The Changing Face of Creating Change

some people

ascend out of our life, other people

enter our life and sit down . . .

some people climb up on the roof,

sit down at table . . .
  

from a poem by the Norwegian poet,

Rolf  Jacobsen,
who increasingly became
skeptical

of technology after WWII 

There is no question that we live in chaotic world! Sometimes I want to block my ears and eyes. Go outside and garden, trying to believe my small piece of paradise is all that exists. Sounds of bird songs, trickling water, and wind through the trees soothe my soul and help prevent “news-overload.”Then inevitably, I am drawn back into the world’s turmoil.

I grew up in a Midwestern rural and insulated community. There was no daily newspaper. The weekly local paper was just that – local - with news about people in our town and surrounding farms. Television was for watching The Lawrence Welk Show and Liberace. News briefs before the Saturday movie matinee were all I heard about the world beyond – and these news reports seemed unreal. After all, this was the 1950’s. No one wanted to hear what was happening in any of those foreign countries!

Then I married. My new husband and I left the next day for Washington DC. It was like moving to another planet! Rural to urban. Isolation to an international city. And finding the way from one place to another. In my home town, streets were laid out in a straight east-west north-south grid, making it easy to find your way. Washington was a bewildering maze of streets going every which way. Circles at intersections channeled traffic in multiple directions.

I can’t begin to tell you how many times we got lost! Ice cream in the trunk from the grocery and heading off across the Potomac and into the hinterlands of Virginia. Coming to the circle by American University where my husband was to do graduate work – and ending up miles away in Great Falls, Maryland.

It was the tumultuous 1960’s. Many encounters and experiences shaped me and expanded my perspective. When JFK was assassinated I wandered the streets with other stunned people. I stood in disbelief that this tragedy could be happening -  as I watched our president’s body being transported to Bethesda Naval Hospital.

Social change was in the air I breathed. Not surprisingly, a spirit of social activism was born within my heart and soul. Lyndon Johnson introduced his War on Poverty in his State of the Union address in 1964, expanding the government’s role in education and health care. Head Start was created to help low-income kids catch up and increase their chances of being educationally successful and I was one of its enthusiastic supporters. Johnson’s Great Society intended to solve urban problems by ending poverty and racial injustice. We truly believed we could change the face of our country – and the world beyond.

Civil rights protests were common. By prearrangement, people would gather together to force an end to white people’s oppression of non-whites. Some marches were massive and peaceful, such as the March on Washington at the end of August 1963, when the Washington Mall overflowed with people.

Elsewhere, protests sometimes were violent. Dogs were unleashed against protesters. Police and state troopers used tear gas and fire hoses to break up crowds of people. Intimidation, economic retaliation, beatings, and arrests were other common “tools” used to maintain the status quo.

A year ago I was in Selma Alabama. I was moved to tears when I stood by the Edmund Pettus Bridge. It was the 1965 site of  Bloody Sunday. Six hundred civil rights workers approached  the bridge, with the intent to march eastward to the capital. They were met by local sheriff deputies and state troopers and attacked with tear gas and billy clubs.

Later I paused in  Birmingham at another civil rights monument. There, a statue of Rosa Parks stands at the bus stop where she dared to not follow the rules. She refused to give up her seat for a white passenger. I somtimes have asked myself if I would have had such courage.

Later, the war in Vietnam was challenged by protesters – a war that polarized the country. One vivid memory is etched in my mind - the day police in riot gear and face masks trotted down the Mall at the University of Minnesota where I was a graduate student. Tear gas filled buildings – and my world view was altered again. The cost of people-power challenging entrenched political and military power.

Today, we are at a radically new time in the history of social protest. Arab Spring began a year and a half ago in Tunisia when a desperate street vendor, Mohamed Bouzizi, set himself on fire. Although turmoil had been fermenting in a number of Arab countries for some time, this man’s action set off an unprecedented rebellion. One oppressive regime after another has been toppled. Today, we watch in horror as Syria’s massacres cost life after life. World governments strive for solutions, amidst what they have learned from the overthrow of dictators in Libya, Egypt, and other Arab countries. It is a steep learning curve with little precedent.

No question - these events in the Middle East could not have happened without today’s technology of Internet connections, cell phones, and Twitter. Protesters in the streets have had equally steep learning curves - as they become more and more proficient in using such tools.

Oppression thrives on fear and the isolation of individuals from each other. “Divide and conquer” is a centuries-old way for a few people to retain control of masses of people. A desperately poor man like Mohamed Bouzizi lived in such isolation. When his license to sell his goods was denied, he saw no recourse in his despair. But it was cell phone photos of his act that sparked street protests that turned Tunisia upside down.

Today we suffer not so much from a loss of innocence, but from a loss of ignorance. In the past, we did not have a “window on the world,” courtesy of the evening news and continual on-line updates that chronicle events around the world. So different from the time of my growing up. A time when there was no need to cover one’s ears and eyes. People believed that WWII was the last war and no one was talking about poverty or discrimination.

The tools of social change have been modified dramatically from my memories of social activism when I was young and filled with the certainty that we could make a difference. Now technology in its various forms makes instant connection possible.

One example is Change.org. Ben Rattray launched the website from his house five years ago. This site provides ways for people to locate other people who share a passion for the same issue. The goal of  Change.org " is to change the balance of power between individuals and large organizations" seeking control. The same goal my young heart yearned to make happen so many years ago.

I am reminded of the following words I wrote some weeks ago, using Rolf Jacobsen's poetic form:

some people fall off edges

           while other people push the edges

some people dance in circles

while other people ask questions

some people are easily forgotten

while other people are unforgettable

some people are all it takes

to change the world