A diatribe on protest and social change

I’ve stopped believing people are stupid.  I’ve stopped believing that the average person wants to grope blindly and helplessly through life.  I’ve stopped believing that people truly want pacification by all the inane trappings our society offers.  Ignorance is different than stupidity.  Ignorance is simply a lack of information, a lack of knowledge of alternatives.  Ignorance is a lack of believing that one person or group of people can affect any sort of positive change or even knowing where to start or what to do.  Ignorance is not the shortcoming of one individual or group.  Ignorance is systematic.  Ignorance is inborn and ingrained in all of us. 

I think it is misguided at best for the activist to approach the systematic ignorance ingrained in society with the attitude of “these people don’t know any better- we have to educate them to see the world through our (the correct) lens”.  That is a rather presumptuous attitude and one which I believe turns many off from noble causes and from actually mobilizing to affect change. 

You can feed people documented facts and truths all you want, but to truly be driven to try to create change, people have to first feel a personal and direct impact.  You can disseminate information about the plight of the American worker and the scourge of corporatism and the growing divide between filthy rich and dirt poor (among many other social ills), until your face turns blue and you wear through the soles of your shoes, but it will not make one damn bit of difference to a person who has not felt the ever tightening screws of the vise on our very humanity. 

That is why I believe that there will be no mass uproar, no protest, until enough people have suffered themselves the injustices of our current broken society.  Even those now who are struggling, who are feeling themselves pinched through every aspect of their lives, but are still eking out survival are unlikely to be motivated toward involvement.  Take the plight of the typical Wal-Mart employee, for example: after working long hours with no benefits and a paycheck that could not support one person, much less an entire family, do you really think that after they’ve been on their feet 40, 50, 60 hours a week, they’ll have the time, energy, or inclination to any great social action?  Do you really think that they can just hop in their car and drive several hours to hold a stupid sign?  Do you really think that they want to?  Do you really think that they can afford the gas, food, and related expenses just to go stand in a disgruntled crowd for a few hours?  Do you really think that after working 40, 50, 60 hours a week they’re going to be so willing to sacrifice what little personal time they have for themselves and their families to go to a protest? Hell, I wouldn’t!

As much as I hate to say it, most people will only be driven to act through anger and desperation.  Say this “typical” Wal-Mart employee loses their job or loses their government benefits (on which many Wal-Mart employees are encouraged by the company itself to rely); this person now faces the real possibility that their family, although struggling before, may now be completely deprived of food, shelter, and good health.  Say 100, 500, 1,000, 50,000 workers face this very real possibility- confronted with such a state of desperation- these people, who now have little left but their anger and helplessness, will be the ones to rattle the bars on the cage.  

You can sit on your folding chair in your climate controlled room and complain about the ills of society.  And you can talk about the poor ignorant people in Anytown, IN, who need to be “educated” into your way of seeing the world.  And you can go to your protests and wave your signs about the injustices halfway across the country or around the globe, but these people, these people to whom little is given and more and more is stolen, these people whom you feel you must “educate” these are the people who will do the true fighting.  Not you, the 20-something urban idealist.  Not you.

The war needs to be waged in our small towns and communities.  Focus needs to be put on organizing, on not trying to “win” people over to a particular ethos or “educate” people into your way of thinking.  Focus needs to be put on meeting people where they are, of encouraging people to stand up for themselves and for each other and see the impact on themselves and others of the injustices that are continually wrought upon them; in small cities and communities I believe there is a great potential for this.  The somewhat insular attitude of many small towns is a blessing in this case- because instead of a mass of nameless faces, the somewhat cliquish attitude of many small towns (despite all its obvious ugliness), can be easily channeled to yield personal connections, yield a knowledge of the problems of your friends and neighbors, and can begin to create a close-knit fabric of interdependence and community solidarity.  That is how I believe the war will be waged if we have any hope of truly winning.