The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself

One of famed 20th century community organizer Saul Alinsky’s most well known adages is the threat of the thing is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. To intimidate an opponent with an impending action against them often causes them to concede to your demands.

In 1964, when Chicago O’Hare Airport was sucking the lifeblood of black and other oppressed Chicagoans, Alinsky and the Woodlawn Organization in turn threatened a “shit-in.” Thousands of activists would pay a dime to access all potties throughout the airport, and stage queues behind those users, to clog up the bathrooms and force passengers to turn the airport into one giant toilet. The Woodlawns team never had to pull off the action. As soon as news of it leaked, city hall called the organizers to meet and yielded to their demands on O’Hare Airport.

To intimidate an opponent with an impending action against them often causes them to concede to your demands.

We learn this principle from a young age. A father raises a hand to slap his baby’s fingers when she wants to touch fire. The parental gesture is cause enough for her to recoil. Threatening to do something can be a more powerful act than actually doing it.

In Busia, Uganda, users of Masafu Hospital, which is supposed to offer free health care services for all local residents, had spent nearly a decade without a functioning X-ray machine. The previous one had broken down, and the hospital administration had not bothered to repair it or procure a new one. Rumours that administrators wanted to embezzle funds instead of spend them on taxpayers spread throughout Busia. In August 2017, a citizen delegation organized by Frank Kasumba and other activists issued a letter to the district’s accounting officer, giving a one-month ultimatum to procure a new X-ray machine. If they failed, residents would invade their office premises and occupy it indefinitely. In a week’s time, Member of Parliament Nabulindo Jane Kwoba donated about $5000, and the district passed a supplemental budget of about $3000 to repair the machine.

In 2015, in response to private sector complicity in Israeli crimes, the Egyptian wing of the BDS movement announced a boycott of Mobinil, the then national franchise of telecom giant Orange, which had 30 million Egyptian users. Before the boycott even began, Orange CEO Stephane Richard flew from Paris to Cairo to pledge Orange’s withdrawal from Israel.

Organizations like Rainforest Action Network have used similar strategies. For example, during RAN’s circa-2000 campaign to get North American forest-product companies to NOT source lumber from old-growth forests, instead of going after every little company, they set their sights on the very biggest player in the market (Home Depot), and once they’d won that fight, they were then able to go to the next several biggest companies and (very credibly) threaten to do the same to them. They all quickly caved without a fight.

Exercising Alinsky’s principle is not for the faint of heart. Individuals and groups that issue threats usually must be willing and able to carry them out, should such a need arise. Then again, Jack London wrote, “Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes playing a poor hand well.”