It’s getting colder and the Largemouth Bass and monster Carp I usually fish for in Central Park have gone to the bottom of the lake so I head out around the shoreline to look for the smaller brown bullhead catfish and bluegills that I know are still biting. I find them under the spreading branches of a willow tree hanging over the water just east of the big fountain on the lower end of the lake. I first try some small feathery jigs that panfish often go for, but after a dozen casts and a lot of snags on underwater willow branches, I abandon all pretense and tie a #8 octopus hook on my line a foot or so below a bobber, mash some white bread into a ball around the hook (it seems as if everything in this urban lake: the carp, the catfish, the turtles, the ducks, the mallards, everything but the bass, eats white bread), and toss it out to semi-submerged brush pile. Within a few minutes my bobber gets pulled underwater, I set the hook, and pull in a little bluegill. A few minutes later I catch another, and then another. Catching the bluegills isn’t as much fun as hooking a nice bass and watching it take a flip out of the water, or feeling the power of a big carp as it makes a run to the middle of the lake, but catching the wee ones keeps me fishing.
Often it seems like protests are organized without much thought to who they are for, or against. The default audience usually seems to be the activists themselves, or maybe expands to include passersby, “the media,” and usually the police. This, albeit often unconscious, choice of audience colors the content and form of the action. Chanting self-righteous slogans feels pretty good to yourself, it’s pretty easy to piss off cops and attract the attention of passersby with a raucous street protest, and doing something controversial is sure to attract the media, and but are these the individuals and institutions who have the power to make the changes we want to see? Experienced activists do something called “power mapping.” A power map charts out who has the power to make changes, and who has the power to change them. If, for example, you want to change policing then who can change training, policy, and recruitment? If it’s an appointed official, who are they accountable to? If it’s an elected official, who constitutes the base of their constituency? These are the folks we need to be targeting. Power mapping reminds us that it’s the big fish that we are after, but it also tells us that sometimes the way to get to them is through little fish.
