Hey all, it’s been a long time since I rapped at ya, but as the Mueller investigation heats up I’ve been thinking about what comes next. The news around the Nunes memo suggests that we may be coming up to a real breaking point, but I’ve been wondering what that would actually look like? How do we know what a real red line looks like, and how do we communicate that it’s been crossed? What actions are we as individuals willing to take?
I’ve been involved in activism since the Bush years, but peripherally. When I go to protests I prefer to stay on the margins, and usually grapple with the question of what’s actually being accomplished throughout. I do the calls to Congress, the online petitions, the occasional training/workshop, lots of Facebook likes and shares, but rarely do I have the feeling that I’m having a real impact, or connect strongly with a campaign/organization. There are various reasons for that, most of them personal — for all that I care about these various issues, there’s a limit to how much actual time effort and energy I’m willing to invest.
I’ve been thinking about the idea of stochastic activism recently — creating an environment where more people are more likely to get actively involved. I’d argue that we’re still a long ways from the level of civic activism/conflict that we saw in the 60s, and I’m not convinced that’s the optimal outcome for our current situation, or that it’s achievable. But at the core of political change is a situation where more people are willing to take action in support of something, than those opposed to it. That’s a pretty vague description, and of course the situation is more nuanced than that. There are many examples where a “good” campaign is blunted, or fizzles out, or all the various other ways that things can go wrong.
My intention here isn’t to criticize what others are doing, but to have a conversation about ways that people feel meaningfully involved. I don’t expect that there is any one right way of doing things, but I’m curious about what people see as their guiding principles for activism, what works for them and what they’re looking for. How do we know when the Trump administration has really really really crossed the line, and what do we do about it as individuals?
I still go back to Obama’s inspiring to “Be the change you want to see”, and in many ways that’s how I’ve chosen to live. But I’m not sure what kind of change we need to see in the current political environment, and how we make that happen.
This is a vague post, and I could write a lot more on the topic, but I figured I’d go easy on myself and start by dipping my toe in the water. Effective activism and advocacy is something that I’ve been thinking about for a long time, but I don’t often have opportunity to discuss it.