One of my favorite fishing experiences took place after the fishing was done. My younger son, Sebastien, had invited his friend, Tejas, to stay with us for a long weekend and they wanted to go surf fishing in the morning. The romantic mist that had surrounded the house as we left at dawn turned into a blowing drizzle when we got to the beach. The surf was up, with large breakers slamming down on the beach and drenching from below any part of our bodies that were not getting wet from above. My son’s friend had never fished before, but Sebastien taught him the basics of spin fishing and in no time Tejas was casting his lure out past where the waves were breaking and into the calm where the striped bass were lurking. Or should be lurking. Or perhaps were lurking but definitely not biting. We stayed on the beach, casting out and reeling in, without a bite, getting wet and getting cold for about an hour and a half then packed it in. On the way home, we stopped for breakfast at a local diner and each of us ordered the “Breaker,” a local take on the classic egg and bacon sandwich with linguica sausage, scrambled eggs, and American cheese on a grilled Portuguese sweet roll. We sat there for another hour and a half drying out, drinking coffee and tea and eating our heart-attack-on-a-bun, recounting our recent fishing experience, our bad luck, and the strike that turned out to be a clump of seaweed. We talked about summer plans and worries about the new schools they would be attending in the fall. We laughed a lot. By the end of our breakfast, despite the cold and the wet and the absolute lack of fish, Tejas was talking about the next time he might go fishing.
One of the most important parts of activism is what happens after the action. The planning is over, the action has occurred, and now it’s time to make sense of it all. Many of my action debriefs have happened in dark bars, as we let go of our pent-up anxieties into glasses of beer, but the one I recall most vividly (perhaps because of the lack of alcohol) took place in the brilliant sunshine in the courtyard of a community center in the Jamestown neighborhood of Accra, Ghana. We had just finished an action drawing attention to governmental corruption, and the group of young artistic activists from across West Africa gathered themselves in a big circle. First, we recounted some of the highlights: the kids who spontaneously got involved, the grumpy market woman who ended up staying to watch, the necessity of ad-libbing when we realized that one component of the performance just wasn’t going to work. But soon the group settled down to the business of the debrief. Everyone went around and gave a short statement of what they observed. Then they went around and talked about what they felt. After these insights, the activists began their analysis: What worked? What didn’t? What surprised us? Finally, they were ready to address the all-important question: Knowing what we know now, what could we do better? It’s fun to get together after the action and relive the glory moments, but the debrief is also a serious business. It’s through critical reflection that we become better activists, next time.