We were in a corridor of the Pentagon one morning in the sixties. Doing a kind of impromptu peace mass in protest against the Vietnam war. So I was giving a brief homily on Jesus' parable of salt having lost its flavor. Antiphonally, an arresting officer announced through a bullhorn "You are under arrest." The charges against us were "disturbing the peace."
How had I got into this situation in the first place? Activism against racism and the war was huge global news and seemingly touched a universal spiritual nerve. Major figures like Martin Luther King Jr., Thomas Merton, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Rosa Parks, Dorothy Day and Richard Niebuhr -- all with highly publicized spiritual connections -- were in the news, plus a roster of lesser known women and men. So an astonishingly powerful moral voice was heard. The UN's Dag Hammarskjold wrote a powerful bestseller "Markings" that implicitly linked world events to deep spiritual exploration.
At the age of 88, with years of activism for peace and justice behind me, I can't help wondering whether the same voice is being heard today, and if not, why not. Clearly the media is no longer paying attention to progressive religious voices with intensity, for example, that put me on the cover of national magazines and positioned me on national TV in an interview with Barbara Walters. The figure of the "radical priest" who comes to "get me released" is no longer current enough to induce this generation's Paul Simon to write a song about him. What happened? Are there fewer religious activists at work, or have the culture and politics of the early 21st century conspired to make them seem less relevant?
My involvement in the radical counterculture movement began in 1961 when I participated in a "Prayer Pilgrimage" Freedom Ride in the Deep South. Our activism was a deeply prayerful protest and witness. We felt compelled by both outer events and inner stirrings of faith to take a public stand on issues of justice and their relation to both public and private faith. We took our stand at a particular historical moment and eventually prevailed.
Were we victims of our success? Perhaps. Much of what we advocated -- much of what seemed prophetic -- has been integrated into the mainstream. Yet remember: no issue is ever permanently solved. No cause has either an official ending or a formal conclusion. Inevitably there are new and varying repercussions, compelling changes and challenges and a new cast of characters. So almost 30 years after the Freedom Ride I found myself among a group of six persons arrested after appearing before the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors asking them "to hear the cries of persons with HIV AIDS in the community."
The need to put one's self on the line to create a more just world hasn't disappeared. But the left seems more than a bit disheartened, fatigued, with blunted passion. Perhaps it has become bewildered by the sheer, even raucous, momentum of the right. Whose voice is loudest? Sometimes I wonder if the left has been enrolled so long in finishing school that it's really more at home at Harvard than Harlem.
Maybe the big question is: Has dissent become simply another commodity? In the sixties it was, for us, honest prayer in action. It held significance as Christian community trying to respond to what it felt was God's will. Dissent will always be with us. It should be. It must be. Yet, really, much dissent is becoming just another voice in what appears to be a streamlined, ultra hip Tower of Babel. So many voices, so little time.
I firmly believe that we stand in need of ever fresher maturity to replace sensation and an infusion of wisdom to supplant knee-jerk histrionics. And, yes, let's develop deep listening to replace simply facile speaking. Can listening to other people, including those different from ourselves, become a dominant mode in our personal and public lives?
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Barack Obama was elected President because of his powerful online support. The Republican counter-riot (called the Tea Party) was equally a creation of the internet although it expressed itself, as should a conservative action, in the more traditional manner - rallies and speeches. If you listen to the left wing blogs today you find almost total disenchantment with Obama. If he stands a chance to win re-election he will have to win back the left. We will know whether he succeeds by reading blogs and comments and
the election itself will merely certify the result.
Respectfully, dissent and demonstrations are not a fashion statement, and media exposure has never been the full metric of their success. (Notwithstanding the way the press will breathlessly swoon at images of large crowds -- due to their attraction to bright, shiny pennies on the sidewalk.)
Those who measure a demonstration’s success on it’s media exposure miss the point, and have likely never participated.
A politician sequestered in their office because of a rally outside doesn’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. People having to acknowledge demonstrators while on their way to work don’t require a news-reader’s analysis to appreciate a level of dissatisfaction that's not in the corporate media’s best interest to report.
And when individuals in Wisconsin go to a rally and discover that (despite media coverage to the contrary) they are actually part of a rather large community movement, the event bonds and strengthens that community and propels it into action. That’s a positive and constructive thing, even if it doesn’t hit the nightly news.
Sure, the “meme” is that rallies are for “media attention” -- and some folks actually have bought into that notion. But it’s a cynical and dismissive way of trying to strip the emotional power generated by public action. Whether or not a falling tree makes a sound in an empty forrest, you can be pretty sure that the other trees around it are going to be disturbed. And it won’t necessarily be on the news.
Admittedly, Obama and the Tea Party may have used online resources for coordination, but it was the actions of real people knocking on real doors and having real conversations that swayed crowds to action. And as satisfying as it is for pajama-commentators to pontificate from the comfort of their keyboard, it is actual physical engagement that moves mountains.
We won’t know anything about Obama’s success (or lack of it) from reading blogs. God bless blogs and the conversations online, but one flatters themselves and compromises real change if it’s believed that reading posts or clicking online petitions are anything but a sorry substitute for real action.
The recent season in Wisconsin… the current “occupation” of Wall Street… the likely rallies on both sides of the impending government shutdown (version 2.0)… these actions might or might not enjoy media attention, but they are not created or measured by it. And Malcolm Boyd’s efforts to “take it to the streets” was, let’s not forget, part of a long national struggle that eventually ended a war, stopped the draft, ousted a President, and changed black-and-white relations after nearly 400 years of nationally-sanctioned racism.
Boyd was only a small part. Millions contributed to the demonstrations large and small that moved mountains. And not one of them had a personal computer... or needed an "atta boy" from Anderson Cooper.