I'll make this quick.
There's a decent article in this morning's Salon.com that highlights something just about everyone in the so-called peace movement needs to pay very close attention to. The focus of the column is the annoying activist group Code Pink, and the question that author Cintra Wilson asks is both a simple and necessary one:
"Why does the peace movement have to dress and act like an irritating children's birthday party?"
I've broached this topic before -- as have guys like Matt Taibbi and David Cross -- and the basic arguments are worth repeating over and over until somebody who organizes these idiots listens: This isn't the fucking 60s anymore; dressing up in colorful, outrageous costumery so that you look like an extra in Disney's Main Street Electrical Parade, banging on drums, growing out your unwashed hair, and dancing around in a throwback to those glory days of Country Joe & the Fish and being riddled with bullets at Kent State isn't an effective protest anymore. Quite the opposite in fact -- it's the kind of activism that will ensure that you're ridiculed in the media, mocked by a Middle America that's having its worst preconceptions about you and your message confirmed and, worst of all, ignored by the very people in government whose minds you hope to change.
The age of the individual is over; the status quo no longer considers him a threat the way it did in the 60s. That's because every form of rebellion imaginable has now been co-opted, pre-packaged, and is for sale at your local Hot Topic. Defiance is a slogan. Insurrection is product placement. The revolution is not only televised, it can be Tivoed and enjoyed at your convenience.
Clownish buffoonery in activism was always stupid -- now it's stupid and irrelevant.
The only threat to the powers that be these days -- the only thing they'll understand -- is groupthink. Organization. As Taibbi once said so well, if the peace movement could get its shit together enough to stage a rally where a hundred thousand people marched silently in shirts and ties right up to the steps of the Capitol, it would likely be the first step in, if not bringing lawmakers to their knees, at least making them sit up and listen.
Because they're damn sure not listening to a bunch of idiots who treat protesting like it's an audition for Sesame Street.
(Salon.com: "Cracking Code Pink" by Cintra Wilson/7.17.08)
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Peace of Mind (or "Hate Ashbury")
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16 comments:
Here fucking here!
What a powerful sight it was, seeing the lawyers in Pakistan protest the suspension of the chief justice; standing in the streets in their suits and ties, holding signs, throwing rocks and shouting.
Gave me the chills.
Complete agreeance on this front here. I'm against war as much as the next person, but dressing as if you're legally retarded is only going to make me laugh at protesters, and everyone else will laugh too. Organization, civility, and having knowledge and rationale to back your message (besides "War is bad because people die for hopeless causes.") are the keys to getting someone to listen to you. The rest is fucking clown shoes.
Totally apropos of nothing, I went to the Hush Sound concert last night and it was pretty damn awesome. The only negative was that the average age of the crowd was about 15, making me feel like a creepy old dude at the ripe old age of 21.
See Votar's comments about Helen Mirren vs. 15 year olds.
It'll make you feel better.
I completely agree. 100%. Spot on.
One question though:
Why haven't we silently marched to the Capitol in shirts and ties?
It would seem to me that there would be more than 100,000 people who would do this.
Especially in a country that has an amazingly unpopular president, a fairly ineffective legislative system, a judiciary that thought Anna Nicole Smith needed to be seen in person, and a media system that does its best to encourage this nonsense.
What the hell is wrong with us?
Do we fear Big Brother that much? Are we just completely disorganized? Or are we just lethargic and apathetic?
lethargic and apathetic
lethargic and apathetic
lethargic and apathetic
lethargic and apathetic
lethargic and apathetic
lethargic and apathetic
lethargic and apathetic
most people who think the shirts and ties idea is a good one have too much to lose (can't take off of work, don't want to be associated with movement thinking), or are comfortable enough economically and ideologically with what's going on to march on the capitol. or anywhere else for that matter.
the 'stupid hippies' don't care what you think of them and have a lot more flexibility to go protest somewhere. granted, i'm throwing about gross generalizations, but there's some truth to how movements happen. for more insight, here's a good reader: Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics. it's by sidney tarrow, professor of government and sociology at cornell. it's a brilliant book.
Code Pink are annoying, but I have a bigger problem with the topless chicks at anti-war demonstrations. What the heck is that all about?
Suzy: I would think that someone who thinks The Sharp Dressed March is a good idea might be one who is willing to make a sacrifice for the greater good.
That said, I agree with your assessment, and fear not your gross generalizations; if they didn't exist, we wouldn't have them.
Suzy:
the 'stupid hippies' don't care what you think of them and have a lot more flexibility to go protest somewhere.
That's exactly why they're not very effective.
Not caring what you think of them means not caring whether you take them seriously or not. And if you don't care whether you're being taken seriously, why the hell SHOULD anyone take you seriously and thereby pay the slightest attention to what you have to say?
But on the other hand, the suits idea isn't just about looking respectful, or even respectable. It's about adopting the idealized image that the politicians have of their constituents: the white-collar, middle-class, office-job-holding Middle American.
Showing a Congressman that a diverse cross-section of the people he represents are opposed to the war is good on paper; showing him that the group of people he LIKES TO THINK he represents are opposed to the war--that's how you get real results.
Ensuring a consistent suit & tie look by barring the odd-looking ones might not go over so well.
However, ensuring that they're welcomed, but **vastly outnumbered** by the suit & tie crowd, might get somebody's attention.
Yeah, like that'll happen.
michael and dave.. i agree with all your points. michael, i wish we could all take some time off, us white collar, middle-class office job-holding americans, and spend four days making a difference. but my vacation time is at a premium. there are still places in the world i'd like to see (instead of the capitol steps [which i did in april 1993 for gay rights in perfectly appropriate attire]). so i'll use my precious vacation time (and my tone isn't directed toward you or dave, it's toward the machine that makes me laugh at how retarded the vacation thing is) on time off with my partner to places where i can forget the grind here for a while. i'm making my own point. there is no perspective from nowhere.
michael, you're right, the people lawmakers think are their constituents are the folks like you and i who they know have to be pushed pretty far, or to grave circumstances before we act, especially against them. revolutionary behavior tends to occur when the middle class is gone or impotent.
I've got on a suit right now. I've got a minimum of 15 more in my closet and a Yaris that gets 34 mpg and I'm 4 hours away from the Capitol. Who's with me?
*crickets*
Yeah, that's what I thought. We're all too damned busy and complacent.
I don't really have a problem with the hippies that do show up if they stay on message. Case in point, the virgins at the ongoing anonymous vs. Scientology protests - Some of them are ridiculous but others keep level and on message, plus they had potential personal destruction as an actual reason to come in costume.
But some of these hippies just have the down right stupidest ideas that have zero place in a well reasoned protest.
For instance, "Kites for Peace" or the "Free Hugs" deal.
Everyone knows, there's no such thing as a free hug and kites aren't even fun.
I know Pink is hogging all of the attention by putting it's acid inspired detachment from reality on display, but these marches aren't really getting any message out that hasn't already been put out there so ultimately they're only being done to get media attention for the same self-important assholes you see every time the anti-war carnival comes to town.
What needs to be done is well organized "hits" to the pocketbooks of the supporters of the intended target or the target itself. Sometimes that involves protest, but that can mostly be done from our living rooms. That's the real power that consumers have over the machine that feeds them, they are free to stop eating at any time.
Most of what I see is a lot of hand wringing over McDonalds and Walmart, retarded conspiracy, and gotcha sideshows with very little real ideas to exert control other than hurling money at Palpal for "Support" or voting for which leeches are going to be allowed to bleed us every two years.
The Anti-war movement fails for more reasons than just Code Pink, it fails because it's being run by a bunch of failures.
As I like to say to the kids in the "Question Authority" tees, first you have to LOOK like someone to whom those in authority will LISTEN!
If you haven't read Cintra Wilson's A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Reexamined as a Grotesque, Cripping Disease and Other Cultural Revelations or Colors Insulting to Nature, I highly recommend them. Funny, scathing stuff.
Hey Chez, I don't think that article is quite in step with your thoughts. By the end of it, the writer says:
"I came away from the Code Pink house believing that guerrilla theater is more critical than ever. For activists, Benjamin and Murphy represent the thin pink line separating the American peace movement from muteness, invisibility and depression unto disbandment."
I'm just sayin....
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