Being Woke in a Messy World

What does activism mean in these times?

I have been struggling with this question for a while.  And not merely as a response to tRump and his toadies--though even in that context I am at a loss.  What the hell can I do?  I can tweet my rants, but that does not do any damn thing other than to release the pressure within.  I can blog. I can talk to the few remaining friends that I have.  Nothing really makes any meaningful impact.

But, this is more than merely about tRump. But, let's start with him.  His rise to notoriety and power was not through any conventional methods of debating public policy issues or organizing movements.  He called into radio and television shows. He tweeted.  He colluded with foreign powers. He got elected to the White House.

In a way, this old orange monster presents us with the reality--political activities are not conducted the old ways anymore.  He has transformed it.  Now, routinely statesmen and idiots, elected officials and basement dwellers, anybody, tweet out their commentaries and activism.

So, yes, what does activism mean in such times?

I got pissed off with the answer that Barack Obama gave.  I mean, mighty pissed I was.

“I do get a sense sometimes now among certain young people, and this is accelerated by social media, there is this sense sometimes of: ‘The way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people,’” he said, “and that’s enough.”
“Like, if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right or used the wrong verb,” he said, “then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself, cause, ‘Man, you see how woke I was, I called you out.’”
Then he pretended to sit back and press the remote to turn on a television.
“That’s not activism. That’s not bringing about change,” he said. “If all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far. That’s easy to do.”

Bullshit!

My immediate thought was about #MeToo.  And then I thought about #BlackLivesMatter.  Black Lives Matter started in the virtual world, remember?

The phrase “black lives matter” was born in July of 2013, in a Facebook postby Alicia Garza, called “a love letter to black people.” The post was intended as an affirmation for a community distraught over George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the shooting death of seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin, in Sanford, Florida. Garza, now thirty-five, is the special-projects director in the Oakland office of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, which represents twenty thousand caregivers and housekeepers, and lobbies for labor legislation on their behalf. She is also an advocate for queer and transgender rights and for anti-police-brutality campaigns.
Garza has a prodigious social-media presence, and on the day that the Zimmerman verdict was handed down she posted, “the sad part is, there’s a section of America who is cheering and celebrating right now. and that makes me sick to my stomach. we gotta get it together y’all.” Later, she added, “btw stop saying we are not surprised. that’s a damn shame in itself. I continue to be surprised at how little Black lives matter. And I will continue that. stop giving up on black life.” She ended with “black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter.”
Garza’s friend Patrisse Cullors amended the last three words to create a hashtag: #BlackLivesMatter.

So, WTF is Obama talking about!

I decided that the guy has become like one of those people who get old and start to angrily shake their fists at younger people.  Which is also why I liked this response:

His eagerness to dismiss one part of what happens when young people stand up for what they believe in as “casting stones” is a reminder of a largely generational divide about whether it’s impolite to speak out in favor of the most vulnerable among us and the world we’d like to live in. While there’s some debate about which generation Mr. Obama belongs to, he’s solidly in the older camp.

Exactly!

The issues that my fellow millennials, along with even younger people in Gen Z, tend to be “judgmental” about are the same ones many of our parents and grandparents have been debating for decades. Being outspoken about climate change, women’s rights, racial justice, LGBTQ inclusivity and gun control — and critical of those who stand in the way of progress on these issues — is work that’s been left to us.

Of course I agree with this.  I am damn judgmental.  I have booted out the tRump toadies. People opposing gun control can go to hell. And about the old country too. The mOdi toadies have no place in my life. I piss off the brahmins too. I am tired of the old approaches that have pretty much resulted in injustices to continue.

Of course, Black Lives Matter did not merely exist in Facebook.  Me Too was not merely a Twitter hashtag.  These translated to real work in the real world.  I hope the young will translate their online activism into real votes in the real elections in the real world and boot out the evildoers.

I am cheering on the young "Woke" people.

Mr. Obama is right that “the world is messy.” But the messiness we see looks like people who are suffering because others stubbornly reject progress and refuse to show compassion. Millennials and Gen-Zers are doing what we can to take down the Goliath many of our parents have been rightfully casting stones at for decades. We have a tool that has helped democratize public debates about these issues, and we hope it will move us to a more just world.
It’s called social media. And we’re going to keep using it. 

I am concerned about the rainforest ... from the comforts of my home?

I have always been highly skeptical of economic growth and development that destroys the natural environment in the name of progress.  It was one of the many, many reasons that I could not understand what it was that I was going to contribute via engineering.  In those primitive days before the internet and television, The Hindu's reports on a guy named Sunderlal Bahuguna and the Chipko Movement fascinated me.  Yet, I was not completely sold on tree-hugging either.

Even early in graduate school, I met students who were committed to the environmental cause.  To many of them, it was not Bahuguna and the Chipko Movement, but it was Chico Mendes and his work to save the Amazon rainforest.  His assassination made a huge impact on many of my graduate-school-mates.  But, unlike this guy, for instance, I could not get myself to thinking and working only on the issue of natural environment, even though by then it was clear to me that professional advancement would not happen if I continued to spread my interests instead of focusing on one big thing.

It has always impressed me, however, that activists like Mendes completely dedicate themselves to the effort even when fully aware that their lives might get terminated by unscrupulous characters who take law into their own hands.  That level of commitment is phenomenal.

In India, Bahuguna has been honored for his work, with awards including India's second highest civilian honor.  The story of environmental activists in South America, of all the continents, continues to be violent.

2015 had the highest conservation-related mortality rates since 2010, with 185 confirmed cases (143 were reported for 2012 and 130 for 2011). In a previous study with data from 2014 Global Witness had counted 116 deaths, which implies a significant growth from one year to the next.
...
Latin America had the dubious honor of being the region with the highest number of conservationist murders—122; Brazil took the lion’s share with 50 killings. The investigation found that conflicts mostly involved mining (42 cases), agrobusiness (20), logging (15) and hydroelectric projects (15).

Killed, just like Mendes was, only because they were in the way of people who wanted to make money out of the natural environment.  How tragic!

Of course, the government and corporate agents are corrupt as hell and work closely with the killers!

The clash between the different viewpoints on how to achieve development is more often than not resolved with violence. Global Witness warns that just a few cases result in the filing of a formal complaint that leaves a documented record. Even less frequent are cases resulting in a conviction. According to the NGO, impunity ends up benefiting not only the perpetrator of the crime but also the mastermind behind it, who can have a relationship with the upper levels of the economic and political powers.

It is easy to point fingers at corrupt politicians and businesses.  What is more difficult is for individual consumers, like me, to understand that it is pressure from us that businesses are also responding to.  We consumers want the next best thing and at the lowest possible price.  The killings are the hidden costs.  The irreplaceable destruction is a hidden cost.  Or, even if they are in plain sight, we choose to look away, or be in complete denial.  Taking care of the natural environment requires us to practice what we preach--which is one of the reasons I knew I could not ever completely dedicate myself to the cause without being a hypocrite.  I would rather accept my flaws and try to understand the big picture and spread the word.

I also know I owe the Mendeses of the world a huge thanks.  I feel so small compared to them.

Being an activist without hurling bombs. Without yelling. It is easy!

Even before I got to college, I had a mental image of college as a hotbed of political activism.  I had a good reason to imagine that way--a cousin of my father's had even gone "underground" during his college years as a Naxalite.  It was all part of the family discussions when growing up. Thus, politics being a keen interest of mine meant that I was all pumped up for it.

It was a shock to then discover for myself that there was a lot of political activity on college campuses, but they had no intellectual basis to speak of.  It was simply dirty, rotten, politics where it seemed like students were fashioning themselves after the dirty, rotten, scoundrels we had as politicians.

So, no activism for me.  Well, except for one tiny bit about which I will write some day.

Coming to the US was wonderful for this aspect as well.  Practically every single day it seemed like there was some student group or the other championing some issue and seeking volunteers or passing around petitions at the USC campus.  As an "alien" I could not sign on to petitions that sought political intervention.  But, I joined in--always the curious fellow I was!

One of the movies that was screened on campus was Cry Freedom.  I went to watch it with my apartment-mate, who was also from India.  While I was aware of the apartheid regime in South Africa, I had not known anything about the black activist, Steve Biko.  Some of my graduate school mates seemed to know more about him, and they were critical of how the movie was about the white journalist than about the black activist.  Finally, I had a place where I could engage in the intellectual aspects of the causes that students were active about.  This was heaven!

Students did not want USC to have any investment portfolio ties to South Africa.  Divestment was the chant.  And when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, and Bush wanted to kick Saddam back to Iraq, I distinctly remember joining the students, and faculty too, protesting against the war preparations.  I was still worried that perhaps as an alien I ought to keep a low profile and not get into anything that can get me deported. (Much later in life, after I became a citizen, in responding to an op-ed of mine, a reader suggested that I self-deport!)

These days, I often wonder why students do not seem to be intrinsically motivated enough to protest.  There are, after all, plenty of things to protest about.  I worry that the youth are becoming either too obedient to authority, or are way engrossed in the different ways technology now provides instant gratification.  Student activism is, for all purposes, now dead in the US.

I, of course, continue to be an activist.  Rarely explicitly, however, which is why the supposedly "activist" faculty, who even led the charge to excommunicate me, falsely conclude that I am one of those establishment guys.  Little do they know me as one ardently subversive activist!  As Azhar Nafisi noted,

SOME ASSUME that the only way academics can engage the politics of the day is by coming out of their ivory tower and protesting in front of the White House. But in conveying knowledge, the academy has a far more important and subversive way of dealing with political issues. Knowledge provides us with a way to perceive the world. Imaginative  knowledge provides us with a way to see ourselves in the world, to relate to the world, and thereby, to act in the world. The way we perceive ourselves is reflected in the way we interact, the way we take our positions, and the way we interpret politics.
Curiosity, the desire to know what one does not know, is essential to genuine knowledge. Especially in terms of literature, it is a sensual longing to know through experiencing others—not only the others in the world, but also the others within oneself. That is why, in almost every talk I give, I repeat what Vladimir Nabokov used to tell his students: curiosity is insubordination in its purest form. If we manage to teach our students to be curious—not to take up our political positions, but just to be curious—we will have managed to do a great deal.

The other day, I told a student that it felt like I had made a couple of students think.  "That's what you want, right?" he replied with a smile.

Indeed!  And I want more of them.

Full disclosure: I am a politically active faculty in the classroom

My socialist, ultra-left, and left-leaning union-card-carrying faculty colleagues who get pissed off at me because I refuse to goose step with them, typically have political statements, cartoons, and news clips on their office doors and walls.  They walk and talk with their political affiliations and views on their metaphorical shirt sleeves and, from what I understand, often express them in their classes too.

My office door has nothing, except for an airline sticker to wake me up for food!

The walls in my office are bare, but for an "upside down" map of the world that I had bought when traveling in New Zealand.

To the casual visitor or student, it might seem as if I am uninterested in politics.  Students could even conclude from what they see that I am an immigrant who cares not about the American political scene, and am perhaps even ignorant of it.

To me, it is all simple: it is my responsibility to provide students with an intellectual and physical space that says nothing about my political preferences.  Even if they try to second guess my views on a political issue, well, I want students to wonder if they are even close to being correct.

Of course, reading my blog, which apparently some students occasionally do, one might draw a clearer picture of my political interests and opinions.

I don't take my own opinions to the classroom, and remind students to never worry about tailoring their responses to fit whatever they think is the correct political response that will get them the best grade from me.

Yet, despite all these, I know I am being ultra-activist in any of the classes I teach.

Because, I continuously prod them to think.

I tell them, over and over, that I want them to be curious and to have an inquiring mind.  That is one of the most subversive political activity ever, as Azar Nafisi has noted:

SOME ASSUME that the only way academics can engage the politics of the day is by coming out of their ivory tower and protesting in front of the White House. But in conveying knowledge, the academy has a far more important and subversive way of dealing with political issues. Knowledge provides us with a way to perceive the world. Imaginative  knowledge provides us with a way to see ourselves in the world, to relate to the world, and thereby, to act in the world. The way we perceive ourselves is reflected in the way we interact, the way we take our positions, and the way we interpret politics.
Curiosity, the desire to know what one does not know, is essential to genuine knowledge. Especially in terms of literature, it is a sensual longing to know through experiencing others—not only the others in the world, but also the others within oneself. That is why, in almost every talk I give, I repeat what Vladimir Nabokov used to tell his students: curiosity is insubordination in its purest form. If we manage to teach our students to be curious—not to take up our political positions, but just to be curious—we will have managed to do a great deal.

I am not sure though whether students really understand it when I tell them that the only thing I want from them is to come to class with a curious mind.  I worry that most have been conditioned to behave otherwise in most of their classes.  Unfortunate!