Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Cultural Creatives
I've written frequently about how communication underpins social action, citing examples from various human and civil rights movements around the world, but something I haven't written much on is how these varied forms of social organization supported the people who provided the information, analysis, and guidance on which their struggles depended.
Taking one example--Polish Solidarity--during its brief existence as a legal entity, the membership paid dues that in turn were used to buy equipment, food, medicine, and legal assistance, as well as to pay salaries to its writers, organizers, printers, and distributors. When Solidarity went underground after martial law was declared in 1981, funds were continually collected and donated through the pre-existing networks in order to continue providing a livelihood for the people and their families who kept the movement alive for eight more years through domestic publishing and international communications.
The United States is not Poland, of course, but as I've observed repeatedly to my activist scholar readers, authentic civic leadership arises spontaneously, and if American philanthropies (and citizens) were serious about democracy, they would get money into the hands of those researchers, educators, organizers, and thinkers who are already doing the heavy-lifting, rather than limiting their grantmaking and donations to non-profit institutions.
Institutions, by definition, resist change. Those who are leading the battles in the War of Ideas on which civic engagement depends are by nature not institutional creatures. They are the cultural creatives that society exploits.
Taking one example--Polish Solidarity--during its brief existence as a legal entity, the membership paid dues that in turn were used to buy equipment, food, medicine, and legal assistance, as well as to pay salaries to its writers, organizers, printers, and distributors. When Solidarity went underground after martial law was declared in 1981, funds were continually collected and donated through the pre-existing networks in order to continue providing a livelihood for the people and their families who kept the movement alive for eight more years through domestic publishing and international communications.
The United States is not Poland, of course, but as I've observed repeatedly to my activist scholar readers, authentic civic leadership arises spontaneously, and if American philanthropies (and citizens) were serious about democracy, they would get money into the hands of those researchers, educators, organizers, and thinkers who are already doing the heavy-lifting, rather than limiting their grantmaking and donations to non-profit institutions.
Institutions, by definition, resist change. Those who are leading the battles in the War of Ideas on which civic engagement depends are by nature not institutional creatures. They are the cultural creatives that society exploits.
