Sometimes you have to fish when it’s windy, and when the wind is up it’s best to cast with it rather than against it. Obviously. But sometimes you don’t have a choice, like with surfcasting for instance, where if the wind is blowing in from the water you either cast into the wind or you go home. Casting into the wind, however, isn’t impossible, you just need to use heavier lures and reconcile yourself to the fact that you will not be able to cast as far and will spend a fair amount of your fishing time picking wind knots out of your line. But there’s another way to deal with the wind. While you can’t change the force and direction of the wind, you can change your positioning. If you are fishing a stream, simply hop to the other side, or fish upstream as opposed to downstream. It may take a bit more time to get downwind when fishing on a pond or lake, but it’s often doable with a nice walk through the woods. Situated where I am on Cape Cod at its narrowest point, if the wind is blowing the wrong way on the ocean side I can take a short jaunt to the bay where it’s blowing the right way, or vice versa. When I can find a way to work with the wind, fishing is a lot easier: my line snarls less and I can cast much further, and this means catching more fish.
As an activist the wind is often against you: the other side often has more power, money, resources, and an entrenched tradition that we do not. It’s still possible to win victories, but it’s always a struggle. It’s better to find a way to work with the wind. Favianna Rodriquez, an experienced artistic activist who believes the way to change society is through shifting the culture, once explained to me that why she’s such an avid news reader, social media follower, and popular culture fan is because this allows her gauge which way the wind is blowing and tailor and time her interventions accordingly. It’s in this vein the radical playwright Bertolt Brecht opined,
I believe that an artist, even if he sits in strictest seclusion in the traditional garret working for future generations, is unlikely to produce anything without some wind in his sails. And this wind has to be the wind prevailing in his own period, and not some future wind. There is nothing to say that this wind must be used for travel in any particular direction (once one has a wind one can naturally sail against it; the only impossibility is to sail with no wind at all or with tomorrow’s wind).
Brecht’s advice was meant for artists, but it works for activists as well. Activism is always easier with wind in your sails. Understanding which way the wind is blowing and working with it doesn’t mean letting it take you wherever it will, it means maneuvering your activism so you can use it to your advantage.