Delaying negotiations until protest energy faded let elites ignore reform

Evidence

High school students dress very formally, in black-and-white uniforms that have earned them the nickname of pingüinos. During the demonstrations, public support for the little penguins reached as high as 87 percent, and socialist president Michelle Bachelet formed an advisory commission, which came up with a package of reforms that she took to Congress. But lawmakers would not pass them. Many students learned a lesson that year—you have to negotiate while the movement is still alive. If the energy has already dissipated, elites have no reason to do anything they don’t want to do. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 275

Categorization

• APHORISMS: A blunt tactical principle: negotiation must happen while a movement’s leverage is live, or elites stall it out.
• XREF: connects to: A protest movement’s splintering makes its demands easy for rulers to ignore — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 302