When I get a new lure, I like to test it out in shallow, clear water. I study how it moves: what happens when I reel in fast or reel in slow, the motions it makes when I jerk it and then let it rest. Sometimes I just like to see how it falls through the water on its way to the bottom. Certain rubber worms, Gary Yamamoto’s for instance, do a wiggle on the way down that the bass in my local kettle pond seem to find irresistible. But I don’t expect to catch fish when I’m testing out a lure, in fact, the expectation that I might catch fish gets in the way of the testing. In search of a bite, I’ll find myself casting out to a spot far out in the pond where I just saw a fish rise and where I have no hope of seeing how my lure is performing. The same holds for testing new (or in my case, usually very old) rods and reels. It takes time to understand the particularities of tackle and adapt your techniques in order to use the rod and reel to its best advantage. Rushing into the business of catching fish, in my experience, often results in bad casts, snarled lines, parts lost in the water, and missed fish. Most of all, it results in a lot of frustration. Once I’ve tested out my tackle, understand how it works, and know what it’s good for and what it’s not, only then I am ready to catch fish.
Too often, activists don’t test out their tactics. At best, we plan the logistics and map out the scenario for weeks or even months, hold endless meetings to decide what words go into the pamphlet and how confrontational to be with the police, and then we leave our meeting spaces for the streets and hold our protest. At worst we do almost no planning and go out to do it anyway. Either way, the action takes place at the end of the process and happens only once. It shouldn’t be this way. A year or so ago, I came across a photo series shot for Life magazine of student Civil Rights activists training for lunch counter sit-ins in the early 1960s. In one picture, a fellow student blows smoke straight into another’s face as she sits impassively at a mock lunch counter. In another, a would-be activist has hot coffee spilled on them. What these young activists were doing was as obvious as it was brilliant: they were practicing for what was going to happen when they sat down at a Whites-only lunch counter, and then testing their responses. Training activists today, I encourage this sort of practicing and testing. We ask people to rehearse their actions in front of a public — even if that “public” is only family and friends — when nothing is at stake. Testing out the action in this way prepares the activists for how they might react, and also provides a sense of how an audience might respond, both of which help them refine their technique. Only having tested our activism in the shallows are we then ready to move into deeper waters.