prev speak your mind, even if your voice shakes next
2002-07-29 | 12:09 a.m.

Had a bit of an epiphany watching K19: The Widowmaker with Mike, who visited and spent the night Friday. I don't know if I can get it all out properly, but I'll try.

Basically, and in short order, during the brief modern-day sequence at the end, I found myself rejecting the persistent and pernicious idea that living a relatively safe and leisured life gives one less authority in political life. This notion seems to be some sort of holdover from my college days, when authenticity and suffering were widely agreed to be more valuable than simple indignation. And of course it is true that someone who has suffered has much to share with the privileged activist who generally learns about and criticizes injustice at a distance.

The key idea is that the activist's role is just as important as any other in society. This hit me like a shovel in the head.

Let's face it. Everybody hates activists. There are maybe 12 people who aren't activists who don't hate them. They make too much noise, they block traffic, they irritate world leaders. Often they don't go away even after you've promised to address their concerns. Ugh! Even activists hate other activists. And they should, because lots of activists are lunkheads. But. The critic, the advocate, the activist has a role just as important as that of the soldier or the diplomat. Cause here's the thing: nobody wants to hear what the damn problems are. People just want to be left alone. But the problems fester. And that's when you need some seriously loud people to come out and make some noise. The activism trickles down; I've always known this. You have to have the loudest people start, and they sound ridiculous. Everybody knows this. Their claims are so absurd. Not reasonable at all. But two, three, five, ten, twenty years later, the thing has been repeated by softer voices, so many times that it begins to take root in people's minds. They see the righteousness of the idea. It was there all along but it requires the ululation of ever softer and more reasonable-sounding voices to ingratiate itself into the hearts and minds of the people. Why not just begin with the soft voices, you ask? Ah, but it doesn't work that way. The idea has to get to them first, and that doesn't happen quickly enough when you're relying solely on the tweedy editors and the circulation desks.

And of course many of these things begin here, in California. As goes California, so goes the nation. I'm in the middle of nowhere yet also in the thick of the action.

I am an activist. My life is not over. There is much to do yet.

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