It sounds obvious, but it’s something I had to learn. Fish where the fish are, not where they aren’t. When I took up fishing again, the running joke in my family was that I was the world’s worst fisherman. I enjoyed the time by myself, I appreciated the nature all around me, but I caught nothing, day after day. Then one day, as I was fishing my favorite jetty on the bay side of the Outer Cape, the schoolies — young striped bass — showed up. Overnight, I went from the worst fisherman to hauling in fish after fish. I was using the same gear (an old 8 ft Conolon rod and Mitchell 302 reel with new Stren 20 lb mono) and lures (a 5 inch Savage Gear sandeel), and casting and retrieving the same, but now I was catching fish. What changed? The fish. They were where I happened to be fishing. But if I wanted to catch them in the future, I would need to go to where they were.
An activist needs to go where people are. One of my first jobs as an activist was helping to organize large rallies in Washington DC, usually on weekends, when it was easy for other activists to get here. We’d march for hours amongst the government buildings for the benefit of ourselves and the few (and over time, less and less) TV cameras that showed up, but the city was largely empty. It was like we were protesting in a ghost town. Where were the people? At shopping malls or sporting events, laundromats and farmers markets, bars or movie theatres, taking walks on commercial streets or through leafy parks, maybe even fishing. These are the places where activists need to go, and they need to go when the largest number of people they are trying to reach are there. Of course, the tactics used need to match the setting. A mass protest is probably not appropriate in a tranquil park, but it’s a great place to set up an interactive exhibit on the effects of climate change. But neither is going to work if no one is around to experience it.
Wonderful!