The Fads of Activism

It's exceedingly likely that in mid-December of last year you heard about, read or otherwise encountered a widespread effort on social media to save net neutrality. For a few weeks, Instagram and Snapchat stories and classroom discussions filled with talk of a Free and Open Internet, of Calling Your Congresspeople and Fighting for our Freedoms and Standing Up for the Little Guy and whatnot. I personally posted some plaintive appeal on my snapchat story, imploring friends to email Ajit Pai at the FCC. But despite my best efforts, the FCC voted to repeal Title II regulations on Dec. 14 last year. That day, I saw a few scattered posts about the injustice of the decision, about faith lost in our federal government, about anger at the ISPs that sought to take advantage of their customers. Then we moved on.  Except net neutrality didn't die on Dec. 14. Through the Congressional Review Act, Senate Democrats proposed a joint resolution to invalidate the decision of the FCC. The CRA was passed in 1996 under Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and grants Congress the power to review and overrule new regulations proposed by federal agencies. It's historically been invoked chiefly by Republicans, most recently in fifteen resolutions under the Trump administration to repeal Obama-era rules and regulations. The way the CRA works is a bit convoluted, but essentially: a senator introduces a joint resolution to invalidate a regulatory effort (like the repeal of Title II protections), which must obtain a majority to pass. From there, it goes to the House, and finally to the president's desk, where it passes with a signature or a 2/3 overrule of a veto. Net neutrality did die on April 23, the deadline for the CRA resolution to secure a majority in the Senate. It failed with 50 votes; one shy of approval. Net neutrality still had a chance— a slim one, but a chance nonetheless— five months after the FCC vote. But on Dec. 14, the preservation of our Title II protections ceased to be a topic of interest for most of us at Samohi.  So why did we drop this issue before it was really over? For many of us, it was probably just ignorance about the CRA; the Dec. 14 vote was styled by activists as a final reckoning, so it makes sense that a lot of people thought that was the end. But I knew about the Congressional Review Act. In maybe January I googled "net neutrality what now" on a whim, hoping to satisfy a vague curiosity towards a cause that I had been invested in just a month before. I found an article that summarized the CRA and its ramifications, and I dimly remember reading half of it before closing that tab and googling "what do plants eat". It wasn't that I didn't support the cause— I certainly did. Net neutrality was just... boring. It had lost its charm now that the herd had moved on to greener pastures. That's anecdotal evidence, and I'm not necessarily representative of the general public. (If anything, the anecdote proves that I'm a weak-willed, unprincipled bottomfeeder who only cares about how he's perceived. Ah, me.) But it's undeniable that once we drop a cause, it usually stays dropped. In 2011, Occupy Wall Street protesters disbanded with no real gains in solving income inequality. After the Sandy Hook massacre, we called for common-sense gun laws for a hot second, then moved on without any legislative action. While protesting can be and often is effective, there are scores of examples like these, in which the interests of the wealthy and those in power are allowed to triumph over popular opposition, and they typically hinge on our ability to give up. The difficult question that we rarely ask ourselves is not whether or not we care, but how much we care. Because most of us aren't speaking at city council meetings or flying to DC to march in front of the White House. Most of us are just people, good people, who "care" in an abstract sense and have marched occasionally recently but only when their friends have marched too, and maybe posted something about net neutrality back when everybody was doing it, because doggonit it's time to stand up for what we believe in and doesn't it just feel good to be a part of something? We care. But a lot of the time, we just don't care enough. The issue is apathy; specifically, apathy disguised as fervor. Our activism often has more to do with ourselves than the unjust policies we lambast, and that's not conducive to actually effecting change. Because effecting change isn't always glamorous. Registering to vote. Finding out if Ted Lieu agrees with you on issues you care about, and calling to tell him if he doesn't. Boycotting antagonistic corporations. There's nothing wrong with posting about whatever issue is sweeping the nation, or swarming the football field for seventeen minutes of scattered chanting, but if that's the beginning and end of our activism, we hand victories to any malignant force that can wait a month or so until we get bored. Now, gun violence is the hot button issue that we're posting and tweeting about. But there, too, we are flagging. Everybody walked out on March 14 for the seventeen-minute on-campus walkout. Far fewer students committed to missing school for the April 20 protest. Within a few days of the Parkland shooting, three marches were scheduled, and the last of those has come and gone. And with no new march or legislation on the horizon, I'm worried that this cause will give way to the same fundamental apathy that plagues every major movement. I'm worried that it will die the moment it stops being fun. And that's a fundamental issue with Progressivism... by definition it's hard. Conservatives and traditionalists can stonewall and just say "no" to maintain the status quo, but progress is only achieved through active and continuous effort, and with so many corrupt, outdated and discriminatory institutions in our society, it's difficult to show a united front. If we regularly reset the apathy cycle, giving up on last month's issues in favor of whatever's new and interesting, we can't enact real change. Real change comes with people who don't give up and move on, who fight for causes they believe in even when the novelty fades and activism becomes dreary and boring. Real commitment is the only way to counter a monolithic establishment that knows if it holds out for a month or two we’ll all just go away.  My point is, in a very roundabout way, this: If you care about gun control— really care— don't give up. If we let the Parkland movement peter out, we'll have a merry old time moving along to another fun issue. Maybe a cake shop will deny service to a gay couple and we'll suddenly decide that it's worthy of our national attention. Maybe we'll take another crack at Wall Street, or attack the injustice of immigration courts, remember that the Dreamers are still in limbo. Maybe we'll walk away with a compromise that doesn't change anything, like the nonsensical clear backpacks at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. But if we continue to conflate activism with entertainment, we'll fail in every way that matters. Put in an hour a week. Or less, if you can't handle that. But break the cycle. Prove that you give a crap. The weakest among us (myself included) cycle back and forth between two strains of apathy, covert and overt. Rise above all that, and prove that you aren't just hopping on the bandwagon. Prove that you really care, not in an abstract or theoretical way, but in a boots-on-the-ground, making-the-world-a-better-place way. I'm calling for some integrity in our benevolence, for proving that we care because the assumption just isn't good enough any more. When the masses can't mobilize, entrenched power wins. When young people don't vote, incumbents hold their seats. Conservatives win, because the conservative base skews old and white and consistent, and racist, sexist legislation that favors the wealthy is allowed to persist. Apathy is implicit support for the status quo, and disguised as activism it's even more problematic.  We're trapped in a cycle of insidious apathy that keeps us from really getting anything done. So break the cycle. Become a statistical anomaly. Care.