I've had 70 people send me supportive emails in response to my blog yesterday about talking with Tom at BIW. When I went to BIW again on Friday, I was looking for Tom but did not see him. I was able to hand out 11 leaflets - not much to report except the folks in one car, waiting at the traffic light, said they had read my letter in the paper. Thumbs up.
The primary message I am getting from all the emails is support and appreciation for my solitary witness at BIW. People are touched by the human interaction I had with Tom and the hopeful possibilities that come from such engagement.
I've been thinking lately that my organizing style was off balance. I spend way too much time on the Internet. While there is no doubt that one can do alot of good work using the Internet, it has largely replaced human interaction and this makes me uncomfortable. So lately I've been pushing myself to come up with some way that I could do something where I was back out on the streets in a regular way.
Usually when I think about such organizing questions I think in the bigger picture - how can I organize a bunch of people to do something? In this case it became clear to me that I had to stop "Waiting for Godot" and get out and do something myself.
Years ago while working for the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice we used to have weekend retreats each year for our members. One year we had the legendary Abbie Hoffman come spend two days with us to talk about organizing. I only knew of him as a political clown but that weekend I learned that he was the most brilliant political strategist that I've ever met.
I'll tell one story to illustrate his thinking and its impact on me. It was during the time he was on the run from the FBI (from 1974-1980). He moved around alot but ended up in northern New York state (upstate I think they call it) along the St. Lawrence River and had changed his name to Barry Freed and had a nose job to change his appearance. But he was an organizer and couldn't stay away from issues that mattered to him. He got involved in a group called 'Save the River' and did such a good job that he was given an award by then Gov. Mario Cuomo in Albany. Can you imagine that? On the run from the FBI but getting an award from the governor. Simply amazing.
Anyway, Abbie told us that when you organize you have to look for every opportunity to project your message into the public consciousness so that no matter where they turn people are always coming back to the issue. He gave us an illustration. He said one day there was a small plane crash into the river and he knew the media would be there. So he ran down to the river and got there before the media. He found a boy on his bicycle who was the only witness. He said to the boy, "You want to save the river, right?" Sure, said the boy. OK, Abbie said, then when the TV interviews you say, "And this plane crash will hurt our ability to clean up the river." The boy did his job. One more seed planted in people's heads about the river clean-up effort.
Abbie wanted us to be more creative in finding these small ways of integrating our message into the daily lives of people. So every time I find myself organizing anything I always come back to that question - what else can I do to bring this story to the public? How else can I weave this issue into the local fabric?
Today marks my 6th day of solidarity fast and it makes 54 days of hunger striking for Professor Yang and 10 days for Sung-Hee Choi. I've not been able to get any news the past couple days from Jeju Island - now that Sung-Hee is in jail the day-to-day reports are hard to find. My hope is that some of the South Koreans who read this will send me an update.
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