Action for Action's Sake: Or How Activists Can Hurt Social Justice Movements

Note: Obviously I'm not keeping up this blog anymore. But, I've recently found this article I wrote back in 2007, before going to Argentina. It's come up in a couple of conversations with organizers I used to work with in college. So, I'm posting it partly so anyone out there can read it, and mostly so that I can keep better track of what I've written!

Action for Action’s Sake

Or How Activists Can Hurt Social Justice Movements

By Colin O’Malley 

January 2007

            It’s January 2007, despite 4 years of massive protest, President Bush has said that he is the sole decision maker in the ongoing occupation of Iraq. He says that even the disagreement of congress would not deter him. As part of the movement against this war, I think it is important that we now consider our path forward with a bit more depth than we have in the past. But the peace movement isn’t the only progressive force in our society that is under attack. Workers rights are being destroyed by the minute in the new global economy. Prisons are being built at new and astonishing rates. Democratic controls of our communities are falling apart. But, it isn’t all lost.

As such, I write this appeal to local and national organizations. More importantly I write this for new activists of new movements in the hopes that we can learn to build a resistance movement in the United States to take our nation back.

Philosophy of Futility

In building grassroots movements, we are faced with a need to develop and activate the power of communities that are withheld power in our society. We do this in hopes of changing the course of those in power, to assert a people’s perspective over those in power, or even to overturn the structures that creates those with power and those without. In building our own communities collective power, we mobilize, and are forced to ask the question: What motivates our community to action?

            The left, particularly the academic left, in the United States seems to have assumed an answer – knowledge motivates. We need to educate people about our issues and the problems inherent in our society to get them motivated. It seems with this method of motivation that we are trying to activate people disconnected from the issues at hand.  Or even worse, that we are coming to teach the poor about poverty, the war torn family of the problems with war, the disenfranchised and marginalized of their own lack of power.

            Acknowledging a variety of reasons that people do or don’t get involved, I believe our major roadblock is the philosophy of futility. This philosophy is a belief that we are already defeated, that there is no alternative. This belief pushes us away from taking action in the defense of our own communities. It stops us from fighting the injustices around us and teaches us to accept them. Even more insidiously, it demonstrates that knowledge of our own oppression is worthless -- or at the very least depressing as hell!

            So, if our own powerlessness and futile outlook on the world keeps us from action, then our previously mentioned method of motivation seems particularly useless, even harmful. We are working to reinforce our own powerlessness and strengthen the philosophy of futility. This is why I believe that action for action’s sake doesn’t build us an effective resistance. Just because you’re doing something doesn’t mean that you’re helping anything.  We’ve all heard it before – the road to hell was paved on good intentions. That isn’t to say that we should stop or slow down our action. Instead, we need to consider more carefully the way we act. If our own sense of powerlessness is what holds us back, then what can we do to move forward? 

Breaking Free

If the main roadblock to building serious social justice movements in this country is a simple philosophy that each of us has internalized, that means that we have the ability to break free. But, this means that we need to reconsider the basis of our movements and organizations. Rather than looking at our organizations as tools to show people how horrible the world around them really is, we need to use them to show that victory is possible. Our movement needs to offer a road to that victory, even if it’s a long road.

            This of course means that we as activists need to envision that road as well. In their recently made article “Building a Successful Anti-War Movement” Beyond the Choir does an excellent job of articulating a need for strategic planning and action:  “Taking action with a faith in the possibility that we may somehow end the war is very different from taking action with a strategy about how to do it. The former is a shot in the dark. The latter is a hard target, but one we’re likely to get closer to with more practice.”  Building this strategy is where our movements should focus. 

            What exactly do I mean by strategic planning and action? In short, this means that we need to be less obsessed with tactics, and more concerned with the goal of a particular tactic. We can develop goals by considering the support that a particular oppressive structure, or symptom of that structure, needs to continue its existence.  We then consider how we can isolate and deprive that structure of its support, rather than continuing to shoot in the dark hoping that politicians and corporations are suddenly going to care for public opinion more than profit and power. 

This also means training. Building our movements isn’t always intuitive. We should always be open to learning and refining our strategic plans. There are dozens of organizations that provide these trainings specifically for social justice groups – beyond the choir, the Midwest academy, and the ruckus society to name just a few.  Find them and build on your base of well-trained and experienced activists and work with them to constantly train new activists.

Let’s fill it with hope.

            In the end, can our movements survive if they don’t have a passion and hope that eventually we will win? Any experienced and committed activist I’ve ever met had some amount of hope that a more just world could be obtained. Otherwise, why would we even involve ourselves in these struggles? But, so often our messaging is fatalist, or our attitude shows how burnt out we are in the fight. Who would join such a movement? Who would aspire to be burnt out and overworked? We absolutely must build a movement that doesn’t hold these defeatist slogans to be a part of our work. We need to build a movement that excites, empowers and builds hope for a better future. I for one think we’re capable of that and more.