Bill Moyer (September 17, 1933 – October 21, 2002) was a

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

social change activist who was a principal organizer in the 1966

Chicago Open Housing Movement The Chicago Freedom Movement, also known as the Chicago open housing movement, was led by Martin Luther King Jr., James Bevel and Al Raby. It was supported by the Chicago-based Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO) and the Sout ...

. He was an author, and a founding member of the

Movement for a New Society The Movement for a New Society (MNS) was a U.S.-based network of social activist collectives, committed to the principles of nonviolence, who played a key role in social movements of the 1970s and 1980s. According to a description from the MNS pub ...

Chicago Open Housing Movement

Initially trained as an engineer, Moyer was introduced to the philosophy and practice of

nonviolence Nonviolence is the personal practice of not causing harm to others under any condition. It may come from the belief that hurting people, animals and/or the environment is unnecessary to achieve an outcome and it may refer to a general philosoph ...

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...

friends, and completed a degree in social work. He became involved in campaigns for

civil rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life of ...

and open housing

integration Integration may refer to: Biology *Multisensory integration *Path integration * Pre-integration complex, viral genetic material used to insert a viral genome into a host genome *DNA integration, by means of site-specific recombinase technology, ...

, working and organizing in the early and mid-1960s with the Chicago branch of the Quaker-based

American Friends Service Committee The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) is a Religious Society of Friends (''Quaker'') founded organization working for peace and social justice in the United States and around the world. AFSC was founded in 1917 as a combined effort by Am ...

along with Kale Williams, civil rights activist

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, and others. Then, in 1966, he joined with

James Bevel James Luther Bevel (October 19, 1936 – December 19, 2008) was a minister and leader of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement in the United States. As a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and then as its Director of Direct ...

Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...

and the other leaders of the

Southern Christian Leadership Conference The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African-American civil rights organization based in Atlanta, Georgia. SCLC is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr., who had a large role in the American civi ...

(SCLC) during the Chicago Movement. James Bevel, who strategized and directed that action, credits Moyer with influencing him to center the Chicago Movement on open housing.

Further social movements

Over the next decade, Moyer was involved in the SCLC's 1969

Poor People's Campaign The Poor People's Campaign, or Poor People's March on Washington, was a 1968 effort to gain economic justice for poor people in the United States. It was organized by Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCL ...

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, nonviolent blockades of arms shipments to

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...

(1971) and to

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...

(1972), support for the

American Indian Movement The American Indian Movement (AIM) is a Native American grassroots movement which was founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota in July 1968, initially centered in urban areas in order to address systemic issues of poverty, discrimination, and police ...

occupation at Wounded Knee,

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux language, Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the West North Central states, North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota people, Lakota and Dakota peo ...

(1973), and a nuclear power plant blockade at

Seabrook, New Hampshire Seabrook is a town in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 8,401 at the 2020 census. Located at the southern end of the coast of New Hampshire on the border with Massachusetts, Seabrook is noted as the location of th ...

(1977). It was during the nonviolent blockade of the

Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant The Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant, more commonly known as Seabrook Station, is a nuclear power plant located in Seabrook, New Hampshire, United States, approximately north of Boston and south of Portsmouth. It has operated since 1990. With its ...

, which involved the arrest of 1,414 individuals (most charges were later dropped), that Moyer recognised the need for social change activists to understand the dynamics behind movement success. In particular, the need to openly address the contradiction that activists often perceive the normal signs of campaign progress as signs of failure. Moyer developed the

Movement Action Plan The Movement Action Plan is a strategic model for waging nonviolent social movements developed by Bill Moyer, a US social change activist. The MAP, initially developed by Moyer in the late 1970s, uses case studies of successful social movements t ...

(MAP) to achieve this end. Since its development it has been used to train hundreds of activists, most notably in the

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

and

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

. After the fall of the

Berlin wall The Berlin Wall (german: Berliner Mauer, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and East Germany (GDR). Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the government ...

in 1989, Moyer participated in many workshops in

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about nonviolence and social change. In the mid-1980s, he moved to

San Francisco, California San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

, where he began to explore

Transpersonal psychology Transpersonal psychology, or spiritual psychology, is a sub-field or school of psychology that integrates the spiritual and transcendent aspects of the human experience with the framework of modern psychology. The ''transpersonal'' is defined a ...

and continued his participation in the Friends meeting there. He also developed a workshop called "Creating Peaceful Relationships" based on his realizations regarding

dominator culture Dominator culture refers to a model of society where fear and force maintain rigid understandings of power and superiority within a hierarchical structure. Futurist and writer Riane Eisler first popularized this term in her book ''The Chalice and th ...

s. Moyer's book ''Doing Democracy'' (New Society Publishers), co-authored by

JoAnn McAllister Jo-Ann Stores, LLC, more commonly known as Jo-Ann (stylized as JOANN), is an American specialty retailer of crafts and fabrics based in Hudson, Ohio. It operates the retail chains ''JOANN Fabrics and Crafts'' and ''Jo-Ann Etc''. The headquarter ...

, Mary Lou Finley and Steven Soifer, summarises his theories of social change with case studies from the

Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...

anti-nuclear The anti-nuclear movement is a social movement that opposes various nuclear technologies. Some direct action groups, environmental movements, and professional organisations have identified themselves with the movement at the local, natio ...

, gay and lesbian,

breast cancer Breast cancer is cancer that develops from breast tissue. Signs of breast cancer may include a lump in the breast, a change in breast shape, dimpling of the skin, milk rejection, fluid coming from the nipple, a newly inverted nipple, or a re ...

and

Global Justice Global justice is an issue in political philosophy arising from the concern about unfairness. It is sometimes understood as a form of internationalism. History Henrik Syse claims that global ethics and international justice in western traditi ...

movements.

References

External links

"Doing Democracy In the 21st Century"''Doing Democracy''The Movement Action PlanMemorial Statement
{{DEFAULTSORT:Moyer, William 1933 births 2002 deaths American Quakers American pacifists Nonviolence advocates