Hope in a Time of Fear
(A Paul Loeb Presentation)
August 14. 2004
Summary by Phoebe Hoss
On Saturday night, August 14, Paul Rogat Loeb gave a rousing talk at All Souls Church on how to rally ourselves from discouragement and move forward actively in this time of fear and anxiety. Mr. Loeb is an activist and author who for over thirty years has been studying why some people feel empowered to work for social justice even when the going is rough.
He noted first how little our culture embraces the heroes and heroines of social change or, if it does, it simplifies them so much as to make them seem unlike ordinary people and hard to identify with. Thus, Rosa Parks's decision to sit in front of the bus has come to seem an isolated incident, when in fact she had belonged to the NAACP for twelve years and had people in the community ready to support and build on her action.
So community is all-important. It makes for the overall effectiveness of any protest and also gives individuals the satisfaction of a sense of solidarity. You draw strength from those you're working with.
Another point is that in protesting you don't know what's going to work. Nor can you anticipate turning points. In this connection, he cited Howard Zinn's notion of the "optimism of uncertainty." You have to have the courage to take a leap to achieve an immediate goal, as Rosa Parks did, and then you and your community work to broaden the boundaries of any social action, just as after her action civil rights workers put pressure, ultimately successfully, on both President Kennedy and President Johnson.
In taking social action, you need to be aware of how the right will try to marginalize you: to condescend to you, or mock you as crazy or exhibitionistic. You need either to ignore or actively to protest such attempts to silence you. Remaining silent - muzzling onself -- in the face of abuse of others is a crime, Loeb said.
And silence is as contagious as courage. We need to be vocal and keep up the pressure no matter who gets elected. Working for justice is a lifetime task. In deciding to take it on, you're joining a succession of people who, despite much discouragement, have made the same decision. Loeb cited a few of these inspiring examples: Vaclav Havel, Nelson Mandela, Mary Robinson, the Reverend Victoria Safford, a Unitarian Universalist minister in Minnesota; Desmond Tutu; a woman who works despite serious physical disability. All of these people, and many more, are represented in Mr. Loeb's anthology The Impossible Will Take a Little While (just published by Basic Books), copies of which were available for sale and will continue to be available through the Peace Task Force at a reduced price, until Sep. 18, 2004.
After his talk, Mr. Loeb had practical answers to a variety of questions. Re the demise of community in the U.S. as described in Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, he cited the success of MoveOn.org, the internet-based activist organization that has defined a different kind of community and continues to evolve new tactics. Re what to do about genocide, the left needs to address it. Re the privatization of the news, protesters need to make their actions visible so the regular media can't ignore them. Re dealing with people on your side whom you don't agree with, try to isolate anyone whose plans are destructive; otherwise, ignore.
He acknowledged that we live in a frightening time, with a wall of fear we have to talk through. For this we must have hope - a hope that is, in Havel's moving words, "an orientation of the heart."
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