{Cross-posted to Broadsides
All the organizations that claim to contest the present order themselves have all the puppetry of the form, morals and language of miniature States about them. None of the old lies about “doing politics differently” have ever contributed to anything but the indefinite extension of Statist pseudopodia.
— From “The Invisible Committee”
Beware of the professional activist, my friends. For they will lead you to policy slaughter and barely bother to conceal their complicity. Winning doesn’t matter to them. Change doesn’t either. Because the paycheck (plus benefits!) is what makes their slumbering efforts feel good.
Their “cause” is just another minor bump in their daily road: take out trash, pay bills, shop for groceries, feign outrage over [insert issue] and then go to sleep. Risk nothing. Quit when it gets hard or uncomfortable. Passion is sanded down to dull edge, whereby simply showing up rings their bell of attainment. Check it off.
When a doctor sleeps through surgery we call it malpractice. But when a professional activist sleeps through an action and misleads a movement we applaud their “effort.” Worse, we marvel at the failure of the professional: “Wow, that took courage.”
Sorry, but losing doesn’t take courage. It only requires not winning. And that’s easy.
The professional activist is hardwired to lose because losing keeps them in business. They celebrate the longevity of their involvement and the age of their organizations as if to spotlight their ineffectiveness: 10 years! 20 years! Send more money! Keep it going! Why? Because they haven’t accomplished anything yet. And it’s a good “job.”
Many years ago I coined the term “Activist Malpractice” in an essay of the same name. I wrote it to put a spotlight on professional activist organizations who would whip up the necessary fear and loathing toward dangers like toxic pesticides and rBGH and then settle for “solutions” like labeling the products that contained these toxins and/or agreeing to 20-year (and toothless) “phase-outs” of carcinogenic pesticides.
But wait, didn’t they say these things were killing animals and people and destroying the environment? Yes, they did. And just as quickly they turned the page and “celebrated” the mere introduction of legislation that they knew wouldn’t pass, ever be enforced and/or save one of the lives they told us these products were claiming.
But they kept their jobs. Got applauded from their largely-disengaged membership. Kept getting their phone calls returned from Capitol Hill. And sent out a new round of fundraising letters for the “next” not-so-great “effort.” We called it “doing bad and feeling good about it.”
This cycle of activist malpractice works most perfectly when it exists within the paradigm of our modern culture’s manufactured disengagement. You know, the one that says: You are helpless without an expert. Or, in the case of the professional class of activists, the one that says: Send us your money and we will solve the issue that we just scared you about. Who knew $25 could solve global warming!?
Because the professional activist needs its followers to be disengaged so that their charades can continue unabated.
Thoreau once counseled his fellow citizens in this manner: “Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.” Today’s professional activists have changed that around a bit: “Let your checkbook help us lubricate the machine.”
And around and around we go, resulting in global warming activists cheering the changing of your light bulbs, health care activists cheering “the public option,” anti-war activists cheering “timetables,” and so on. The only true “winners” in any of these “causes” are the professional classes of activists, lobbyists, legislatures and regulators who’ve found that their own personal economic stimulus is based on your fears and lack of true engagement and expectation. Sucker.
Which brings me to the issue of the week (for me, at least) and a current case of activist malpractice: All-Terrain Vehicles (ATVs). As readers will know from my two previous posts (here and here), the State of Vermont is now proposing that ATV riders have access to state lands, including our forests. It’s an absurd idea that is certainly opposed by a vast majority of Vermonters, not least of which are the hikers, birders and campers who enjoy the non-motorized nature of – well – nature. Imagine that.
But the professional organization that is claiming to lead the grassroots charge against the new ruling is the Vermont Natural Resources Council (VNRC), a group that claims to be the state’s “largest, most effective” environmental group. Oh yeah, it also claims to be the “oldest” such group, too (see above reference to age and effectiveness).
Like any good activist organization, VNRC does an admirable job of describing the dangers and problems of the issue at hand. ATVs, they report, are loud, smelly, destructive to the environment and dangerous to both the riders and those who are forced to encounter such machines in the so-called wild. As a result of these clear and present dangers of ATVs, VNRC issues an alert to its members: Danger, danger, they declare, the big-bad Republican Governor (Jim Douglas) and his Agency of Natural Resources are threatening our public lands! And I’m sure the fundraising solicitations went out with even greater haste.
But then comes the activism. And down go the expectations.
First, the VNRC’s Jamey Fidel told the Vermont Press Bureau on the day of the public hearings on the issue that his group was “not necessarily” opposed to the first new ATV trail on public lands that was being proposed. But what about all the death and destruction they whipped us up about? Nevermind. Because they’re now being professional. But keep sending those checks!
Worse, when the hearing finally happened, VNRC showed just how atrophied its grassroots muscles have become: Out of 250 people in the room, an estimated 15 were opposed to the new rule – and probably about two were associated with VNRC (both employees). Nice showing. But keep sending those checks!
Unfortunately, it gets worse. At the hearing, the VNRC’s Fidel got his chance to testify and he more than blandly reads and otherwise mumbled through a thoroughly passion-less recitation of the documented problems with ATVs and the hurried “process” by which the ANR has reached its decision (read: give me more time to raise money!).
Next up to testify: Fidel’s VNRC colleague, Jake Brown, the group’s communications director. And he begins with this: “I’ve owned an ATV for eight years and I ride it as much as I can on the weekends.” Sorry, but you can’t make this stuff up.
Memo to the VNRC staff: Have your “communications director” read your documentation on the environmental threats of ATV use, please.
And what’s that feeling I’m having: Oh, that’s the grassroots rug being pulled out from under me. Thanks, VNRC. Where do I send my check?
It’s called “activist malpractice.” Pure and simple. They raise money to protect the environment and they cower like scared sheep when the opportunity to truly protect it arises. They scare the public with the facts and then they fold like a cheap suit when it comes to the solutions. They scare the public enough to raise some cash about the dangers of ATV riding by day, and then mount an ATV by night and the weekends to frolic in the benefits of their “labor.” Shameless.
Ironically, I approached Fidel at the hearing to ask him a few questions. Specifically, I asked him if he thought Brown’s boasting of riding an ATV on weekends undercut his testimony about the environmental destruction of the so-called sport. His reply: “Not at all.” Of course not – just keep sending the checks!
But Fidel wouldn’t allow me to ask any more questions because he was “busy.”
“Call me at my office and I’d be happy to talk with you about it,” he told me.
“Tomorrow?” I inquired.
“No, I’m going on vacation tomorrow. Call me the week after next when I get back.”
The public comment period for the new ATV rule ends on June 22nd. Don’t count on the VNRC to be generating oppositional comments because its point-person on the issue is on vacation. But keep sending those checks!
Activist malpractice, indeed.
one of your examples was “global warming activists cheering the changing of your light bulbs”
in 1990, the people of Burlington voted to tax themselves to pay for an $11.3 million bond to invest in energy efficiency; as a result, Burlington uses about the same amount of power we did 20 years ago
so while we haven’t “solved” global warming, we have made a substantial contribution by effectively capping our electric energy use (and using more and more renewables to generate what we need)
I don’t really know much about the VNRC. However, you raise some interesting and important points about the liberal model (speaking in broad terms, not liberal as in only “Democrats”) and institutional activism in general.
For instance, if any kind of political movement is going to be more than random, dis-organized, dis-jointed “actions” (and no political movement that I’m aware of- ever- has been much if any success operating in that manner) it’s generally going to need some orgnaization (Kropotkin: “anarchy is organization, organization, organization!”). But then to get much done, you need resources. So you need money or donations of one kind or another. And to keep those resources coming in you’ve got to have results/output of the kind that are going to please the people who are making your efforts possible. I’m not (necessarily) talking about cow-towing towards “special interests”- there’s room to stand on principle in this slippery slope- but gosh darn, this is a slippery slope. If we want to be succesful in accomplishing political goals, we need resources behind those efforts. And, since we often have to go outside of ourselves to get those resources (unless we’re just privately wealthy to begin with) we’ve found ourselves in a compromised position, in terms of power-sharing. The resources we need (be they monetary or otherwise) and those who have them have a certain degree of POWER over our political efforts.
Not that any of this is right or ideal or desireable- but more often than not, simply is the reality.
I received my fair share of donation and subscription renewal requests from Food & Water, so that they could keep doing their thing.
There’s always a place to crique the successfulness and efficiancy of any particular group, agency, organization, or movement- or the particular organizational structure of each- but in more general terms, any increase in scale for activism (moving from, say, a couple of people who commit civil disobidience every once in a while- which, honestly, is a solely and merely reactionary movement by its own definition- towards more organized and comprehensive forms of resistance) is always going to take a certain amount of resources, which is always going to bring us to the question of where do they come from, how are they used, and where and how are we gonna get more once they’re used?
Not easy stuff, really.
But the local grass-roots group, to which I belong, owes a tremendous debt to the VNRC for their tireless effort and investment in our epic land-use struggle to prevent further sprawl, preserve prime ag soils, and protect our local economy. For this reason, your perspective does not resonate with me at all. I can’t help but think that the experience you had might be the result of a profound drain on the resources and skilled personnel of the VNRC, due to the immediate stresses associated with our battle and a couple of other difficult and protracted struggles in which the VNRC are engaged elsewhere in the state.
Yes; fund-raising is part and parcel of non-profit operation. I accept that as a given, and do what I can; which isn’t nearly enough when measured against what they accomplish with regard to issues that are important to me. I suppose that, if I belonged to the class of people who have more, and are therefore “put upon” constantly to contribute to this effort and that, I might also get a little testy; but I do not. I am one of those folks who have only my time and energy to give. I do so willingly and abundantly because, without the help of the VNRC, we could not have possibly come this far.