When fishing for bass in my local pond I have to make a decision: do I cast for accuracy? Or do I cast for coverage? Casting for accuracy means being able to drop my lure exactly where I want it. Like right at the edge of a fallen tree sticking out into the water that seems like a likely place for bass to hang out. Accuracy matters because if I overshoot just a foot too long my lure will wrap around a branch, get all tangled up, and I’ll have to cut the line. Too short, and the bass lurking under the log won’t notice my alluring rubber worm as it falls through the water. Casting for coverage means being able to propel my worm far out into the lake, let it sink its way to the bottom, and then slowly retrieve it — twitching, lifting and falling — across a maximum distance. Depending on which way I decide I want to go, I take along a different rod and reel. For accuracy, I use a baitcaster setup: an old Abu Garcia 5000 reel and a Kunan Competitor 5 foot rod. With its short throw, and by keeping my thumb on the spool as the line spools out, I can drop my lure on a dime (well, sometimes). If I want to go the distance, I use a spinning outfit: my trusty Garcia Mitchell 300 reel and 7 foot Fenwick Feralite rod. The longer pole and spinning reel lets me cast far out into the lake. Most of the time, however, I just grab whatever rod is handy and go to the pond and try my luck.
When thinking about audiences for their actions, activists frequently — albeit unconsciously — default to two options: themselves or everyone. Either their intervention is crafted to appeal only to the narrow band of people who share the same ideological concerns, common languages, and aesthetic and cultural sensibilities as themselves, or they veer in the opposite direction: creating actions with the most general and generic of appeals in order to offend no one and include as wide a demographic as possible. The former has a specificity that makes it more likely to resonate with its target audience, but that audience, let’s face it, is minuscule. The latter approach has the potential to break out of “preaching to the choir” and reach the mass audience that’s necessary for any sort of social change, but such a mass audience is too broad, too diverse, too massive to reach and touch with any singular approach or appeal. What works is to locate your audience between 1 and 100 million, identifying groups of people who are large enough to make a difference, yet share enough commonalities to create an intervention that they can feel speaks directly to them and their concerns.