If the Dobie Mall Management wants to house federally funded institutions then they should be willing to recognize the founding principles for which this nation is supposedely founded on.
The Thursday May 3rd action at the Riverside offices will be postponed for the time being with a new date to be decided upon later.
The movie screening of The Ground Truth will still be in Parlin 1 at 7pm Monday April 30th and Iraq Veterans Against War members Hart Viges & Carl Webb will be present. We still invite people to join us for a discussion about future actions on Wednesday May 2nd at 7pm in Parlin 208;
The main thing to note is the change in counter recruitment dates. We will be postponing the May 3rd Riverside action and instead will go back to Dobie on Monday May 7th.
We will meet at Dobie at noon. The reason why we will return is best expressed by Dobie's on-site manager, Todd Engstrom:
"I'm not anti-First Amendment or against free speech. Just take the message somewhere else," Engstrom said. - Daily Texan, Wednesday April 25th
Dobie and their accountants oblige themselves to federal funds; it is imperative that they also become responsible for the side-effects of such. If not, we have a fundamental break down in the relation of the state and the people's ability to confront the state directly. If such a seperation can continually be perpetuated by badges and force...it will be allowed for each of us to draw our own ironic lady liberty being corralled into her free speech zones.
Schedule of Events:
Monday April 30th
Film screening and discussion; The Ground Truth
Time, 7pm @ Parlin 1
Speaker Hart Viges & Carl Webb (VFP/IVAW)
Wednesday April 2nd
Final planning meeting to discuss first counter-recruitment rally and to plan more fully for the counter-recruitment rally the following day.
Monday May 7th
Dobie Mall @ noon, Demand Dobie recognize First Amendment rights.
2 comments:
TO CAMEO: This is the deployed soldier that asked the other day for you guys to reconsider your planned disruption of the Dobie mall recruiting center. I sent this e-mail to one of your members with a proposal for a way to shift your Monday protest from a negative, disruptive action to a positive, politically supportive protest. I didn't get any response from Ammar, and fear I may have written his e-mail down wrong. So here's my proposal as an open letter to you guys. If you want to discuss it further, you can reach me on my cell at Austin number five one two seven one eight one four four zero, or at the e-mail address signed to this comment. Thanks for listening. Here's the letter:
Hey, Ammar, this is Jed, the bald guy that attended the CAMEO planning meeting the other day. Listen, I asked you guys then to consider trying a different tack for your protests, play a positive and supportive political role, rather than a negative and disruptive one. I asked you to consider it, but I did so pretty late in your planning cycle, when you were already committed to doing something, and additionally offered you nothing in the way of examples of what a 'positive, supportive' protest might be or how it would look. That's not a good way to do anything but make you guys question what you're doing, which is maybe at the back of my head just what I was hoping to accomplish. At the same time, though, before I came I thought about it quite a bit and couldn't really think of a way to make a positive, supportive protest that would work within your framework. Maybe I should have said I'd thought and failed to find something, and maybe that's a forgiveable oversight-- after all, why should I be helping you guys to be more effective when I disagree so strongly with you, right? Still, something in the paper today kind of clicked, and it came to me in a flash what a 'positive, supportive' protest might be, how it could work, all that kind of jazz, and so maybe now I can share it with you. If I remember, you guys have another planning meeting tomorrow, Saturday. If what I say makes sense to you, maybe you can bring it to the guys there and you can toss it around a bit, run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes, that sort of thing. If it's silly, what the hell, I've lost 5 minutes typing and you two minutes reading, right? So here goes...
OK, you guys have the goal of communicating to the folks that military recruitment and military service are inherently political, so long as there is a war on, right? You're addressing recruiters and disrupting that process because you want to communicate to UT students and Dobie Mall bystanders that the military and/or soldiers/recruiters should not simply ignore the political aspects of military service in wartime, but address it head-on, in a public manner. Your goal in getting into the mall and protesting there is to get the recruiters to come out and talk to you, debate you publicly, address these issues. Well, the recruiters aren't going to do that, period full-stop.
It's forbidden by policy for one thing. Too, it's not a winning strategy for them, it is a very risky act that bears very serious consequences if they perform badly, it endangers their immediate mission by turning what (to them) is inherently NOT a political function into a political function, etc. It is far bettter across the board for them to ignore you, wait for Dobie Mall to tire of you and deal with you themselves, etc., than to take on the risks of a potentially catastrophic debate. Not only could it go badly, and there's no guarantee there's anyone good at public speaking at that station, but finally it's very firmly against Army policy to use the Army uniform to support or oppose any political position, as I mentioned. This is a strong commitment, punishable by UCMJ action, and occassionally guys get busted for it when they start running too close to politics, including the former director of the Army Intelligence Service Command, INSCOM. He was speaking at a church, preaching to the choir, as it were, so he figured it was a religious rather than political expression, and behind closed doors anyways so who's to know? He miscalculated, and while he weathered the storm, it could have cost him big. Others who considered addressing political questions in uniform certainly took note, because whether they were justified or not, on the proper side of the legal fence or not, the debate meant that the old rule about military interference in political affairs was something that needed to be interpreted as conservatively as possible, to avoid getting your ass in a sling. Not only can it get you a reprimand or relieved for cause, it can also get you drummed out or lose you your pension.
This policy, that of the military staying out of politics, is not necessarily a bad thing. From my perspective, it's a great thing, and the very foundation of why it is that we as a nation can afford to have a standing army. If you'll read the Federalist papers, you'll note that having a standing army and a permanent or established means of funding a federal army was not exactly a given. It was hotly debated at the time, and there were a lot of good arguments against it. One of the compromises that finally allowed a bunch of rebellious, politically and socially fragmented colonies to accept a federal army that no state would have control over was the idea of civilian control of the military. It's central to how the US military works in the political system, and if you ask me, it's probably one of the if not the greatest policy innovations enshrined in the Constitution. Protected freedoms, political representation by the people, even separation of powers and a three-branch political process, none of these were novel. You don't believe me, read Macchiavelli in his Discourses. He discusses these ideas in detail, and with many examples of how they have worked and not worked historically. What WAS new was the idea that the military, the arm and sword of the sovereign, the coercive power of the state, should NOT be used for internal political developments, but rather only external ones. No political use of the military, no political role for soldiers. That the strongest tool in the government's toolbox should languish unused to settle the most pressing and perilous quandries of this or any future day, but that instead the military should be completely divorced from the political process, this was a daring new idea, and only put in place to address the concern of the colonies with standing armies. It was new and risky, and if you ask me, it's rather worked out. After over two-hundred years of continued political development under a single constitution, through incredibly strong and shattering storms of discontent and public peril, civil wars and near revolutions, we have yet to have had in this country a military dictatorship, or even a significant period of military control of a civilian population for reasons of civil disturbance (with the one exception of the Mormon experience, a rather unusual situation that was never seen as a precedent elsewhere largely because the subject population was a religiously divergent cult-group far removed physically and culturally from the rest of the nation). We don't have and have never had a military with a political veto like the Turkish military, or the Imperial Japanese military, nor have we had a coup, like your home of Pakistan has had. True, sometimes it can be argued that the military dodges the hard questions because of its 'We can't play politics, we're just grunts, figure out what you want us to do and we'll do it' card, and maybe sometime we stray too far in the non-interference side of things, but overall I'm pretty happy with the way things work out with civilian control and a non-political military. I'm pretty fucking proud of it. However, for your purposes, it's a problem-- because US military policy is that ONLY a command's Public Affairs Office can make public statements for the military, and ONLY the PAO can address itself as a political/media representative of the military. If the recruiter were to address you guys, he'd be crossing a line, and while at such a trivial level it probably wouldn't be an issue, it might be. There's no future in him taking that chance, whatever payoff you offer him. And the PAO won't stage a debate, because they actually understand WHY the military doesn't debate politics, but simply only provides reference information so that political bodies can make informed choices.
Now, like any matter of law or public policy, this is not always a simple black and white issue. There are shades of grey, conflicting policies, fashions of intrepretation and legislation. Just by putting on a uniform, a citizen does not lose his right to participate in the political process. That is allowed, and due to some scandals where folks were reprimanded for political acts (all on your side, BTW), the military is reluctantly allowing soldiers to make political statements, play political roles, so long as they make it very clear they are NOT acting as representatives of the Army, but only representing their own opinions and feelings, based on their own personal experiences. In some ways, it is even encouraged, so long as very strict guidelines are adhered to, 'staying in your lane', as it's called. It's a new policy to try to reverse the military's notorious inability to handle PR, 'telling the Army story'. Now, the recruiter can't and won't address you guys in a debate, because he's in uniform and on duty, and that would be crossing the line, no questions asked. But maybe I can.
It's not without risk for me. I've gotten into trouble before, because I wrote an op-ed piece once that I didn't think would get published and did, and it ignited a firestorm of support and a brief internet media flurry. I did it without informing my command of what I was doing, and they were blindsided by it. I wasn't wrong in doing so, was the eventual conclusion, I was well within my rights, and I was even allowed to capitalize upon it and give interviews and the like based on it. My command at the time was okay with what I had done, and I hadn't violated any rule, but as a professional courtesy I should have informed them what I was doing so they didn't suddenly get greeted on Monday morning by a batch of e-mails and irate phone calls from their higher-ups asking who the fuck I was and who the hell authorized what I was doing. That decision was made, but it took about a week and a half before it was reached-- by which time of course the flurry was over and no one was interested anymore. Now, this decision was a bit more complicated for my command that it would be for many, because I am Psychological Operations, which is basically propaganda and public relations, and PSYOP is VERY strictly constrained to be ONLY used on foreign audiences, not American ones. Other offices, such as the PAO, recruiting, and Morale offices, have the responsibility for doing what amounts to propaganda for American audiences, but there is a very firm and established line drawn between them and us, a line that is jealously guarded on both sides. In Iraq, we've even had some of our operations shut down and our plans vetoed, on the basis that the means we were using to reach Iraqis would be likely to also hit American reporters and journalists, and that was unacceptable. So participating in a debate would not be without risk for me, and some guidelines for the debate would have to be established, so it would be clear that I was only speaking as a private citizen and not as a representative of the Army. But it's a chance I'm willing to take, if it would get you guys from playing the divisive/dispruptive card you're playing now, and give you the ability to turn your protest into a positive protest playing a supportive role in the political process.
For you guys, this is a win-win situation. You get your debate, minus only the legally risky maneuvers that you've been forced to resort to, having bumped into a policy situation you weren't aware of. You get to have a (possibly) interesting direct political action, maybe even at the same time and place as what you were planning. But you don't now run the risk to your members of getting arrested or inciting a disturbance that nobody wants. Moreover, you even get to a way to show folks that you're not just a bunch of crazy radicals attacking soldiers and disrupting business, you are politically involved citizens making a legitimate political point, and that you are willing and even eager to accept debate and discussion about it. What you lose is the fun and excitement of an undercover incitement operation, the chance to fight the man in a direct manner and show the courage of your convictions. You lose the ability to make yourselves martyrs and reap the PR benefits of that. And you run the risk that you might come off worse in the debate then you would like, you run the risk that you might end up losing in the public eye from a better-than-bargained-for opponent. From what I've seen of you, though, that's a risk you'd willingly accept. I am confident you guys will see the merit of what I'm saying, and help me to get you guys into a support the troops/oppose the war position, away from the disrutpive one you have been forced into.
For me, it's a bit more risky. So long as nobody finds out about it in my command, which is unlikely cause they're well the hell out there and not in Austin, no harm, no foul, right? If a guy farts in the forest but no one is there to smell, did he really fart at all, y'know? And the payoff for me is pretty good. If it works out, you guys get at least a head-start on being positive, supportive protesters and not disruptive ones, and maybe the UT environment becomes that much less hostile to guys like me, maybe when I get back this time I won't have to feel like I'm behind enemy lines when I go to watch a movie or hear a speech up at UT. That would be worth a hell of a lot to me, to get my home back.
So think about it. Bring it up on Saturday to your buddies and discuss it with them. Maybe we can work something out, if not exactly this then something similar, and maybe we can end up working together to resolve our political conflicts rather than simply sharpening the divide, maybe we can act together to bridge this gap, one brick at a time.
Yr Obt Srt,
jedtodd
After-Action Review for the 7 May Recruitment Center Disruption:
The AAR is an Army custom and organizational habit that is really useful for any situation where different strategies and tactics are applied in operations with a defined duration. It can very readily be adapted for civilian use, and is perfect for political action. Essentially, it’s a semi-formal way of analyzing the successes and failures of an operation so as to capitalize upon the successes and correct the mistakes for the next action. It amounts to doing an assessment of the last operation, which is something you guys did at your planning meeting. The problem is that if you do it several days after the fact the hard edges of memory have been softened, and rationalization and justification have had time to set in. Additionally, if you do it when you’re planning your next action, it is only natural to allow the assessment to drift into dreams and hopes for the next step, which complicates your efforts to see what you’ve done. Ideally, an AAR should be done right after an operation, before everyone has a chance to drift away to other business, and should be scheduled into the operation just as any other phase. It doesn’t have to be formal, you guys probably did an impromptu AAR when you went out to eat afterwards, and that was probably of some use. If you keep in mind what your goal for the AAR is, though, and make an effort to get a contribution from every person that participated or played a role in the operation, you’ll find that you learn quite a bit from every action, and continue to grow and develop from your experiences. You really need to have a thick skin for an AAR, because if you really want to improve you have to be willing to listen to the criticism and advice of your fellows. While there’s no single method for conducting one, and it isn’t possible to have a ‘wrong’ AAR, there’s several common techniques that are useful, especially when folks are less than enthralled with the idea of spending more time talking when all they want to do is go rest and have fun. One of the best techniques is to have every person in turn be asked to give a certain number of negative and positive aspects of the operations, improves and sustains they’re often called. Three is a good round number for a small group, though one is probably more common for rushed AARs. You can also have the group as a whole come up with a certain number of sustains and improves, and discuss them among the group. This works best when everyone knows each other and the more aggressive elements won’t trample over the less dominant members, otherwise it will tend to devolve into a situation where one or two people lecture everyone else on what they did wrong. Remember that every single person saw a slightly different set of events from a slightly different perspective, and sometimes you will find the whole operation hinged upon something only noticed by the least likely members of the team, the quiet ones that otherwise will never get a voice. I heartily recommend doing an AAR after every event, and suggest that you will find it tremendously helpful in planning and conducting future operations.
Like I said, you guys probably did your own impromptu AAR, by whatever terms you called it, and whatever limited participation you had for it. Obviously, I am not one of your team, and frankly you guys probably don’t like me or want to hear any more from me. All the same, you have in me a unique opportunity to see your operation from an outside view, and from someone with no personality issues or internal politicking playing a role in my discussion. I can offer criticism without worrying about hurting your feelings or inciting dissension in the ranks, because I know that NONE of you are going to suddenly become my friend or stop being my friend because of it. I’ll like as not never see you again, and have no real interest in shaping your actions to better suit me, because I don’t approve of them or want to participate. So I can give you guys a little extra advice and assessment, and maybe I can say the things that need to be said but risk hurting feelings in the process.
So, to start off with, I’m going to consider your group in the aggregate, in terms of your collective action. Philosophically, this may be a bit dicey, but I am personally convinced that a social identity arises as an emergent process from the dynamics and relationships of any group of human beings, sufficient enough to at least for heuristic purposes discuss the group as an entity separate from the individuals that compose it. Normally, of course, I wouldn’t feel the need to make bullshit justifications like that in an AAR, but from comments on the Daily Texan website, it is ill-advised to take anything for granted with you guys. I’m used to dealing with soldiers like me, that speak plainly and can take a joke in the spirit it is rendered, but I understand that you are, after all, a different target audience. By the way, ‘trawling’ for women is used in analogy with the fishing technique of the same name. The word takes modifiers and modifies in the same manner, as well. A man is trawling, or likes trawling, or trawls as a habitual action. However, while a boat can be a trawler, a person cannot be a trawling person. I am not familiar with ‘trolling’, but suspect it must be in some way connected with lurking under bridges in the hopes of ambushing billy goats.
On to the group. The three sustains are splitting the group to maximize your impact, good use of media attention, and the practice of listening to your target audience rather than simply talking over them. The improves are the marginalization of women, the inflexibility of techniques, and most importantly the lack of a sense of humor.
Sustains:
Splitting the group: The technique of splitting the group to maximize your impact is very effective, especially for a small group. By having a series of smaller groups scattered about, rather than one single body of 15-20 individuals, you can create the illusion that the group is larger than it really is, or at least that several different groups are coordinating their actions. With a group as small as yours, techniques of rallying and participant mobilization are not real effective. A mob of 15-20 is hardly a threat, unless that group can mobilize the bystanders and/or audience, which you seem to be particularly ineffective at. If you can get the audience to listen to you and respond with you, that’s one thing. If you can’t, though, it is far better not to make the attempt—the failure makes you appear weak and ineffective, and damages your credibility when attempting another approach. Additionally, not all approaches are going to be equally suitable for all people—what works for Ammar won’t work for James, and vice versa. By intelligently dividing your force, you can have everyone working in the manner that best suits their personality. Given that you don’t have to be concerned for your security, I would heartily recommend the technique of splitting your group into pairs and triplets, which then spread out across the target area. Think of Hare Krishnas in airports, or evangelists on street corners. A group of even 5-7 people is very intimidating for folks to approach for face-to-face, one-on-one interaction, leading to a situation where the unmarked state is for the target audience to simply avoid you as best they possibly can. Lower your profile and you’ll find much greater scope for personal interaction, which is where your bread and butter is going to be. Leave the rallies and the signs to folks that can get a real concentration of forces at a spot, that can really mobilize a significant group. You guys can’t, so try another route.
Media Attention: You guys made the front page of the student newspaper, and were the most posted to story in the online paper for that day (or as best I could tell, given the presence of older stories and controversies on the message board). 3 or 4 posts is average and for your story there were 11 comments last I checked, of which 7 were negative (against you) and 4 positive (for you). Considering that two of those four were Kyle, and a third a raving psychotic accusing those Nasty Zionists of trying to buy up Iraqi real estate for their Zion-condos, though, it isn’t as good as it sounds at first blush. You guys made the front page, but that was largely because I was there. The story made you sound ineffective and petulant, and judging from the tone of the posts that is exactly what the readers picked up on. Look, guys, you did good by making the big story for the day, but your spin is all wrong. You need to be able to get the spin you want on the story, and you do that by marrying your goals and your capabilities. If what you said you wanted was to close the station down for an hour, you would have achieved your goal, and you wouldn’t have ‘Waited in Vain’. You would have been a success. If what you wanted was to inform people of your positions, Ms. Persons would have been watching the guys outside, and seen folks talking to them (albeit reluctantly). But if your goal was something you knew you couldn’t do, then OF COURSE the story is going to say you are a failure—you DESIGNED it to be a failure. By having someone there offering you a way to achieve your desired end-state on a silver platter, and then ignoring it, you demonstrated to the reporter AND the audience that you really didn’t want what you said you wanted, and they distrusted you for it. Look, this is a sustain, but a marginal one. You excited some controversy and got your story, but you were incompetent to manage that attention. You’re on the right track, now watch your follow-through, OK?
Listening to your target audience: This is a sustain due to the efforts of one individual, James. After the rest of you went out for a late lunch, James hung on to the bitter end, doing the grunt-work, listening to his audience and responding appropriately, and in the doing so he made sure that you didn’t look like a bunch of pompous asses lecturing the masses from your soap-box. He achieved a better result than the rest of you, simply because he demonstrated a willingness to listen to his audience and showed hostile audience members that he heard their arguments. He also had the balls to be the only one of you that was outnumbered by opponents at any point in time, and he stood his ground. That is not easy, and it is impossible if you are hostile. James knows this, and he utilized his knowledge effectively. He kept the dialogue constructive, and it worked. Now, based on body-language, there were two or three others that were working in the same direction. I missed out on hearing those talks, as I was hanging back, partly because I didn’t want to appear to be ‘a representative of the group’, and partly because there was some poor girl tripping her head off when one young women was working it and I was trying to help the psycho. I apologize for missing that, although as I said it LOOKED like the dialogue was flowing in that same vein. James did stand out, though, and I think that deserves some recognition. Listen to how James makes his arguments—he’s not just thinking of his next response, and he’s not going to tune you out once he’s made his bon mot. He’s engaged with you, and that shows. People respond to it. By listening to them, you remove well over half their animosity to you, and if they’re positively disposed initially, you can get them INVOLVED from that basis, if not now then in the future. Given your size, that is exactly the approach you need to work from. Like I said, James wasn’t the only one listening, he was just the only one I could verify and hear what he was saying. Reflective speech is a God-send in this arena—when they make their argument, say, “So what you’re saying is…”. Get them to expound, and often enough in gratitude they will shift somewhat in your direction as reciprocation. Then when you lay your arguments out, you can tailor them to meet their objections and interests. Even if they don’t shift their position, the AUDIENCE hears what you are doing and is more positively disposed to you as a result. Try it, and see what you can achieve.
Improves:
Marginalization of women: Look, in politics and political action this is often very difficult to avoid, but it’s IMPORTANT. This isn’t a point about political correctness, it is about EFFECTIVENESS, and women are very often your most effective assets. In your particular case, this is especially true. Of the two most potentially effective assets you had in your group, one was forced to leave before you started and the other felt marginalized and ignored by the rest of you. This is just dumb. You had a third potential asset that was entirely unutilized, monopolized in conversation with me, in fact (I wasn’t meaning to sabotage you, she was just cool to talk to). Let’s start with Vanessa, the young woman that painted her chest with ‘Make Love Not War’. What she was doing had tremendous potential, and I have trouble believing anyone that calls themself an activist could be so entirely off-base. Have you seen the PETA ‘I’d rather be naked than wear fur’ campaign? Compare the effects of that campaign to the results of the fake-blood-on-fur-throwing they used to do. Take a look at what kind of image PETA has now to then. Look at the amount of fellow-travelers. Look at how popular culture has since adapted that image, not to mention the mind-set that goes with it. It works. It is effective. And the women who participate are not exactly diminished by their role in it. It’s good press for them, good press for PETA, a story that folks want to read, a protest that folks want to watch. And it’s fun. Something like that, folks hear about it and they want to be there at the next protest, to see what will be done next. The rationalization that she might incite arrest is transparent, and beneath you guys. You guys got two folks arrested last time, and one almost arrested this time. That was in your fucking program, to invite arrest. If you’re planning on getting arrested, make it as useful an arrest as you can, and as hard on the cops as possible. You think cops LIKE to arrest girls for going topless? Macho is a big recruiting point, for cops as well as soldiers, remember? Nobody goes back and brags about how they cuffed some chick in body-paint, it makes them feel low and silly. They’ll ask her to cover up, and try every technique in the book to avoid having to arrest her, because they know it looks bad, and feels bad. If they do arrest her, it makes fuckin’-A good graphics. Compared to a young, attractive topless woman in body-paint dragged kicking and screaming into a patrol car, there is only one better image, a grandmother being clubbed senseless. Given that you aren’t Hizb-ut-Tahrir, and Austin has no Karimov, I’d advise not trying to incite the grandmother image. Plus, it’s inhumane. You haven’t got a grandmother to use, anyways. So Vanessa is your hands-down best asset for making the cops look like asses, and getting people incensed by their treatment of you. She’ll also attract attention, which is what you want. Not to mention the fact that if your goal is to stop the recruitment of young males to the military, she is a hell of a lot more likely to invite discussion and dialogue from those young males than a scruffy bearded guy with a sign with ten obscure points on it. I was looking at that damn sign for an hour and a half, and I never fully read it. I saw her from across the street, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. I knew her message before I could even read it, because she had a peace sign on her back. And I was positively disposed to her message, which is way more than I can say for the babble on the signs. Remember, folks know who you are and what you are doing BEFORE they interact with you. Give them a reason to get closer, to hear the details. Vanessa is self-confident, assured of herself and her sexuality, empowered, committed, willing to risk ridicule for the sake of her convictions, and enormously FUN. You guys fucked up by forcing her away. The least you could have done, if you couldn’t set aside your petty-bourgeois for the good of the cause, was offer her a T-shirt so she could go to the protest. Do you really want to end the war and stop recruitment? If you can’t stand to stare at a beautiful pair of tits for an hour in order to accomplish it, you’ll forgive me for doubting your commitment. The underlying cause of your dismissal of Vanessa, the feeling that her presence would diminish the dignity of your protest, is equally wrong-headed. She didn’t feel diminished, so why should you? Guys, this isn’t the Security Council speaking before the General Assembly, this is a bunch of scruffy college students heckling a recruiters office. Get up off your dignity and have a little fun, your audience will have fun, too, and people LIKE TO HAVE FUN. Make it fun and they’ll come back, they’ll WANT to see you there. Sing songs, play games, offer food and flowers and something to participate in, and folks will love you. If you can’t do that, at least offer them titties. One of you has the guts to make a real contribution to the protest, don’t treat her like Typhoid Mary because she’s thinking outside the box. Read your Paglia, you are doing neither her nor yourself a favor.
That’s for Vanessa. There’s another woman who could have made a tremendous impact upon your protest, had you only listened to her. I regret that I don’t have her name. She spoke to me on the way to the Dobie Mall building, expressed her frustration with the chosen tactics and mentioned that she had made the same arguments previously regarding positive versus negative protesting. I got distracted and lost her soon after that, and never had the chance to follow-up. Frankly, I was embarrassed that I didn’t remember her name, or who she was. Her appearance was directly at odds with the rest of yours, being relatively normal, cute. For lack of a better term, cheerleader chic. She was normal and attractive in a normal manner, and because of that I am afraid I at first dismissed her as being unimportant to the group dynamics. From the body language of the others towards her, you guys do the same. Folks, this is dumb, too. Your target audience is not scruffy protesters—they’re already with you, no need to convince them. Who you need to mobilize are the mainstream folks, the average students that support your position, but can’t stand YOU. 80% of folks now support withdrawal. About 80% of the posts to your story in the Daily Texan were against you. There is a mismatch. That young woman knows how to reach those people, how to talk to the mainstream—she does it every day when she gets dressed. The persona you project is not accidental, it comes about with effort and conscious decision. Her persona is attractive to your target audience, acceptable to them. Yours is not. Think about it. Look, read your Dunbar, on the social intelligence theory of evolutionary psychology. Intelligence didn’t appear on the scene because there suddenly was a selective advantage to doing differential equations or memorizing dates. It appeared because the ability to maintain an awareness of the net of social relationships surrounding us became exponentially more difficult as the size of the group became larger. Understanding the social network and working that network is essential to primates, and those that could work it had more children—check out De Waal or Goodall for verification of that one. Later on, we found that intelligence was a marvelous pre-adaptation for various other pursuits of benefit to us, including the academic subjects that we all know and love so much. But that wasn’t what it was there for initially. The point is that maintaining a good awareness of the social environment and demonstrating capability in navigating it isn’t an easy task, it isn’t simply a matter of looking pretty and being air-headed, no matter how much us bitter and jealous egg-heads might want it to be. It takes smarts. To maintain that kind of persona while simultaneously being heavily engaged in politics and other intellectual pursuits takes real smarts. She can do that, and she has been demonstrating that, by being an active and engaged member of your club. Dismissing her because she doesn’t look like your kind of protester is not wise at all, and she was obviously frustrated by your dismissal of her efforts. If you lose her, you lose your ability to talk to the people you need to target. Don’t let your high-school jealousy get in the way of the cause.
The final asset you missed was Tanya, from the Palestinian Solidarity Committee. She is heavily involved in their efforts, and they are much more organized and effective than you are. Hmm. They represent a point of view that is NOT supported by 80% of the general population, and manages to make their point and even expand their influence despite overwhelming public hostility to their message. Hmm. And she stood there for an hour chatting with me, rather than her having given you advice in the first place and used her formidable organizational and confrontational experience and talents in your protest on the ground. Hmm. Get the message? Yes, she is a woman. Yes, all of the above are women. And yes, they are not doing their damnedest to hide this curse of theirs, that they happen to be members of the largest subset of the human population. So what? Let them work. Let them help you. Listen to them, and stop trying to impress them with your macho and your dire concern for the needy of the world. They are at least as strong as you, and a damn sight more effective at social interactions—which is WHAT YOU ARE DOING.
Sorry I got a bit heated there. Where I work, we don’t have a whole lot of women working, for reasons both valid and invalid. It is very frustrating to me to see you squander the talent you have, and for such petty, dick-headed (in the literal sense) reasons. It is only natural for guys to try to wall the women off from the ‘real work’ of politics, to spend more of their time talking at the girls than talking with them. It is a part of human courtship, and understandable. But if we are human beings, rather than mole rats, we can rise above our instincts and work effectively despite ourselves. That’s what you have to do here.
Inflexibility of techniques: Look, Ammar is the heart that motivates your group. He has charisma and assurance, eloquence and self-confidence. He can get you guys jumping when no one else can, and he can push you into what you otherwise wouldn’t do. He is the scion of a privilege and status, and he knows it. He has what used to be called ‘good breeding’, and is now oft as not termed ‘class’. He has that, and he can use it. But just because he’s got it doesn’t mean the rest of you can borrow it. Ammar could walk into a KKK rally with one arm around a black transvestite, ask the Grand Dragon for a beer, and half the time he’d get it. Zach, you’re followed by store security when you go into a dollar store. You can’t do the same things, and what works for him isn’t going to work for you. Tailor your objectives and roles to your personalities and talents. Let Ammar handle the cops and the media. Let Colin and Kellen handle the ideology. Let James and the woman whose name I don’t have do the talking. Let Vanessa and the mysterious vanishing ukulele player handle the entertainment. Zach, pull security and step in if somebody gets aggressive. Kyle… well, I’ve already seen Kyle’s comment about me, so I’m biased and will recuse myself from comment. Don’t everyone try to do the same thing all at once. Remember that there are a lot of different roles in an effective operation, and make sure the best man or woman for the job is filling those roles. As it is, you guys are stepping all over each others’ toes trying to all do the same thing at once. That’s one part, the other part I’ve already spoken of. Make your goals achievable, and if you find a way to achieve those goals or an 80% solution to your problem, take it. Be flexible and make sure you are a success, by defining your goals and endstates to benefit you.
Sense of humor: This is true for the group as a whole, but especially important for Colin, Kellen, and Zach. Lighten up. Have fun with it and relax. Zach, you refused at one point to shake my hand, when I’d spent well over an hour doing my absolute best to help you guys to the greatest extent possible. What do you do when you talk to someone who’s really opposing you? How do you have a dialogue when you refuse to talk? How are you going to change their attitudes or behavior when you can’t stand them, and display that in every fiber and ounce of your being? Does it work well when your Dad does the same to you, in reverse? When frat boys laugh at you for your hair or your beard, when clean-cut yuppy types tell you to get a job? That motivates you, does it? So why would you expect them to listen to you when you’re doing the same to them? Colin, Kellen, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes when someone is being nice and saying he wants to help you, he does. Don’t overanalyze, and don’t spend your time spinning dark and dangerous webs when the sun is out there. If the cobwebs are lying around, you can brush through them without a sweat. The only way they’re going to be a problem is at night, when you can’t see them and the spiders are the size of cocker spaniels in your mind’s eye. You guys are choosing to stay in the dark, so you can see the cobwebs better. It doesn’t work like that. Read Gandhi, read the Rev. Dr. King, hell, read you’re fucking Bible and think on the lilies of the field and the sparrows in the sky. You guys spend all your time trying to out-conspire conspiracies that don’t exist. The recruiters are just 9 to 5 guys serving their time and doing their job. They aren’t hooked into to some secret nasty web of devil-agents trying to take over your mind. Get a grip, guys. For the group as a whole, remember that the only way you are going to be effective is if you mobilize the folks around you, that 80% of the population that supports your position but can’t stand you. Have fun, and let them have fun. You want them to become involved in what you are doing. If they do, mall security and recruiters aren’t going to be tossing you about like matchstick dolls, they’ll be quaking in their boots when you say you’re coming. The reason you guys are protesting is because of all the stories and movies you’ve seen and heard about the hippies, right? You ever see Laugh-In, the Smother Brothers? Woodstock, levitating the Pentagon? Have fun, and people will want to join you, because they want to have fun, too. Like I said, Vanessa saw that, understood that, and was willing to take a big risk to make it work for you. Talk to her, if you guys have trouble having fun.
That’s it for the AAR. Look, I don’t like what you are doing or that you are doing it all. Frankly, I hope you guys ignore this all-together, except for a few of you that keep it in the back of your head for that time years from now when you’ve grown up, the war is over, and we’re back on the same side. There’s more than a few of you that I would very much like to see working towards social change in other areas. You’ve got the spirit and the fire, it’s just burning in the wrong direction. When the wind has changed… Until that time, I fully expect you to write all of this off. But, whatever wild and wooly theories Colin and Kellen may spin you, this is sincere, and real advice from someone who has seen far more political actions than you’ve ever gossiped about. Maybe I’m trying a different tack, trying to love my neighbor as myself even if I don’t like him. And maybe I’m just an awful contrarian who gets a kick out of seeing you guys try to pigeon-hole a wily old bastard. And maybe this is just an amend. Whatever, I have given you time, energy, and effort, with no hope of recompense. Do with it what you will.
Yr Obt Srt,
jedtodd
Post a Comment