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MAILBAG: Remembering Brown


What is the first thought that pops into your head when you think of the year 1954?  A simpler time?  Rumblings of racial unrest? Or do you just say to yourself, “That’s ancient history?”

“Many people can’t imagine 1954. A postage stamp was three cents. The population of the United States was 163 million people, and the world series of baseball was broadcast in color for the very first time.”  

These were the opening remarks of Joe Madison, talk show personality for XM satellite radio and the moderator of “The Voices of Experience,” a community forum and panel discussion that is part of a larger program entitled, “In Pursuit of Freedom and Equality — Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas: The Legacy,” which came to Montgomery College, Rockville Campus, on Tuesday, Feb. 24.

Brown v. Board of Education is arguably one of the most important legal decisions handed down in the past 50 years in this country. In essence, it hailed the beginning of the end of segregation because the Supreme Court judges ruled 9-0 that separate is not, in fact, equal.

On Tuesday evening at the Montgomery College Theater Arts Arena, distinguished educational luminaries and authors who once attended Montgomery County Public Schools gathered and educated members of the local community about what it was like to teach, learn, and live in Montgomery County in the days leading up to and after the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Drawing on his own experiences in the post-Brown multi-cultural education (or lack thereof), Mr. Madison cut to the chase with his first question, “Where did all the white people go?”  

The first panelist to answer was Mrs. Doris Hackey, a native of Germantown and a lifetime educator in the area:

“I remember I didn’t see any white people going to Carver (one of the first ‘colored’ schools in the area).  We all went to their schools.  I’m not sure what happened,” she said.

“White people went to the suburbs as far as they could go after Brown. The opposition to integration was really scary. White people were angry, I mean really angry,” said Mrs. Nina Clark, a lifelong resident, educator, and the author of History of the Black Public Schools of Montgomery County, Maryland.

“The white people actually went and built their own school, and it is still standing to this day in Calvert County,” said Mr. Warrick Hill, author of Before Us Lies the Timber: The Segregated High Schools of Montgomery County, Maryland, 1927-1960.

It was enlightening when the panelists were asked whether “colored” schools were equal. The answer was a resounding no.  

The panelists weren’t all heavy-hearted and somber when talking about these things, however. Mrs. Hackey smiled and joked about how there was no playground equipment at the “colored” school, and how they were lucky if they got a ball.  

“I remember playing a lot of dodge ball. And if the ball went in the street and you lost it, no more ball game,” she said.

Some of the panelists recalled the drudgery of walking miles upon miles to school. However, Mr. James Offord, another distinguished panelist, saw it with a little irony. The white children got to ride the bus, but Offord had to walk to his “colored” school.  

“It was two-and-a-half miles to my school, one way. I guess one thing we had over the white kids was that it was excellent exercise. At colored schools you didn’t have many twisted or sprained ankles,” he said as he chuckled.

So how did this group of people manage to succeed  when the odds were so clearly stacked against them in terms of schoolbooks, buildings and other resources?  

“There was a lot of motivation on the part of the parents because they were denied an education,” said Mrs. Clarke. There wasn’t a “colored” high school in Montgomery County until 1927.

A large motivation for African American students after Brown was to show “I’m just as smart as you are,” said, Mr. Offord.  It also probably helped that all students, regardless of race, were entitled to the same quality books, teachers and facilities.  

“We learned more because of shared resources. We were doing things after Brown that we had never done before. Now we can. Brown instigated these things,” said Mrs. Clarke.

“We used adversity as a stepping stone to success,” said Mr. Hill.

—Tom Love

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MAILBAG: Status anxiety


There’s this pretty girl I know. She lives on welfare with her grandmother. But project-bound, I see her sashaying down the block in pants designed by Versace. During summertime, she adorns herself with Chanel sunglasses. Here she stands out like a glamourous Sophia Loren against a backdrop of the harshness of the urban jungle. She cannot afford groceries for the next two weeks, but she says, “Damn, at least I look good.”

This is what pyschologists term “status anxiety.” In a time where there are more jobs offering titles than ever before, we are not satisfied unless we exhibit the materialistic ways that predominate the world. For New Yorkers, it’s the cab to work, the brownstone, and a Panamarian called ”Chu-chu.“ It’s the Brazilian and the three-week holiday in the Seychelles. It’s the Botox.

Unless you have the luxury of being heir to a multi-million dollar business empire, however, it’s hard graft. Nights with your brain networking and planning meetings for the morning. Caffeine injections. All of this because you still want more. Because you’re fed images of nothing but the new cell phone with a flip-top camera. The new diet. The fashionable lifestyle.

Of course, we all crave the finer things in life. Yet 33 percent of those in successful careers are also in the psychiarist’s chair seeking therapy. The sentence that seems to be echoed is “I still am not happy … ’til I have more.”

I still see that girl now and then around the projects. I smile. Given the richness of her heart, she is already successful.

—Anonymous

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MAILBAG: Meaning gets lost in translation


Regarding “Stereotypes translate well on screen“: I can see where some might think that the characterizations of Asians might be a bit offensive, particularly when seen through Western eyes.  However, you might also find it interesting to understand the real translations of the Japanese dialogue. The question then becomes which stereotypes do we really talk about?

Perhaps the title really does explain it.  Maybe it’s just a matter of which translation you are looking for.

—Anonymous

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MAILBAG: Usurping our jobs and country


Regarding “The Chicken Hangers,” by Russell Cobb (Identify, February 2004)

After reading ”The Chicken Hangers,“ I find it disquieting that a union organizer would rather pitch in with illegal aliens who have cost his fellow legal state residents the opportunity to access jobs which are now occupied by illegal labor, than with those who are legally entitled to be in this country. It is also alarming that, knowing that the employer is delinquent, Cobb fails to denounce him to immigration authorities. The employment of legal laborers, in lieu of illegal aliens, would cause salaries and living standards to rise because illegal aliens are not looking for the same standard of living as U.S. citizens but for one better than the one they left in a developing nation.

Most unions, however, have fallen to the need of increasing their membership, even if this means betraying the future of American workers. The answer to the widespread use of illegal laborers would be to turn in every employer and landlord who is employing or sheltering any illegal aliens. Under Section 274 of the Immigration and Naturalization Act, it is unlawful to encourage, employ, import, transport, and shelter illegal aliens. These acts are penalized by fines and imprisonment. Why unions don’t force employers to adhere to the law is beyond logic.

With eight to fourteen million illegal aliens occupying jobs that should be held by American citizens, Mexican President Vicente Fox is encouraging farmworkers to come to the United States, and therefore condones the siphoning of over $60 billion per year in remittances out of our economy into those of the illegal workers’ various home countries. The present situation can only be described as an invasion by hostile forces. In addition, thanks to the Voter Registration Act, every state that issues driver’s licenses to illegal aliens is potentially enabling a criminal to vote in our domestic issues and leaders. I hope that we learn to act accordingly and vote to roll back the tide of criminals who are squatting on our jobs and land.

—Carlos M. Rodriguez
Overland Park, Kansas

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Photo Essays

The 9-10-3 project

1 writer, 4 cameras, 13 photographers, and 100 rolls of film.


Click here to enter the visual essay.

The exile capital for Tibetan refugees, Dharamsala, India, has a charm that can either seem quaint and ordinary or strikingly out of place. The stains and scars of the past are covered up by brightly colored prayer flags, and relegated to pieces of literature that the tourists pick up, skim, and shake their head in disbelief upon completion. There are a number of places where the memories ooze out in a somewhat unmarketable way, but for the most part, Dharamsala triumphantly celebrates the Tibetan culture while swaddling the dehumanizing memories in the folds of their robes and tucks of their chubas.

The 9-10-3 Project puts the prayer flags of Dharamsala in the foreground, but also stirs the wind. It deals with the force of labels human beings invent that cause severe destruction, dehumanization, and identity reformation. The names “dissident,” “freedom fighter,” “nun,” “activist,” or “prisoner” all carry inescapable connotations and consequences that manifest in ways only barely accessible to an inquisitive outsider.

We’re interested in this dichotomy of why the hellish past must be isolated from the exiled present; why accounts of political prisoners’ experiences are promptly punctuated with notes such as, “He escaped to India and presently lives in Dharamsala.” One might be left with the impression that only the pain is sexy enough to read, that the rest of this survivor’s life is insignificant, and somehow, as if upon exiting the prison walls, his or her life becomes ordinary and normal.

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Reviews

Beyond ‘Tokyo Story’

Ozu’s classic films illuminate the human experience.


The traveling retrospective celebrating the late Yasurijo Ozu’s one-hundredth birthday and showing his thirty-six extant films has already passed through New York and San Francisco. But if you are lucky enough to live within driving distance of Vancouver, Canada, Toronto, Detroit, or Washington, D.C., you still have a chance to see some of this extraordinary filmmaker’s works projected on the luminous white, before they recede again into whatever hole great films vanish for lack of an interested public.

An Ozu film can be a disconcerting experience for filmgoers accustomed to the fast-paced cuts, copious camera movements, and tightly-honed narrative arcs of the average modern film. Ozu’s camera sits three feet off the ground and rests there for almost every shot. He never changes the lens, the same locations come up again and again, and the plots are loose and seem to repeat themselves — in other words, an Ozu film can seem static and frustrating.

But if you can embrace the slowly developing drama in its archetypal scenes of nostalgia, love, defiance, and familial conflict, and if you are able to let the films open themselves to you so that you can see their shots and cuts as a succession of pure cinematic images — not merely as devices to further the plot, but as the play of projected light and shadow — then the world of Ozu will begin to reveal its sublime vision.

Many regard the well-known Tokyo Story (1953) as Ozu’s masterpiece, but, in my opinion, it does not begin to match the perfection of Late Spring (1949), or even There Was a Father (1942), The Only Son (1936), or The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice (1952).

Late Spring and The Only Son

In Late Spring, everything comes together: Ozu’s penetrating understanding of intricate family intimacies; his and editor Yoshiyasu Hamamura’s beautifully-sharp editing; crystalline shots of trains, stones, and daffodils; and wonderful performances by Setsuko Hara and Chishu Ryu. The film’s narrative follows the iconic Ozu themes of familial change, generational conflict, and resigned acceptance of a new beginning.

Noriko (Hara), a daughter devoted to her aging father (Ryu), cannot bring herself to separate from him, even though it is time she gets married and start her own life. Played masterfully by Hara (known in Japan as the “eternal virgin” for the innocent happiness she exudes), the daughter’s filial devotion and perennial radiant smile descend almost shockingly into defiant anger and jealousy, and then resigned sadness, as her father regretfully forces their lives to change.

In the final sequence the film cuts from the white and drooping gray of a peeled apple framed by the darkness of the father’s hand and study to the wider shot of the father’s lowered head, and then to the much wider and brighter shot of the timeless ocean. Through its brightness and expanse, the light of the sky and breaking waves in that final shot cleanses and opens the mind to the characters’ tender rebirth on the heels of the sad darkness of the father’s study and unraveled life. Here we can sense the power of Ozu’s shots and cuts as light on the wall — as pure cinema.

The Only Son is another beautifully subtle rendering of the sorrows and disappointments of the parent-child relationship. We are no longer in the familiar Ozu terrain of agonizing marriage machinations, arrangements, and decisions. This time, the anguish comes from the mother’s and son’s disappointment at the son’s failure to amount to anything despite the mother’s great sacrifices for his education. At times, the montage itself manifests their resigned sadness. In a wrenching scene on a forlorn hilltop, as industrial smokestacks billow in the background, mother and son confide in each other their disappointment in life.

“Self-symbol” in Ozu

As Nathaniel Dorsky discusses in his Devotional Cinema, the smokestacks in The Only Son are not just a surface symbol of contamination or failure. Rather, the open quality of the hilltop shot and the cuts from hill, smokestacks and the quiet pair to the expansive and empty sky, and back again to the hilltop, are “the poetic mystery and resonance of self-symbol” — things presented for what they are. We, as viewers, are then “awed into appreciation.”

This quality of openness in shots, cuts, and story, and the feeling that we are not being manipulated by meaning, that we are being presented with a world that rests in itself, that lets us receive and discover it for ourselves — what Dorsky refers to as “self-symbol” — belongs to only a handful of filmmakers. In Ozu, we are constantly confronted with shots that exude self-symbol and offer themselves to the viewer as themselves, free of the violence of egotistical imposition.

Of course, Ozu is not perfect, and one encounters failed Ozu montage. But for every unsuccessful sequence like the painfully forced montage of the erect phallus-tower and vaginal-like tree towards the end of the magnificent and disarming The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice, we are treated to many more breathtaking sequences: the rusting sewer pipes and commuters hurrying to work in Early Spring; the husband’s speech at a friend’s wedding about his bad luck to have had an arranged marriage and the matchless ambiguity of his wife’s awkward expression in Equinox Flower; or the stunning rock garden montage towards the end of Late Spring, where from the dark outline of a vase in a play of dancing bamboo shadows we cut to the bright white of the rock garden’s sand and lonely black stones.

The variety of these examples illustrate how the revelatory quality of Ozu’s films plumb at the same time the human world and existence itself. In Ozu we are immersed in timeless human conflicts and age-old generational dramas, revealed with the utmost economy and precision: a Setsuko Hara smile, an innocuous comment about some daily trifle, a well-timed grunt by Chishu Ryu. But next to this human world, Ozu also presents us with magnificent shots and cuts of objects (hats, trains, girders, rocks, tea pots, shoji screens) that, in the way a wall reflects a shimmering pond or a wind-blown tree canopy flits in patches of revealed sky, seem to hover on the surface of consciousness, revealing something, even if we aren’t quite sure what.

A friend of mine, with whom I went to many of the films, spoke one night, after our tenth Ozu screening, of what we came to call the Ozu Holy Triad: power-line insulators and girders; trains; and clothes on clotheslines. One could do well in summarizing most any Ozu film by taking the triad as a base: an opening shot of power lines, trains passing power lines and telephone poles, insulators gleaming in the sunlight. The trains snake through the frame, fill the frame. People are departing, people are arriving, families are splitting up. Lonely laundry seems to call out nostalgically for the way lives were, but now there must be a new start. A new start and a new horizon, pierced by the lone power pole in the opening shot — this horizon is bound: iron-bound, custom-bound, and ego-bound, but nevertheless new, new despite the intransigence of thoughts and life.

Discovering Ozu

Many of these films are rarely shown in theaters, and most are not even available on video or DVD; of my recommendations, only Tokyo Story, Equinox Flower, Late Spring, and Early Summer are currently available. Now is possibly your only chance to experience Ozu’s films as they are meant to be experienced, the only way their shots and cuts can manifest their full power: as projected light, large and on a white screen. My must-see list includes: There Was a Father, Late Spring, The Only Son, A Hen in the Wind, and The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice. But close behind are: Tokyo Story, Equinox Flower, Early Spring, Early Summer, Woman of Tokyo, What Did the Lady Forget? , and Late Autumn.

STORY INDEX

EXHIBITIONS >

Toronto
Cinematheque Ontario
January 16 to March 13
URL: http://www.e.bell.ca/filmfest/cinematheque/home.asp

Vancouver
Pacific Cinematheque
January 23 to March 20
URL: http://www.cinematheque.bc.ca/JanFeb04/ozu.html

Washington D.C.
National Gallery of Art
March 6 to April 10
URL: http://www.nga.gov/programs/film.htm

Detroit
Detroit Film Theater
March 22 to May 24
URL: http://www.dia.org/dft/

PEOPLE > OZU, YASURIJO >

Biography
URL: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/03/ozu.html

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About PULSE


Welcome to PULSE. This space is devoted to an animated, ongoing discussion of contemporary politics, culture, and society. Hosted by InTheFray editors (along with a few guest bloggers on occasion), PULSE will bring to your attention news items concerning identity and community. We provide the incisive analysis and thoughtful insights; you provide the withering criticism and rigorous debate. The end product will, we hope, be a lively exchange among readers and editors that is a tad serious, and a tad not. The PULSE page will be updated on a daily basis, so please check back frequently.

To post an entry, visit the submission form on our site. Make sure you select PULSE" as the Topic. Alternatively, you can email your entry to pulse-at-inthefray-dot-org. In either case, the post should be no more than 1,000 words. We do not permit spam, libelous or defamatory posts, or other abuses. Please make sure that you are logged into the ITF website when you submit your entry. You may use a pseudonym, though we encourage people to use their real names.

To read the latest PULSE entries, click here.

—The PULSE staff

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Big plans for the New Year


In 2004, we have bold new plans to go print, expand our readership, and make ITF an even better magazine. To bring these ideas to fruition, we need your help.

We will be conducting a major fundraising campaign during the next few months, but before doing so, we need your input on what you like about InTheFray and how we can improve the magazine. Please help us — and yourselves, our loyal readers — by taking a moment to fill out this completely anonymous survey.

We know that surveys aren’t always fun. But because we need your valuable input, we’ve made this one as painless as possible. Simply use the pull-down menus, fill in the blanks, and click ‘Submit’ when you’re finished. The entire process should not take you more than one minute.

Thank you for your time and for helping us make InTheFray even better in 2004. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email me at fundraising@inthefray.com.

Happy New Year!

Bryant Castro de Serrato
Marketing Director, InTheFray Magazine
New York

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Making a list, checking it twice …


issue banner

It’s that time of year again … time to drink some eggnog, make your New Year’s resolution and then promptly break that New Year’s resolution, and, of course, rock the vote — the ITF vote, that is.

There are two parts to this year’s vote: (1) your picks for the Top Ten U.S. social justice organizations (choose from eighteen), and (2) your favorite ITF articles of 2003 (pick one article for each of the four channels of the magazine). We’ll publish the results in the January “BEST OF InTheFray 2003” issue.

Please email your votes to vote@inthefray.com NO LATER THAN MONDAY, JANUARY 5. Feel free to cut and paste the list below in the text of your message.

READERS’ CHOICE: TOP TEN SOCIAL JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONS

Now that you’ve helped us choose our top ten activists in America, we need your help again. Choose ten picks from the following list of eighteen. The question is: “Which ten organizations working on social justice issues in the United States have had the most influence over the past three decades?”

[ ] ACORN

[ ] ACT UP

[ ] The American Lung Association

[ ] Amnesty International

[ ] Center for Community Change

[ ] Center for Third World Organizing

[ ] Environmental Justice Fund

[ ] Green Party

[ ] Human Rights Campaign

[ ] Jobs with Justice

[ ] MoveOn.org

[ ] National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

[ ] The National Organization for Women (NOW)

[ ] Public Citizen

[ ] Rainbow/PUSH Coalition

[ ] Reform Party/Independent Party

[ ] Schools of the Americas (SOA) Watch

[ ] Third World Majority

Optional: We’d love to hear why you chose the ten organizations that you did. Make your case for your picks in the Forum or email them with your votes. We’ll publish your comments (without your name if you prefer) in the next issue of the magazine.

BEST OF InTheFray 2003

Choose your favorite article in each of the four channels below:

IDENTIFY

[ ] Genocide is not a spectator sport
Exploring the roots of ethnic violence in Gujarat. By Anustup Nayak.
February 12, 2003

[ ] Bollywood ending? Not yet.
What digital video could mean in the world’s largest democracy. By Nicole Leistikow.
April 10, 2003

[ ] Driving us into the ground
The debate over the true cost of cars. By Nick Hoff.
June 9, 2003        

[ ] Southern hospitality
Mourning a lost home, refugees from Vietnam start over in North Carolina. By Krista Mahr and Lissa Gotwals.
September 29, 2003

[ ] The end of old-school organizing
How United for a Fair Economy is reaching across lines of class and race in the fight for economic justice. By Victor Tan Chen.
October 27, 2003

[ ] The revolution will be emailed
Can a widespread, loosely knit organization — connected only through email — make the American mainstream media take notice of the Palestinian perspective? By Tamam Mango.
November 13, 2003

[ ] The battle after Seattle
Four years after the landmark 1999 protests in Seattle, times are tougher for the global justice movement. But activists are adapting by broadening their ranks, shifting their tactics, and envisioning an alternative world. By Victor Tan Chen.
December 26, 2003
        
IMAGINE
    
[ ] A is for ambivalent
The rise, fall, and pending resurrection of an Asian American magazine. By William S. Lin.
February 10, 2003

[ ] From sparks to full blaze
Reporting Civil Rights traces the evolution of a movement and its coverage. By Andrew Curry.
April 9, 2003        

[ ] Breaking the celluloid ceiling
Asian Americans embrace the bad-boy characters of Better Luck Tomorrow. By Gavin Tachibana.
April 10, 2003

[ ] The painted ladies of Queens
When Matisse and Picasso visit Long Island City, it’s their mistresses who take center stage. By Maureen Farrell.
June 9, 2003

[ ] Not on my watch
Can A Problem From Hell make stopping genocide a priority? By Jal Mehta.
September 29, 2003

[ ] Elisabeth Leonard, Raging Granny
Faith, righteousness, and the march to stamp out war. By Henry P. Belanger.
October 27, 2003

[ ] Where give meets take
Sharing a house, a shower, and a meal at the Catholic Worker. By Maureen Farrell.
November 13, 2003

[ ] Burning Man lights a fire
The Nevada desert art event doesn’t just produce art, it produces citizens. By Katherine K. Chen.
December 22, 2003

INTERACT
        
[ ] Crying wolf
A television journalist decries bias in media coverage after 9/11. By Hari Sreenivasan.
February 12, 2003

[ ] ‘Mother-guilt’
The unscientific progress of a psychiatric resident. By C.T. Kurien.
April 10, 2003

[ ] Free at last
Saying goodbye to that nettlesome question: Is it the French Quarter, or the Freedom Quarter? By Judith Malveaux.
June 9, 2003

[ ] The other side of Lawrence
A Supreme Court victory may turn out to be the gay community’s death knell. By Adam Lovingood.
September 29, 2003

[ ] The new ‘crisis’ of democracy
The world today is witnessing an unprecedented level of popular protest — but watch out, the Empire is striking back. A conversation with Noam Chomsky.
October 27, 2003

[ ] ‘Assault on the very basis of life’
In an age of unprecedented corporate power, social movements offer the greatest hope for humanity’s survival, says Vandana Shiva. A conversation with Vandana Shiva.
November 13, 2003

[ ] It’s lonely at the top
Every generation likes to think it stands at the end of time. But there are good reasons for activists to remember their history — and remember their humility. By Larry Yates.
December 24, 2003

IMAGE

[ ] Kids in color
Nurturing the adults of tomorrow. By Lia Chang.
February 10, 2003

[ ] The peace series
Because no one wants to shoot a teddy bear. Illustrations by Genevieve Gauckler.
April 8, 2003

[ ] The propaganda remix project
Somewhere, Norman Rockwell is rolling over in his grave. Posters by Micah Wright.
April 8, 2003

[ ] The oxymoron
A war that the whole family can enjoy. Posters by John Carr.
April 8, 2003

[ ] On the front lines
Images of anti-war. By multiple contributors.
April 8, 2003

[ ] Guerilla banner drop
5:30 a.m.: We drop the flag on Union Theological Seminary. Photos by Dustin Ross.
April 8, 2003

[ ] 911: State of Emergence
Ride the Saturation Engine. Multimedia immersion courtesy of 47.
April 8, 2003

[ ] I love war!
Print them out and share the love. Stickers by DesignBum.
April 8, 2003

[ ] Por los ojos
Down a road in Central America, eyeing each other. By Alejandro Durán.
June 12, 2003

[ ] A walk in the dark
Photographs and notes from a long walk home during the Blackout of 2003. By Dustin Ross.
September 29, 2003

[ ] World trade barricade
Puppets and protests galore at the World Trade Organization’s Cancún ministerial. By Dustin Ross and Victor Tan Chen.
October 27, 2003

[ ] Fear totalitarianism
Dodging rubber bullets at the Miami FTAA ministerial. By Tom Hayden, Diane Lent, Toussaint Losier, Andy Stern, and Victor Tan Chen.
December 26, 2003

Optional: Please tell us what you think about any or all of the articles you voted for. You can post your comments in the Forum or email them with your votes. We’d love to hear what you think about the magazine in general, too — constructive criticism is always welcome.

The articles that receive the most votes will be featured in the “BEST OF InTheFray 2003” on Monday, January 12. We’ll publish readers’ comments along with the winning articles. If you don’t want your comments or name published, please let us know.

Finally, please submit your vote NO LATER THAN MONDAY, JANUARY 5, 2004 to vote@inthefray.com.

It really is that easy … no hanging chads, no confusion about whether Jewish Floridians actually voted for Pat Buchanan — just your voice and your vote.

Happy holidays, happy voting — and don’t forget to check your lists twice!

Laura Nathan
Managing Editor, InTheFray Magazine
Austin, Texas

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Commentary

It’s lonely at the top

Every generation likes to think it stands at the end of time. But there are good reasons for activists to remember their history — and remember their humility.


It is hardly likely that twentieth-century man is called upon to discover truth that has never been discovered before.
—E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful

Outside my home, somewhere in the cedar trees, summer insects are piping away, with no idea of whether they are the first, the billionth, or the last to do what they are doing. Unlike them, I worry about my place in the progression of time. A baby boomer, a modern man, someone living in a time of global crisis — I not only see myself in time, but I sometimes view myself as being at a privileged position — which is at the summit and culmination of history.

Having a sense of time and place is one of the interesting things about being human. But our awareness becomes a problem when we start to believe that our particular moment is the most important moment, that our insights are the best of all time so far, that our generation stands on a mountaintop soaring above history’s hills and valleys. And I think this is especially a problem — even a trap — for those of us who are working for social justice.

I think that the idea that insights, problems, and programs are “new” is driven largely by those — mainstream politicians, or corporate brand marketers, or discoverers — who feel a need to claim that they are pioneers of a brave new world. Then, of course, there are academics and inventors and funders and folks applying for grants — people who are competing for time-limited resources. Throughout the twentieth century, the worlds of music and art have also been tangled up with time-based competition, as artists get praised and rewarded for being “contemporary” or “modern.” In each case, we are urged to forget all the losers in the past, and simply glory in the wonderfulness of the present, where someone finally did it right. Whatever “it” is.

In reality, most of what we know, do, smell and think has been with us for a while. Some of our ancestors were as smart and sophisticated as anyone is now, and we are pretty much in their footsteps on a long march, much of which keeps coming around to the same places.  The accomplishments of those who lived thirty or even ninety years ago are little different than the accomplishments of this generation.

The more things change …

At the age of fifty-three, I’ve seen more than a few things cycle around and become trendy in activist circles again. Recently, I came across two books that reminded me of this. One of them is Neighborhood Centers Today: Action Programs for a Rapidly Changing World, written by Arthur Hillman and published in 1960, when I was a child. One article in the book talks about “planning for inclusiveness.” It emphasizes that activists shouldn’t follow a “melting pot” approach, but should recognize that diversity among groups is real and valuable. Not only the sentiments, but the actual phrases, are those we hear every day from folks who think they are way up to date. Another article chronicles a process of “leadership development” in neighborhoods. Another talks about ways of dealing with aging. A lot of the material could very easily be recycled for social workers, organizers, and researchers writing today.

The Power Elite, by C. Wright Mills, was first published in 1956. When I was a young radical, this was a book that all the older radicals, the twenty-five- and twenty-six-year-olds, had on their shelves. And like Neighborhood Centers Today, it anticipates some of the “modern” wisdom of our day. See if these words don’t give you a shiver of familiarity: “a small group of political primitives … have exploited the new American jitters, emptied domestic politics of rational content, and decisively lowered the level of public sensibility.” Or how about this: “The elite of corporation, army, and state have benefited politically and economically and militarily by the antics of the petty right, who have become, often unwittingly, their political shocktroops.”

Doesn’t this pretty much describe where we are in 2003?

Obviously, some progress has been made over the past several decades. There is no mention of LGBT (lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgendered) issues in either of the books I mentioned, let alone any sense of an LGBT movement, though it certainly had begun back then. Apartheid in housing was still legal in the United States in 1960, instead of just an informal reality as it is today. And I’ve heard rumors that there have been some changes in communications technology since 1956.

But we progressives have also lost ground in a lot of areas. Income inequality has grown. The labor movement has become weaker. Fundamentalist and media-based churches have grown at the expense of more tolerant, congregation-based, and progressive mainstream churches. The United States is a more frightening military power than it has ever been.

Overall, the basic facts have not changed. Some people seize every opportunity to exploit others, and defend every vestige of privilege and dominance over other people that they can get away with. Other people give their lives, or many years of their lives, for justice. And most of us just live our lives, trying to do the right thing to the extent that we can cut through the fog of media messages.

In other words, in 1956 as in 2003, we are pretty much the same kind of people playing out the same drama. That doesn’t mean the drama is somehow bogus or unimportant, or some kind of cruel joke. It means that the social struggle is part of life. Breathing is also a repetitive process. So is housework. A lot of tasks that are vital to our very existence are never completed, never fundamentally resolved in one unique moment. There is no Mount Everest of social justice waiting for us to climb it and plant a flag once and for all.

Nevertheless, there continue to be people who look down on the rest of us for following an approach from the eighties, or the sixties, or the thirties. They don’t know that most of what we do has been done before — and they don’t learn from that experience. They have a notion in their heads that the present historical moment is unique. And they believe, with all earnestness, that they are the ones with the solutions for society’s problems, that they alone have the smart ideas that really will work — unlike all those annoying, lame efforts in the past. Usually, the new “something” they are going to do is a way to win without organizing and talking to people — or a way to avoid taking the risk of going to jail or being targeted for violence. Then, of course, there are the folks who are going to be more militant than anyone ever was before, or who are going to have a more brilliant analysis than anyone ever did before.

It’s lonely at the top

I don’t mean to merely be a tendentious lecturer and wet blanket. There are some big-time benefits to realizing we are not at the summit of time. For one thing, it gives us a lot more comrades in our struggle, and a lot bigger sense of what is possible.

We no longer have to travel to connect to the great social movements of the past. Wherever we live, we already live on ground hallowed by struggle. For example, I just moved to a mostly white, rural county in Virginia that goes Republican in every election. Why I did that is a long story. But it definitely helps that John Kagi grew up several miles from here. A few miles farther away is Harper’s Ferry, where Kagi fought with the radical abolitionist John Brown against slavery. The longer I live here, the more I’m inspired by the local history: the farmers who organized, the unions that struggled, the indigenous people who resisted.

Of course, many of these stories from the past are not happy ones. It is unpleasant to be reminded that some of our struggles will also fail, that some of us will also suffer unjustly. But at least we know we are not alone. This is important, because the exploiters often do a good job of embarrassing us activists into feeling that we are strange — overly sensitive, “politically correct,” obsessive. But history tells us that in every hierarchical human society there are people who rise up for justice. Sometimes, they even win.

It’s also important to remember that whatever we activists are trying to do, someone has done it — or something a lot like it — before, under way tougher conditions. That doesn’t guarantee our success, but it does mean that we can succeed if things go right.

These days, I often think of the abolitionists who fought slavery in the early 1800s. They lived through a time when it looked like slavery would be swept away in the egalitarian fervor of the American Revolution. That didn’t happen. The system of slavery, in fact, got stronger: Churches that had been racially integrated in the late 1700s became rigidly segregated; laws were passed preventing slaves from learning how to read and requiring them to travel with passes. But even in these bleak times, activists struggled valiantly. Gabriel Prosser still organized a rebellion in Richmond. Benjamin Lundy still traveled around the nation preaching the evils of slavery. Lundy, in fact, managed to inspire a few people before he died in the 1840s — among them, William Lloyd Garrison, the great anti-slavery crusader who helped convince Lincoln to set black slaves free during the Civil War.

It’s not hard to see why Gabriel Prosser and Benjamin Lundy were considered fringe fanatics in their day. Slavery wasn’t going to go away in 1800 or 1840. No smart young man eager to influence policy would have done what they did.  But without their struggles, slavery might not have gone away in the 1860s. These two people really mattered — in some ways, more than the men who were presidents during their time.

It’s hard for activists to have this kind of long-term perspective. I recently got an email from someone on a progressive email list I am on that said, “Let’s make sure that Bush is the last Republican president.” I am sure it won’t be the last time I hear this kind of apocalyptic rhetoric between now and the 2004 election.

If you have any sense of history, you know that wish could come true. Political parties come and go, and in 1856 nobody really thought the Whigs were going to vanish from the American political scene. Some Republican president will be the last one. It could be this one. But you also know, if you study history, that it ain’t about Republicans — it’s about systems and egos and opportunities to exploit people. Bush is not going to be the last human being to sit on a pile of concentrated power and abuse it for the interests of his class/race/gender/gang.

In fact, every presidential election is a reminder of how presumptuous we activists can be, to think we stand at some special historical moment. Millions of dollars are spent to mobilize people around the idea that 1960 or 1984 or 2004 is some kind of Armageddon. And thousands of intelligent people get caught up in the illusion. Anyone who questions the importance of a presidential race gets accused of cynicism.

Perhaps the most decisive U.S. presidential election was the 1932 race, in which the Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt beat the Republican incumbent, Herbert Hoover. Many scholars argue that this electoral victory led to the modern liberal state, and possibly prevented a socialist or fascist government from coming to power in this country. But what really happened in 1932? A former governor of New York from a wealthy family was elected on a platform to make massive cuts in the federal budget. If the people hadn’t been in the streets, before and after the election, there would have been no New Deal. The election of Roosevelt may have been a necessary condition for the New Deal, but it was not a sufficient condition.

At any given moment, the government we have largely reflects the existing balance of power among various classes, ethnic groups, and communities. And that balance of power is the result of long-term efforts and trends, as well as purely random events. It is the result, in other words, of what millions of people — some long since dead — have done. The Roosevelts and Lincolns, and even the Gandhis and Guevaras, can do no more than the complex set of preexisting conditions allows. You and I help to create those conditions — sometimes much more than we know.

We may very well live through an event — perhaps the impeachment of George W. Bush, or the resignation of Dick Cheney? — that will become a defining moment for our generation. But we have no way of knowing for sure if or when those moments will come. Each of us is merely one more human being doing her or his best to find justice.

In 1956, C. Wright Mills wrote that the United States “now appears before the world a naked and arbitrary power.” Its leaders were, “in the name of realism,” imposing “their often crackpot deliberations upon world reality,” Mills argued. He offered these views with no prescription for what could be done. He envisioned no movement that could use his insights. He simply felt it was wrong to “relax the effort to understand the facts of power and the ways of the powerful.”

Last winter, millions marched around the world, in the first truly global mass movement against a planned act of war — the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Their actions were a resounding vindication, half a century later, of Mills’ criticisms of “naked and arbitrary power.” Today, other thinkers are following Mills’ lead in writing analyses that will someday pulse through the world — once people build a movement around them.

After my time as an activist is done, I hope someone else will breathe as I have breathed, be concerned as I have been concerned, and take a few risks for justice as I have. Or, even better, as Emma Goldman did, or Sojourner Truth, or the unknown person who first had the idea of a labor union, or who first insisted that the widows and orphans deserved a share of the year’s harvest. With each generation, the same song is sung. But it never comes without effort, and never without desire. And the song is no less beautiful or vital because it has been heard before many times and will be heard many times again.

STORY INDEX

MARKETPLACE >
(Order from Powells.com and a portion of each sale goes to InTheFray)

Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered by E.F. Schumacher
URL: http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=28164&cgi=product&isbn=0060916303

The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills
URL: http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=28164&cgi=product&isbn=0195133544>

PEOPLE > BROWN, JOHN >

“John Brown and the Valley of the Shadow”
Information about John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry.
URL: http://www.iath.virginia.edu/jbrown/master.html

PEOPLE > KAGI, JOHN HENRY >

Biography
Brief description of John Kagi, a follower of the abolitionist John Brown.
URL: http://www.plainandsimple.org/kagi.html

PEOPLE > PROSSER, GABRIEL >

“Historical Background of the Gabriel Prosser Slave Revolt”
Excerpt from American Negro Slave Revolts, by Herbert Aptheker. Published by International Publishers. 1974.
URL: http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/spl/gabrielrevolt.html

“

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Latest update

September 22, 2005

Analysis of the survey results has been completed. Click on the link below to view the document.

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About the survey

This survey was prepared by Tom Hayden and Victor Chen. It will be used by InTheFray, a nonprofit magazine devoted to issues of identity and community, and the Department of Sociology at Harvard University. In 2003 Hayden led a study group at Harvard’s Institute of Politics on social movements and globalization. The survey results will be analyzed by Victor Chen (vchen@fas.harvard.edu, 617.669.2578) at Harvard’s Department of Sociology and by other Harvard students who traveled to Miami as observers during the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) ministerial conference in November 2003: Jordan Bar Am, Anne Beckett, Rachel Bloomekatz, Madeleine Elfenbein, Denise Lambert, Toussaint Losier, and Colin Reardon. The survey is funded with the generous support of Harvard University’s Institute of Politics.

The survey will be distributed at a number of globalization-related demonstrations and events, beginning with the 2003 FTAA ministerial. The survey is anonymous and the completed forms will only be seen by members of the Harvard research team.

Please take a few minutes to participate in this collective process of defining a new identity in the world. Please circulate the survey and ask your friends and colleagues to participate as well. Thank you!

Completed surveys and other correspondence can be sent to Victor Chen, Department of Sociology, Harvard University, William James Hall, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge MA 02138, USA.

Note: The categories make it easier for us to analyze the results. However, feel free to write in a response if you don’t feel they represent your unique viewpoint.

Interviewees needed: As part of his research at Harvard University, Victor Chen is conducting interviews with activists about their participation in the global justice movement (this is separate from the survey). If you are willing to be interviewed or know someone who might be, please contact Victor at vchen@fas.harvard.edu or 617.669.2578. Or, fill out the relevant information in the form below and mail it to the address above. Interviews take about 1 hour and can be conducted over the phone or in person. Interviewees have a right to confidentiality.

To read the survey, click on one of the links below:

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News

The revolution will be emailed

Can a widespread, loosely knit organization — connected only through email — make the American mainstream media take notice of the Palestinian perspective?


Ahmed Bouzid is the founder and acting president of Palestinian Media Watch.

In May 2002, an Israeli tank shell killed a Palestinian mother and her thirteen-year-old daughter. The pair was grazing sheep on their land, far from any Israeli checkpoint. In defense of their actions, the Israelis said that the two women “looked suspicious.” The incident did not make the front page of any national American newspaper. The next day, a Palestinian suicide bomber killed two Israelis near Tel Aviv in response, and the event topped headlines of every major paper in the country.

The discrepancy did not go unnoticed. Activists from Palestinian Media Watch (PMWATCH) immediately barraged newspapers across the country with letters criticizing the unbalanced coverage.

Founded in 2000, PMWATCH now has thirty-nine local chapters in cities across the United States and tens of thousands of members, who regularly contact media oulets to demand fair coverage of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Group leaders and members have attended dozens of meetings with editorial boards and foreign desk editors, published scores of op-eds and letters in major newspapers and magazines, and appeared on various radio and television shows. The group has become so well-known that writer Ahron Shapiro of the Jerusalem Post called it, “one of the best media monitoring sites I’ve encountered, period.”

PMWATCH began with a single letter. Sitting at his computer three years ago, Ahmed Bouzid wrote a letter to The Philadelphia Inquirer, criticizing a recent article for being pro-Israeli. The letter was published, along with Bouzid’s name and email address. Over the next couple of days his inbox was flooded with responses — some encouraging his efforts, others criticizing his reaction to the paper’s coverage.

Bouzid replied to the supportive emails, encouraging the authors to send their own letters to The Philadelphia Inquirer, and inviting them to participate in a dialogue with him about media bias relating to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Many of his responses were ignored, but three Philadelphia residents wrote back, and an initial mailing list of four — Bouzid and the three respondents — was set up.

The four discussed media bias, emailed articles and opinions back and forth, and wrote to The Inquirer. They also set up a meeting with the paper’s editor to discuss what they perceived as a systematic prejudice when it came to reporting on the conflict. Through word of mouth, news of the list and its goals spread, and others interested in the issue joined. Soon the list had members in cities other than Philadelphia, ranging across the United States from Washington to Los Angeles.

In October 2000, an official organization evolved out of this email list: Palestinian Media Watch. The organization’s mission was two-fold: to identify and protest instances in which U.S. journalists failed to cover the Palestinian-Israeli conflict accurately and fairly, and to help mainstream media outlets access pro-Palestinian perspectives.

Redefining a ‘community organization’

While Palestinian Media Watch’s short-term goals are to monitor U.S. newspapers, it does so with the larger intention of increasing Arab American participation in domestic politics. The group works to empower its members to change the perceived image of Arabs in the media, as well as to teach them how to promote a political agenda using the press as a medium for effecting change.

With these long-term goals in mind, PMWATCH is wary of the strict hierarchy and “take-it-or-leave-it” culture that seems to plague many media watch groups. Media watch organizations tend to attract a more educated audience, and their work ranges from starting and maintaining relationships with editors to publishing media reports. Given these activities, it seems only natural that these organizations often end up as elitist institutions dominated by paid staff and experts.

The leaders of PMWATCH wanted to avoid creating this kind of culture within their own group. It wasn’t just a matter of being idealistic activists. Bouzid and his fellow activists worried that an organizational structure that was less-than-democratic would stifle creativity and intimidate ordinary members from speaking their minds.

Francesca Polletta, a Columbia University sociology professor, argues in her book Freedom Is an Endless Meeting that it is sometimes more “effective” and “efficient” for activist organizations to organize “democratically” rather than hierarchically. In the case of the Arab American community this rang especially true. Arab Americans are not as clustered in cities as are other ethnic groups. While some do attend mosques, most do not, and hence there was no obvious institution from which Bouzid could solicit a constituency.

Moreover, Bouzid’s willingness to get involved in politics, which led him to become the founder and acting president of Palestinian Media Watch, seemed an exception among Arab Americans. In an interview with The Chicago Tribune, Bouzid described the Arab American community as a “punch bag,” absorbing blows that Jews, Hispanics, and African Americans would never tolerate.

The personal experience of many members of the community with monarchies or totalitarian regimes may be one explanation for their lack of political participation. Rashid Khalidi, director of the University of Chicago’s Center for International Studies, says that most Arab Americans confine their activities to business, not politics, and “they have not played the political game.” James Zogby, president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute, points out that “the problem is not just apathy but a lack of connectedness that people have to the political process. People aren’t investing in it.”

Working with a constituency resigned to political silence and believing in an “Israeli-controlled” media was PMWATCH’s first challenge. The new all-volunteer organization had a long way to go to reach the level of pro-Israeli media watch groups such as Honest Reporting, which boast large constituencies that are quickly mobilized, paid staffs with office space and administrative assistants, well-endowed activities, and long-standing relationships with newspaper editors and TV producers.

Khalidi stresses that building a mass political movement is no easy task. Even if people do become involved, he says, “Political influence will not come quickly. You have to start at the local level with local building blocks. It took the Jewish community literally decades to do this.”

This became painfully apparent to the founding members of PMWATCH. Change did not occur overnight; as hard as it was to get one letter published, a single letter would not make a difference. There were no short-term incentives to encourage the rest of the community to join the effort. How could this new organization, with no history and only an email list of members dispersed across the country, begin to make a difference?

Organizing the ‘politically Palestinian’

PMWATCH’s membership slowly began to grow, initially through word of mouth and later through organized advertising efforts. The new recruits ranged from university students to businesspeople. As membership grew, so did the ethnic and social diversity of the members. Soon separate groups in thirty-nine cities — spread across the United States — had their own email lists and websites.

After Rania Awwad, a graduate student in genetics at George Washington University, set up a Washington chapter, PMWATCH launched its first large campaign. In December 2002, the Israeli army destroyed 350 Palestinian homes and damaged 500 more in the Rafah neighborhoods of occupied Gaza along the Egyptian border. The next day, The Washington Post did not mention the incident but ran a front-page story about several Israeli deaths. For Awwad and several other PMWATCH Washington members, this was the trigger event that inspired them to start challenging media bias.

Washington chapter members wrote and called the Post’s ombudsman, Michael Getler, to demand an explanation for why the Rafah home demolitions were not reported. In his weekly column on the following Sunday, Getler mentioned the complaints about the newspaper’s silence on the home demolitions, before proceeding to discuss the event in detail. This initial success was publicized on the PMWATCH email list, and soon similar strategies were being tried in cities across the country.

With each success, membership grew, and as groups in certain cities became significantly larger, the organization developed “task groups” and “media groups” that spanned the entire network and that any member could join or lead. The task groups focused on developing the PMWATCH website, drafting media reports, and working on other tools that the organization could use to further its cause. The media groups concentrated on national newspapers and magazines, like Newsweek or Time, which were beyond the scope of local communities. (Recently, PMWATCH also established a “movie group” to examine how Arabs are portrayed in Hollywood features and on television — the group is especially popular among younger members.)

Because of the overlap between groups and the lack of a consistent hierarchy, the leader/member divide within chapters has faded. Moreover, since most of the discussions take place over group emails and are posted online, each member has a good chance of being heard as a leader. Often in community meetings, more gregarious attendees and community leaders dominate. However, over email there are no time limits, and shy individuals are generally better able to express themselves. “While you can lose out on getting to personally know people over email, I never felt the group suffered, and we always got to hear people’s thoughts,” Bouzid says.

PMWATCH’s open registration and email communication system have also allowed a wide range of personal experiences and backgrounds to be shared among group members. Just under half the group are non-Arab Americans. The ethnic diversity of the network has not led to any problems, according to Bouzid.

In their book The Miner’s Canary, Harvard law professor Lani Guinier and University of Texas law professor Gerald Torres discuss what it means to be “politically black” — that is, being able to identify with the African American experience regardless of one’s own race. A similar sort of identification process can be found in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. “The nature of the conflict is such,” Bouzid explains, “that the Palestinians no longer question the origins of people involved in it.”

You could call these activists “politically Palestinian.” Some Jewish leftists, such as MIT professor Noam Chomsky, fit the label; they have often been the Palestinians’ greatest supporters. Bouzid himself is Algerian, and has never been asked how he came to be so dedicated to the Palestinian cause. (In fact, most Arab Americans identify with the conflict, often called the “Arab-Israeli” conflict). If there are arguments among members of the group, they are often dealt with in the “public arena” of a PMWATCH messaging board.

Turning laypeople into media critics

The fact that PMWATCH members were spread out across the country meant that for the first year of work, the group’s leaders never met in person. The work was done over email and in chat rooms. Strategies were discussed over the Internet, but ultimately the success of the organization came down to the degree of mobilization in each city, and the effectiveness of the group in persuading editors.

The media is a fast-moving industry, and quick response time is essential to success. Waiting for a centralized group to react to a specific event would have incapacitated the organization. Each city group had to be trusted to respond on its own initiative. Furthermore, city groups were best situated to establish the necessary working relationships with editors and foreign correspondents that PMWATCH needed to gain a solid reputation.

Other media watch groups have remained much more centralized and hierarchical. They enjoy fully paid staffs and the money to fly out to visit newspaper editors. In contrast, PMWATCH’s slim resources have resulted in a horizontal structure, which also seems to represent the network’s democratic philosophy.

At the heart of PMWATCH’s mission is a desire to undermine the “us” vs. “them” perceptions that many Arabs have about the media. The organization works to persuade newspaper editors to “print more,” to give a more comprehensive view of the situation. While other media groups, such as Honest Reporting, organize widespread boycotts of newspapers (such as last year’s boycott of The Washington Post for describing atrocities allegedly perpetrated by the Israeli army), PMWATCH has not yet participated in any boycott effort. The group collectively feels that a boycott would undermine the group’s “report more” philosophy.

Because the network does not focus its efforts on boycotts, it has the more challenging job of gaining legitimacy and respect from editors and television show producers. Experience has taught them that it is counterproductive to walk into an interview unprepared. Editors will always claim that the complaint is about a “one-time event” and that, overall, the coverage of the situation is balanced. PMWATCH learned fast that to be taken seriously, its members had to do their homework. Letters to the editor would only be effective if written well and intelligently.

PMWATCH had to bring its members up to a level of critical thinking that editors would respect. To this end, PMWATCH has put a lot of time and energy into the development of its online resources. On the “action page” of its website, for instance, links are provided not only to important articles and the phone numbers of editors, but also to guides for letter writing and detailed reports on current issues. Furthermore, visitors to the site are invited to participate by doing research or writing up reports.

While new members of PMWATCH might balk at the idea of writing a research report criticizing the media, they quickly learn that there is no one else to do it. PMWATCH has gotten around having a paid professional staff by teaching laypeople to research the issues and write the reports by themselves. The website provides templates of previously written reports, and simple instructions on how to calculate figures of a newspaper’s bias, and how to classify articles under the terms “pro-Israeli,” “pro-Palestinian,” and “balanced.” Authors of previous reports are available to help any city group or individual writing a report for the first time (even though this support might only be over email or the telephone), and the researchers can send emails to the list soliciting input along the way.

Another key component of Palestinian Media Watch’s strategy is “constructive pressure.” PMWATCH regularly sends editors and foreign correspondents updates about academic work on the conflict, as well as lists of potential sources or op-ed writers: people who are able at a minute’s notice to grant interviews, or who are articulate enough to react immediately to a column or event with an op-ed that newspapers can publish.

An organic and effective structure

As Polletta argues in Freedom Is an Endless Meeting, groups that choose participatory democracy over more conventional forms of organization do so because it is more efficient. Though it may seem counter-intuitive, such decentralized structures have certain advantages over hierarchical ones: Members working within a participatory system, for instance, have more say over decisions and are thus more likely to accept them as legitimate.

Believing in the cause and trusting group decisions becomes even more important when being a member of the group also makes one a target of harassment. So far, the negative repercussions for PMWATCH have been fairly minor: Bouzid received a call from the FBI after newspaper editors and television show producers complained about vulgar emails sent by hackers from his account (the email accounts of several other PMWATCH members have also been hacked into).

Having a healthy level of participation within an organization also encourages innovative thinking. At PMWATCH, members from across the country can offer their input about different strategies and approaches. The group as a whole benefits from the diverse array of media experiences represented, and can draw from this resource base to rapidly respond to a constantly changing news cycle.

Participation is especially important when it comes to developing leadership skills and increasing self-confidence. For many members, meeting with a newspaper editor can be a frightening experience. When a member feels she or he has contributed to the group’s overall strategy and is well-versed in the rationale behind it, that member’s ability to carry out the task effectively is substantially enhanced.

By promoting democracy within their organization, PMWATCH activists have encouraged the often shy Arab American population to begin getting involved politically. In the process, they have enfranchised and mobilized a broader membership than anyone would have thought possible. Working upward from an initial four-person email list, PMWATCH has created what Harvard Professor Archon Fung refers to as “social capital with fangs.”

STORY INDEX

ORGANIZATIONS >

Committee for Accuracy in Middle Eastern Reporting in America
A media-monitoring and research organization “devoted to promoting accurate and balanced coverage of Israel and the Middle East” and fighting anti-Israel and anti-Jewish prejudice.
URL: http://www.camera.org

Honest Reporting
Media watch organization that monitors instances of anti-Israeli bias.
URL: http://www.honestreporting.com

Palestinian Media Watch
Group that seeks to increase attention to Palestinian viewpoints in the news.
URL: http://www.pmwatch.org

PEOPLE > BOUZID, AHMED >

“Keeping an Eye on the News”
By Sandi Cain. Published by Arab-American Business. July 20, 2003.
URL: http://www.arabamericanbusiness.com/July%202003/newsfocus.htm

“Palestinians Find Their Voice Online”
By Mark Glaser. Published by the Online Journalism Review. October 22, 2003.
URL: http://www.ojr.org/ojr/glaser/1066177054.php

Personal website
URL: http://www.ahmedbouzid.org/

PEOPLE > FUNG, ARCHON >

Personal website
URL: http://www.archonfung.net

PUBLICATIONS >

Philadelphia Inquirer
URL: http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer

TOPICS > ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT >

“Photostory: Home demolitions in Rafah”
By Darren Ell. Published by the Electronic Intifada. December 19, 2002.
URL: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article995.shtml

“Covering the Company, etc.”
By Michael Getler. Published in The Washington Post. January 20, 2002.
URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A6797-2002Jan19¬Found=true

Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also: