I think the figures here have been presented several times on this list, but I don't remember them exactly. The general point if I remember correctly at all is that less than half the population reads newspapers or even watches TV news programs. (And of those that do read newspapers not much more than half read the news columns.) Thus the major source of news for a huge proportion (more than half?) of the population is what they pick up in conversation with others. It would thus be exaggerating only slightly to say that _even_ for the mainstream media the only audience in the church is the choir (and that the choir has a high rate of absenteeism). Note: among college students huge numbers think, for example, that El Salvador is in the mideast or that the Philippines are in South America. Thus if they do read or listen to news, it gets radically filtered. I am _not_, incidentally, blaming or even mildly criticizing these students for their ignorance, and I would deny as reactionary propaganda any claim that their ignorance was wilful.
Any "plan" for getting a leftist message across to its intended audience has to take all this into account. _Also_ (this was one of my reasons for launching the thread on rhetoric) it has to be assumed that the _content_ of that message, whatever it is, will pass through a filter of preconceptions that contradict or distort anything the left has to say. This is widely known but not always remembered. For example, any critique of hip-hop is aesopian language for "Those filthy n.......s" -- i.e., is racist regardless of the intentions of the speaker. That is how general assumptions (aka "common sense" aka "ideology") filter the meaning of statements. "Gangs" is short for "Black Gangs." "Single mother" is short for "Black Welfare Queen." And so forth.
This is the context for seeing the importance of Yoshie's argument.
She writes: "I believe we should concentrate on expanding the size of the crowds and sending a message not through words but through the social composition of the crowds and their actions...."
_Eventually_, of course, the message has to be communicated in written/spoken words: but if the message is a leftist one, the first necessity, prior to the message's content or style, is to gather an audience for it. Nothing in the message itself will accomplish that.
And that is also why DSR's plea is incorrect. She wrote: ". . .it is time for gay activists to quit acting like every day is Stonewall and start acting like sophisticated political strategists." What is needed, rather, is for gay activists (and their friends) is to START acting _again_ as though every day is Stonewall.
Jane Austen put the point rather well in _Emma_. The problem was to persuade Emma's passive-aggressive father to accept cheerfully her marriage:
********* But Mr. Woodhouse--how was Mr. Woodhouse to be induced to consent?--he, who had never yet alluded to their marriage but as a distant event.
When first sounded on the subject, he was so miserable, that they were almost hopeless.--A second allusion, indeed, gave less pain.-- He began to think it was to be, and that he could not prevent it-- a very promising step of the mind on its way to resignation. Still, however, he was not happy. Nay, he appeared so much otherwise, that his daughter's courage failed. She could not bear to see him suffering, to know him fancying himself neglected; and though her understanding almost acquiesced in the assurance of both the Mr. Knightleys, that when once the event were over, his distress would be soon over too, she hesitated--she could not proceed.
In this state of suspense they were befriended, not by any sudden illumination of Mr. Woodhouse's mind, or any wonderful change of his nervous system, but by the operation of the same system in another way.-- Mrs. Weston's poultry-house was robbed one night of all her turkeys-- evidently by the ingenuity of man. Other poultry-yards in the neighbourhood also suffered.--Pilfering was housebreaking to Mr. Woodhouse's fears.--He was very uneasy; and but for the sense of his son-in-law's protection, would have been under wretched alarm every night of his life. The strength, resolution, and presence of mind of the Mr. Knightleys, commanded his fullest dependence. While either of them protected him and his, Hartfield was safe.-- But Mr. John Knightley must be in London again by the end of the first week in November.********
REPEAT: He began to think it was to be, and that he could not prevent it-- a very promising step of the mind on its way to resignation.
REPEAT: He began to think it was to be, and that he could not prevent it-- a very promising step of the mind on its way to resignation.
Gay rights will be achieved NOT when a large bulk of the population believes Gays _should_ have rights; Gay rights will be achieved when a large bulk of the population becomes resigned to the fact that only gay rights can make the public sphere comfortable, when like Mr. Woodhouse they become _resigned_ to the public presence of Gays.
In the world in which I grew up (that of the '30s and '40s) the assumption of most (would-be) anti-racists was that "toleration" would be won by Blacks ("Negroes" or "Colored Persons") showing by their good behavior that they were "just as good as whites. In some movie I was watching recently on cable, a white sheriff tells a group of (armed) blacks that he can't help them till they give up their weapons (which they intelligently refuse to do. What above all brought the (too limited) gains of the Black Liberation Movement was that large sectors of the _ruling class_ and their political servants (e.g. Senator Dirksen) became resigned to the necessity of buying peace with granting those gains. (I was utterly shocked by a conversation I had with an uncle back in 1969: as a teenage liberal I had become contemptuous of him because of his overt racism, but in this conversation in 1969, and on the basis not of anything except the headlines about black riots, he responded favorably to the suggestion that his interests as a working person coincided with black rights.) It was the acts of rioters more than the pleas of King that won such rights as blacks won in that decade. (The pleas of King were essential, but only as commentary on and explanation of the riots.)
A delightful anecdote passed on to me by Bruce Franklin back in 1970. Some "non-violent freaks" had been picketing a napalm plant in the bay area, and several times workers at the plant had beaten up the pickets. Then Bruce and some of his comrades showed up carrying ball bats. The reaction: Now the workers thought it would be worthwhile to sit down and talk. Their reaction was something like, "O, we hadn't known you were serious."
Actions don't explain themselves, but actions do create a desire for explanation. Without actions most of the public (to whom the left is currently invisible) will never pay any attention to our words.