The way that movements communicate with the general public matters for their chances of lasting success. Comparing the public discourse on the living wage and marriage equality between 1994 and 2004, Deva Woodly shows that movement- led political change is rooted in whether or not movements are able to gain political acceptance.
"Reckoning: Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Necessity of Social Movements is an analysis of the emergence of the Movement for Black Lives, its organizational structure and culture, and its strategies and tactics, while also laying out and contextualizing the social movement's unique political philosophy, Radical Black Feminist Pragmatism, along with documenting measurable political effects in terms of changing public meanings, public opinion, and policy. Throughout the text, the author interweaves theoretical and empirical observations, rendering both an illustration of this movement and an analysis of the work social movements do in democracy"--