On Thu, 5 Jun 1997, William S. Lear wrote: > Anyway, we have RI -> DUI -> DA (Radical Intellectuals produce > Democratically Useful Information, which will/can lead to Democratic > Action). But my little model misses something, RI -> DTM -> DUI -> > DA, where DTM is the Democratic Transmission Mechanism. I'm curious, > being a not-yet-activist-intellectual, which DTMs do folks (activists > and people) find most (cost) effective? Radio? Magazines? Internet? > Direct contact and speaking engagements? It seems TV would be the > best, but for obvious reasons that's pretty hard. I think that for all kinds of reasons, we actually have to be _in_ the communities we're trying to change. For some of us, this may mean unions, or campaings for/against various things (workfare, police brutality, a living wage) run by the people who are effected most by them. Ultimately, socialism will be built by people responding to their immediate circumstances and finding that it requires a change in the relations of power. For those of us at universities, that can mean student/faculty/worker control of the school. It starts with demanding things like curriculum reform, dignity for workers, the school helping the surrounding community instead of colonizing it. Ultimately people realize the school is not a democracy and that it could be. Similar things could be said about myriad other movements and community organizations in different ways. We have to struggle with people and learn this realization with them, because it's a different kind of realization for different kinds of communities. Just braodcasting to "the people" over television with our idea of the correct program is, ultimately, just politics as usual with a left face. Yours for the meandering road to revolution, Tavis
