In the book, and in presentations since, I've talked a lot about the Coalition for a Passenger's Bill of Rights, the group founded by Kate Hanni in early 2007 that lobbied for better treatment of passengers stuck on grounded airplanes. There have been several of these incidents in recent years, including the American Airlines diversions to Dallas in December of 2006 and the JetBlue JFK meltdown on Valentine's Day in 2007, and there is no question how the majority of the flying public feels about the issue.
What was remarkable about the Coalition's work last year is that they achieved a remarkable success in a legislative eyeblink, convincing the NY State legislature to pass a law creating passenger's rights in less than 8 months, with little staff or budget, and after a decade in which the airline industry simply fought off every previous attempt to create passenger's rights. And now the big test comes -- yesterday, the 2nd Circuit struck down the NY State law, saying that only the FAA can regulate passenger treatment. So now the issue goes to the US Congress, and maybe to the Supreme Court.
I've argued that the Coalition succeeded where early efforts at either lobbying or class action suits failed because the Coalition is ad hoc, amateur, and surprising. They didn't set up a big institution. They have a very specific and targeted goal. They attract people from across a political spectrum -- their members didn't need to agree about any other issue besides passenger's rights. And they appeared out of nowhere, getting the attention of legislators before the airline industry had time to frame a reaction.
However, the risk is that protest movements that rely on surprises simply get waited out by institutions. Once you get a tactic that works well, it can't be surprising anymore. (I speculated about this problem at Berkman about a month ago, and now here it is.)
So the test case here is: can a pressure group that doesn't have an institutional structure prevail in a situation where the airline lobby in the US Congress is well defended against citizen complaint? The next phase of the drama will be slower moving the first phase, but will ultimately matter more in what it tells us about protest culture in the current era.
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