In his article on the Huffington Post “The Tragedy of Political Advocacy,” Jake Brewer describes how the online petition craze–known as clicktivism–is creating “paralyzing noise”1 leading to Congress hearing less of what citizens have to say. Brewer details how this has come about through advocacy groups being disconnected from Washington; petition campaigns not actually getting through to Capitol Hill, or causing more problems when they are delivered; the presence of so much noise that Congress can’t listen to anyone besides Lobbyists. He concludes that remedies to the noise issue are as simple as hand delivering the results of online petitions to our decision makers on the Hill with concrete numbers and include amendments different petition-takers would like to see included.
While I agree with the points Drewer makes about Congress not being able to distinguish what is going on through all of the noise, I think his article is addressing a symptom of the problem–and a very superficial symptom at that. If we look back at the readings from past weeks, we have discussed issues of accessibility–not only to food, but to the decision making process. As an overview we can conclude that the folks who are not included in the decision making process often are the most affected by the decisions made. Furthermore these folks usually aren’t included in democratic processes because of immigration status, time constraints, language barriers, which can all be connected to race, gender and income. This institutional racism/sexism/classism has lead to oppression being internalized my many vulnerable communities, perpetuating the problem of who has a voice. If there is anything that I have learned in this class, it is that many vulnerable, impacted, fenceline communities are fighting back and to fight in solidarity with them we have to look beyond the 21st century “clicktivism” that is giving Congress another excuse to look away and not address root problems.
To stand in solidarity with those have been institutionally silenced means silencing the institution. It means stripping the institution of the decision making power and taking it into our own communities. By creating better local decision making processes lead by those who are most impacted by the outcomes in our communities–neighborhood, school district, city, county, state, region–we can slowly turn down the volume on the noise in Congress. We can turn down the importance of the institution. We can silence the institution.
Now I don’t mean to argue that by getting rid of the institution will end racism/sexism/classism/etc. but one of the daunting parts of addressing these root problems is that we don’t have a very good platform to discuss how we treat each other. We don’t have to work together to make decisions because that is our elected governments job–and so far it has failed (or been successful, depending on the perspective). Recalling the stories we heard from different community garden projects and urban agriculture productions, a reappearing theme is that growing food and repurposing unused spaces creates a platform for everyone to find a common denominator and rehumanize each other. The community garden model is not by any means perfect and has been cooped in many places by rich, white people. However, there are examples–like the South Central Farmers–who not only have been able to feed themselves and their communities, but have recovered some of their food sovereignty, their cultural heritage, and created a platform for collaboration.
The real tragedy in advocacy is that articles like Drewer’s are published and totally glaze over the problem of the institutional flaws that prevent communities from making decisions or being a part of decisions being made that will impact said communities. Obviously we can’t just ignore the governing bodies that put parameters on our day to day lives, but the more resources–time, energy, money–we spend on building resilient communities, the better our chances are in achieving a more equitable and empowering society. By slowly silencing the institution and turning up the volume on our creativity, compassion and communication, we can achieve something that’s got to be better than what we’ve got going on now.
Works Cited:
Drewer, Jake. The Tragedy of Political Advocacy. Huffington Post, 05/25/2011. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jake-brewer/the-tragedy-of-political_b_773734.html
Mares, Teresa M. & Devon G. Peña “Environmental and Food Justice: Toward Local, Slow and Deep Food Systems” Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class and Sustainability
Slocum, Rachel. “Anti-Racist Practice and the Work of Community Food Organizations. Antipode, 2006.