The Search for Solutions
Still, if we are to find workable
solutions, we must be able to break down such ecologically defined social
problems into manageable pieces and to identify zones of consensus that can
become the basis for effective action. "We didn't attempt to take on the
entirety of alcohol use and abuse in American society," says Winsten,
reflecting on the Center for Health Communication's Designated Driver Campaign.
Instead, Winsten and his staff tackled one issue--drunk driving--for which they
had wide support and, therefore, an opportunity for success.
What zone of consensus might there be, in the case of violence? Rosenberg and
his colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and,
separately, Professor Franklin Zimring of the University of California at
Berkeley have identified what they consider the most salient themes emerging
from the epidemiological data: the problem of "kids killing kids" and the
deadly role of firearms in the escalating homicide rate. These, Rosenberg and
Zimring believe, are the most appropriate targets of public policy, and however
heatedly Americans may disagree about all other aspects of gun use, surely
everyone can agree that guns do not belong in the hands of children. Outside
these limited circles, this issue is only beginning to emerge as a theme around
which to rally and take action. Part of the work that lies ahead entails
changing the public's perception of guns as symbols of self-reliance and
protection.
Winsten points out that timing was critical to the success of the Designated
Driver Campaign, which built on work that government agencies and grassroots
organizations had carried on for years to raise public consciousness about
drunk driving as a social problem related to alcohol abuse. Although the early
government-sponsored propaganda campaigns were deemed failures, Zimring argues
that they played a critical role in stigmatizing drunk driving as deviant
social behavior. "What the early educational campaigns did," Zimring observes,
"was to associate the consequences that are harmful in the aggregate with the
individual acts [of drunk driving], even in those situations where harm did not
actually occur." Zimring also emphasizes the importance of research in
promoting changes in drinking and driving internationally. "This was one
situation where facts counted and where scholarship and scholars counted. In
this dimension . . . the alcohol and traffic safety story is a particularly
hopeful paradigm to emulate," Zimring observes.
Pertschuk notes that, in a similar way, research on the health effects of
secondhand smoke brought new life to the languishing anti-tobacco crusade by
undermining the assumption that smoking was strictly a personal matter. U.S.
Surgeons General, having previously warned smokers about the hazards to their
own health, now stated unequivocally that smokers' behavior harmed "innocent"
victims as well--not least, their own children. And this informational
campaign, in turn, laid the groundwork for new policy initiatives promoting
smoke-free environments in the workplace and in public facilities.
In an effort to change the public's perception of guns as instruments of
self-defense, Rosenberg and his colleagues emphasize the scientific evidence
that gun owners are more likely than non-owners to be injured or killed by
firearms. However, Yankelovich does not believe that information campaigns,
however valid they may be scientifically, will persuade people about what is at
heart an issue of emotion, perception, and conflicting values. For much of the
gun-owning public, guns, and even violence, are seen as necessary means of
protection against real or potential dangers. Earls doubts, too, that the
message of "nonviolence" will work with inner-city young people at risk, unless
something happens to change the underlying realities of their lives. Nor are
gun owners likely to respond to appeals that they give up their weapons unless
they can acknowledge and accept alternative strategies for removing the
perceived threats or defending themselves.
"Trauma and violence have become incorporated into the language. And this
language of defensiveness -- this posture of 'You won't get me because I will
get you first' -- has become the dominant language of rap, the voice for
post-crack, post-trauma culture of the inner city."
Mindy Thompson Fullilove
Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Public Health
Columbia University
and Research Psychiatrist
New York State Psychiatric Institute
The success of any such initiative also requires discovering targets that the
public, and the media, can readily accept. Pertschuk points out that the
tobacco industry makes the perfect villain in the ongoing crusade against
smoking. Instead of a villain, Winsten and his colleagues found a hero, the
designated driver, whose behavior could readily be modeled and emulated. The
designated driver became Harvard's "product," Winsten notes, and "we marketed
that product the same way you would market a Ford or a Chevrolet." The virtue
of even a narrow, specific intervention, Winsten maintains, is that it can open
the way to a deeper public engagement with the issue: "If you can get on the
air with a noncontroversial issue that's narrowly defined, it can have a
spillover effect that affects public thinking about the broad domain."
Some potentially useful "villains" and "heroes" in the movement against gun
violence are beginning to emerge. The National Rifle Association (NRA) is, at
least in the minds of gun control advocates, the obvious villain in the
story--the counterpart to the tobacco industry in the antismoking movement.
Unfortunately, the NRA is also the official representative of many grassroots
gun owners, who are not so easily cast in that role. The heroes of the
unfolding story may be the gang leaders or other young people who voluntarily
agree to stop the violence, walk away from confrontations, or "squash it" in
the vernacular of the streets. Winsten and his colleagues are seeking to make
this persona the antiviolence campaign's equivalent of the designated driver.
"Violence will probably replace health care reform as the number one issue on
the public agenda, but we are going to have a limited time to make a change.
The Chinese word for 'crisis' comes to mind. It has two characters. One is
danger. We know the danger. The danger has moved this up on the public agenda.
The other character is opportunity. This is an unparalleled opportunity. How
long it will last, I don't know."
Mark L. Rosenberg
Director, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
