When we had our little experiment in class, dividing into “conservative”, “progressive activist” and “apathetic” camps and trying to have a discussion, it seemed like “apathy” made sense from the standpoint of seeing activism as futile. This might not be the whole picture, but it seems really important to find optimism in activism.
I remember noticing how many of our guests talked about getting hooked on activism and protest. MASA mentioned it, Nakajima-san talked about how fun it was to be active and see things change, and Tawara-san talked about the joy of participating in the Anpo protests. And I remember having this feeling, listening to that, that you aren’t supposed to enjoy protesting; you should be desperately upset if you are going to protest, or be calm and rational with no emotions playing a part. And I don’t think this is an uncommon position: I’ve heard it said that the union marches in Paris are like a carnival or festival, implying that they are not quite serious or legitimate, or that otherwise activists are only riding along. But I mean, I thought it was a bit sad how much effort was necessary yesterday to “fire up” the Darfur marchers in order to give social and political justice a voice–why should it be so hard?–and it was based on getting (rightly) upset about the situation.
I thought, there should be joy in protest, it should be fun and easy to get into. It wouldn’t make the position less right. I don’t know, maybe this is all very obvious, but as the title of the lecture series, “Celebrating Protest”, suggests, one of the major lessons, for me, was that we should be trying to make protest enjoyable. I say this because protest and activism are critical of society, and in that sense negative, and we seem to be able to come up with innumerable criticisms, but the positive side of protest is as important, but so difficult.
