"[He] participated in the Junior Year Aboard program in Liechenstein, where he learned to make dumplings."

What is the best way for a group and/or movement to make others sympathetic to their cause and/or struggle? Do protests and public demonstrations cause onlookers to think deeply about the group's cause, or are they mostly turned off by what they perceive as "fringe" or "extreme" actions? How does a group strike that balance between passive (conservative) and active (radical)?

This is something that I've thought about a great deal, and not just regarding 2nd wave feminism. I think about it whenever I hear about folks protesting the war, or listen to a candidate give a speech, or read about nonviolent resistance methods during the Civil Rights era.

Obviously, the folks involved in said movements are usually the ones giving this dilemma the most thought:

From the beginning, Ms. [Magazine] faced the double task of speaking to the converted and recruiting new readers. Ms. covered grassroots organizing activities of feminists activists as well as the different problems faced by minority and poor women. But more often the magazine focused on the problems encountered by its largely middle-class audience of white women.

Of course, the women's movement was effective in many areas, and Ms. Magazine no doubt contributed to that effectiveness. But could it have been more effective by practicing different methods? Should activists have been more conservative in their efforts, or more radical? Obviously, a question that is impossible to answer today, but one that I believe is worth contemplating.

Photo: First Ms. Magazine to hit newsstands, July 1972.