But in ACT UP Philly's case, there were varying levels of involvement. There was the intensely close core of full-timers who lived and worked together on AIDS issues all the time; the 'fellow travellers' who would come to meetings, take on tasks, or lend their energies to particular parts of the work; and then thousands of more general supporters from the queer community, drug-recovery programs, and HIV support networks, who would attend a march or a fundraising party and make them the huge successes they often were.
My own experiences with this mixture of mass marches of poor and queer people, disruptive and adventurous direct actions, and rigorously pragmatic lobbying and media work; and the tangible, life-saving results such good work could produce (slashed prices for life-saving medications here and in the global south; funding for programs; total backtracking by the right away from their early disgusted hate for HIV+ people to today's surprising amount of engagement with global AIDS by evangelical groups) motivated me to take organizing dead seriously, and not just as a pasttime or way to meet people.
So I'd argue for us NOT to "reconcile ourselves to the reality that since everything I work on may not come to fruition until long after my oblivion, I cannot pin my level of satisfaction on whether I see a practical difference occurring because of my work." If the left were less allergic to results, I believe the public at large would be less allergic to the left.
actup fight back! Jim
>
> But is expecting to get this sense of connection a
> reasonable expectation? I remember at ACT UP --
> people not only expected you to work with them,
> but to become their friends and have meals with
> them, etc., etc. I always found such expectations
> absurd.
>
> > On the other hand, I have always been profoundly
> dissatisfied with bearing witness. So are most Americans,
> I believe. More people would get involved in politics
> if they thought they could make a practical difference
> on big issues that matter to them, if they believed that
> they had a good chance of changing the nation.
>
> I long ago reconciled myself to the reality that since
> everything I work on may not come to fruition until long
> after my oblivion, I cannot pin my level of satisfaction on
> whether I see a practical difference occurring because of
> my work. Also, having discovered that I am best at
> counselling and mentoring teenagers helped immensely
> with establishing this discipline, since teenagers rarely
> provide any feedback whatsoever.
>
> > What we need, I think, is a critical mass of leftists getting
> together and coming up with a medium-term strategy that
> clearly charts a path to power
>
> But don't you find that many leftists are allergic to taking
> power/control?
>
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