Online activism, fighting by writing

I've said before that reading the news and reading people's comments on the news are two methods of taking the pulse of society. This is what leads to a not insignificant amount of despair and frustration when so many of the public comments on news stories are profoundly against what I believe in (whether they are railing against environmental protections, rigid pro-capitalist diatribes against anything remotely resembling social and economic justice, racist and dehumanizing remarks about "illegal" immigrants, et cetera). But a wise professor has noted that there are groups whose sole purpose is to troll the internet looking for stories and blogs on specific causes, and to rail against them. That there is a virtual project by the Minutemen to look for articles on immigration probably shouldn't have come as much of a shock.


This is why I recently joined a group whose raison d'être is to provide an online voice to counter the often-hateful comments made on news stories regarding "illegal" immigrants. The idea is that, to quote the group's description and information:


We need to BE VOCAL (AND VERBAL) ONLINE. We can't just "speak" during occasional marches, nor can we think they will "hear" us only at the ballot box, and we certainly can't rely just on signs that end up in the garbage! Stand up and WRITE / FIGHT !... 


We will defend our friends, families, and neighbors by blogging after news stories and standing up to the xenophobic and racist "Comments" (reader-response blogs that are attached to newspaper articles) that are running roughshod over the immigration debate. We will support one another by coordinating our responses, and we will win the "turf wars" that swirl around every page of online news. We stand united for our friends, our families, and the future of our democracy.


To a limited extent, this is something I've been doing for a while on a much smaller scale whenever I came upon certain news stories on the Knoxville News-Sentinel. But this group takes it to a whole new level where members are encouraged to actively seek out news stories at the Huffington Post, New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times, et cetera, and post the stories on the group's Facebook page so that everyone else knows where to focus their attentions. They even suggest everyone to do their online activism in a specific time of day so that members know their fellow bloggers are there with them, virtually, although we're encouraged to do this virtual vocalizing at whatever hour is most convenient for us personally.


So far it has been... an experience, to say the least. The same rhetoric and misconceptions get recycled over and over again. Personal attacks are often made. I strongly suspect that some individuals (on both sides of various arguments) post under multiple monikers to give the illusion of additional "support." And some stories wind up with hundreds or even thousands of comments. Where does one even begin to address all of that? It's only been a few days and there already exists the distinct feeling of wrestling with pigs in the mud. An English professor once said you can't argue about issues of belief or taste, and it's become apparent that many of these individuals are firm in their beliefs and are not likely to budge on them any time soon. And – this is going to sound horribly elitist – I fear that there are many folks out there who simply cannot handle an intellectual argument. They don't understand what someone else is saying, so they get angry and counter with, "Whatever, you [expletive] liberal" and then go after straw men. How is that productive?


On the plus side, though, there are definitely also a number of individuals who are being far more sane on the issue, including those who are on the "other side" of the debate but who are at least debating intelligently rather than using "illegal is illegal" as their mantra without any consideration as to what that phrase means or the implications of it. I can respect someone who is respectful and open to true dialogue, even if I don't share their opinions. And of course it is a source of hope that many individuals are also on "our" side, calling people out on their xenophobic remarks and providing reasonable, rational arguments as well as emotional appeals.


I vacillate between thinking that this medium of online advocacy is the best idea ever, and worrying that this is relatively lazy "armchair" activism. Is responding in a virtual forum going to have the same effect as staging a sit-in in Arizona and risking arrest? (Especially for someone like me who has the luxury of U.S. citizenship, where the worst problem I would face would be a heavy fine, not deportation.... the only excuse for not doing something like this is my own cowardice.) Is it going to have the same effect as marching in the streets? (It would probably take something pretty extreme for an online forum to get a blurb in the nightly news.) Is the point to change the minds of the racists and xenophobes who are posting? (If so, I doubt that will work.) If the point is to simply be a presence, though, this may really be something. 


Environmental activist/author Derrick Jensen writes about how every day he asks himself whether he should continue writing or if he should go blow up a dam, and every day he chooses to write. While my own dilemma isn't quite that extreme, I can certainly understand being torn between more active modes of advocacy and the somewhat more passive act of simply writing about one's beliefs. Is the pen mightier than both the sword and the picket sign?


Émile Durkheim noted that division of labor in society is a form of organic solidarity, reinforcing social bonds through mutual interdependence. There are brave souls who will risk arrest and deportation by staging sit-ins, as well as relative cowards like me who can't bring themselves to do much more than march at a rally whose organizers went through the pains of obtaining permits. Even writers have their place in activism, though, for their words can reach a larger audience and perhaps educate others in a medium that may seen less "threatening" than carrying a picket sign. Antonio Gramsci couldn't do much from prison other than write, and his prison notebooks influenced the likes of Howard Zinn, Eric Wolf, Noam Chomsky, and David Harvey, who in turn have influenced (and continue to influence) countless others. I am no Derrick Jensen or Vandana Shiva, but am proud to say that my entry about the DREAM Act, cross-posted at Open Diary and at AlterNet, received several positive comments from people who said they'd never even heard about the DREAM Act before and were now going to write to their legislators in support of it, and it got positive "tweets" as well. (There was also a nasty person on AlterNet who posted several nasty comments, but that's another ball of wax.) To paraphrase Julia "Butterfly" Hill (who gained fame by sitting in a California redwood for over two years), we all make a difference; it's just a matter of the kind of difference we make. And, perhaps, the medium we choose in which to make it.


The tentative conclusion to which I've come is thus: Certainly, fighting by writing cannot serve as a substitute for more active activism. But it can certainly complement it. 


Thoughts?