The Revolution Still Won’t Be Televised
DAVID DUHALDE
On a cool New England autumn afternoon, I walked to Harvard Square to meet a fellow union organizer. Tim (not his real name) and I grabbed lunch and discussed his union’s current organizing drive at a mid-level university in the Boston area, where they’re having lots of trouble organizing a group that’s key to the future of the union movement: 20-somethings.
He told me a young organizer out of Harvard University’s rank-and-file planned a session on “why her friends won’t join/like the union.” His union wanted this hold this meeting to understand my generation’s approach towards workplace unity. Tim wondered whether new technologies and web-based social networks lessened a so-called “millennial’s” desire for community at work. Of course, many of my peers have little investment in their university jobs because they view them as a minor stepping stone in their career.
Tim’s comment about the Internet resonated with me after we parted. I don’t think progressives stress enough what potential damage to organizing the Internet has done. As we are often caught up in the wonders it has made, we can forget its significant and potentially growing downside. At the end of the decade, how better off are we with Facebook and Twitter? Are forms of so-called “social media” really a means of further encouraging the kind of narcissistic individualism that’s always been a major aspect of our culture?
The simple is answer is the world is grey.
Yes, new social networks have improved organizing. Look at the Iranian uprisings. Twitter and YouTube played a huge role in disseminating information about the Islamist regime’s oppressive tactics. On a much smaller scale, the Young Democratic Socialists (YDS) used our Facebook group to find new contacts. We built several of our strongest chapters through this kind of outreach.
So what’s the gripe? The dilemma of our decade is not the existence of multimedia organizing tools per se. The problem is the activists who believe the Internet has replaced proven old-school techniques. On-line social networks can’t replace personal social contact.
Overreliance on the Internet returns us to the difficulty of organizing young people into unions. What is their incentive to unite outside of economic interests? Tim reminded me, and I saw this at hospitals where I organized, that you can find staff that never knew a world without the Internet texting, chatting, and Googling on company time. Our peers always have community – even if it’s artificial.
Indeed, you can have a thousand friends on Facebook. But how many of them would you feel comfortable joining alone at a bar if they were drinking with strangers? How many people do you know who post random tidbits about their day just for attention? Everyone knows folks, including myself, check their profile dozens of times daily as if they are waiting for something magical to happen next time they log on.
In the end, people still need a real community. Furthermore, building a union, a collective, or social movement requires face-to-face contact. During the past decade we witnessed the rise of new gadgets and means to communicate. Many devices that cost nearly a week’s pay one day are become little more useful than paperweights the next. As we move into the new decade, I think it’s safe to say that new organizing techniques haven’t evolved at the same pace as MP3 players. But it’s fine if technology outpaces new strategies. This is because the old ways in some ways were working.
My Luddite rhetoric masks my real point: in the age of web communication, an organizer’s main task remains getting people to step out of their comfort zone.
Web-based technologies and applications do expand our access to new ideas. But at the same time, they also leave people to gain information merely reinforce their currently existing worldview. This was true where it was easier to live in insular communities and when our society had ghettos without easy access to global knowledge. The conditions of the game have changed, but the basic rules do not: 1) Personal interaction is what builds movements. 2) Movements are what change society. 3) The revolution will not be televised (or on-line). The revolution will be live.
I view today’s editions of The Activist and Red Letter as living proof of using the new Internet media and old-school techniques in the best way. The Activist is primarily focused on theory and lengthier articles and the Red Letter on internal organization updates. The Activist today exists as a blog. Its articles bring quick responses which foster an immediate intellectual discourse that the previous magazine simply could not. Yet, the Red Letter still remains in paper newsletter (with a PDF version) distributed to campuses in bulk. Why? Because YDS grassroots activists still have to put a periodical detailing our work in people’s hands. Why? Because you can’t expect people just to find out about YDS and socialist activism on their own. You have to bring it to them. You have to take them out of their comfort zone.
Fellow YDS activist Will Emmons can attest that I used to chew out activists who didn’t distribute the Red Letter like Rahm Emmanuel on a bad day. Not pretty. But Will also got a date once by showing a young lady his copy of the Democratic Left. Strange, but true. So next time you knock a Trotskyite sect for selling papers, think about the last time you went up to a stranger and tried to talk to them about socialism. It might be obnoxious at times, but it gets members. They still maintain great websites and publications, too. But they know: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Will got a date from showing a copy of DL? I so have to tell the rest of the editorial board.
And it’s Trotsky-IST, Comrade David, not Trotsky-ITE! Show some respect for the “Old Man” (as Ernest Mandel always called him)!
It’s true. She was cool. But also crazy.
Excellent article, David. I am curious about this organizing at Harvard, but I won’t pry further (at least online), as I respect the organizer’s anonymity. That being said, I think the nature of the jobs you’re talking about would determine whether or not they are really just a “stepping stone” to a better position. Not sure if you’re talking about TA’s, clerical staff, or what…
Anyway, I agree that technology does not replace old-school organizing. I think technology actually leads to a great sense of alienation in many ways. Facebook, as you point out, leads to a lot of narcissism and voyeurism. People also feel as if they are “doing something” just by joining dozens of online groups, yet they don’t understand the need to lift a finger in real life. There’s something wrong with this picture. How do we solve the problem, though? There are no easy answers-the world is gray, as you said.
I tend to think that a certain percentage of people will always be hangers-on more than cadre; the 80-20 rule is very true in organizations, unfortunately. A certain portion of people will join a Facebook group but be flakey in real life (I’ve had this happen many times when people have randomly messaged me online about YDS and then never end up doing anything). I guess the key is to recognize this fact and move on.
P.S. That’s awesome Will got a date that way! It wasn’t with Lily, was it? Anyway, I definitely need to bring more DLs to rallies, etc…..
No, I got a date with Lily because I was awesome and we had class together. It was only tangentially related to my being in YDS.
Nice! You ARE awesome. Lily is pretty awesome, too.
Haven’t seen either one of you in ages….
I’m smacking you with a copy of “History of the Russian Revolution” next time I see you. I’m in general agreement with the article, but I’m not too sure about the old newspaper hawking on corners model of the Sparts or the ISO either. The cost-benefit ratio of that should be examined (financial and time and energy expended by cadre).
((the following is a slight detour from David’s article))
I’ll give the example of the Democratic Left (a bit anachronistic, I know) last year. While tabling we had more people sign up for our mailing list than any other student organization short of the College Democrats and we passed out fliers about democratic socialism and engaged with people directly. (Perry and I might have been especially charismatic that day.) Granted they were almost all freshmen and had a lot on their plate, but out of the almost 60 people on our mailing list only around a dozen or so, not counting friends of all political orientations we brought in to pad the crowded, materialized. Everyone else just wanted to be involved in protest actions and not in day to day deliberation and political debate. That should be expected, but it’s unfortunate, because for the moment the latter is more important than the former. Most people aren’t politicized and committed enough to join a nascent movement, but they won’t be politicized by “action-ism” alone. Granted this applies more to organizing on campus rather than workers into trade unions, but I can levy some criticisms along these lines towards publications (largely written by radicals) like “Labor Notes”. It’s like reading the phone-book, but without all the sexual innuendo-littered names, and I don’t see how it politicizes.
A few points:
1) Obviously the type of jobs matter to how one views their relationship to the university. Most of my peers aren´t professors. They work clerical and administration jobs. Hence, they don´t feel the emotional attachment other workers might feel to the school.
2) You guys sound (even if unintentional) that lack of participation from others is so new discovery. Think of how many people go to Church just on Sundays? They never go to anything Church related again. Unless an organization has exact demands on membership (think Church of Latter Day Saints where our peers dedicate two years of their life to missionary work), the 80-20 is inevitable. Whether I think the current DSA model is viable in the long run is subject for another piece.
3) Erik Straub of SDS once pointed out the idea of a party organ should be to promote debate within the organization, not just be its mouth piece to the out side. That was his interpretation of Lenin in a way. He felt that Trots really missed the point on that. I think, however, what´s worthy of praise is putting yourself out there to sell a paper. You are going to get nagged and cat called. I remember dealing with YDSers who really had too thin skins to be American socialists. If you can´t deal with some negative feedback, you aren´t ready to build socialism in the USA.
In the end, the best way to find out if someone is a flake is to call them to do something. I always say: never underestimate a good phone bank and rap to mobilize folks. I don´t say that about carefully worded email blasts.
“Erik Straub of SDS once pointed out the idea of a party organ should be to promote debate within the organization, not just be its mouth piece to the outside. That was his interpretation of Lenin in a way.”
That’s precisely how “Iskra” was, or so I’ve read. Indeed, the Trotskyist papers DO miss the point, as they don’t allow for any proof that there are differences within the Trotskyist organizations. As someone once said, there should be no secrets from the working class!