An Ode to Sue Boyer
Years ago, when my father was cleaning out his parents’ house, he came across his childhood Boy Scouts of America handbook. When I found the book myself, I relished it as an artifact of the days when Scouting meant adventure. My own Girl Scout experiences didn’t look at all like cooking over an open flame, tying slipknots and devising outdoor showers with pails and sticks. Mine looked like Sue and Jean, our homely Scout leaders, cutting ice cream into equal rectangles we could enjoy while the other girls made fun of me in the elementary school cafeteria.
And it is with the same childlike reverence that I recently finished reading Abbie Hoffman’s 1971 classic, Steal This Book. Though the good old days were not as they seemed, the book still possesses a kinetic energy and a presence of irony that seems missing from activism today. In an age when my peers rebel by riding bikes and caucusing, a how-to guide to hitchhiking, crafting Molotov cocktails, and rolling joints is certainly a throwback to something. The political climate Hoffman was confronting was not unlike the climate of today: a stupid incumbent president setting records for low approval ratings, fronting an administration rife with scandal, entrenching the country in a war in we had no business fighting. So why is it that Washington has not been overrun with protests? Where are the troublemakers? Where are the Merry Pranksters?
It could be that they are all on the computer. Yes, Facebook, MySpace, Moveon.org and other such sites have become vehicles for the activism of the new age - armchair activism, in which only a single click separates the activist from - well, from myself. But you have to admit, 30,000 twenty-somethings clicking a petition doesn’t quite have the same impact as 30,000 draft card-burning hippies outside the Washington Monument.
It could be that today’s activists simply have too much to confront. Just look at Steal This Book: Hoffman condones - nay, encourages - eating meat (and processed meat, no less!) for the sake of the cause. Young folks who are perfectly capable of finding their own jobs are given a step-by-step guide on how to freeload off the government - programs more needy people could surely use. His objective - to overthrow the government - was lofty, but at least it was clear. I suppose Hoffman figured we could iron out the kinks once we killed all the pigs, and here we are vegetarians who don’t iron on account of going green.
It could be that living by example, thinking globally but acting locally, is way so much cooler than overthrowing the government. Product RED, caucusing, canvassing, shopping at co-ops and other painfully mainstream activities are actually cool now, not to mention progressive. Really? I guess revolution became a product when Steal This Book sold a million copies. Sometimes I can’t figure out who is pulling a fast one on whom, or if we’ve all just slowed down to a behemoth mental crawl.
Now, I hope you’re not reading this thinking this is my call to arms; I view activism is my spectator sport, but lately it hasn’t been much to see. I choose to live by example – an example of what, I’m not sure, but definitely not an activist – and simply watch everyone else take their stand. And I don’t see a lot of people standing these days, unless you count the folks who were waiting in line for the caucuses. And really, are we allowed to pat ourselves on the back for engaging in our civic duty?
So where have all the Yippies gone? Am I a hopeless curmudgeon, or is our activism really that much less adventurous than the days of yore? I haven’t seen a can of tear gas fired at a bra-burning draft-dodger since the WTO protests in 1999. So what will it be? Revolution, adventure or ice cream rectangles?
Lauren Ciechenowski writes about music, obsession and where the two overlap at http://electricend.blogspot.com.
