Gordon Fitch wrote:
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> It's all that simple, is it? They're _lying_? Why don't
> they go to work for the government, then, if that's their
> métier?
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Actually, the first words I ever spoke in a general meeting of the local peace group were to declare that there was no chance of our influencing immediate policy, that the Administration was going to do what it was going to do for the present, but that if we built strongly enough in a year or so we might be having a significant impact. The reason I gave for emphasizing this was that peace movements died from unreal expectations; that to sustain a movement we must have a clear sense of what we can hope to do and what we cannot hope to do.
Put another way, mass movements (revolutionary or not) have to incorporate a sense of protracted struggle.
I was trying to work this out a little further in an unfinished post I was working on for Pen-L earlier this week. Here is the unfinished draft:
**********
Michael Hoover wrote:
> Each section of the movie was shown independently of the others in non-theater settings conducive to the collective's desire to periodically stop the projector and facilitate audience discussion.
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This reminds me of an observation/suggestion that I've been brooding on for nearly 30 years. It pertains to the presentation/organization of agitational/educational "forums." First a particular instance.
Some years ago I attended a presentation on the war in Colombia which, up to a point, was one of the best such presentations I have ever attended. First, it had attracted an overflow crowd: apparently both the advertising for the event had been extremely well done and/or the topic in one way or another caught the interest of a very diverse group of people. Secondly, it centered on a really excellent video (made by the BBC) on political activity (resistence, Death squads, etc.) in the area of Colombia in which British Petroleum was developing an oil field. Moreover, the speaker who introduced the video and commented on it afterwards was truly superb. He held the audience's attention and drew out the political implications of the video accurately and convincingly.
But his commentary after the video, all of which was interesting and well delivered, tended to go on rather too long. He knew a lot about Colombia. He was passionately attached to the cause of the people of Colombia, and he was intent on carrying that attachment to his listeners. That is, he saw his listeners as passive receptacles of information and opionion. And that was a terrible mistake. Moreover, it was a mistake which (in my experience of over 35 years of involvement in movement politics, is repeated over and over and over again. And of course, usually the speakers are less able to hold an audience's attention than was the case in this event. I know I could not have spoken so well and so long with such precision and force.
And the occasion then degenerated further in the question period. Again, taken one question and answer at a time, the question period was superior to most I have attended. The questions were less pompous, the answers were informed _and extensive_. Some of the audience began to leave. More questions. More long and detailed (and in themselves interesting) answers. More of the audience left. There was now space inside the room for the overflow crowd who had been standing in the hall outside. In fact seats became available for standees, and eventually empty seats began to appear. More intelligent questions and more intelligent and well-spoken responses. More people left. I had driven 50 miles, and I was anxious to become acquainted with some of the people in the audience. Actually, I was even more interested in various people in the audience becoming acquainted with each other. But there came a point when, I suspected, those who remained were either _mere_ students or belonged already to the group that had sponsored the event. (By mere student I mean anyone satisfied with the mere acquisition of knowledge and understanding.)
The work that had occurred before the event in attracting people to it, as well as the initial presentation of the video, was only _half_ (and I think the less important half) of the agitational task. It was requisite that at least some of those attending be incorporated into the the ongoing activity of the sponsoring organization. Partly this is because the intensity of the presentation was really wasted. I would imagine that most of the audience consisted of those who _already_ were prepared to respond positively to the "message" of the event. It was not a matter of informing or persuading a passive audience -- it was a matter of expanding the core that already existed -- expanding it in such a way that the new activists would represent a wider circle of direct acquaintance, a potentially wider ultimate outreach.
I have no formula for doing better -- partly because the context for such events (and innumerable other kinds of event with a similar purpose) constantly changes, and improvement would have to stem from the summing up of new kinds of practice. But perhaps a few observations can offer pointers.
First of all, the assumption behind the practice I have described seems to be grounded in academic or journalistic practice. The journalist cannot expect feedback from or interaction among her readers, so all she can do is present her case -- shoot her arrow into the air and hope it lands someplace useful. And the academic, whether in the classroom or the scholarly journal, has her audience pre-selected (and to some extent a captive audience). The classroom presentation or scholarly article must constitute its own context, with no goal beyond informing or persuading a passive audience. But in the kind of event I am describing, the audience by its very presence announces its readiness to move further: one might say it is still the choir, but a newly enlarged choir, some of the members of which may be persuaded to stay.
The essential point then is to give those new faces something to _do_ -- and do at once, before they leave the room (perhaps never to return). And of course the only thing that _can_ be done within that context is to talk to each other -- and the subject of that talk must be what to do next. ********
I couldn't get beyond this point -- perhaps because there is no way to work out an abstract principle which will govern all cases. Perhaps I should have ended one clause quicker in fact. I'm not sure at all what the subject of that talking to each other "must be." So I'll let it go here.
Carrol
P.S. I write one post at a time, and I give no consideration whatever to
whether that post is or is not consistent with some other post I wrote.
I don't regard mail lists as a theoretical journal. They can be
exploratory only -- and consistency and exploration are often not
compatible. As someone or other once said, how can I know what I think
until I see what I say.
> -- Gordon