"Major social movements eventually fade into the landscape not because they have diminished but because they have become a permanent part of our perceptions and experience"
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The sharpest move Adler makes here is to flip the usual obituary we write for activism. When a movement stops dominating headlines, we tend to treat it like a trend that’s run out of steam. Adler argues the opposite: the real mark of success is invisibility. A cause “fades into the landscape” the way a curb cut or a seatbelt does. It’s no longer a spectacle because it’s become infrastructure.
The intent is quietly corrective, aimed at an audience conditioned to measure political energy by volume: marches, viral slogans, donation spikes, media attention. Adler reframes that metric. A movement hasn’t “diminished” when it’s less conspicuous; it may have done the more difficult work of rewiring norms, institutions, and reflexes. The subtext is a warning against impatience and nostalgia-for-the-peak, that addictive moment when a movement feels like the main character of history. After that comes the less glamorous phase: policy, practice, and the slow recalibration of what people consider normal.
Context matters because Adler writes as an educator: someone invested in how societies learn. “Perceptions and experience” are pedagogical terms as much as political ones. She’s pointing to cultural absorption, when ideas migrate from protest signs into curricula, workplace expectations, family conversations, and law. It’s also a reminder that permanence can be deceptive. What becomes “landscape” can be taken for granted, defended less vigorously, or claimed by institutions that once resisted it. Success, in Adler’s framing, is real when it’s ordinary - and still fragile enough to require maintenance.
The intent is quietly corrective, aimed at an audience conditioned to measure political energy by volume: marches, viral slogans, donation spikes, media attention. Adler reframes that metric. A movement hasn’t “diminished” when it’s less conspicuous; it may have done the more difficult work of rewiring norms, institutions, and reflexes. The subtext is a warning against impatience and nostalgia-for-the-peak, that addictive moment when a movement feels like the main character of history. After that comes the less glamorous phase: policy, practice, and the slow recalibration of what people consider normal.
Context matters because Adler writes as an educator: someone invested in how societies learn. “Perceptions and experience” are pedagogical terms as much as political ones. She’s pointing to cultural absorption, when ideas migrate from protest signs into curricula, workplace expectations, family conversations, and law. It’s also a reminder that permanence can be deceptive. What becomes “landscape” can be taken for granted, defended less vigorously, or claimed by institutions that once resisted it. Success, in Adler’s framing, is real when it’s ordinary - and still fragile enough to require maintenance.
Quote Details
| Topic | Legacy & Remembrance |
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