The Party is Indeed Over…Let’s Try Something Different!
I recently rented a film. It was a documentary entitled “The Party’s Over” and it was made back in 2001 before 9/11. The documentary starred Philip Seymour Hoffman, the Academy Award winning actor of Capote and Doubt among many other films. It essentially chronicled his journey across the country during the 2000 Presidential election. He got to go to each one of the party’s conventions and interview many elite political figures and actors. However, a great chunk of the film also included him interviewing lesser know figures, primarily political activists who were protesting the two parties and their anemic approach to solving the problems the country was facing. The film delved deep into the struggles of some of these activists and showed how difficult it is for them to be heard, as it often times leads to police breaking up their peaceful, non-violent protests and acts of civil disobedience. Watching this happen over and over again to protestors got me thinking about the conflict I constantly feel as a self-described activist. And that conflict is, as much as I appreciate the power that civil disobedience and public protests has played in past social movements, namely the civil rights and labor movements in this country, I can’t help but feel that they are so ineffectual in the context of today’s political struggles and the power dynamics at play that we need to abandon the tactic and try something new.
I have this conflict for several reasons, and much of those reasons can be summed up as emanating from the measure of utility that the tactics have for achieving a particular aim. Public protests and acts of civil disobedience definitely did work in the past as they actively disrupted the status quo and forced the powers that be to pay attention, but I think this was due to several reasons that simply are not at play today. First, what was happening in the South during the civil rights movement was hard to ignore, especially as police brutality and the boldness of the protests kept escalating, so they garnered plenty of media attention. It also certainly helped that the movement had a very charismatic leader with a well-established institution already setup to support the effort (e.g. Southern black churches). The situation today is largely different for groups fighting for various social justice causes. Leadership is present in some circles but it is patently obvious that there is not one charismatic leader of these efforts. Some may say Barack Obama is their leader, but to those of you who may say that, ask anyone within the left actively fighting for things such as economic justice, racial justice, restoration of civil rights or anyone within the anti-war movement and they will probably vehemently disagree with you, as would I. The other thing the left does not have is in the infrastructure or institutions that are readily available to support their efforts. There are some instances of it here and there, but in my own personal experience thus far, the left is far too occupied with trying to find a way to work together and coalesce, which is born out of this lack of a central institutional framework or infrastructure that links everyone to everyone else. And lastly, the one thing the left does not have today that the right has in abundance is the mainstream media coverage. In the 1950′s and 60′s and 70′s, the civil rights movement managed to garner coverage of their struggle. However, how often do you see on mainstream media coverage of the actions of the groups fighting for social justice, unless violence breaks out, and even then its twisted and distorted? If I want to hear about these kinds of stories, I have to turn to alternative media sources, like Democracy Now and the internet, which do not get the public’s attention as much as what a cable network does, or it has to compete with information overload (as is the case with the internet). And this segue ways nicely into the idea I have as to how to help the social justice effort. By the way, I do not offer these criticisms as proof that the left needs to adopt these
Ralph Nader said in the film that the only outlet from which the people can express themselves and demand social change is the street. I tend to agree with him most often when I am angry or frustrated about the state of things and want to publicly express myself and demonstrate a need for things to change. However, I am more interested in actually changing something versus simply venting about it and then going home with nothing improved upon. And as Rep. Barney Frank, a well-known liberal congressman from Connecticut says in the film, no one in Washington pays attention to protests. Why, you may ask? The reason he gave is because the people who are protesting do not vote. Therefore, why should Congress care? I think that’s a perfectly rational reaction and we on the left should not lambast representatives and senators when they have this reaction. It’s a consequence of the representative democracy we have put in place for ourselves as a political order. However, I also do understand why some on the left choose not to vote, and I myself have come close to doing this very thing. It’s because the political system has become so tainted and so ineffectual for so long that it seems that nothing will ever be truly addressed or changed even if one were to vote and even if their chosen candidate won. Just look to the dissatisfaction of liberals with Obama (albeit some of the criticism justified and some not in my opinion). Such a reaction is also just as rational as members of congress not caring about protestors if they do not vote. When one looks at this quandary, it would probably be fair to assume that we have arrived at an impasse. I would tend to agree with that. So the question then becomes, if we are to all stick to our principles, what shall we do to move beyond this impasse and get to truly addressing the challenges of our times? My answer lies in working outside of the system and creating a whole new one that can then replace the old with the new.
And for clarification, the system I am referring to is not only the current political order we live in, but also the system by which we use to challenge the system. The tactics of protest and rallies and other such things may still be utilized but they are no longer the main means by which to effect social change. What we need to do is to go outside of the current system and create new social spaces and a new political order to govern those social spaces. At first, your instinct may be to say, but where is the room to create these new social space? The answer to this question is also greatest part because this is already starting to be done and it has seen tremendous success. Do you know where that is? It’s the web! Sites like Wikipedia, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube and other social networks are pioneering the way in which we engage and interact with each other. This is not to say that these new social networks are not without their problems and flaws, but what I am suggesting is that we can use these first steps and build something extraordinary with them. The seedling has already been planted; the idea that we can engage with each other without the need for a hierarchy or some centralized authority to govern the social space within which we inhabit and congregate in. Political theory has already touched upon this idea but has often been construed as an impossibility when it comes to its application. However, the theory is already starting to be applied in the online realm. I posit that as our lives become more and more driven by what we do online, it will inevitably effect how we perceive our offline world. We are already seeing this occur, but in a negative aspect in my view. Games like Second Life and World of Warcraft sometimes consume people’s time so much that most of their time is spent interacting with a virtual being instead of a physical one, and I would assume that the reason for that is because of a person’s dissatisfaction with the “offline” world and their life within it. It has not yet translated into a positive where people can ask why their lives offline are not as rich as their lives online, and then actively work to make it more rich and fulfilling. We need to do a lot of work to make sure that people do ask themselves that question and see that indeed it is possible to create the social change they so desperately seek. If we manage to create this kind of a revolution, I think this will be much more powerful than any protest or public demonstration where you are trying to change the status quo when the majority of people are not actively aware that the status quo is need of a change. If you can get people to discondition themselves from the “me, me, me, I, I, I” mentality that is at the heart of our culture and instead get people to care not only about themselves but others as well, then you won’t need to advocate for change from the elites any longer. You will be able to do what I said we should be aiming to do earlier, replace the old system entirely with a new system built upon the principles of true democracy, equality and justice. No system will be perfect, but a new one built upon these principles will have a much better chance at addressing the challenges of humanity.
We tried the system we have now for over 200 years, it hasn’t worked…let’s try something different.
