So you want to be an activist?

Does anyone ever consciously decide they want to be an activist?

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Originally posted by Caissa:
[b]Does anyone ever consciously decide they want to be an activist?[/b]

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I think so. It's a decision to take the ideas that are in your head and turn them into action.

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Originally posted by jrose:
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Activism isn’t always approachable, and I understand Punk Girl’s worries, assuming that many wannabe-activists don’t feel well-versed enough or well-read enough. [/b]

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People should try to be more welcoming. (I do think activists should try to [i]become[/i] well-read and well-informed, though).

But she's not concerned about not being well-read or well-informed. She's worried that she's not tough or [b]cool[/b] enough. This isn't the first time I've encountered the confluence of "activism" and "cool". It's a very, very, very bad sign, in my view.

Activism should be grounded in [i]need[/i] to be enduring and long lasting. However, those needs could be of the most elevated social or spiritual kind.

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Originally posted by N.Beltov:
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The culture wars, mostly emanating from the USA over the last 30 years, succeeded in "The Conquest of Cool". Check out the book of the same title. It was "cool" to be active in issues of social justice and to be part of the counter-culture. The culture wars undermined that, and made selfishness, racism, misogyny and other markers of capitalism "cool". This is no small matter at all ... but associating activism with "coolness" seems fine by me. That's the way it should be, no?

[url=http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/259919.html]The Conquest of Cool by Thomas Frank.[/url][/b]

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No, I don't think it should. I don't like what "cool" means in this culture and I am suspicious of the value system of anyone who aspires to it. Coolness is only for young, attractive (in the conventional sense), relatively affluent and privileged people. The poor, marginalized, disabled, oppressed people of this world are not "cool". They don't have a hope in hell of being cool.

(I enjoyed One Market Under God enormously, but haven't read The Conquest of Cool.)

ETA: I really haven't made my position clear. I'm doing a couple things at once and have to leave in 5 minutes. Maybe later.

[ 27 June 2008: Message edited by: RosaL ]

It's a culture, and ultimately a social, war. The bosses and their agents want consumer idiocy and slavishness to the boss to prevail; those of us on the left want social connectedness, spiritual elevation, and class consciousness to prevail. "Cool" is simply a term the two sides fight over, like "freedom", and so on.

I want to add that there is also a kind of fake activism, or a watered-down activism, that is sold to people. Consumer actions, through shopping, replaces mass mobilizations. And so on.

Here's what Frank wrote about the counter-culture and the fake counterculture:

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Thomas Frank: from its very beginnings down to the present, business dogged the counterculture with a fake counterculture, a commercial replica that seemed to ape its every move for the titillation of the TV-watching millions and the nation's corporate sponsors.... Apart from certain obvious exceptions at either end of the spectrum of commodification (represented, say, by the MC-5 at one end and the Monkees at the other) it was and remains difficult to distinguish precisely between authentic counterculture and fake: by almost every account, the counterculture, as a mass movement distinct from the bohemias that preceded it, was triggered at least as much by developments in mass culture (particularly the arrival of The Beatles in 1964) as changes at the grass roots.

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Even the impulse to be involved in social justice issues is a target for capitalist marketing. Let the activist beware. It's a totalitarian system. But forewarned is forearmed, even for young activists looking at our brave new world with blinking eyes.

I think it's useful to assist the prospective social justice activist by pointing out that they will face a battle of ideas, even over their activist soul, and that they should be ready for it. We should protect our young.

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Originally posted by Michelle:
[b]First of all, the word "activist" is kind of loaded, isn't it?

I think it's necessary to rethink the whole activist chic thing. There are ways of getting involved and working for change without necessarily cultivating The Image Of Activist.[/b]

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Another loaded word is "change," as overused by the Unity Pals yesterday.

It reminds me of the old General Electric Company slogan "progress is our most important product."

Capitalism dissolves cultures and boundaries. "Change," yes, but not the change anyone here asked for. Bush wanted to change Iraq.

[ 28 June 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

Activism has always been cool and out front. In the long run it's always co-opted. Listen to the Quirks and Quarks segment on teenage chimpanzees. Apparently it happens in all primates. Cool is just the teenage rebellion that has been adopted by the larger society.

We know about co-opting too. I remember when the early members of the civil rights movement started coming north on speaking tours, we asked them about the funny farmers clothes they wore. They explained that dressing like the poor southern farmers help them gain acceptance for programs like voting rights and desegregation. So a few of us in the north started wearing jeans in solidarity with our older activist cousins. We all know what a marketing bonanza that turned out to be for the capitalistas. First it was wrong to wear jeans, then there were designer jeans almost overnight. The first time my grandmother saw me wearing jeans she said "why you wearing those farmer clothes". We were going back to what she moved away from. Today's cool is tomorrows marketing device. It's sad, but it's the way it is. You wanna be cool, but you also want to move beyond cool real quick. Turn cool into commitment, before it gets old, and bypassed by the next cool. As for those who are uncool, that's way more of a problem than cool. How do you save your movement from the ideological nerds that spend way too much time in meetings and not enough time in action? Don't get me wrong it's fine to have meetings, if at the end of the day, some action comes out of them. But, the meetings need to be held by people who are actually getting out and doing something. Not by cause groupies. That's where the tough enough part comes in. When I was a kid we had to risk being beaten and jailed to walk through the "activist" door. I know I'm gonna hear screams of protest, but, as "activists", we used to be a lot tougher.

I guess the thing with being an activist, is occasionally you're going to get beat up, maybe not physically, but verbally, you're going to get ambushed, you may not be picking yourself up off the pavement, but you're going to be picking yourself up emotionally. I guess the first thing you need is a cause you're willing to suffer abuse for. But, the cause comes first. You can adopt someone else's cause but you have to make it yours before you go out there. So, I guess my advice would be , read everything, try and be aware of all the issues, become an activist in whatever field catches your attention, whatever that might be. We may all want to free Tibet, (my Free Tibet t-shirt didn't shrink but somehow it's become woefully small) but you don't really get to dictate what it is that ultimately catches our attention. Personally my next big thing will probably be campaigning to ensure the Species at Risk Act is not amended to make the protection of caribou habitat on crown land legally impossible. That something like that would be of interest to any but a few people is highly unlikely. But that's what appeals to me right now, so off I go. I'm sure there are many more "worthwhile" things out there, but each of us has a responsibility to go with what inspires us.

A couple of clues. If something inspires you, you'll find out everything you can about it. You'll read, you'll watch any available films, you'll know who the "experts" are. The trick to being an activist is being active. If that's too much, just go to the parties.