What do you mean by "activists," though? It seems that you are confusing organizers -- especially organizers of demonstrations -- with "activists," but organizers and "activists" do not play the same set of functions (though individuals may move from being organizers to "activists" and vice versa, depending on their personal circumstances). IMHO, organizers create scenes, milieus, infrastructure, etc. -- from lobbying to demonstration, from activist workshops to public educational fora, from call-in days to letter-writing campaigns, from fund-raisers to solidarity caravans, from all sorts of civil disobedience (with or without an intent to be arrested) to electoral campaigns -- through which ordinary individuals can become more politically active than "Average Joe's," i.e. become "activists."
Even organizers do not necessarily act like "salesmen," i.e. public interfaces between a social movement and the rest of the public. Let's say you are organizing a big demonstration, but organizing a big demonstration takes all kinds of work, from creating and updating databases of activists, creating and updating websites, making arrangements to set up Porta Johns, contacting likely allies (including lawyers), making signs, puppets, and other props, making and distributing flyers and leaflets, writing and dispatching press releases, leading chants with megaphones, to acting as spokespersons to the media. Much of work involved in organizing a demonstration doesn't have anything to do with acting as a salesman and making cold calls to sell "an unpopular product." 99.99% of the organizing work that goes into making a demonstration possible is completely invisible to the public, and 89.99% of it is also probably invisible to the segment of activists who have never been organizers. There should be _at least one_ aspect of organizing work for which a given individual, whatever his personality, is cut out. The only obstacles are ill health and lack of time, from which a lot of people suffer temporarily or chronically.
As for being politically active, i.e., being an "activist," I think it would be futile to aspire toward any kind of democracy if it weren't true that everyone, regardless of his or her personality, could be _at least potentially_ politically active _in some way_ but for temporary or chronic obstacles of ill health and lack of time. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>