I had missed daybreak but it was still early morning when I pulled into the beach parking lot next to a large SUV with Rhode Island plates. Four guys, all in their late 20s or early 30s, were unloading their gear. It was impressive gear: top-of-the-line St Croix rods and Van Staal reels. They were outfitted in bib waders and surf boots with fancy tackle bags slung over their shoulders. A shiny steel device hanging from one of their belts reminded me of a prosthetic robot arm from one of the science fiction TV shows I used to watch as a kid. (I later found out that it’s used for gripping a fish’s lip and weighing it at the same time which, I have to admit, is pretty cool.) We did what anglers do when meeting one another: wishing each other luck and soliciting advice on where best to fish — which I gave freely, if not entirely completely. They clunked their way across the lot and to the beach in all their gear as I got my rods out of the jeep, slung the old Strand Bookstore bag I use to carry my surf plugs over my shoulder, slipped on my rotting canvas sneakers, and followed them. The fish weren’t biting that morning, and after an hour or so I saw them leave. They didn’t seem disappointed at all, and I began to think that maybe fishing for them was more about the road trip and the gear and not so much about catching the fish.
I was in Washington Square Park a few months ago sharing a coffee and a catch-up with a scholar whose work on social movements and radical theory I’d known and respected for a number of years. They asked me the required question that scholars ask one another when we meet up: “What are you working on now?” I knew better than to tell them I’d been working a lot on my fishing lately, so I described my current book project assessing the impact of artistic activism. “That’s good,” they said, “because you’ve been coasting since your last book.” For the past dozen years, I had been busy working on scores of campaigns with thousands of activists around the world while raising a family and holding down a full-time teaching gig. Coasting? I was exhausted! I was also angry that someone who I thought shared my commitment to radical social change could somehow overlook the work I had been doing to bring about change for more than a decade. Then it hit me. Radical social change for this person wasn’t activism and organizing, it was primarily a set of academic ideas and lifestyle practices. And in this way I had failed: I hadn’t published an “important” book in more than a decade and I was living a middle-class life with a job, wife, two kids, and a dog (a Labrador Retriever to make it that much worse). For all our ostensible shared revolutionary desires we didn’t really share much at all. Since that day they’ve texted me a couple of times to see if I want to get coffee and catch up. I reply that I’m too busy.