Concluding Comments

I was looking at back at my introductory entry just two months ago and read “not only is my generation failing to express an adamant resistance to war, we are not making any of our political platforms and perspectives clear to our government officials and to the rest of the community. I will use this blog to . . . investigate why protests are losing value and power.” Not only did my investigation shift direction, but my thesis has completely changed. My generation is indeed making our opinions clear; we are just doing it using new methods that are equally as powerful, and more relevant than the methods of the sixties. A lack of personal connection to issues, such as a draft linking young people to war, may explain a decreased forceful opposition to war, but on the whole, students of today are as active as they ever have been. Media censorship limits coverage of this activism, and new protest methods have not yet been acknowledged. There has been a notable decline in physical presence, though, which may explain the judgment that we are not active. Indeed we are not out protesting with pickets and staging marches and demonstrations like we once were, but online petitions and blogs have skyrocketed. Anonymous methods of activism are huge among my generation who use them to articulate political platforms without attaching personally to those opinions. Internet blogs and petitions have replaced picket signs, coming to represent peace and politics in the minds rather than hands of my generation. If the vast size of the internet yields any predictive power, the voice of the youth will be heard loud and clear. Move On, generation now. Move On to great things.

MoveOn.org

MoveOn.org epitomizes modern political activism. Students no longer go out and stage marches and demonstrations, but they still work to get their voice heard using their most powerful tool: the internet.
MoveOn.org was created in September of 1998 in the wake up the Bill Clinton impeachment process. Joan Boyd and Wes Blades were frustrated with the issues the government was focusing on in that process and started this site that has since become one of the most powerful, influential Political Action Committees. They “launched an online petition to “Censure President Clinton and Move On to Pressing Issues Facing the Nation." Within days they had hundreds of thousands of individuals signed up, and began looking for ways these voices could be heard. They found their soundbox.
MoveOn.org has developed to support liberal progressives, working to defeat the right wing. Site visitors vote on issues they feel are most important, which become the issues that Move On works to support and/or protest.
The most important, and perhaps most powerful, aspect of Move On is that it is intended for and uses by average political participants. All of its proceeds go to support issues and democratic candidates. “Through 2004, MoveOn.org Political Action raised approximately $11 million dollars for 81 candidates from over 300,000 donors. In 2005, MoveOn.org Political Action grew to 3.3 million members and 125,000 members contributed $9 million to progressive candidates and campaigns (average donation: $45).” People do not need to supply hundreds and thousands of dollars to influence politics. When the people come together, as this site has encouraged, each little independent contribution adds up to make a huge difference. This site has brought people back into the American political process.
This thank you to Move On demonstrates the power and opportunity that has been given back to the people:
I can't thank you enough for providing the tools I've always wanted for social change. With MoveOn, I feel like I have a voice in the world and an organization fighting for the same things that are important to me. As a working professional and mother, I don't have time to look up whom to contact on what issues. You make it possible for me to fight against the infuriating things that I see either destroying or about to destroy our country.
Thank you all at MoveOn.org for your vision and your work.
Sincerely,
Laurie (Matawan, NJ)

MoveOn.org

Berkeley tree-huggers (update)

Following up on my mention of the Cal tree huggers, I found these reasons that the tree huggers provide for their protest that they distribute on pamphlets:

SEVEN REASONS WHY THE OAK GROVE SHOULD NOT BE DESTROYED

1. It is a Native American burial ground. Native American remains were found at the site in 1923 when the stadium was being built. UC Berkley tried to hide this from the public but documentation was leaked by a conscious UCB employee.

2. It is a World War I Memorial site. The stadium and the Oak Grove are named in honor of Californians who died in World War I.

3. Berkeley City Law prohibits removing mature Coast Live Oaks. Coast Live Oaks are Protected Heritage Trees in the City of Berkeley. If UCB, the largest landowner in Berkeley, doesn't have to follow city ordinances, why should anyone else have to?

4. The new proposed development is adjacent to the (recently active) Hayward Fault. Since the tree-sit started on Dec. 2 there have been seven earthquakes (ranging from 2.0-4.2 on the Richter scale) on the Hayward fault which runs directly under Memorial Stadium.

5. There are four lawsuits against UC Berkeley. A diverse group of institutions and organizations; the City of Berkeley, California Oaks Foundation, Panoramic Hill Association and Save Tightwad Hill are challenging the proposed development as being in violation of various regulations including CEQA (California Envoironmental Quality Air Act), the Alquist-Priolo Act (earthquake fault proximity), and laws regarding emergency access and response requirements.

6. Global Warming is the biggest problem we face today. Cutting down old Oak (and other trees accellerates warming and climate change. Replacing these trees with saplings does not come close to replacing the bio-mass lost.

7. There are other viable alternative sites for the facility. The athletic training facility can be built at Maxwell Field, with the playing surface maintained above. The parking lot at Bancroft/Fulton is another option. A third option is the building at 2223 Fulton St., which is in need of demolition. A further option is expansion at the Edwards Field site. These are only some of the many alternatives to building at Oak Grove.

WE CAN HAVE NEW GYMS AND OLD GROWTH

I can’t find very much information on this issue, but I heard on radio news that the tree huggers are being legally evicted this week and that the company has been given the permits required for the development. This means a defeat for the students’ issues, but a win for student protests. These student have essentially devoted this time (which some say has been as long as year of living in trees) in their lives to a cause. They earned national attention and gained a lot of support. I am glad that the Berkeley students are still living up to their sixties generation of political activism. Good for them!

http://12thstreetchatter.blogspot.com/2007/09/cal-tree-huggerscampers.html

Modern Methods of Protest

There is a notion that the generation of students today is apathetic and uninvolved in politics, disengaging from issues and events. This is a misconception created in part by lack of media coverage, but mostly by changing means of protest and involvement. I asked Carolyn Knox about this misconception of an apathetic generation and she said,
"I believe there is a very strong opposition to the government at this point. Violence is never pretty and alternatives to violence are not obvious. A generally agreed-upon vision for how to make forceful opposition work in this country has not emerged at this point--neither has a grass-roots organization of people who can articulate even a half-assed version of such a vision." (1) Essentially students still have powerful, emotional commitments to issues they have clear opinions about, but they just do not know how to make those opinions clear to everyone else. The sixties and seventies are represented by youth activism and change, but the methods incorporated into that activism and change is not used today as result of laws and regulations and declining necessity. Students today no longer need to go out and make loud, perhaps even violent, statements. The student voice is no longer ignored as it was in the sixties. Those students earned a voice and we take full advantage of their successes, sharing our opinions in new ways.
One evident change in the way students today demonstrate the issues they are passionate about is not through marching. Marches were common ways of education and publicity from the sixties until as late as the nineties but are becoming less frequent and even less influential. Christina Larson wrote an article about this trend, arguing that, “While in the past a march was judged successful if it affected a political outcome; today's protests are judged on how they affect a protester's sense of self” (2). I think protesters are motivated by the drive to something, anything, to help the cause they are passionate about. As professor Knox explained, not very many people aware of how to make an opposition heard. People may use marches not as a forceful means of opposition, education, or aid, but more as a tactic to be able to say I did something. Also, the social value of protest marches is increasing as fast as the ineffectivity rate.
Silent, artistic demonstrations are gaining popularity, media coverage, and influence. People do not have to be present at these demonstrations to articulate the anonymous political standpoint. This is the second year that the University of Oregon had the anti-Iraq War flag demonstration on campus as pictured above. Each of the white flags represented six Iraqi people killed in war, each of the red represtned one American killed. The flags, even representing more than one person, still covered a huge portion of the campus grass. It was not publicized who posted these flags and sings, but the silent message was sent loud and clear. The scene was really rather tragically beautiful and impossible to ignore. Google searches for information and pictures of the demonstration yield hundreds of sites and articles, showing that the message is being carried further than the University campus. The issue is more important than the protesters in these types of demonstrations.

(1) Carolyn Knox, University of Oregon, interview
(2) Christina Larson, “Postmodern Protests: Why marches matter only to those who march”

Hiding the Truth with Media Censorship

Media and censorship have tremendously inhibited the public political sphere. Corporate ownership of media has limited free speech and censorship limits publicity and shows only partial truths. Carolyn Knox argues that, "corporate ownership of the media allows the information coming to Americans to be controlled much more than it was forty years ago. We rarely see real outlaw, underground journalism that appeals to young/concerned people in a big way. That's true even here in Eugene where the Weekly is as close as we get to an underground paper, and it is not really a true, strong voice of opposition." Mainstream media is centrally controlled and publishes the same stories with the same political bias while claiming to be neutral. CNN and FOX publicize support for the American government while a proven majority is in opposition. Groups such as CODEPINK show up at trials and interviews and speeches and could use the media to publicize their peaceful political aims, but are edited out of news reports. Scenes such as the courtroom scene in which a pink lady activist ran up to Condoleezza Rice with seemingly bloody hands screaming “there’s blood on your hands” are major enough to make national television but instead can only be found on YouTube searches. Political opposition has been increasingly pushed underground by the media. Blogs, YouTube clips, and internet sites are found by specific searches or by accident, and provide great outlets to share and learn about political activism and opposition, but are not mainstream or publicized. Even the statues quo and the mainstream majority may be in opposition to war (both Iraq and Vietnam) but the media continues to broadcast a different view.