facebook protests
I am in the middle of Give Me Liberty, spotted at random at the library.
This is for everyone I know who signs Facebook-based petitions or friends a cause as their way of making a political statement. It feels crucial just now to get this out.
"It is easy for us to look at the diminishing of our common space to assemble and protest as a minor inconvenience; we are overcommitted and protesting doesn't sound like much fun anyway, and, hey, in the Internet era, isn't it beside the point? Can't I do just as well staying safely in my study, clicking a mouse?
No, we cannot do just as well staying in our private rooms and going online; that is how private space becomes the isolation of citizens and in turn eventually becomes a comfortable personal cage. At times we must amass ourselves; this action is not expendable. Its benefit to us is not just stylistic or a matter of nostalgia. Mass disruptive protest is history's time-honored tactic against the suppression of citizens' rights; the assembling of citizens in defiance of wrongdoing also feeds a psychological space that we need to fill if we are to live as truly free men and women."
-- Naomi Wolf, Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries, pp. 118-119 (I stopped there because I should probably not just type the entire book out.)
She does an excellent job noting the dangers of real protest actions, and the weaponry of intimidation, which I have personally not experienced in the course of such actions. I think that disseminating information online is vital, which is why I'm trying to do it right now, and why I have some seriously deep respect for solarbird and others who do more research and aggregation than I will ever have the dedication to personally do.
It just can't stop there, and my heart falls a little when I see causes -- doesn't even matter which causes -- going around Facebook or LJ and people "friending" them as the sum total of their willingness to identify with them. This is alliance, not activism, and trivial alliance at that. Being an activist is goddamn fucking hard, and I am guilty of more alliance than activism too.
Write letters to the editors of publications that get you fired up about something for more than ten minutes. Blog the shit out of what you care about. Give actual cash dollars to organizations that represent you. I can't actually recommend showing up to protests, especially since the ones I have read about recently (and not attended) I'm embarrassed to be associated with and glad I didn't go, but it is amazing to find validation for that action. Friend things on Facebook too, as a means of incrementing the count and throwing in your two cents, but remember that it's not worth two cents. The value is in speaking. I hope that doing so in just another LJ post is worth something too.
This is for everyone I know who signs Facebook-based petitions or friends a cause as their way of making a political statement. It feels crucial just now to get this out.
"It is easy for us to look at the diminishing of our common space to assemble and protest as a minor inconvenience; we are overcommitted and protesting doesn't sound like much fun anyway, and, hey, in the Internet era, isn't it beside the point? Can't I do just as well staying safely in my study, clicking a mouse?
No, we cannot do just as well staying in our private rooms and going online; that is how private space becomes the isolation of citizens and in turn eventually becomes a comfortable personal cage. At times we must amass ourselves; this action is not expendable. Its benefit to us is not just stylistic or a matter of nostalgia. Mass disruptive protest is history's time-honored tactic against the suppression of citizens' rights; the assembling of citizens in defiance of wrongdoing also feeds a psychological space that we need to fill if we are to live as truly free men and women."
-- Naomi Wolf, Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries, pp. 118-119 (I stopped there because I should probably not just type the entire book out.)
She does an excellent job noting the dangers of real protest actions, and the weaponry of intimidation, which I have personally not experienced in the course of such actions. I think that disseminating information online is vital, which is why I'm trying to do it right now, and why I have some seriously deep respect for solarbird and others who do more research and aggregation than I will ever have the dedication to personally do.
It just can't stop there, and my heart falls a little when I see causes -- doesn't even matter which causes -- going around Facebook or LJ and people "friending" them as the sum total of their willingness to identify with them. This is alliance, not activism, and trivial alliance at that. Being an activist is goddamn fucking hard, and I am guilty of more alliance than activism too.
Write letters to the editors of publications that get you fired up about something for more than ten minutes. Blog the shit out of what you care about. Give actual cash dollars to organizations that represent you. I can't actually recommend showing up to protests, especially since the ones I have read about recently (and not attended) I'm embarrassed to be associated with and glad I didn't go, but it is amazing to find validation for that action. Friend things on Facebook too, as a means of incrementing the count and throwing in your two cents, but remember that it's not worth two cents. The value is in speaking. I hope that doing so in just another LJ post is worth something too.