For most of my life, I, like many, have been encouraged to do the right thing and to think outside the box. I don’t think these things are mutually exclusive. Surely, one can steadfastly struggle for justice while offering a unique perspective.
Yet, Nicholas Blake in his letter to the editor last week pejoratively labeled protesters responding to Gov. Rick Perry and Gov. Jan Brewer as partisan. These protesters, Blake believes, misleadingly label themselves as non-partisan while usually only responding to speakers representing the Republican Party. He argues that, if the protesters are in fact non-partisan, they would have protested President Bill Clinton, who, like Perry, has a history of supporting the death penalty.
One reason the protesters Blake is specifically indicting did not demonstrate at Clinton’s speech is that the protesters in question were still organizing themselves.
Rightly or wrongly, there is a perception that student activists are a small group of “liberal extremists.” There is some truth to this myth. There is a relatively progressive group of students who have helped organize and demonstrate at several protests. This is not because they are rabid Democrats—most aren’t even Democrats.
Most of the activists in question, rather, are opposed to specific policies and discourses. We do not support Bill Clinton just because his name used to be followed with “D-AR.” We recognize that politics, like most questions, are more than simple either-or questions.
Consequently, when people like Blake urge protesters to “express their views […] in a consistent and logical way that does not rely on demagoguery,” protesters are not the ones relying on demagoguery.
Blake, like most, wouldn’t indict activism. Doing so would dismiss the Civil Rights and Women’s Suffrage Movements as “petty radicalism” or “legitimate, but uncivil.”
At the same time, whenever protesters voice their opinions, we are branded as instigators of partisan tensions who refuse to air “legitimate political grievances in a respectful and thoughtful manner.”
What our critics are left with is avoiding dedicated and active political participation, favoring instead simply voting Red or Blue every two years, dismissing anything else as “the tactics of demagoguery.” In the years between elections, we are supposed to observe the political process, and passively write the occasional op-ed.
In other words, this debate boils down to whether or not it is appropriate to express political opinion outside of the electoral process or simply through writing. Certainly, such uncontroversial political figures as the Founding Fathers and Dr. Martin Luther King thought so.
Actively engaging the political system, even critically so, is part of civic responsibility, and civic engagement is more than watching two groups of people pick one of themselves and responding when they ask you to pick one between them.
Many of us do not hold the superstitious belief in there being only two legitimate voices of the public—in the two-party system—but rather that we, the members of the public, should voice our own opinions through activism. This is not radicalism; it’s a demand for democracy.
Mike Lubbock
Class of 2014, SPA
