Examples?
When Rosa Parks decided NOT to give up her seat on an Alabama bus - the modern civil rights movement was born. The "message" of social equality for all races has moved through time - you can see it all around you. Well, those of us who grew up in a time before Rosa Parks can see it. The country got better because of her action.
When the movement became active, everyone - almost everyone - in the black community was involved. By the '70's the movement had changed - and true community involvement stopped. I remember a friend called me up in the late 70's and ask me to go to an NAACP meeting with her. She said the press was going to be there and they needed people in the chairs to make it look like "people cared". Truth was - they didn't.
The civil rights issues that had brought the vast majority of people in, had been won.
After that people drifted away.
The modern civil rights movement ended ( in my opinion ) when Raines of the New York Times tried to gin up some big "civil rights" issue over wealthy blacks and some golf club thing - something waaaay past it's time.
I've often thought the MSM missed the civil rights movement at the beginning - when it was really cutting edge and exciting - and they kept wanting to go back and not miss it...
Martin Buber felt people needed power to accomplish good. But that when the good was accomplished, there would be people who wouldn't want to give up the power - and that's the point where power would be corrupted. When it's power for it's own sake - and not power to accomplish the goal. Jessee Jackson falls into that category for me. His "shake downs" are a symptom of the debasement.
It was the same with the women's movement. It started out with women from all walks of life fighting for things like equal pay - and ended up as hard core lesbians fighting to fight - keeping the power.
It's kind of how movements work. If the tea parties are successful - and our country becomes financially more responsible, in 20 years you'll have power brokers with established "organizations" spending great effort to accomplish limited new "financial responsibility"....
FreeRepublic is another example of a natural movement. Early members knew there was some risk involved with standing up to the Clintons - things could have turned out differently if the "vast right wing conspiracy" hadn't been exposed as the joke it was. And this site was instrumental in that. That idea has come down to our time and safeguards us even now. There are others - but I've already written too long - and I think you see what I'm talking about...
Well I won’t argue with you, but I don’t see how any of those things show “real” movements are some kind of existential lightning strike.
The “choice” movement was damn sure real, and that was orchestrated from day one.