busyHowl
If you've ever wondered what lurks at the very bottom of the American political barrel, look no further than the scenes that have been playing out in health care town hall forums across the nation over the last couple of weeks. Members of Congress who favor President Obama's health care reform program returned to their districts to speak to their constituents about the details of the president's plan, and were greeted with howls, screams and shrieks from right-wing protesters bent on blowing the whole process to pieces.
No debate. No conversation between intelligent parties. Just yelling.
I've been watching the scare tactics used in town halls that are trying to discuss health care. The Republicans claim that these protests are part of a respected American political tradition. (Yes, activism is; funny how they don't seem to feel that way about other peoples' protests.) The Democrats say that these protests are aimed at shutting down the whole process, which is happening in some cases as multiple meetings have been cancelled (or not scheduled in the first place under circumstances that normally call for such) for fear of disruption, and that this is a problem.
This got me thinking ... what is activism all about? What is the purpose behind it? Activism is what you do to make people pay attention. It's all about driving a message home when the mainstream has decided to stick its fingers in its ears, sing LA-LA-LA, and pretend that you and your inconvenient truth don't exist. You do something they simply can't ignore. But at the core, activism is about opening communication.
These protests are about shutting down communication. Town hall meetings are a fundamental democratic process for giving locals a chance to discuss important issues with their representatives and each other. People are going into these meetings and simply screaming so that other people cannot hold a discussion. That's not activism. It's not aimed at convincing others that the speaker's stance is better. It's aimed at making communication impossible. That is not a respected American tradition.
You have a right to your opinion. More specifically, you have a right to your informed and articulated opinion. You do not have the right to prevent discussion of the issue on which you have an opinion -- not just because people on the other side have a right to their opinion, but because some people on your would like to try convincing people on the other side that your side makes more sense.
By the way, I want to thank all the folks (on various sides) who have been working hard to carry on a rational discussion of health care reform here with representation of arguments for and against it, pros and cons, challenges, problems that we all agree need to be solved but don't all agree on exactly what would achieve that, wildly divergent personal experiences, and all. The more perspectives we get, the more things we uncover that one or two people thought of that others haven't and the media isn't discussing either. We're trying to find common ground, where we can work together on stuff we agree about instead of fighting over stuff we disagree about. We're fielding a lot more options than the government is considering. Even if Washington drops all the eggs it's trying to juggle, we have ideas for some individual aspects of health care that can be worked on at lower, smaller levels.
Even though this is a topic that I normally prefer to avoid like the plague, it's important enough for me to make the effort to manage a discussion of it as long as I can, with as broad an array of articulate positions as I can gather. I'm proud of you-all for contributing to that effort, because explaining your reasoning over and over again to people who don't share it is 10 times harder than just screaming. Whether you're passing me links to articles on some aspect of the debate that I haven't covered yet, or defining your terms in comments, or pointing out "Yeah, but ..." pitfalls, or sharing stories of what has or hasn't worked in your experience, or looking up references to support your arguments -- THIS is what makes a democracy work. Not the tantrums in the town halls or the baksheesh in Washington. This. The point where "I disagree" is not the end of the debate but the beginning: what comes out of that equation is democracy.
August 14 2009, 23:27:33 UTC 11 years ago
But it worked. It worked very well. It got peoples' attention, and it got the policies and the laws to change. It even got me to change, eventually. I hope.
So people learned that the way to change the country was to march around, wave signs, and shout. You say the current health care protests aren't political discourse. This is correct, but demonstrations and signs and marches never WERE part of the political discourse. You can't put a detailed philosophical or legal argument into a two-by-three picket sign or into "Hell no, we won't go!" Demonstrations and that sort of activism were never anything more than a kick into the teeth of Mundane Everyday Order.
And shouting, giving the world the finger, worked beautifully-- until everyone else learned how to do it too. Once that happens, once everyone is screaming some mindless slogan and bopping passers-by with picket signs, the game is up.
Discourtesy can't shock people in a world where courtesy is considered quaint. Where people think the opposite of polite is "creative."
So how do the True Believers get the message across? Do they escalate to death threats and, finally civil war? Or can we find some other way to talk to each other?
Because the old stuff isn't going to work. Marches and demonstrations are dead as effective activism, I think, unless you want to go over the edge into rioting, and that's likely worse than what you're trying to protest. You march. You yell. You wave your sign. The ones you're trying to shock into thinking about the issue are marching and screaming and giving you the finger right back. Everyone else has seen it a thousand times, and is bored to tears by it.
Answers? I don't have any.
Hmm...
August 14 2009, 23:58:15 UTC 11 years ago
I disagree with that last part. Previous bouts of activism were intended to force a conversation about things that other people wished to ignore. The current bout is trying to force an end to a conversation that's already happening. I don't think that's the same thing.
>>Discourtesy can't shock people in a world where courtesy is considered quaint. Where people think the opposite of polite is "creative."<<
That is disturbingly apt. And yet ...
>>The ones you're trying to shock into thinking about the issue are marching and screaming and giving you the finger right back. Everyone else has seen it a thousand times, and is bored to tears by it.
Answers? I don't have any.<<
...this does give me ideas.
Back in my college days, when the first Iraq war was revving up, there were noisy marches and rallies. They came and went. But there was one protest that came and stayed, and it was different.
That was the Silent Vigil for Peace, and it was organized by Quakers. What they did was stand in a circle on a busy street corner, in silence, praying. All they had was one sign that said "Silent Vigil for Peace" (and maybe something like "all are welcome to join"). When Quakers get together in silence, they're not talking to God. They're listening. There's making a kind of big receiver antenna pointed at heaven. And that thing has a blast radius, or blest radius, dependent on the number of participants. I think the average energy imprint was about a quarter square block, but some days up to about a whole block. People noticed. Heck, even the atheists noticed. No amount of police persuasion could induce the Quakers to move, and they never did anything remotely legal. Arresting them would've looked stupid and been thrown out, and the cops realized that rather quickly. (It helped when the History majors explained to them the futility of arguing with Quakers when they're listening to God.) That form of protest was so different from what people expected, they didn't know how to handle it.
I'll bet they still don't. The main drawback is that it's a tricky technique, and not everybody has a Meeting of Friends they can call on for the heavy work. But it might be interesting to try something like this again.