Interesting experience. Another person from 99rise and I gave talks at a forum at Golden Gate Law School. I sweated bullets over mine. The mixture of recommended criteria guaranteed difficulty. Should contain a large dollop of self introduction; should be under ten minutes, should introduce 99rise in terms of our actions, the actions should be described experientially, should not sound academic. That was their criteria. Perfectly reasonable; a lot of them. There were also mine: In an academic setting, I should not sound like an idiot; should introduce amusement; should not introduce it in such a way as to sound disparaging; should express the admiration for the group I in fact feel; should not go overboard with that. It was a trip. There was also the thing about venturing into an unknown setting and speaking there to unknown people. A prof spoke first: said, in effect, that, while much attention is focused on corruption in the legislative branch, the judiciary, also, has been a problem for years: (he backed this). Said that in Italy, his country of origin, hed (owned? worked in? not sure) a water distribution company, run, at first, according to the capitalist model. He and friends converted it into a cooperative (a common, he said). The learning, for those who participated in the project, must have been bracing, to say the least. Later he said that he objected to people who engage in political action; they do so, he said, in order to feel good about themselves and to demonize others. The creature. I was avid to derive all available truth from what they said. A student suggested that one cannot expect people in crisis to interest themselves in abstract goals like getting money out of politics; one needs first to do something about their problem. Yet another said that the goal of fixing the system is idle; it has been corrupt from the start: its original purpose was to keep slavery in place. I see now that none of the above carries much weight.. As to the first--it is true to a degree, but by no means necessarily true... As to the second: there are many things that it would be nice to do: pragmatically, it is often best to go for one thing at a time. As to the third, the assertion would take a book or at least a thesis to establish. But it was great to be in rooms filled with academic heads. The feeling afterwards is like that of a visit to the gym. What the prof said stung a bit, though; and the question whether what we are doing is frivolity and ego massaging demands examination. I want to read the lit 99rise has tucked here and there on line. I want to reread Gene Sharps From Dictatorship to Democracy and read Erica Chenoweths Why Civil Resistance Works and the profs book about his enterprise.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Sep 2014 23:27:34 +0000
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