Here’s a common scenario for lone wolf activism. Imagine you’re attending a city council meeting. You probably don’t make it a habit to go to these things. Because, well, who really wants to do that? The meetings take too long. They’re uninteresting. And they cram the agenda full of inside baseball for local politicos.
As John Gaventa would put it (e.g., Power and Powerlessness), governments set up the agenda and the rules of the game to favor insiders. And to exclude people like you and I.
But there’s something you care about on the agenda this time. So, you show up and argue forcefully for your opinion on that issue. Maybe you get a little passionate. Maybe even indignant, landing a zinger at the expense of your opponents.
Or, like some people, maybe you attend every city council meeting and do this. Whichever.
The point is that, in the moment, it feels good. It feels satisfying. But then you watch the council vote the other way. They shoot down your side of the argument by a comfortable majority. You lose.
What happened here?
Lone Wolf Activism
On the left, we often default to a politics of suspicion. We claim powerful interests got to the politicians before we did. Or we accuse them of practicing some kind of civility politics aimed at the passive majority. In short, we accuse them of cowardice in the face of great political forces.
But doing so absolves us of any role in the failure. It can’t be anything we did or didn’t do, right? Politics must be rigged by and for the powerful.
And, yes, politics are rigged by and for the powerful. But let’s talk instead about what role we can play in it. Let’s talk about what you did and didn’t do. What role does the activist play here, and how do we win?
In the scenario I laid out, you’ve performed lone wolf activism. And lone wolf activism almost always fails. Usually badly.
So, what is lone wolf activism? How can we tell when we’re doing it?
Simply put, it’s when a person tries to go it alone on advocacy around issues or causes, usually in front of a government body at public meetings. Some lone wolf activists show up to just about every meeting of a local government body and constantly scold them. Others show up only rarely. But they do it largely on their own.
Who’s a Lone Wolf Activist?
Some forms of lone wolf activism don’t concern us much on the left. All sorts of relatively minor and unimportant issues appear on a city council agenda. If someone wants to go out on their own and speak to those issues, it’s no problem for us.
But often we see lone wolf activism on much more important issues – core issues of concern to working people and their families. We especially see it in college towns, where lots of ultra-progressives vaguely associated with the New Left really feel like they need to speak. Spaces for lone wolfers also appear in college towns because their working class populations tend to be a bit smaller–and also less organized and engaged–than in other places.
And as a strategy, it’s incredibly unsuccessful. So unsuccessful that I’d call it more an anti-strategy than a strategy. It simply doesn’t work. Lone wolf activism fails. Repeatedly.
Many of the people who show up to meetings as lone wolves are people public officials find personally obnoxious. If anything, they’re less inclined to do the things lone wolves want them to do. Especially since those things rarely command majority support among voters. In the rare cases they do win, it’s despite their efforts, not because of those efforts.
And so, not only does the lone wolf activist often fail, they often set back the causes of movements they ostensibly support. Or the movements that don’t exist, but should.
What To Do Instead
Again, let’s say you’re an activist with opinions on issues of concern to working people. The best way to advance those opinions is to join a democratic organization devoted to advancing the interests of working people.
Most towns have plenty of activist groups. And, in a pinch, you can join one of those. But I think the best way to get involved is to join member-run groups like a tenants union, a union at your workplace, or Democratic Socialists of America.
And, most importantly, you should try listening to what the other people in those movements have to say. You probably don’t have all the answers. The other people in those orgs probably have things to add. Maybe even things that are better than what you have to add.
I know “Join DSA” or “Join the tenants union” is the biggest cliche I use on this blog. But it’s usually the correct answer. And it’s definitely the best answer for what to do when you end up as a lone wolf. Join – and listen more than you talk.
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