Musings on Radicalism

After taking part in this past weekend's World Without War Protest and Rally in Portland, and being sort of kind of untenably disappointed for reasons I only hazard to understand, and sitting through an hour and a half lecture today on radical environmentalisms, I've sort of come to the conclusion that my life is pretty well worthless because I'm not planting pipe bombs and hacking the power grid. And definitely, my little outdoor education and social justice project seems entirely futile, I mean really, save the world by playing outside?? Come on. Direct actions, as opposed to symbolic protest mechanisms sometimes seem like the only way to avoid supreme and overarching cognitive dissonance. Knowing that you're truly working for radical and revolutionary change, I mean, really who can argue with that?

And yet, call me a fence-sitter or whatever, but I can't quite find the balance in truly radical modes of protest. Maybe I still believe too strongly in the power that connections and coalitions can make towards social change, that the human to human network is still a force for a lot of good. I agree with a lot of the philosophy, the necessity for wide and sweeping changes in order to fight oppression and protect habitats in ways that don't simply perpetuate the problem in the first place.

However, I have a really hard time justifying violence. Really hard time. I like to call myself on good days a pacifist, and on even better days somewhat of an activist, but I think thats a line that I could never cross. Me, personally.

But thought provocation is always preferred to, well, the opposite extreme. Thats one of the biggest things that the rally this weekend left me thinking about...sadly nothing to do with the conflict or ensuing disasters. Five years of war, where was I five years ago, and every year since marking this date? Last year, I was on crutches, though I disparately wanted to be in town, at what apparently turned into the biggest anti-war rally in the nation that year. Sophomore year I had some vague knowledge that people were angry and shit was going to go downtown, but it was the semester after I was in Russia and I was working the brunch shift in the Bon and couldn't make it down in time. Three years ago, as a second semester freshman, I had no energy or space left to even think about being angry about a war being perpetuated in my name across the world. I couldn't even deal with the wars I was raging with myself that spring. Senior year of highschool and the second anniversary of the invasion I don't really remember, that whole year was so weird and disjointed. I have some vague recollection of going to DC that March to mark the day with my parents. Five years ago, however, I was raising hell in Prague prior to the invasion of Iraq. I have some ridiculous pictures from a march I was at, me a bunch of expats and the Czechslovak Anarchist Alliance, marching through Old Town Prague. At one point I climbed one of the statues on the Charles Bridge, and looking in all directions across the river all you could see were angry people protesting. It was pretty amazing to be a part of it, marching all through the city. At one point when we reached the American Embassy in Nove Strana, and massed outside of it, that I had the premonitions that at some point I'd look back and know that that very moment marked the beginning of my FBI file. And then the whole me almost getting kicked out of the country because AFS bans active protesting basically...but thats sort of besides the point.

What is the point, though, is the question I'm trying to raise? If all of our methods are basically useless except burning shit down, why bother? Why try? What's the alternative, if society as we know it is coming to an end anyway?

Not advocating, actually, not entirely sure where I stand on the matter. Just curious.