Would someone please tell me why no one seems bothered by the war in Afghanistan? Why is no one protesting? Why on this \liberal"" campus do I see no signs of dissension?
I remember walking down State Street the day Clinton began bombing Iraq in December of 1998 and being approached by three different people who asked me to sign petitions and attend meetings and rallies. That was the old days. That was back in the days when we still had a few activists left on this campus.
Today only panhandlers approached me when I walked down State Street. There were no girls with clipboards telling me of the thousands of innocent civilians who have been killed by the U.S. military in Afghanistan. Nor were any young socialists trying to hand me fliers about John Ashcroft and his gradual stealing of civil liberties. Instead it was just two men with small plastic cups asking me for change.
Today I quickly passed the panhandlers, smiling before I looked away, just as I had done three years ago when I saw the activists on the street. Three years ago I was more apt to give away loose change than I was my signature; now it's the other way around.
Now I'm looking for petitions to sign, but I can't find them, and I have to search and search to find an activist, and often I fail and find myself turning instead to the Internet to get the ultra left-wing propaganda I used to get on the street.
I feel like an old man saying, ""Back when I was a boy we had activism,"" and I know I have no idea what activism is really like. I have no idea what it must have been like here in the sixties, but I can at least remember the days when a handful of activists tried to change things around here, and at that time, I didn't even think there was anything to change.
Early in the second semester of my freshman year, I went to a party at the Phoenix Co-op. They had two live bands, and between sets a kid, who I thought was crazy at the time, got up to the microphone and began talking about labor rights and sweat shops.
The kid was passionate, and as he spoke about other universities that had just begun sit-ins, I knew it would only be a matter of days before he and his friends would start a sit-in of their own.
""It's just sweat shops,"" I thought. ""What a stupid issue."" But it wasn't stupid, yet that remained my attitude through their entire ensuing sit-in.
It would be another year, and another sit-in, before I began to respect a little activism around here, and that wouldn't last long enough, because now I'm nostalgic.
This weekend I want to go to a party that gets interrupted halfway through by a kid who's mad about Afghanistan or Enron or maybe even panhandling. And, maybe he'll manage to get other people worked up, because that's how things go. And, maybe something will happen, and maybe someone will feel that they can change things.
And maybe when I walk down State Street next week, I'll see people with fliers and clipboards. But you know what? I doubt it.
andrewmiller@students.wisc.edu
