activism – Page 2 – Stephanie Rodgers

Owen Jones wrote a great piece the day before Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the UK Labour Party, reflecting on his own role and how people’s perceptions of his writing might be affected if Corbyn won.

It was never my intention or ambition to become a writer. … All I’m interested in is reaching people with political ideas that are otherwise banished. Obviously, the role of any individual in political change is limited and modest. I’ve spent the last few years trying to contribute to rebuilding an alternative politics, and unashamedly so. I see myself as an equal to any other activist: we’re all trying to achieve political change and contribute in different ways.

That makes my relationship with the mainstream media pretty difficult and conflicted. … Choose your metaphor or simile: but it feels like swimming against an extremely strong tide, without getting out the world’s smallest violin (oops, another one).

The point I’d make is this. I make my opinions and biases abundantly clear. But there are news journalists who are as opinionated as me, but pretend to be impartial. Indeed news and opinion are extremely blurred in this country. It is often possible to read through a news article about British politics and have a fair guess at the political convictions of the writer. As for the mainstream press as a whole — while, it serves as a very sophisticated de facto political lobbying operation, overwhelmingly promoting the cause of right-wing politics.

Go read the whole thing, it’s excellent.

It obviously gave me a bit of pause for thought. I don’t have anything like Jones’ reach or platform (no paid media gigs is a significant one) and I don’t think I’m anywhere near his level. But I am a party activist. I was fairly closely involved in Andrew Little’s campaign for the Labour leadership (enough so, and proud enough of my work, to stick it on my LinkedIn page like a total nerd, prompting a few interesting “who’s viewed your profile” results.) I work for the biggest Labour affiliate union, and blog in my free time on a clear understanding I am expressing my personal opinions.

There are plenty of other people in the NZ political blogosphere and commentariat who wander back and forth across the pundit/activist lines. Many, unfortunately, don’t draw clear lines about when they’re acting as one or the other – and that goes for people on the left as well as the right. And many, I believe, don’t reflect Jones’ commitment to only put in print what he would say behind closed doors anyway.

I can tell you I’m happy to make that commitment. I may choose to comment or not to comment on different issues, but when I comment, you’re getting my opinion on the matter. (Of course, if you already think I’m a party hack regurgitating Head Office’s key messages you aren’t going to believe me, but that’s up to you.)

I have an agenda, just like Owen Jones and just like anyone else who believes passionately in their politics. I want to see “my side” succeed. But a pillar of my ideology is that democracy is the bedrock of our society, and for democracy to function properly it needs an informed, aware electorate.

If we start telling voters what we think they want to hear, in order to gain power at any cost, we don’t deserve power. The other side don’t deserve power either, but I’m not willing to destroy everything that makes our movement worthwhile to get them out. What precisely would we achieve then? The same cold-hearted value-free government with a different arrangement of faces on the front bench.

Words are my tool. I love to write and express my political beliefs through writing. Sometimes that’ll be within the Party of which I’m currently a member. Sometimes that’ll be here. Usually it’ll be on Twitter.

I do work in communications, and I haven’t always worked for employers whose policies or processes I agreed with. And yeah, in those instances I’ve given advice on how to communicate their terrible policy or process best, if that was my job. But when I tell you something is my opinion, you can believe it, and you can believe I will say it to anyone behind closed doors who wants to listen.

If someone wanted to pay me to say it in a major newspaper I’d be down with that too …

[Content note: discussion of dead children, Syrian refugee crisis – no images]

I haven’t seen a single person genuinely react to the harrowing photo of Aylan Kurdi – or any harrowing photo showing the plight of Syrian refugees – with a shrug or a “who cares?”

That kind of heartless reaction is being loudly performed on some platforms – i.e. the comments sections of news sites or rightwing blogs which regularly stir up anti-immigration, anti-Muslim sentiment for the sake of pageviews. They’re loud, but they’re a minority, and their only true goal is to shock people with how cool and extreme they are.

But when it comes to your average not-very-political friend on Facebook, or the broad audience using the #doublethequota hashtag, the reaction is universally one of sadness, and horror, and a desire to do something.

This has given rise to many a weary cry of “why does it take a picture of a dead child to make you understand how serious this is?”

And it’s lead to a backlash against people who are honestly traumatized, triggered or upset at having those images retweeted constantly, without warning, into their timelines or news feeds. “We must show these photos, because no one cares!” declare the humanitarians, full of righteous indignation. “How dare you try to turn away and refuse to acknowledge what’s happening!”

Yet that’s not what anyone is saying (except in the aforementioned, disingenuous “look how edgy and uncaring I am” comments.) It’s a straw argument. So why the outrage?

Those of us with the privilege of spending a lot of time talking politics online are living in a world of immediate gratification. We want to buy something – we can buy it. If it’s a video game, or an album by our favourite band, we can not only buy it the moment we decide we want it, we can begin downloading it immediately.

And we see the political power that social media can have, even if it’s only watching the race between political candidates to adopt popular hashtags or reference the latest meme. Politicians and political journalists are on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram too, and you can believe they’re just as hooked on the instant feedback and “23 people retweeted this!” validation that we are.

When a story goes viral, we’re used to seeing a swift reaction from our leaders. A condemnation of a terrible crime. A promise to investigate allegations of misdeeds.

But on the Syrian refugee crisis – because there’s a lot more involved politically than simply opening our borders to people in desperate need – we’re not getting the speedy response we want.

We see the photos of Aylan Kurdi and his brother, alive and happy, and think “If I were Prime Minister, I would double our refugee quota immediately!” We see the thousands of people signing petitions and donating goods and money and say to ourselves, “Everyone can see this is the right thing to do. Our leaders must see it too!”

Instead, we get silence. Or if not silence, vague promises of reviews and reassurances that something will be done. “We’re looking at all the options,” John Key says, without even the decency to rule out options like “do nothing”. All the while, those haunting images are stuck in our heads on a tragic loop and it offends our sense of justice that the well-polished politicians aren’t reacting the way any moral human being should.

So we keep sharing those photos in the desperate hope that it will impel action from our leaders, and when others ask us to stop – to at least put a warning at the top, the way all the mainstream media has been doing – we can react cruelly, turning all the frustrated rage we feel about our Prime Minister’s inaction on other people who are already on our side and already understand too well how horrific this situation is.

Powerful images (used with the consent of the people involved) have a long and noble history of focusing people’s attention on a human tragedy, and prompting us to respond. But let’s take care of each other, too, and focus the pressure and denunciations where they belong: on political leaders like John Key who are standing by and twiddling their thumbs waiting for a focus group to tell them what to do, while thousands more Syrian children and their families are at risk.

[Update: Key has now announced he’ll announce a “one-off” intake of “hundreds” of refugees, i.e. the absolute minimum possible response. The focus group results must have come in overnight.]

Tag: activism

The line between political activist and commentator