2025-02-08

Becoming an "activist"

In these early days of the new Trump administration we've experienced something entirely new: A glimpse of fascism or an attempt at fascism and we seem largely unprepared and confused about how to respond. I don't have the answers and I currently live in the woods in a very rural area of Missouri. I'm somewhat isolated so I don't feel like I'm in a position to be actively organizing in a way that I can see would be useful. But I can write something about my early efforts as an activist learning about organizing in Missouri, and later, neighborhood/community organizing in Memphis, Tennessee in the 1990s. Americans need to rediscover what it means to be active citizens or, what we often refer to without much thought, as simply activists. Perhaps stories such as this might provide folks with some ideas about how to move forward.

Ask yourself, what do I think an activist is? Ask yourself, am I an activist? If you don't think of yourself as an activist, perhaps it's time to change that or at least begin to think about why you don't and also why you think you should be exempt from that responsibility. I've always thought of activism as simply being an active citizen, which is to say, taking the responsibility of citizenship, seriously, and engaging with it. I've long argued that most of our problems in the United States become worse or exist in the first place because citizens do not take their responsibilities seriously. My own upbringing is the perfect example. I grew up in a family that was apolitical. I don't remember politics being discussed at all. Civic responsibility was not something I ever thought about until I went off to college in 1987.

As a part of my college orientation, I was assigned a book to read, and it happened to be a biography of Gandhi who I knew nothing about, but I believe it was the reading of that book that began a shift in my perception of my responsibilities as a human being and a citizen. At some point during the first couple of years of college, I began learning about organizations like Amnesty International and I began attending the meetings of the college "World Peace Group" which was basically a small group of anti-war progressive activists. My understanding was still pretty basic, but these were all new ideas to me and it set me on a path of thinking differently and it was the beginning of my political education. It was also the very beginning of my thinking of myself as an activist.

At some point in my third year of college I came across a brochure about the Greens that was being distributed at a nearby college campus I was visiting. I'd never heard of what seemed to be a generic term but it caught my eye because I'd recently been thinking more about environmental activism. As it turns out picking up that brochure proved to be a pivotal moment for me personally. The brochure presented a vision of a different kind of society, one that appealed to me immediately. I went searching for more information and it led me down a rabbit hole that I've been in ever since. Within a few weeks I had decided of picking up the brochure I decided I would start a local Greens group. I'd never done such a thing. I was not comfortable speaking in front of people and had never made any attempt to organize a group of any kind. At that point, I was just winging it. This was 1989 and there wasn't an Internet as we know it today so I was scrounging around for information. I used that first brochure to make a few phone calls and gather up more printed materials which I copied and distributed. I set up a meeting date.

To my great surprise and horror, the first meeting was very well attended with a room that was full of people and overflowing. I was terrified. I've been reading the literature for several weeks at this point and was confident enough to stumble through some sort of rudimentary presentation and answer questions afterward. I passed around a clipboard together names and phone numbers and I believe that after a brief conversation, a second meeting date was set for those that wanted to come back. I spent the next few weeks putting out more flyers and brochures. I and a couple others used a large sheet to paint a banner that simply read "Be Green" with a sunflower (the logo used by the Greens at that time) between the two words and hung it on the walking bridge that organizations used to advertise events. I kept reading. The second meeting was again well attended, and we continued on from there with meetings every month. With a single decision and a few weeks of effort I'd become an "activist".

We began setting up a table at our student union where we would sit with our brochures and talk to folks who expressed interest. We joined in a larger effort to organize Earth Day 1990 (this was the renewal of the original 1970 Earth Day and it became a regular event nationally in the years since). Over the next couple of years our new group organized protests of the first Gulf War, attended Catalyst, a regional environmental conference in Urbana-Champaign, IL, tabled, put in a community garden and organized workshops and teach-ins. When I graduated I left behind a group that continued on for several years. I moved on to Memphis, Tennessee, where I would begin again.

Part Two explores building community gardens, pirate radio, a housing co-op and a good bit more!

For anyone interested in a more radical green activism, recommended reading: Remaking Society by Murray Bookchin.

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