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Persuasion: Infusing advocacy practice with insights from anti-oppression practice

Ann Curry-Stevens Journal of Social Work 2012 12: 345 originally published online 11 March 2011 DOI: 10.1177/1468017310387252 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jsw.sagepub.com/content/12/4/345

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Article

Persuasion: Infusing advocacy practice with insights from anti-oppression practice

Ann Curry-Stevens
Portland State University, USA

Journal of Social Work 12(4) 345363 ! The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1468017310387252 jsw.sagepub.com

Abstract  Summary: The role of social work has not, to date, been sufficiently explored in persuasive policy practice. This article draws upon messages from a study about the motivators used by educators to reach more privileged learners on issues of social justice. Applying messages to policy practice allows advocates to comprehensively craft advocacy practices that draw from these motivators, which have been shown to enlist support from more privileged power holders in social justice issues.  Findings: This article confirms the importance of Goodmans motivators (2000, 2001) of empathy, values and beliefs, spirituality, and self-interest; a deeper complexity about how to effectively use these motivators is explored. The research reveals that another four categories of motivators can be added to persuasion strategies: guilt, anger, desire to create a legacy, and a universal yearning for justice.  Applications: The contribution of this article is to advance the strategic dimensions of advocacy efforts undertaken by social workers. It seeks to inspire practitioners of the need to move away from a value-neutral position of social work (where practitioners avoid using their influence to obtain specific outcomes) to exploring the strategic value of being as persuasive as possible, in order to advance social justice among policymakers. Keywords advocacy communications, anti-oppressive practice, pedagogy for the privileged, persuasion, policy advocacy, policy practice, resistance, social work education, transformative education

Corresponding author: Ann Curry-Stevens, Portland State University, Suite 600, Academic Student Recreation Center, 1800 SW 6th Avenue, Portland, OR 97201, USA Email: currya@pdx.edu

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Social work practitioners, educators and students all struggle with how to inuence others. While this dynamic is usually at the margins of ones attention in social work practice, this article centers on the dilemma, and oers concrete solutions about how to persuade others to embrace policy changes that place the needs of those living on the margins at the center of public policy. This is not a value-neutral endeavor. The language has been chosen carefully rejected are notions of informing or educating replaced instead by methods to catalyze the embrace of equity issues and other remedies to injustice: it is about persuasion. Persuasion is understood here as the strategic exerting of inuence, aiming to change behavior towards support for proposed change. This is a rare endeavor in social work practice, as the professions ethos has rmly centered selfdetermination and informed consent. Social works primary address of topics of persuasion conventionally rests in the area of motivational interviewing where it is rejected as an undue inuence of the clinical practitioners will over the lives of clients (Wahab, 2005). In community practice, however, there is considerable urgency to advance advocacy practices for marginalized communities, and to persuade mainstream funders and policy practitioners to limit capitals inuence over public policy and, instead, advance attention to human need. Today, policy advocates in social work must change the opinions of policy-makers and persuade them of the importance of paying deeper attention to the needs of marginalized communities, thus rallying a non-traditional ethic of practice (as foreshadowed by Hardina, 2004). This divergence allows us to move away from the conservative impact of neutral political stances and towards more progressive ideologies of advancing the common good and collective well-being. While strong mandates for advocacy exist in the codes of ethics in Canada, the USA and the UK (among others), the practices of social workers in systemic advocacy eorts (as opposed to individually oriented casework advocacy) is relatively low and weakening (Byers & Stone, 1999; Dudziak & Coates, 2004; Ezell, 1994; Reeser & Epstein, 1987). Building advocacy ecacy within the eld can help social work better embrace our advocacy mandates and equip practitioners for advocacy practice. The application of such work is likely to be useful for preparing communications eorts aimed at recruiting allies among policy-makers. It is useful for advocacy eorts both inside and outside policy-making arenas (for both consensus building and for pressure politics). The theoretical foundation of persuasion is traditionally rooted in two scholarly and professional arenas: marketing and psychology. It has recently been applied to political campaigns through the work on framing by Lako (2002, 2004), and surfaces in a few community social work texts such as Homan (2008) and Jansson (2008). Inuencing behavior is growing in importance as a eld of research, and it has important lessons for community-based social workers who engage in an array of advocacy eorts both inside and outside their organizations. The premise is simple: advocacy eorts can be strengthened when we draw from proven communications strategies about both persuasion (Cialdini, 2007; Simons, 2001) and understanding how motivation can be catalyzed when one is not directly

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inuenced by the issue, and in fact typically benets from the current status quo (this research). Transformative learning also directs attention to motivation, with Mezirows (1991; Mezirow et al., 2000) work on catalysts that serve as disorienting dilemmas to ones existing worldview. This research suggests possibilities in extending transformative learning practices with policy-makers. Transformative approaches are understood to be more durable than episodic advocacy eorts here we intend to shift the perspective of the targets from one of disagreement or disinterest, to one of becoming allied with the policy being presented. This is an approach that is more congruent with one of building consensus as opposed to a conict-oriented approach. This is of rising importance in understanding successful community development practice (Beck & Eichler, 2000; Eichler, 2006). While the motivational strategies in this text hold transformative potential with policy practitioners, they can similarly be applied in a utilitarian manner to gain support for an issue. The approach can thus be adopted more comprehensively as a framework for practice, or more strategically applied as a tactic to be used within larger advocacy campaigns. The research base of this article ows from a qualitative research study conducted from 2002 through 2005 in Canada. With grant funding from both the provincial and federal governments, the project received ethics approval for the protection of human subjects. Twenty adult educators were interviewed, focusing on their experiences of working with privileged learners with the goal of assisting their transformation into allies for social justice. Deeply experienced community and labor educators participated through 2003 and 2004, sharing insights into educational practice with privileged learners. The context of their practice involved conducting anti-oppression and anti-racism workshops, sensitivity training, organizational development, leadership development and human rights training. The overall intention was to translate tacit knowledge of practitioners into more formal knowledge by applying rigorous analytic methods for assessing the convergence and divergence of practitioner sensibilities (akin to Bergers, 2010, focus on building practice-relevant knowledge). The social work link of this article is the eld of anti-oppressive practice, and its central focus on issues of power, oppression and privilege and ones group identities such as gender, race and class (Dominelli, 1998; Healy, 2005; Mulally, 2002). Taking social location as foundational to how one experiences the world is a signicant addition to social work, helping social workers better address issues of oppression and privilege, and manifest more strongly the mandate of advocacy and advancing social justice. Drawing from the specics of how educators practice reaching privileged learners and then applying this knowledge to the eld of policy advocacy holds potential for enhancing the skill base of practitioners and educators alike. Participants were selected using purposive sampling, on the bases of practice locale, depth of experience, social identity, prole as an educator (those whose teaching reected adult education principles), and perceived ability to articulate

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their practice in a reexive manner. Those interviewed were female 70 percent; minority racialized 40 percent; working-class background 17 percent; and gay or lesbian 20 percent. Analysis of the data followed methods for grounded theory and combined open, axial and selective coding of the data in order to reveal a discursive set of theoretical suppositions (Creswell, 2007, p. 160). Those ndings have led to the emergence of principles, practices and a pedagogical model through which educators can catalyze the transformations of privileged learners (Curry-Stevens, 2005, 2007) into being allies for undoing oppression and privilege. The research also surfaced motivators that can engage non-aligned learners in anti-oppression practice. One application of these strategies is the policy advocacy arena. Since that time, the author has applied these concepts in social work classrooms in both Canada and the USA. Students resonate with the substance of the approach as they are challenged with how to exert inuence inside and outside the policy arena, oering the author an opportunity to reect on how students write persuasive advocacy statements to an array of audiences. This serves as a testing ground for methods of persuasion. The emerging framework of motivators includes a total of eight categories of motivators which are proled in turn. This framework builds upon Goodmans work (2000, 2001) on how to motivate people from privileged groups to support social justice, conrming and adding complexity to her original four categories (empathy, values and beliefs, spirituality, and self-interest) and adding another four categories of motivators (guilt, anger, desire to create a legacy, and a universal yearning for justice).

Empathy
Goodman (2001) denes empathy as our capacity to understand and feel the suffering of others even though we have never experienced that particular suering ourselves (Chinua Achebe, as cited by Goodman, p. 126). Social work relies heavily on empathy for its ability to guide comprehension and for communicating compassion and support (Shebib, 2003), credited as a natural impulse that is similar to compassion, yet distinguished from sympathy which tends to generate feelings for the person but without the comprehension of the cause of the distress (Murphy & Dillon, 2008). Goodman uses an inverted argument to explain the importance of empathy. It is well recognized that, in order to legitimate the oppression of certain groups, target groups have been dehumanized and depersonalized, and at times, demonized. Slavery, segregation and denial of due process have been dependent on understanding people of color as something less than human. In order to uphold exploitive relationships, there must be a foundation that justies inferior treatment. It has been a strong tool of the oppressor and as such warrants attention as a potential remedy for injustice, as denial of empathetic opportunities erodes our capacity for empathy and thus the propensity for care and action (Goodman, 2001, p. 127).

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Empathy-building operates when people build a compassionate understanding of the distressing experiences of others. Empathy is typically evoked by telling stories of distress and making explicit links to the causes for distress. Research from Batson et al. (1997) shows that even when these stories could instead be reinterpreted in a blame the victim manner, in fact they do not, and that: once aroused, empathic feelings appear to have some inertia (Batson et al., 1997, p. 117), making it wise to tap empathy as a source of motivation. The core technique behind an empathy-building persuasion technique is to share the details of peoples lives so as to elicit an emotional response to the person, and by extension, others like him/her. When photographs can tell a story, this too strengthens an emotional empathetic response. Participants in this research reveal a more troubled relationship with empathy as a motivator. While these educators conrmed the importance of empathy, they also added three important dynamics that advocates for constrained use of this motivator. The rst is that it seems that one is blocked from empathy for another until one recognizes their own suering. Framing this as self-empathy (Curry-Stevens, 2003), self-empathy is a required precursor to the development of empathy for another. One example is the early (and ongoing) backlash of white feminists in their denials of perpetrating whiteness for until their oppression as women was recognized, they were not ready to consider their role in upholding racism. Advocacy work thus should be practiced with compassion for the ways in which our targets may be or have been oppressed. Assuming their status to be uniformly privileged is a mistake. Working from the assumption that they have some legacy of oppression is advised. We are also stretched by participants in this research to simultaneously care for our learners, even to love them. By extending empathy in this way, policy advocates are encouraged to reach through barriers to compassion. While researched in the clinical context, participants in a study on transformative change noted they felt completely loved and accepted by their therapist and that this is an instrumental trigger for change (Miller & Cde Baca, as cited by Wahab, 2005, p. 48). The second dynamic is that storytelling by the oppressed can result in a backlash against them particularly among those they know. Remember that we are using their experiences to elicit empathy, but sometimes our advocacy targets are not ready for these messages, and can retaliate by resisting the advocates messages or their capabilities. In some settings, these storytellers become perceived as damaged people who are not appropriate leaders or experts. In the policy advocacy environment, the experience of people who are oppressed telling their stories needs to be protected while not inappropriate, they need support (although this must not verge on paternalism) and to be treated with respect. Third, research participants issued a cautionary note about heavy reliance on empathy. Relying excessively on building empathy serves to place responsibility for change in the hands of those who are oppressed. This means that the power to create change lies in the persuasiveness of these stories. The result of this dynamic is that if the persuasiveness is not suciently powerful, policy-makers are able to

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remain oblivious about the injustice. This is an unacceptable responsibility, although it is currently the state of aairs, where the marginalized need to press the corridors of power to aect change. Ultimately, we aim for the emergence of a common good and shared conviction about the need to advance social justice, but our pathways towards such consensus must not be walked on the backs of those who experience injustice. When considering the transformative potential of empathy, we notice a familiar dimension of social work teaching. Empathy is understood as an essential skill for practice and one that typically relies on ones ability to walk a mile in someones shoes (Murphy & Dillon, 2008; Shebib, 2003). This is indeed what advocates are trying to evoke, but with a subtle addition that draws from Goodmans (2001) development of empathy. Her work posits that empathy exists relationally, and that we can aspire to an interdependent understanding of empathy that exists when we understand that there is a fundamental common humanity among us all. This framework of shared humanity requires that we reject our practices of othering those who are outside our relational worlds. Simultaneously this approach requires that we reject hierarchies that exist in the dominant discourse arena, such as the idea that whites are better than people of color, and that those with deeper needs and dependence on public supports are not as good as those who do not. Advocacy within this framework emphasizes that stories be used that allows for the targets to see themselves in these stories, such as average people trying to make a good life for their children or trying to develop a skill or secure work. Stories should build such commonalities, and then identify divergences such as unique barriers or struggles posed by policies that thwart their eorts. This framework holds the long-term benet of rejecting othering that serves to allow us to accept such dierent life outcomes for the oppressed. When we see ourselves as the same, then we look to other reasons to account for dierences in the challenges facing more marginalized groups. We become more likely to see policies and systems as responsible for inducing the dierence. Participants in my research identied this dynamic as an important dimension of transformative learning that comes from international exchange experiences for young adults. As they built relationships with those in another country and came to see their commonalities, they were more inclined to implicate macro-level injustices for the differences in their living standards, and thoroughly reject individual deciencies. In short, the ideal form of eliciting empathy would come from building a shared sense of humanity, and subsequently turning to injustice to explain distress. Persuasion that relies on empathy means that we should use stories to elicit empathy. Sharing the experiences of individuals who suer due to the presence or absence of particular policies will soften hardened hearts and bypass normal resistance to progressive ideas. These stories are best told in the rst person, but a second-best method is to have others tell the story. It should allow for both sympathy and compassion to emerge within the policy-maker and clearly articulate the distress that is caused by specic policy initiatives. Ideally, the target (the policymaker) should be able to see themselves in the story, and see similarities between

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themselves and the storyteller. The advocate is advised to ensure that this storytelling is not exploitive, for when the storyteller might talk in the rst person, and then the response not be respectful, they may hurt by the response. When the risks of exploitation cannot be minimized, it may be preferable to tell ones story by someone else. Procedurally, the oppressed should have nal say over how their experiences are represented by advocates.

Values and beliefs

Values are understood to be personal perspectives that serve as guides to individual and collective action. They are emotionally charged conceptions of what is desirable and within the eld of social work are unprovable assumptions or tenets of faith that guide social work practice (Compton & Gallaway, 1999, p. 151). Values guide behavior. While the profession of social work typically embraces a set of core values (typically oriented towards service, integrity, and social justice, as in the USA), dominant values co-exist such as individualism, merit, and self-suciency that social workers have been socialized to adopt. One challenge for social workers is to unlearn and/or bracket the inuence of values rooted in dominant discourse (as advocated by Compton & Gallaway, 1999, among others) as these values serve to justify inequality and reinforce internalized oppression. Advancing the values of justice, equity and fairness is of strategic importance to exert inuence and build support for policies that promote equity and social justice. One example is child poverty in Canada and the USA. More traction on the broader issue of poverty exists when children are involved. While advocates know that poor children are part of poor families, and solving child poverty will require solving family poverty, advocates are able to gain signicant support when the experiences of children are evoked. This is true because child issues tap into our values as adults, that we know we should protect them and step up when they are vulnerable. The same is not true for their parents. This is a commonly held societal value that is used strategically by advocates. Advocates rely heavily on values to inuence policy, with an example being the call: its the right thing to do. Often times, there is a companion juxtaposition of a characteristic of the target with that of more marginalized groups, such as: Its unconscionable that you go to bed safe and sated while poor children dont have such luxury. Such communications are explicitly or implicitly rooted in values of equity and equality and are deemed the core of advocacy practice. Educators in this research relied heavily on values and moral persuasion to help shift perspectives. Yet cautions exist relying on values assertions. The rst is that it can render the target defensive, for there is an unspoken message that: my values are better than yours. To moderate this dynamic, the advocate would be wise to also implicate themselves in the targets behavior. The prior scenario can thus be reformatted as: Its unconscionable that you and I go to bed safe and sated while poor children suer. This positioning serves to take the advocate o their self-proclaimed pedestal of superiority and communicate a humility that is much

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less likely to trigger resistance. The advocates decision to implicate oneself is strategic to avoid creating a power dynamic that suggests the advocate is morally superior. This method is correlated to Richans call for the development of common ground (2006, p. 82). There is an assumption that the target and the advocate will share ground in being troubled by such a contradiction of experience. The second caution is that when used alone can generate accusations of irrationality as the approach suggests emotional responses matter more than the intellect. We thus add factual arguments to strengthen our position. Educators specically identied the need to statistically prole lived experiences of marginalized communities, and aligned with Saids notion of contrapuntal analysis that juxtaposes dierential experiences of privileged and marginalized groups (1994). This approach simultaneously deconstructs privilege and oppression, and advances social justice in a profoundly logical way, since systems of oppression and domination are mutually constructed. Such an approach has a two-fold benet: it provides evidence of unfairness without overplaying the moralizing features that can easily backre, and it accomplishes engagement of both the head and heart. An example is to not only deplore racism, but also to identify disparities in lived experiences between whites and people of color, such as longevity, health outcomes, incomes and educational attainment. Such an approach combines values and beliefs with factual arguments and expands persuasiveness, congruent with the advice of communications strategists (Fenton Communications, 2001; IMPACS, 2002; Simons, 2001). Greater complexity about reliance on values was uncovered in this research. The issue of moral superiority was believed to be a problematic stance for advocate and educator alike. The stance leads to self-righteous activism that is deeply divisive and likely to induce resistance. While advocacy eorts have traditionally relied on discrete binary opposites of good (the advocates position) and bad (the targets position), such framing is typically simplistic and inaccurate. While it is simple and eective to motivate people by rallying against a clearly dened enemy (and simultaneously build shared identity and urgency for action, as articulated by Burgmann, 2005), the risks are that our analysis is oversimplied: today, we are all implicated in domination in numerous dimensions. One educator held out for a much more complex understanding of complicity and possibilities for deep transformation, advocating herself for an end to the good and bad dichotomies so prevalent in social movement campaigns:
Lots of activism is just about condemning those who have more than I do, and being the gracious and noble helper of those who have less than I do. Many activists still avoid going upstream [to address the causes of oppression]. It means they can stay in their own place of comfort and self-righteousness. And not actually have to change themselves . . . this whole bringing together of the conscientized oppressed and the conscientized privileged has to begin with us here, where we have the capacity to recognize not just the truth of dominance but also that we are part of the problem. It is so much easier to think of ourselves as part of the solution . . . but we have got to

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agree to much that changes our lifestyle [to build a sustainable future.] (Curry-Stevens, 2005, p. 214)

This perspective of the complex nature of privilege and oppression suggests advocates move away from dualistic thinking. This article surfaces the need to gently but persuasively add complicity to understanding advocacy practice, as we now recognize that advocates themselves are usually implicated in systems of oppression and privilege. Today we need to consider how we can rework our understanding of enemy and ally. At hand is an opportunity to redene and broaden social consensus and the common good. Framing issues can broaden our appeal and open engagement possibilities. Part of that process will involve understanding how we are all implicated in domination moralistic messages to the contrary will prove hollow (or certainly short-sighted) bases from which to organize. It is time to explore, as Lako (2004) suggests, what values and principles can help us build a positive future for all and that open (instead of narrow) the possibility for an expanding solidarity.

Spiritual teachings and values

Using spiritual teachings and values to motivate others is a strategy that connects with an answer to the following question: From where do we draw our moral compass? Both prior literature and this research illuminates that there are spiritual traditions that are shared by many that instill a motivation within many that comes from faith traditions. Drawing explicit attention to these imperatives we are guided by can help provide impetus to persuade others. Working from a First Nations worldview, Hill (2000) asserts that human existence begins with natural alignment of the self with others, and injustice is created as dierences and power-based hierarchies emerge. This takes all of us, as individuals and collectively, away from our place of integrity in terms of our emotional, spiritual, physical and intellectual well-being. Recovery requires a worldview of harmony and an active resistance to all forms of oppression and privilege. The reclamation process of resistance to both privilege and oppression is perceived as a spiritual journey and a healing of the soul wound that injustices create (Duran, 2006). Similarly, Christianity, Judaism, Bahai, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, and Taoism emphasize the interdependence of humankind. We are taught that all human life is valuable, and that no life is more important than another. Advocacy work can eectively draw on faith traditions and spiritual texts to emphasize the connectedness of all humanity, and the compelling value that all religions have placed on equality among all people, as well as the requirement of those with more to remedy the injustices done to those with less. Participants in this research expressed their support for a similar framework, particularly

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participants who worked in faith-based organizations who made explicit use of scriptures to conduct advocacy work. They identied the value of using spiritual texts to achieve several advocacy goals: to reintroduce the moral compass to direct human progress, to identify contradictions between faith mandates and policy impacts, and to build commonality between divergent groups in society (thereby reducing the social distance between policy-makers and those who are impacted by them). An example of policy advocacy relying on spiritual teachings is the progressive Christian church sector that designed a campaign around the concept of Jubilee the biblical call for debt forgiveness. This campaign worked among congregations to build analysis and action among people of privilege in both geographic and economic contexts. They drew heavily from their faith to mobilize Christians across Canada. Over 640,000 people signed a petition to cancel foreign debt, successfully persuading the federal government to declare a moratorium on $696 million debt owed to Canada by 11 countries (Canadian Council of Churches, 2001, p. 17). Their pitch drew from their scriptures directives to set slaves free and cancel debts (as directed in the Book of Leviticus). These advocates recognize the signicance of the persuasiveness of their faithbased values and how eective a tool for organizing it can be. Faith-based imperatives for action would be useful for those who are rooted in such faith traditions. It should be viewed as a potential lever for change, and its relevance will be greatest where such a context is shared.

Self-interest
The most contentious of the motivators to enlist support for social justice issues is self-interest. In the arenas of psychology and marketing, self-interest is a relative no brainer since self-interest is such a ubiquitous motivator that human behavior is understood to be incomplete unless this concept features dominantly. Indeed, Cialdini (2007) omits the concept of material self-interest from his text not because it is unimportant, but because it is always an inuence in decisionmaking. Within advocacy practice to improve conditions for marginalized communities, however, self-interest is a deeply contested motivator, largely rejected in favor of reliance on values and ethics. The history of social work can help unravel this. The early inuence of the charity model leads us to a noblesse oblige framework for understanding the interface between those with and those without access to societys resources. Leading advocates such as Saul Alinsky, Bertha Reynolds, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Barbara Wootten and Jane Addams similarly valued the idea of social responsibility from those with privilege to help those with less. This history continues to inuence advocacy practice today that obligation, empathy and moral higher ground are the strategies used by advocates to advocate for change. These are powerful arguments but greater prospects for change could result if advocates made eective use of self-interest.

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Goodman (2000, 2001) helps us reect on the role of self-interest, proling how privileged people have been hurt by privilege, and that by working to end oppression, they simultaneously advance their self-interest. She details psychological, social, intellectual, moral/spiritual, and material/physical costs that are incurred by those with privilege. Examples include the costs of being isolated from many peoples of the world, and the economic costs of policing such divides. A current application of this work is the business case developed to provide institutions the motivation for undoing various forms of institutional oppression (racism, sexism, heterosexism, and ablism). These business cases provide a wideranging set of motivators for businesses to do the right thing and draw explicitly from self-interest such as reducing legal costs, lowering sta turnover, improving community credibility and leveraging customer purchasing dollars by illustrating commitments to diversity. Why then the ongoing reluctance of community advocates to use the same strategy? Most nd that it is inappropriate to suggest that someone with privilege has been hurt by a system of privilege, since it implicitly marginalizes the injustices faced by the oppressed. Participants in my research diverged in their support for using self-interest as a motivator. Here, one ags concern about pedagogy that places the costs associated with privilege as a central tenet of the practice:
My anxiety is about the fact that people will talk about the losses in terms of political correctness and reverse racism. Theyll say, in our society, its no longer positive to be white, and in particular a white straight male. Thats the way theyll talk about loss. Im not sure thats where we want to go . . . I think the risk lies in the problem of saying, its worse for us [as privileged people]. (Curry-Stevens, 2005, p. 235)

Despite this caution, the same educator notes that she has used this approach to discuss issues of globalization:
I used to talk about the global economy as being death dealing for people in the global south. You could see that it was killing people in the south at a far greater rate than it was killing us . . . [And yet] theres a sense that it was killing our souls. From that rst cup of coee in the day, we were implicated in this kind of web of oppression and oppressing other people which nobody wants to be doing . . . Just in having a cup of coee we end up participating in this oppression which cant be good for me. (Curry-Stevens, 2005, p. 235)

Participants emphasized that no harm done to the privileged through oppression can approximate the devastation experienced by the oppressed. While this framework does hold possibility for implying that the privileged are somehow victims as being privileged, educators acknowledged that focusing on losses suered through oppression to them personally is believed to be a powerful motivator for social change. By enabling educators and activists to explore self-interest, we gain more inuence.

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Some writers advocate expanding consideration of the losses from oppression. Kivel (2002) states: racism is burning us all. Some of us have third degree burns or have died from its eects; many others live in the charred wreckage (p. 1). Kaufman (1991a, 1991b) adds a focus on the liberation potential that feminism holds for men. The advocacy work of US-based Responsible Wealth relies on wealthy individuals to advocate for more progressive taxes, and thereby work against their apparent self-interest. While these wealthy advocates may have a loss of nances, they are likely gaining through the ripple eects of reduced social unrest. Similarly, ending sexism and racism can improve the quality of life for all through reducing social and material costs, while collaboratively improving quality of life for all of our children. Overall, the motivator of self-interest is a powerful lever to add to ones advocacy toolbox, particularly since excessive reliance on the traditional motivators of values and ethics is cautioned, with the proviso that using values and ethics eectively can build a shared consensus around shared humanity. If more powerful levers exist, it is incumbent on social workers to gain familiarity and ease with using them. It remains evocative to suggest that privilege carries costs and that policy makers simultaneously suer from their privilege. While these costs pale in comparison with those who experience oppression, they can still be considered costs.

Guilt
Guilt is understood by research participants as a powerful stimulus to motivate a change in perception, and ideally action. It is the emotion that results when one understands that they are the beneciary of an unjust situation, or an empathetic response to someone elses oppression. Guilt is believed relatively simple to evoke, especially when it is the intended goal of advocacy practice. One example is the reaction most people feel to seeing homeless people on the street it evokes a sense of guilt about the relative ease and comfort that exists when knowing that one has a home where food, warmth and safety exists. Powerful pictures and scenarios can provoke this guilt and this is believed to be rooted in an awareness of the relative privilege with which the target lives his or her life. While most advocates hope to induce some discomfort or disruption in the complacency of the target, evoking guilt can be a risky endeavor. Echoing the sentiments of participants in the research, the following authors well capture its complexities. Guilt can hold the potential to motivate (Holzman, 2002; Kimmel, 2002; Morales, 1998), but it is also believed to immobilize the target at times (Kumashiro, 2000; Vodde, 2001). Holzmans position is persuasive: Guilt is the discomfort I feel when I have done something that harms another person or violates a moral prohibition. . . Guilt tells me I have done something wrong and need to correct it or make reparation (2002, p. 108). Kimmel also advocates for guilt to be used strategically in persuasion: Guilt can motivate us to transform the circumstances that made us feel guilty. . . guilt can politicize us (2002, p. 5).

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Holzman, on the other hand, cautions that immobilization can result, yet also guides us towards more eective guilt-evoking practices when she highlights the areas to avoid:
Shaming techniques such as belittling, sarcasm, or expressions of disgust, contempt or condemnation are counterproductive. They reproduce childhood shaming experiences and are likely to trigger irrational shame . . . there will remain a tendency to parrot what is believed to be acceptable to the group, and for the learning process to be drastically inhibited. (2002, p. 111)

This research adds another layer of complexity to understanding the role of guilt in advocacy. Advocates can be strategic in their use of guilt. They can evoke guilt, and then oer redemption from this discomfort by suggesting ways to act to alleviate guilt. Guilt can be a positive motivator for change, as long as the advocate also takes responsibility for ensuring that it does not immobilize and that actions are recommended. The most intense reactions are believed to occur when powerful arguments are made as to the complicity of the target in the oppression of others, such as intentional shaming messages. The primary advice is to avoid shaming. Caution remains: while such evocation may help the target consider their privilege in a more enduring manner, there are risks of it backring and triggering an immobilized reaction.

Anger
Advocates have been able to evoke anger among their targets quite easily about injustice. Building anger within a target is understood to be relatively easy, although care must be taken to maintain focus on the issue, rather than it spreading to the advocate communicating the message. Simply, anger is the logical reaction to a perceived wrongdoing. Methods include sharing information about injustice, presenting persuasive data about the experiences of people who suer. An example would be showing how children are impoverished and denied education through child labor in India. Even more powerful is the addition of pictures and stories about the experience. Particularly powerful is, as identied earlier, proling how some thrive while others suer, especially when this suering is due to the actions of those who are thriving. Specic methods include juxtaposing the dierent eects of particular policies: the degradation of the environment leading to the suering of polar bears (or baby wildcats) while corporate paper producers make record profits. Another example is the juxtaposition of the dierent benets of a 20 percent income tax cut: a round-the-world trip for upper income earners versus a weekend in a budget hotel for lower income earners. Anger results from observing these dierent impacts. Generating anger has long been associated with social justice campaigns. There is little else so reliable as a force for generating support and involvement. When an injustice is perceived, anger and outrage are a logical response.

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This approach does not, however, come without a price tag. There are three reasons why building anger is not enough, and why it might backre. The rst is that it positions the advocate as needing to return again and again to elicit the support of targets for little transformative learning has occurred, and more durable change and commitment to ending injustice has not occurred. One research participant suggested that it is probably good enough as a motivator, if one is satised with this reactivity orientation, as opposed to a transformative orientation. If the advocate is aiming for support, then eliciting anger is enough. If, instead, the advocate desires transitioning the target into a reliable ally on a broader issue, then building anger is not sucient as a motivator. The second is that it is easy to blame others for injustice and remain ignorant of ones own complicity. In an example where a target successfully becomes, for example, angry about the harms of racism, s/he will be applauded in eorts to end racism (such as remedial schooling supports) but the complicity of whites (including his/her own) will be left out of the equation. The target gets to claim exceptional status among whites, which while desirable if it catalyzes action, is ethically somewhat suspect since whiteness needs to remain implicated in injustice, but through this strategy stays out of sight. The individuals get to position themselves on the side of the angels. Similarly, it falls prey to an uncomplicated relationship between right and wrong, which devalues the signicant role that everyone plays in upholding injustice. The third reason that evoking anger is not enough is that it typically evokes charity or bandage solutions instead of justice-oriented solutions. Such solutions ow from an oversimplied understanding of the issue, because communications that engender an anger response have typically communicated the issue in oversimplied terms, relying on binaries or right and wrong. The approach is simplistic and can lead to arguments based in self-righteousness that are not deserved or accurate. When one becomes the target of the selfrighteous zeal of another, this dynamic can deteriorate, for self-righteousness implicitly suggest a dynamic of I am better than you. Anyone who has been the target of such accusations knows that it can backre into defensiveness and counter-attacks. While there are varying responsibilities for injustices (such as comparing the shopper at Wal-Mart with the corporate lobbyist who ended inheritance taxes or environmental regulations), advocates stand on shaky ground when they espouse that one group needs to change without the others similarly changing their practices. This becomes a form of moralizing that can readily create divides and narrow the possibility for transformative change, consensus, and durable commitments to justice. If ones advocacy practice is more utilitarian and pragmatic, then evoking anger is an appropriate strategy for change. But if ones strategy is more holistic and transformative in nature, then advocates need to be more restrained about evoking anger due to its potential to advance an overly simplistic analysis of good and bad.

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Desire to create a legacy

The seventh motivator documented in this research was the desire to create a legacy by which a policy-maker might want to be remembered. The concept of building legacies has burgeoned in philanthropy, and is usefully applied to policy advocacy. Participants highlighted that they have used this approach in both organizational advocacy practices (to motivate Boards of Directors to rebuild their organizations to foster social justice environments in their organizations) and in advocacy work with policy-makers (to inspire politicians to leave lasting changes on the policy environment as they were leaving oce). It is a persuasive social justice approach as it tends to inspire the best in people. There are many reasons why policy makers neglect the needs of marginalized communities during their time in oce such as the impact on their chances of reelection (consider, for example, the US debate on gay marriage) and the cost factor. A departing policy-maker is unconcerned with re-election and less accountable to the public for expenditures of public dollars. This can be a fortunate conuence that makes progressive policies more likely at the close of a reign of power. Appealing to decision-makers to make their mark on the policy landscape typically brings out the best in people. It provides a motivational message to reach through complicity and inaction to persuade policy-makers to create change, and thus be remembered (after leaving oce or after they die). This motivator can stretch through many layers of institutional ranks and reach politicians, policymakers, decision-makers and social service practitioners. Suggesting people can place their mark on history or on an organization in a durable way has the potential to be a signicant force for justice. There are dierent ways to approach this practice. The rst has a moralizing tone, and can be very eective to catalyze action when inaction has been the historic pattern. It would go something like this: Do you want to be remembered as an advocate for those in need, or as someone who stood idly by as people suered? While moralizing has been treated with skepticism in this paper so far, its contribution is more promising here, since it is juxtaposed with an opening to move away from the stance of moral dubiousness. The remaining ideas do not rely on the moralistic overtones. Instead a direct appeal to create a legacy is oered through motivators such as: What mark do you want to leave on this organization? How do you want to be remembered? Another could be: This is a chance to distinguish yourself from others. You can be remembered for your courage to stand up for what is right. Creating a legacy is a profound idea for many in the policy arena. In Canada, it is believed departing Prime Minister Jean Chretien was inspired to advance legalized marriage for the lesbian and gay community in 2003, introducing legislation to legalize such unions. This is perceived to have been a legacy action.

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A universal yearning for justice

Participants surfaced a belief that all of us yearn, at some level, for social justice. The persuaders task is to activate this yearning which may be buried or overshadowed by other aspirations. An eclectic set of writers suggest this yearning takes dierent forms: for connection and community (Peck, 1987), and for an integration of values and behavior (Lange, 2000; Palmer, 2005). This is similar to the aboriginal notion of a soul wound (Duran, 2006; Hill, 1999) whereby our inherent nature is premised on peace and kinship. The existence of oppressive hierarchies creates a wounding that needs to be healed through eliminating hierarchies and patterns that reect that some lives are more valuable than others. Participants believe that all of us desire equality and inclusion, and the corollary desire to end exploitation and oppression. Oppression is at odds with these concepts. When these desires are buried and not very hot as proled by a participant, the task is to bring them back to the surface, breaking through other values and defenses. Advocates can activate this yearning through simple yet passionate expressions of the world we want. Talking passionately about our future dreams and goals may heat up the dissonance between what we live with and what we want. It is suggested that such articulation can break through cynicism and apathy and enliven the possibility for social justice. The appeal of such a construction is obvious from an intellectual and emotional perspective. It sets aside the constraints of traditional social movement tensions, and articulates a world of alternatives. Such a repositioning is reected in the tremendously successful World Social Forum that derives much of its success from its embracing of the vision: Another world is possible. While some might sco at the idea of returning to utopian values, we need simply to remind ourselves of powerful orators who know the persuasiveness of vision-based language: Martin Luther King, Bertha Reynolds and President Obama are excellent examples of how to tap into these universal yearnings, and activate a sense of possibility in the present moment, even when the current context is perceived as dismal. Advocates can activate this motivator when they communicate with passion and inspiration. Articulating a vision for the future is one such method. Asserting the existence of a future condition where all are equal and peace and justice are observed across society is persuasive.

Conclusions
As one reviews the motivations proled in this article, an obvious question emerges: what form of motivation should the advocate enlist? The answer is that the advocate should enlist as many forms as possible, that they all serve as potential hooks to recruit the support of the target. While Janssons work (2008) suggests that specic forms are more appropriate for specic audiences, there is wisdom in

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using as many as possible, provided that information does not suggest that some approaches will be counterproductive. A nal cautionary message needs to be shared: the underlying framework in this article is that privileged policy-makers can be voluntarily persuaded to improve the policy environment for marginalized communities. Two shortcomings exist with this approach: continuing to make marginalized communities responsible for catalyzing such change and the voluntary nature of such change. To address this, reforms to policy processes continue to be needed such as limiting the inuence of those advancing the interests of capital (such as campaign nance reforms), diversifying those in policy practice positions, and increasing the power held by those living in the margins (such as increased political participation and increased inuence over policy practice, drawing from Arnstein, 1969, as an example). Second, the voluntary nature of such persuasion strategies provides no guarantee that the advocates recommendations will be adopted. Commitments might be derailed and sidelined as the normative environment has not changed. Alternative change strategies exerted by social movements and advocates are needed to exert outside pressure for change. It is important to retain the full scope of methods to advance social justice while we simultaneously emphasize the value of persuasion to inuence voluntary change practices. This article concludes with an appeal for social workers to make more extensive use of these and another other advocacy strategies. Advocacy practices rooted in persuasion can be strengthened by following the directions laid out in this article, but the strategic advocate is wise to expand beyond the persuasion arena into structural shifts in the advocacy landscape. Our inuence can and must expand if we are to live our commitments to social justice and our mandates to advocate for ending injustices. References
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