Like all anglers, I have my favorite spots to fish. There’s a semi-submerged log that juts out into my nearby kettle pond where I have stashed a long stick to help me keep my balance while I navigate my way out to the end. About twenty-five yards to the right of the path through the dunes that leads down to my local beach is my favorite spot to go surf fishing. These are places where I have spent a lot of time fishing and — if I’m lucky — catch a lot of fish. But, like most anglers, I always have an eye out for new spots: the cut I noticed in the sandbar about 500 yards up the beach, or the overhanging trees on the opposite side of the pond that seem like a shady, cool place for bass to hang out in the heat of the day. Every once in a while, I leave the safety and comfort of my usual haunts and try out one of these new spots. Sometimes for an hour, sometimes for an afternoon. If nothing is biting, then I’ll go back to my old spot, nothing lost but an hour or an afternoon. If I do catch fish, however, then I’ve found what might become a new favorite spot.
There are activist tactics that have always worked. One of my first activist jobs was for an outfit called Mobilization for Survival, an offshoot of the Vietnam War-era MOBE. The organization was known and respected for their logistical abilities in pulling off mass marches in the US capital. Such demonstrations had been a mainstay of protest since the Civil Rights and Anti-War Movements, and the annual March on Washington was a tried and true formula to draw attention to an issue and flex a little political muscle. But by the time I had joined “the movement” in the 1980s they were also getting a bit tired and stale, marches were still working, but with diminishing returns. Looking around I saw (and participated in) other, newer, modes of activism: ACT-UP’s media zaps and the street protest cum rave parties of Reclaim the Streets. I went on to train activists in other forms of “artistic” activism: comic street performances and eye-catching visual spectacles. These new types of activism seemed to work better, garner more media attention, and were certainly more fun than those tired and tiring marches. But there were plenty of new tactics I tried that didn’t work so well (I’ve come to despise flash mobs). What mattered was that I — and hundreds of thousands of other activists — were willing to try new tactics in new settings. Without this willingness to explore, the public square occupations that swept the globe in 2011, from Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street, would never have happened. But looking ahead to what may be an unprecedented refusal of a US president to concede a lost election, and the protests that are sure to ensue, I’m reminded that old favorites like mass marches on the capital can still deliver the goods.