Social Change within the "Establishment": A City's Response to National Antiabortion Protesters

From 1988 to 1992, antiabortion groups such as Operation Rescue attempted to close abortion clinics through use of innovative protest techniques. Their strategy was to overload local institutions such as police departments, render them ineffective, and allow protesters to block and subsequently close abortion clinics. This study viewed reaction to these new protest techniques from within a local community rather than from a national perspective. The study found that local institutions surprised protesters with animated defenses that ultimately caused the protest groups, rather than local institutions, to be overextended. The article attributes this effective response to a view that public officials became activists. The authors defined activists as those whose behavior changed from the predictable and routine to that which was unexpected and had not been experienced previously by opponents. The authors were participant observers.