I see the question of strategy to be multipronged. Mainstream groups can spend years quietly pleading for shelters and whatnot while being totally ignored or being given empty lip service. They have the general good will of the high society types but keep it only because of their quiet and humble approach. When the time comes, they can get the infrastructure to manage programs. Groups using loud direct action have the potential to bring issues back onto the radar screen of politicians, but lack the ability to convince capitalists to kick down our money to provide services. By having each prong do what it does best, the politicians are ticked off at the direct action groups which are seen as unreasonable and asking for too much. Being forced to act however, politicians then turn to the mainstream groups that hang around the Chamber and Rotary looking for table scraps. "Win win" deals are struck, the issues are somewhat addressed, all the while the direct action groups are talked down to and marginalized as too radical. The reality is that the matter would never had surfaced for action without the unreasonable activists pushing the issues. No, the shelter plaques will never read "thanks to all the unknown radicals that made politicians pay attention to this matter" instead some local industrialist or dot commer will be imortalized as someone who lifted our bodies and spirits with his/her charity and generousity. Never mind that it was the wage system they enforced that put people in the poor house in the first place.

Yeah, oversimplified but this isn't a dissertation, ok?