It has more of a chance to endure. Advocates and constituency builders serve different functions. The advocate s job is to push against the status quo for change, usually for a particular solution to a documented problem. The constituency builder s job is to explain the community to itself and to enlist as many elements as possible in problem-solving. The advocate puts a problem on the public agenda, the constituency builder develops shared responsibility for solving that problem.
Advocates act fast.
Constituency builders work over time. It will take both advocates and constituency builders to create and sustain a viable children s movement. In focus groups we commissioned after the demise of health care reform, we were told over and over again that no child in this country really lacked access to health care. It was because their parents were either too lazy, incompetent or selfish to bring them to the free clinics that existed on every corner of every poor neighborhood. When you introduced the notion that children of the working poor were most likely to lack coverage, public support warmed.