person making them possibly overloaded and turned off from actually reading them. Overall I was happy with the outcome though, it was a fun experience and I would certainly do it again. Considering our turn out compared to other tables, I felt like our group did well in altering people perception and thinking of our issue. We had many people sticking around, seeming interesting and asking to join in whether they were directly affected by our issues or not.