Further, both movements have faced the related task of influencing public opinion. Events at Selma generated a public outcry: thousands marched around the country in support of voting rights (Branch, 2007), and voters deluged Congress with angry letters. To achieve shifts in opinion, both the Civil Rights movement and the climate movement have needed to challenge established views of ‘the way things are’. Fear campaigns, lies and distortions, and political loyalties associated with entrenched identities and emotional outlooks figure significantly in both cases.^⁠ Here, ‘information politics’ by itself is not enough: it can succeed only with those who are already open to persuasion.

Another parallel between the two movements is that both involve an interaction between cultural power and the ‘people power’ of community organising. The tasks of organising, persuading the public and energising a movement are interdependent, yet they are also distinct. Alongside orchestrating highly-visible dramatic events, social movements do the hard, ongoing work of building local groups, alliances and networks. To cite another example from the Civil Rights movement, Ransby (2003) writes about Ella Baker, a key figure in both SNCC and SCLC. Her approach ‘placed more emphasis on process than on singular, dramatic events… she understood that follow-up activities would be even more important than the kick-off itself’ (p. 182). Without an organised movement, none of what happened at Selma—or Birmingham in 1963, or Nashville in 1960, or Montgomery in 1955 (or Newcastle in 2014) would have been possible. Visualising, narrating and dramatising these events was integral to the political outcomes the movement achieved. ‘People power’ and the cultural power of imagery and political theatre are two distinct and related threads running through the work of both movements.