I speak from my experience as an activist. If you'd get off campus once
in a while Carrol, maybe these things would make sense to you.
All my political activity for 25 years has been off campus. Campus was only a place where I earned my living. My wife was a clerical there for some years and led a (unsuccessful) union organizing drive there. Later she was president of her APWU local for 4 years (broken between the third and fourth years when she really ticked her chief opponent off by succeeding in getting her candidate for the job elected). She was also (until she shifted from the PO to State Farm recently) an officer of the McLean County Trades & Labor Assembly.
I've been off campus quite a bit. It was only in 1968-70 when my political activity was mostly on campus and almost got me fired. (An asshole in the state legislature, overestimating my pay by around $7000, introduced an amendment to the 1970 budget of ISU cutting it by my estimated salary.It was at that time also that I was arrested for disorderly conduct for speaking rudely (or so she alleged) to a librarian while I was observing a black student action in the university Library. I was one of the large crowd of blacks and whites who blockaded the Bloomington City Council in the Council chambers until they pledged not to "urban renewal" an older black woman out of her home.
I was one of the five initiators of the *off-campus* 'division' of the community coalition against the Gulf War. We organized a march much larger than any during the Vietnam War (mostly non-students). I am in fact more of a community activist than a theorist, only engaging in extensive theory at the present time because these maillists are what is available.
I initiated the Jesse Jackson primary campaign in this congressional district in 1988 and was one of the candidates on his slate of delegates. My wife and I arranged for him to make his final speech of the Illinois primary campaign in Bloomington at a labor rally.
So just how much more is it possible for me to "get off campus"?
Carrol