Final Project Post 3 – Activism in Action

My first post of this project can be found here. It focuses on the spectrum of activism and tries to show why we need different types of activism and how one is not greater than the other.

My previous post can be found here, which focus on laying out and defining some tools of activism.

By now I hope you can feel that activism isn’t inherently better than others due to prior exposure to its forms. We need many different tactics to blend and stand alone sometimes to allow expression, the passage of knowledge, or pressure a change.

I went to a local protest on Earth Day for the global protest March for Science, which was a distributed action due to it being spread across the globe in many instances and clumped on social media to show its widespread support for science to be respected and funded. It was also a direct action as it surrounded one main theme and was set locally around a center area for each community that hosted one. The local direct action ensured that local representatives heard the word of the people while the distributed action of the global March for Science showcased the widespread support of science and how it is not a small problem, it is a global problem.

As serious as the dependency on fossil fuels is or the fact Trump denies the majority of the world’s experts in the field, this activism does not have to be depressing, dark, and stern. Other than myself and my friend, I saw many creative ways of protesting mixed with very serious signs and speeches.

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There were many great serious speeches and many signs that are the usual “Fight for Science”, “Facts cannot be Ignored”, and many others. But the creative group that showed up is not any less serious. We want to poke fun and enjoy life even when having to fight for a better life. While using already known stories and symbols to criticize stances we cannot support.

The picture with the dinosaur is my favorite, as the little girl looks at the dinosaur in curiosity little does she know the dangers of her future. My friend and I sporting Pokemon and Magic the Gathering themes signs are trying to get new understandings of what is happening, we can get angry and protest but if we use our fantasy worlds to understand our real worlds, kids and nerds can better understand the real life story. Whether it be a Pokemon trainer wandering the world with no Pokemon or the people of Kaladesh revolting against the oppressive Consulate to secure a future of innovations and inventions. Kids could imagine a Pokemon game where there are no Pokemon, is that the world they want to live in? They can learn from connections to other worlds they do understand to better understand this one.

We need to support creativeness for without it, we are only to ever have stagnation. We need those brave few to organize and ask others for support, those who put themselves in physical danger to fight oppression, and those creative who can nurture knowledge and be outright smart asses.

If we want a world that works together, we need activists that work together.

Final Project Post 1 – The Rainbow of Activism

We tend to look at social movements and judge them on effectiveness scales.

“Did this protest actually help women?”

“Did this one actually help science?”

“Was there people there who did not really seem serious?”

“This is not how it was back in the day, this movement will not get anything done!”

I used to look at movements this way too. At one point I lost all hope in Occupy Wall St for the fact a lot of protestors got abused by police and it seemed as if no one ever accomplished anything. It wasn’t until the 2016 election and 2017 class semester I realized I was wrong. A number of times the topic of income inequality and the diminishing “middle class”, which should by now just be summarized as the “working class”, was brought into the attentions of viewers and candidates.

It is not so much about instant, success, and change that you should evaluate. Sure Occupy did very little if anything about legislative change, maybe it did spark a few Fight for 15 campaigns, but even that has only changed in a small portion of the nation. But we need to look at the multifaceted influence movements can spread. This also cannot be done through one tried and true method, we need a multitude of strategies to exercise the many ways to spread a movement.

First, we need to step back and think about stratification. American culture loves to say how helpful and united we are, yet we push competition and hierarchies that show us otherwise. A social movement that is cited with the remembrance of the lines of workers marching through the police arm locked with their fellow workers who demanded workers’ rights and pressured federal law to pass and give breaks, a shorter work day, and health benefits, we would think as victorious. We would love to think those are the most important compared to movements where their legislative ideas never pass, the movement eventually breaks down, and at its smallest attribute is that it allowed a new discourse to be focused on. We want to rank them vertically on which was “successful” because it is what we have been born into, success and failure, those who made it big and those who did not go far enough in life.

We seem to apply it everywhere. I did. The featured picture is a public domain picture I found when searching Creative Commons, and the picture is being used a bit out of context but captures my idea of activism. Originally mainly centered around animal rights movement the rainbow and each color should represent a style of activism. One color does not make a rainbow, but a few distinct colors and shades in between that complete a rainbow. One style and one movement should not and sometimes cannot stand alone. The rest of the picture shows the range of those who hide identity and are known for social chaos, yet they are cuddling bunnies which can show the more nurturing side of activism, to look after one another and help those in need. These people who are both in the cities and towns for civil liberties and worker’s rights, while also being within nature and advocating for animals and environments.

Sure those who marched arm in arm may seem like the best way to ensure big change, but even today all their work seems that it was for nothing as once again economic disparity plagues us and worker’s unions seem to constantly be hammered by union busters and fighting for conditions or reasons that by now should not even be a problem. Not saying their work is a failure, but those social movements cannot be inherently more valuable. We need those that focus on education to people of the topic. “Educating them means the problem will go away,” is also not what I am saying, but those who bring problems to the attention of people and try to educate them on the issues and possible solutions; educating the younger population to what the problem is, educating the current young adult and adult population of what the problem is, and the older population, who may not see or understand the problem, show them how and why it is a problem.

We need those who can simplify and educate the children, allow them to get to a conclusion they can understand.

We need those who are aggressive and literally fight against oppression and wrongdoing.

We need those who swarm media and force it to be a topic and exposed to the people.

We need those who force their problem and movement to be discussed by media and the governments.

We need all movements styles to be respected and supported to its flourishing capacity.

I will expand upon some methods in the next post.

Project 2 – Occupy, the Internet, and Communism

Occupy sprang up while I was still in high school, by this time I learned in history classes, English classes, and in my own research, of America’s many historical blunders. Many times online and from the news I happened to breeze by Occupy coverage and  I always heard it depicted as some socialist-communist bull-crap from lazy people (from anywhere not progressive). As I started looking into it and saw the main point being in response to the bank bailouts and what many called “unchecked capitalism” that allowed these banks and corporation great disparity between the working class and the capitalists in charge of said businesses. I did not see laziness, just people tired of being screwed over. If the working class is the reason why this country stays afloat and as they say make up the “99 percent”, how is it all these businesses get bailed out while families lose houses, small businesses, and jobs. As much as it was a progressive socialist movement, it wasn’t lazy nor an attempt at some communist revolution.

However being so young I was able to give minimal help to the cause other than posting constant memes and videos of the events, and one event that horrified me. UC Davis pepper spray incident, for those not familiar, here is a link. This will be more relevant later.

Coming into college as a psychology major I always had a long fascination with people, this is what drove myself to sign up as an anthropology minor after taking many courses in that field. I quick fell in love with Karl Marx, a political/economic philosopher whose ideas leaked into anthropology. Now he was a communist, not (all*) Occupy protesters. But as his theories suggest culture creates a way to ‘legitimize’ oppression from the powerful. American capitalism has the idea that we fail because we are not good enough, it is a personal problem, not a system problem. Those who work hard are rich, those who are poor are lazy. This is exactly what Marx was explaining, we have the ‘working poor’ class and that can’t be because they are lazy with 3 jobs. American culture has an adoration of our public service workers, especially our cops. They’re all the good guys, here to protect you. Yet with the UC Davis incident, that cop clearly used excessive force, doesn’t matter if they were told not to camp out. They were students and using their own campus, students peacefully sitting. The cop that just began to casually pepper spray them in the face was defended by the station to the point they lied about being ‘closed in’ by protesters and worried about their security (as stated in the link about the incident above). They look out for themselves, not the people.

Occupy went viral fast, but the UC Davis incident exploded! I saw the videos on Facebook the day it happened, probably hours afterward. This movement sent ideas and videos around the world within minutes. With new technologies, they mastered new weird ways of having discourse. Memes were big but this meme was like one I have not seen before in the movement. It took everything we knew about beloved American pictures and/or items and defiled them.

Before I talk about the bigger picture I need to explain some history and how it all ties together. You’re probably wondering why this post is titled with the word communism yet all I talked about is a bit of Marx, well this is where it comes in.

Occupy was not the first major progressive-socialist movement, in fact, it’s almost the baby of other movements, this was not a one-time idea out of nowhere. America has a long-term history of attacking progressive ideas, even though America was a nation founded on revolutionary ideas. Literally (Necessary Trouble p.198). There have been other recent attempts throughout American history towards more socialistic ideas and unionization. Worker’s movements became associated with immigrants and foreigners and therefore targeted as attacks on America. This grew to detrimental proportions during Vladamir Lenin’s Russian Revolution of 1917 happened, when a leftist workers’ revolution took place. The fears of this communist uprising made the USA create the Sedition Act of 1918 which prohibited any anti-war effort (p.198). This fear grew greater during the second Red Scare, which happened after World War 2. The Red Scare of this time was little about punishing crime as it seemed to attack those with more progressive ideas. It put people against each other and was made to divide. It successfully allowed for a narrowing of what was deemed proper discourse in America, “class struggle” was not accepted (p.199-201) and people lost jobs, rights, and became pawns in a game of fearmongering. Those in power pointed fingers and without a real crime could say “you’re unAmerican!” and sabotage your whole life. The Red Scare benefited those in power and stopped any further movements of worker’s having an equal share to their bosses.  It was in one easy sentence a war on workers (p.199). As Marx stated, “the history of all hitherto existing society, is the history of class struggle” (The Communist Manifesto p.62).

Back to the Casual Pepper spray Cop meme of UC Davis, within hours hundreds of memes circulated about him (John Pike). As states in the last paragraph, it was the powerful/oppressors who pointed the finger and called one’s ‘unAmerican”. This time in the revitalized worker’s movement, THEY pointed the finger and called out “unAmerican”. The memes they sent around depicted the pepper spray cop defiling well-known pictures with meanings attacking the integrity of those who were against Occupy. I use defile as the term because I feel as if this word and our feelings to how it’s also used creates the perfect feelings of what the tactic is.

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The constitution being vandalized, the Iwo Jima soldiers being assaulted, the Founding Fathers’ constitution being destroyed, even the famous picture of the Tibetan monk’s martyr suicide against China, a chilling image of someone going to the extreme to demonstrate against a corruptive force to the demonstrator. The doctored picture of pepper spray cop defiled the original meanings of these pictures and tainted their meaning and directed a new meaning. The villain is the cop attacking those who fought against something tyrannical or a threat. The threat is very visible, the authority figures.

The socialist movements of my parents or grandparent’s time failed because of the fear mongering of communism or socialism. The fear of Russia was real back then, fear of nuclear fallout. Something that scares me to this day but the fear is not that of what older generations faced. A professor of mine from another class told the story about him growing up and praying every Christmas Eve that the nuclear fallout wouldn’t happen because he wanted his presents. The new generation growing older and becoming the next ones in line to take the country do not have this fear, in fact, we have seen a huge movement towards a more socialistic government and economy this past election.

We have the same general ideas of the movements from before but we do not falter to fear mongering of ‘Anti-American’ views since a lot of us are way over the accepted level of ‘American values’ and ‘views’ today. Occupy did not spring up from laziness or random boredom, but is connected to ideas shot down before. These memes, although funny even in terrible ways sometimes, have strong meanings connecting to other struggles we adore today. Occupy is showing that if you go against the people in this struggle, what difference is it to the other ones?

Jaffe Response 1

Jaffe Response 2

Jaffe Response 3