I was out fishing early this morning on the Christopher Street Pier. It was a misty, colder morning, the first real sign of the winter that was coming, and I was fishing for tautog (blackfish) with a simple sinker slider rig with a piece of shrimp for bait. After a few minutes one of the elderly Chinese men who frequently fish the pier showed up with his multiple rods. Recognizing that I was encroaching on his usual space, I nodded in his direction and moved over to give him room at the railing. Then we stood, 15 feet apart, watching our propped-up poles for the telltale dip that meant a fish was nibbling. Neither of us were having much luck, but I was having a little more luck than him and so he walked over and asked me what bait I was using. I told him it was shrimp and went into an overly detailed story about being out of other bait and then discovering the shrimp in a leftover bag in the bottom of my freezer and so on, but given his limited understanding of English, and my absolute ignorance of Chinese, I think I lost him. We stood apart again, both watching our poles. Then, a bit later, after I was done baiting up my stripped hook, I walked over and gave him a few frozen shrimp. He nodded his thanks, and we both went back to our fishing. The mist had turned into a steady drizzle and we were both standing back from our rods taking advantage of the cover of the pavilion that stands at the end of the pier. Periodically I would run out to my rod and check the line to feel for nibbling. After the third or fourth time, he came over to me with a little device: a clip with two bells on springs that attached to the tip of my pole and tinkled if a fish was on the line. I nodded my thanks, and we both went back to fishing. By 8 am I was cold and it was time to go to work so I wound up my bait, broke apart my rod, packed up my gear, and headed over to the old man to hand him back his bell. He smiled and gestured that it was mine to keep. We both nodded at one another. This was a poignant, but not isolated case of human connection. Lately, in these days of divisiveness, most of my cross-class, many of my cross-ethnicity, and nearly all of my cross-political exchanges have taken place while fishing or discussing fishing.
The Acts in The Bible should be up there with Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals as required reading for every activist. As much as I despise the Apostle Paul for what he did to Jesus’s teachings in turning love and forgiveness into rules and intolerance, I have to admire his skill as an organizer, turning a ragtag bunch of rebels into the nascent Christian Church. Here he is dispensing invaluable activist advice in 1 Corinthians:
Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews….To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.
Sure, Paul may be a shameless opportunist, but he also understands that in order to reach people, to connect with people, and to convert people you need to be able to meet them where they are. Too often activists don’t do this. We insist on meeting people where we are, or where we would already like them to be. This may work amongst the already converted, but to bring about broad social change we need to connect with those who don’t know, don’t care, or don’t agree with us (aka the infidels). To create these connections requires recognizing and nurturing commonalities. This doesn’t mean pretending to be who you are not, it means finding what we share with others: being a mother, a son, or a devoted partner; an avid gardener, lover of romantic comedies, a pop music fan, or, yes, a fisherman, and starting there.