While for most of this week national and local media obsessed over the woefully unfocused messages coming from angry crowds of right-wing protesters, many of whom may never have dunked a bag, another group who's members occasionally bag a buck conducted a very focused demonstration for their cause, not with clever(or not) signs or inappropriate symbols, but with an approach to redressing their grievances to government agencies worthy of a study in activist civics.
Outside the state Capital in Madison, Wisconsin on Wednesday, with tea bags the chosen symbol for it's incoherent agglomeration of unrelated issues, one demonstration served simply to vent anger at having lost their grip on political power, while under the dome inside, camouflage and blaze orange garments marked many of those who chose to take a serious approach to focusing their message and advancing their agenda.*
courtesy Isthmus-The Daily Page courtesy fox11online.com
On the prior Monday, nearly 8,000 citizen-hunter-activists attended the annual Spring Fisheries and Wildlife Rules Hearings and Wisconsin Conservation Congress county meetings throughout the state, including one in Middleton, just outside of Madison.
The meetings provided for the introduction of citizen proposals which were then voted on by those in attendance. These advisory proposals will go on to the state's Natural Resources Board for review. They also provided the focus necessary to take a unified agenda before a joint hearing of Wisconsin's Senate Natural Resources and Assembly Fish and Wildlife committees on Wednesday.
As tetritus flew in every conceivable direction outside the Capital, inside a dignified and focused hearing was under way. Members of an overflow crowd of citizens joined by a common cause each patiently waited their turn, speaking in personal, yet unified voices before the policymakers who work for them. They were acknowledged by public officials who could easily discern the message of these well organized constituents.
"We are listening", said DNR secretary Matt Frank.
Though there were two groups intent on some form of bagging within a few hundred feet of each other in Madison that day, only one had a comprehensible message, and likely only one will eventually bag their properly steeped reward.
*Some unrequired and boring background f.y.i.- The issue of contention is a deer-hunting regulation which in certain cases requires a hunter to harvest one doe before being allowed to harvest a buck. The intention is to maintain a balance between the herd size and the habitat and food sources available to maintain that herd without either underpopulation, which makes hunting unproductive, or overpopulation, which leads to starvation. The State Department of Natural Resources manages the rules based on field research, but there are far more hunters in the field than officials, and the hunters sometimes have different views.
But that's not what this diary is really about; we can talk hunting some other day. This is about just how serious our activism is, and I believe that is related to just how honest our activism is. Though anger is sometimes appropriate, that's true only if it's based on honest concern.
The real problem with the tea party groups is that their message isn't at all discernible; only their anger is. And the dishonest bases of that anger makes productive activism unattainable for them.
At least we can be thankful for that.