In an op-ed in Sunday's New York Times, Sudhir Venkatesh wonders why the "populist rage" regarding the Wall Street and A.I.G. and the bailout hasn't led to riots or protest. He writes, "Today widespread anger and collective passivity exist side by side." We're angry, but we're not going to do anything about it.
Sudhir gives some reasons for this passivity. We expend our anger on the Internet and blogs and then don't have any anger left for real protests. "Technology separates us and makes more of our communication indirect, impersonal and emotionally flat". We are too embarrassed about the source of our anger, ie high credit card debt, to want to go out and make our mistakes public.
It's a very interesting column; worth a complete read. Sudhir is a University of Chicago trained sociologist, who has made his fame by hanging out with drug dealers on the Southside for a couple of years. His book, Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets
I liked this column in many ways. Echoing Putnam, Sudhir recognizes that the decline in connectivity of people and the role that technology has played in our isolation. But he goes even further. He said that we expend our anger on the Internet and then lose the passion to take it to the streets. I'm sure that he's right about that.
But Sudhir conflates riots with protests, and they are very different. True riots, such as the one that describes happening over public housing in Chicago in 1992, aren't happening by blog readers. The folks that he described throwing bottles and shooting off their guns aren't leaving comments on Powerline. And I am not a fan of riots. They are random, dangerous beasts and only lead to political change when there are dead bodies on the ground. Don't like 'em.
Protests on the other hand are more organized, focused, and politically effective. They need calm direction and organization. The folks that organize protests are blog readers and may be spending quite a bit of time on the Internet. Is all the time online leading to real protests? Well, the research on that question is mixed. There are certainly many stories about people using Meetup.com to find each other and organize. Organizers can set up websites and e-mail campaigns to get more people involved. Others have found that bloggers exhibit no change or even a slight decrease in real political participation after starting their blog.
Why hasn't there been more evidence that Populist Rage turning to Populist Protest? Well, people are worried about it. Security has been increased in front of my husband's Wall Street firm. But, for the most part, it hasn't materialized for a number of reasons.
One, people don't get it. They have no idea why the stock market plummeted, why their retirement accounts shrunk, and why their house lost half its value. The words "sub-prime mortgage" have a chilling effect on protest.
Two, it hasn't hit home for many people. If you don't live in Michigan, haven't retired yet, don't need to sell your house, and haven't lost your job, the economic recession is still very abstract. Maybe in another year, the pain will be more obvious. If the MTA increases the fares on the subways again, then there might be action.
Three, people still like Obama. They believe that he will sort out all this mess. He has about another nine months, before they lose their patience.
Sudhir writes, "Fury can inspire real protest, nonviolent civil disobedience, even good old-fashioned, town-hall meetings. That's how we'll recover our public life and perhaps help one another through this crisis — storming angrily into the streets and then, once we're out there, actually talking to one another." Yes. I like fury, but we're not there yet.
Apt. 11d 
There are the tea parties, of course.
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For me, I’m hoping there will be some good from the crisis. Most of Pittsburgh’s problems have been punted down the road for at least the last 20 years. Not being able to borrow more money at a time of declining tax revenues is necessary for change (not sufficient, of course). Reform is still a long-shot, but I’m hopeful enough about our upcoming mayoral election to temporarily switch my registration so I get a meaningful vote.
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I think people start protesting when something affects them personally, and that this hasn’t affected people personally yet, until they’ve lost their job. I’m not absolutely sure why people who have lost their jobs aren’t protesting, but I suspect that it’s because they are 1) collecting unemployment 2) think they’ll be employed again. I think we’ll start to see protests when more people are unemployed for longer.
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The tea parties? Hello? There’s also the Simon Jester Project which is just starting up. Google either of those and you’ll find plenty of people organizing and protesting.
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Interestingly, this post, and another one (written by an author with probably an almost diametrically opposed view of the current crisis than Laura), have combined to make me determined not to be passive at this moment. Tomorrow, there’s an organizing meeting for a bunch of–potentially–rather angry people. I was invited, as I get invited to a lot of things around town. I wasn’t sure I wanted to bother going. Now I’m determined to.
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After sitting on this post for a couple of hours, I think that there are two other big problems that have stifled protest.
One problem is identifying the bad guy in all this mess. The blame can be spread around everywhere. The media for hyping up spending on the market and on housing. Yes, I’m talking to you, Jim Cramer. Wall street traders looking for an easy buck. Every day trader, real estate flipper, 401K gambler, real estate agent, every credit card maximizer. We all spent more than we should, gambled, and expected blue skies forever.
So, I’m not exactly sure who going to get tarred and feathered.
I think that government is doing everything that it can to clean up this mess. We saw a real change after the bailout happened. There’s no way that the US economy would have survived without the Wall Street firms. It looks like they are being tough with A.I.G. and the auto industry.
The only baddies right now are those who haven’t figured out the rules have changed now, like the AIG crew.
My biggest concern, and this is one that I will take to the streets, is who’s going to get what now that the pie has shrunk considerably. If the rich keep their money, while the working class has to fork over more to take a subway, then I’ll flip out. I want to see where all the investment is going. Is it only going to Wall Street or do I see more money for infrastructure and schools and student loans. The pain and the benefits have to be spread around.
What are the angry people going to talk about, Russell?
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“The blame can be spread around everywhere. The media for hyping up spending on the market and on housing. Yes, I’m talking to you, Jim Cramer. Wall street traders looking for an easy buck. Every day trader, real estate flipper, 401K gambler, real estate agent, every credit card maximizer. We all spent more than we should, gambled, and expected blue skies forever.”
…mortgage brokers, crooked appraisers, Suze Orman, etc.
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Pushing the Democratic party (which barely exists locally, but you have to start somewhere) against the concessions Obama is giving to Wall Street bankers, and the unspoken cover which Republican opposition in Congress is giving him to do so. An attack on the Geithner plan, mostly following a Krugman/Quiggin line, I suppose, but with some nice populist/socialist anger tossed into the mix. (I said my piece about the bank bailout here.)
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Venkatesh’s first book, American Project, includes a fascinating reconstruction of the history of the tenant association in a Chicago public housing development, showing how the state of popular organization at this micro level responded to political change at the national level. Fascinating stuff.
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This guy’s utter unawareness of the tea party events reminds me of Pauline Kael: Nixon couldna won – I don’t know anyone who voted for him! It’s classic Times worldview: if the Upper West Side doesn’t know about it, it didn’t happen.
I pay the Times hundreds of dollars a year to deliver the paper to my door, but sometimes I think it doesn’t deserve to live.
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Coincidentally, my daughter and I ran across this video on Venkatesh on our nightly visit to wimp.com. Haven’t watched yet, fwiw.
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I went to grad school w/him. He and my boyfriend at the time were in sociology together.
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Based on what I see on Instapundit and the fact that they are called ‘tea parties’, the tea parties don’t seem ‘populist’ in the traditional sense. Not that I find anything objectionable to bitching about taxes and government spending. For one thing, the tea party protesters seem to be opposed to inflationary (less deflationary?) monetary policies, which is the opposite of the free-silver populists.
I think we need someone to give a speech (“Cross of Securitized Debt”?). For historical reasons, this person should be from Nebraska. Though I’m Catholic and a drinker, I think I’d be a pretty good candidate. If my landlord wasn’t lying, I’ve actually lived in what used to be William Jennings Bryan’s brother’s house. And, though I don’t have any problems with Darwin, I’m willing to be flexible and prosecute high school biology teachers if it helps get me a better job.
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Well, there was a protest yesterday in Trenton over proposed state budget cuts and tax hikes. There were protests in Philly over budget cuts that were aimed at taking out the public libraries. Those protests resulted in the mayor saving the libraries and figuring out other places to cut. I didn’t understand why we weren’t protesting the war so much or torture or any of those other things.
I haven’t been to a protest in a long time. I protested the tearing down of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis to make way for a glitzy civil rights museum. I protested for divestment during apartheid. I protested over Tiananmen Square. Now, I don’t have much to protest over . . . yet. And protests take place in the city or in D.C., a fairly long hike. It would need to be worth it. I think that’s probably the way a lot of people feel. If much of the pain is being felt by people who live in outlying cities and towns, maybe there just isn’t enough of a critical mass to get a protest going.
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Russell’s helping open the Overton window. More please!
A friend in Louisiana is helping to organize a jazz funeral to call attention to Bobby J’s 83% cuts of arts funding. She’s been getting media attention, too, so maybe something will happen.
Basically, though, I think protest is low-key right now because people think that the system can work. The change in party at the top last November plays a big role in that. Effort is aimed at getting duly elected representatives to do what people think they should be doing. If that’s not effective, then start worrying.
(And have a look at my current country on or about April 9. The gov’t is in deep denial about any number of things, and there’s no prospect of real change before 2013. That’s too far. Right now, I’m skeptical that the opposition will push Saakashvili out.)
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“The change in party at the top last November plays a big role in that. Effort is aimed at getting duly elected representatives to do what people think they should be doing. If that’s not effective, then start worrying.”
What’s your “start worrying” date?
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I’ve actually been noticing a boom in protest songs on the internet. The latest one I’ve come across (thanks to a reference by Mickey Kaus on bloggingheads) is John Rich’s “Shuttin’ Detroit Down.”
This is an unpolished version, but you can see in the video that the people in the bar are crazy about it.
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Maybe because the history of the last fifty years has called into question whether public protests actually are transformative unless the issue is about public space. E.g., if the problem concerns legal restrictions on the movements or activities of some people, then sure, of course the mass action of people is a meaningful way to attack that practice: it reveals that those legal restrictions are impotent against a social consensus that they’re immoral or odious. Almost all the most successful non-violent mass protests I can think of that worked in the 20th Century involved challenges to dominance over the movement or action of populations.
But protests against policies you don’t like? Against interests that are acting against you and most people like you? About demands for change? They may sometimes have added to the civic or political momentum of a concerted push for change, but mostly they’ve just been moments of isolated theater, and are now surprisingly easy to reproduce for that reason. Get a couple of hundred thousand to the Mall, carry the signs, big fucking deal. That just becomes a Rorschach blot for political leaders and pundits to read out however they like, and probably for the protesters too, who usually have a big variety of reasons for being there and a big variety of life situations they’re returning to when it’s done. A lot of protest theater is just the action of complete cynics combined with an ideological grabbag of people with various axes to grind like most of the tea parties.
The stuff that matters much more is small-ball civic activism: showing up at town meetings, zoning boards, working on issue-oriented campaigns that cover the range of political action, working for local candidates. The big targets are so far away and so insulated that I can’t honestly imagine what could get to them except for activity in the online public sphere.
There are some isolated circumstances where really riled-up people have mobilized in ways that make political leaders react, sometimes by trying to channel or make use of that anger, sometimes by trying to just squash it or shut it down. Immigration-related activism in the West sometimes looks like that. Which makes it clear that anybody thinking that angry populism is always progressive or clear-headed in the reforms it seeks should think twice.
You could argue too that one thing that online communication has done is not isolate us, but bring us in connection with people we might at another moment have tarred and feathered. Whatever their ideological habitus, most people find it way easier to hate (to the point of violence) either people who are very distant and alien to them, more like objects, or people who are very similar but rivalrous to them, but still not known personally. Once you know someone very well personally, though, even when they’ve done pretty bad things, it’s often hard to hate them to the point of wanting them hurt or destroyed. (Unless you’re one of the bad-thing-doing kinds of people, I guess.) So even as angry as I am at the people at AIG-FP, when I read some of the blogs and emails and communications from people inside that situation, it tends to defuse or complicate my anger. That’s not isolation, it’s connection, an awareness that any thread I might pull on could unravel even more.
We’re all in a kind of paralysis. We don’t believe any more in magic solutions, only in marginally better worlds. We’re all disaffected because everyone seems to be either a phony manipulator or an ideologue. We’ve lived through a century of people with big visions and they almost all of them got people killed or hurt or they just didn’t pan out. Modernity is in a kind of midlife doldrum, where you want something better, want some change, but can’t really make yourself believe that it could happen, and you’ve been hurt too many times before to take a chance anyway. I dunno, maybe we don’t protest because we’re more mature, more cynical, and don’t expect that much. We’ll be happy with a tinkering there and a reform here, we’ll settle for things being not-so-good as long as they’re not apocalyptic.
If you really could get an angry mob together, where would you go? What could you do? What would do any good?
What if joining up with an angry mob meant that as you looked around, you found out that the guy next to you was a Lou-Dobbs watching maniac looking for immigrants, the guy behind you wanted to go burn down the houses of AIG executives, the guy in front of you wanted to deal with the Jews running the Trilateral Commission and the homosexuals who were on TV too much, and the guys up at the front wanted to smash windows at Starbucks?
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I think Timothy Burke is on to something about the efficacy of demonstrations and traditional protests. There were a whole bunch of protests against the war in Iraq, and it’s not clear to me that they had any effect on the course of US politics. Likewise, there’s a big pro-life march in DC every January, as there has been for decades now. I think demonstrations tend to be at least equally as much about increasing zeal and forming community among the like-minded.
I think it probably is true that physical presence is most effective with local issues where turning out twenty people is a big deal. Also, as with the successful blocking of the comprehensive immigration bill, it really is effective to flood individual politicians with reminders that if they vote for this bill, they are going home. A problem with demonstrations is that they are a letter addressed to no one in particular.
I also agree that those who yearn for mass movements and action won’t necessarily enjoy them when they show up. It is actually rather surprising that there haven’t yet been any major acts of violence directed against Wall Street. (Tfuu-tfuu.)
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Likewise, there’s a big pro-life march in DC every January, as there has been for decades now. I think demonstrations tend to be at least equally as much about increasing zeal and forming community among the like-minded.
Which is no small thing, don’t forget. While I attended grad school at Catholic University in Washington DC, I got to watch up close as the campus was transformed into a base camp for anti-Roe v. Wade protestors, and it was brilliant, enthusiastic, powerful stuff. Much of that washes off on the bus ride back home, but for a few, the experience becomes part of a shared memory that keeps people voting, keeps them donating, keeps them doing all the boring-and-far-from-the-sexy-side-of-the-blogosphere-civic-stuff which Tim talked about: showing up a town meetings, working for local candidates, etc.
(What’s the Overton window, Doug?)
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I would like to think that we don’t protest, because we’re more mature, but I’m not sure that’s the case. This economy thing is tricky; people aren’t in the streets over that for a number of reasons. But I’m not seeing people protest for very real, obvious things.
I’ve been involved in some local battles where the impact of political decisions are clear, obvious, and direct, and it is very difficult to get people to show up. Why don’t they care? Probably for many reasons — laziness, isolation, low levels of political efficacy, intimidation of the political process, busy lifestyles. Maybe it is the Internet.
That bothers me. I’m a big fan of civic activism and I believe, perhaps foolishly, in its effectiveness and its carry-over into all aspects of political life (just as RAF said).
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“What if joining up with an angry mob meant that as you looked around, you found out that the guy next to you was a Lou-Dobbs watching maniac looking for immigrants, the guy behind you wanted to go burn down the houses of AIG executives, the guy in front of you wanted to deal with the Jews running the Trilateral Commission and the homosexuals who were on TV too much, and the guys up at the front wanted to smash windows at Starbucks? ”
Tim, in this case, try not too look foreign, Jewish, gay or bankerish. Follow the guys who want to smash the Starbucks. Get the little packets of dried fruit they give you with the oatmeal. Run.
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I see that immediate impact problem, too, Laura. I think on the flip side of being mature is being convinced that nothing can change, life is what it is, you can’t beat City Hall. It’s curious: we’ve lived through times where the politically unthinkable happened (the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the end of apartheid) in no small measure because huge populations of people sensed a moment of opportunity and acted en masse. In contexts where we should sense the opportunity for change all around us, many of us wearily feel there isn’t much hope of it.
To give a simple example, today’s Philadelphia Inquirer detailed some of the outrageous benefits that the City Council of Philadelphia grant to themselves: obscenely high salary bonuses that were originally intended to retain highly trained technical staff in the municipal government, most prominently. So why aren’t there mobs down there every day demanding that they resign in a year where cuts in the city’s budget are going to hit services all across the city and taxes are going to go up?
Because the next council election isn’t for some years. Because the council members benefit from powerful electoral machines. Because they have patronage systems which they use to keep members of their district beholden to them, and complicit in the general corruption. Because people are suspicious of the Inquirer’s motives for breaking the story. Because voters feel a defensive loyalty to council members of their own ethnic or class identity (this doesn’t just apply to African-Americans: Frank Rizzo Jr. benefits from it; there was for many years a WASP Republican on the council who benefitted from it). Because nobody believes that anybody else would be any different if elected.
So folks sigh and grit their teeth and accept it. I’m not sure they’re wrong to do so. Maybe it will take a genuine whiff of change (rather than a slogan of it) to make them think otherwise. And even then: well, think about Eastern Europe. A few places changed a lot after those velvet revolutions. A lot of places only changed a little.
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“A few places changed a lot after those velvet revolutions. A lot of places only changed a little.”
Belarus has changed as little as it was possible to change and Russia thawed and then re-froze, but by and large, Eastern Europe has changed a lot. Even Russia is different, despite a neo-Soviet nostalgia push. Political passivity is the traditional norm there, but thanks to oil revenues, Russians have gotten used to prosperity, and the populace has been surprisingly eager to publicly defend their standard of living. In December, there were large, vigorous demonstrations over–of all things–tariffs on foreign auto imports. In the article below, a hundred protesters were arrested in Vladivostok during an illegal protest against the new tariffs.
http://www.thestar.com/article/557157
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Philadelphia is what I always look to when I want to feel better about Pittsburgh’s government.
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Rough and ready view of the Overton Window. John Quiggin adds some thoughts.
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Mark the date, I’m agreeing with Amy P. A lot of places changed enormously in Eastern Europe post-89 and post-91. (Not always for the better, but different nonetheless.) Far fewer changed little, and of the European stats, Belarus is the only one that’s even close to what it was during the Cold War.
(PS Sarah, above, appears to be comment spam.)
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Thanks for the primer, Doug; I guess I missed that thread on CT. So, does my signing a petition, becoming a registered member of the DSA, and getting involved in some events centered around a call for bank nationalization count? (If not, then perhaps writing for a radical localist publication does?)
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“Mark the date, I’m agreeing with Amy P.”
Doug, this happens at least once a week. Now, 30 days until our next conjunction!
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Instapundit has up a google map showing the geographical distribution of tea parties. There’s a lot of activity along the coasts, particularly the East Coast and Gulf Coast. I suppose that’s where the US has a lot of population. A lot of the active states were ones that voted for Obama in 2008.
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The tea parties are a great example of why protest doesn’t matter any more, why most protests are inauthentic theater designed to get on the evening news with a bit of concocted spectacle. Believing that a given protest (especially the tea parties) actually represents some deep underlying political movement that has coherent goals which that movement will pursue with substantial popular backing is like being a 50-year old who believes in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy.
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“…inauthentic theater designed to get on the evening news with a bit of concocted spectacle” and lack of “coherent goals” are a pretty good description of politics in general. I have no idea of the tea parties will accomplish anything (though I doubt it) or even what most of the people showing-up want to accomplish, but I wouldn’t rule-out something just because it’s concocted and incoherent.
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If the meeting I went to last night is any indication, I may have some “concocted spectacle” in my future. As long as it doesn’t involve giant paper-mache puppets, I think I can handle it.
P.S. I hope I didn’t quote you inaccurately, Tim. My apologies if I did.
P.P.S. I’m a 40-year-old, and I still believe in Santa Claus. Sort of.
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Politico, via Josh: “My administration,” the president added, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”
Just so, Mr O. I wonder if the collected CEOs were listening.
Dans ce pay-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un financier pour encourager les autres.
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Timothy Burke: “We’ve lived through a century of people with big visions and they almost all of them got people killed or hurt or they just didn’t pan out. ”
That would be National Socialism/Fascism
and Marxist Communism. OTOH, we’ve watched industrialization, the New Deal, European social democracy, decolonization, feminism, the Civil Rights movement in the USA (which has been echoed in many places)….
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“…decolonization…”
That’s been a mixed bag, hasn’t it?
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Rather like democracy, in preference to, say, monarchy.
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