About me: activist

By now the details of the Jena 6 debacle have been rehashed countless times by reporters, but I remember the days before the story broke when very few people were talking about it.

It came up first in my Mini-Feed; a friend had posted a video called "Jena 6." I ignored the video until a few days later when my Mini-Feed told me that seven of my friends had joined a Facebook group called "Free the Jena 6." Intrigued, I clicked on the group name and read all about it. Weeks later, when the story became national news, I shook my head condescendingly at those who were learning about the story for the first time.

I have a friend who's working on the campaign of one of the Democratic presidential hopefuls. One of the first things she did to build support in her district was to make groups in all of the local high schools' Facebook networks devoted to the students' support of her candidate. The groups are overflowing with members. For Facebookers who want to really make a political statement, there is an application that allows us to list which candidates we support. Barack Obama even has his own application. I've noticed friends posting links to speeches, videos of candidates and links to news stories directly off their Facebook profiles.

My generation gets a lot of flak from our elders about our lack of political engagement. It's true that we're not chaining ourselves in front of busses or flocking to protest. However, we live in a country where a massive amount of people are protesting a war, but the government hasn't paid any attention to them. Maybe we're not disengaged; maybe we're just pragmatic. In the cost-benefit analysis method of thinking that has become like second nature to a lot of us, we don't want to devote an entire weekend to a protest when we don't actually believe there will be a benefit. Posting a link on Facebook or joining a group takes just a few minutes and might be worth the time investment even if the estimated benefit is small.

It's more than raw pragmatism-I think my generation just navigates our politics differently than previous generations. Posting on Facebook is not an appeal to authority; rather, it circumvents anyone in a position of power. We're speaking directly to our peers, oftentimes not pushing a specific political agenda but instead sharing information that we think is important. It has a much more grassroots feel, and who can blame us? We're a generation that came of age during the imperial Bush-the-Second presidency, where unilateralism and unresponsiveness to the wishes of voters have become the norm. Although we were taught that we could "make a difference," the recent American political climate has been incredibly disillusioning.

We might have come of age during an imperial presidency, but we also grew up in the Age of Napster and the beginning of peer-to-peer sharing. We're masters of communication, and many of us are using our skills in a very political way. However, our politics have become so entwined with our personal lives that it is difficult to tell what's activism and what's not. Facebook and the other Web pages like it are deceptive because they look like private spaces. When you change your status to "John is wearing red tomorrow for Burmese solidarity," that's a political statement. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to find a Facebook profile completely devoid of politics, whether the Facebooker belongs to the "Students for Bus Accountability" group or lists the "Daily Show" as one of his favorite TV shows. It shouldn't be shocking that our preferred entertainment is political humor.

This melding of the private and public makes sense for our generation. For some reason, the contentious political issues of our time revolve around marriage (gay), birth (abortion), and death (i.e. Terry Schiavo). It's no wonder that we can't separate politics from our private lives. With the rising popularity of vegetarianism and sustainable eating, many members of my generation are making political statements with their food choices. Our parents might have spent a few weekends carrying signs with anti-war slogans, but did they carry Seafood Watch guides in their wallets so they didn't eat any unsustainable fish?

Our political engagement might be less obvious, but I think it's much more consistent. Just because we're not hunger-striking or marching on Washington, it does not mean that we're inactive. I suppose it remains to be seen if our grassroots, quiet activism can have an effect on the status quo.