William Moyer
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Bill Moyer (September 17, 1933 - October 21, 2002) was a United States social change activist, author, and founding member of the Movement for a New Society.
Initially trained as an engineer, Moyer was introduced to the philosophy and practice of nonviolence by Quaker friends, completed a degree in social work and became involved in campaigns for civil rights and housing integration, working with Martin Luther King Jr. and the other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) during the summer of 1966.
Over the next decade, Moyer was involved in the SCLC's Poor People's Campaign in Washington (1968), nonviolent blockades of arms shipments to Bangladesh (1971) and to Vietnam (1972), support for the American Indian Movement occupation at Wounded Knee (1973) and a nuclear power plant blockade at Seabrook, New Hampshire (1977).
It was during the nonviolent blockade of the Seabrook nuclear plant, which involved the participation of more than one thousand individuals, that Moyer recognised the need for social change activists to understand the dynamics behind movement success, and in particular, to address the contradiction that activists often perceive the normal signs of campaign progress as signs of failure.
The Movement Action Plan (MAP) is one of the tools developed by Bill to achieve this end, and has been used to train hundreds of activists, most notably in the United States, Australia, Canada and Europe.
Bill Moyer died in October 2002. His book Doing Democracy (New Society Publishers), co-authored by JoAnn McAllister, Mary Lou Finley and Steven Soifer, summarises and illustrates his theories of social change with case studies from the anti-nuclear, civil rights, gay and lesbian, breast cancer and global justice movements.
