COLUMN: If they’re selling cookies, buy ’em
There was something spineless and oddly second-rate about the manner in which affirmative action supporters chose to counter the College Republicans’ brassy bake sale last month.
While campus conservatives resorted to tactless theatrics to make their point about “a color-conscious program that harms America,” liberals and progressives threw their hands up in the air, cried bloody murder and fell back on vituperation. Propriety became a bone of contention.
For those who missed the high-profile stunt, here’s a quick recap: Affirmative action opponents, on Dec. 2, set out to ruffle a few left-wing feathers by organizing what has become a clichéd bit of drama since it was first introduced by Republicans at the University of California’s Los Angeles campus early last year.
In keeping with the Bruin Republicans’ gimmick, the Utah State University group held a bake sale in which whites were charged a whopping $2 per cookie; minorities paid small change, with African-American women being charged only 25 cents per piece.
The pricing scheme didn’t go down well with multicultural student groups, representing about 5 percent of the student body.
“People are coming out of the woodwork to me saying how offended they were,” griped Braden Jenkins, co-president of Academic Scholars, a program for multicultural students.
But, um, causing a stir was precisely the point.
And that’s what campus liberals failed to grasp, thereby missing an opportunity to return the salvo.
Here’s what I would have recommended: A spontaneous parallel fundraiser to benefit affirmative action programs. This would have most definitely attracted a good bit of spare change on a college campus, where most ordinary folk tend to appreciate and abide by liberal values even if they don’t openly champion liberal causes.
That money could then have been used to buy out the Republican cookies with some help from a few willing African-American volunteers.
Essentially, liberals could have called the conservative bluff – intelligently and effectively.
But they didn’t, and that causes me to wonder: Have we on the political left forgotten our iconoclastic roots? Have we been scared into abandoning the vigorous progressive dramatics of the 1960s in favor of sanitized newspaper editorials, petitions and other forms of white-collar activism?
If energetic liberalism is dead, then we ought to revive it. If we don’t, then we risk having our own methods employed against us by right-wing groups with parochial agendas.
In a way, the Republicans’ cookie politics should serve as a wake-up call. Bad manners aside, the sale was a masterstroke. The stunt was obviously effective in grabbing media attention and making a political point, albeit in a crude way. Campus liberals would do well to take note.
I’m calling for a return to guerrilla theater – brief humorous acts designed to shock the conscience. We need to revisit our leftist roots in order to reclaim our effectiveness in bringing about sweeping social change.
Similar groups known for their in-your-face style currently exist at universities across the country. We would do well to form strategic alliances with these organizations, tapping into a fountainhead of innovative ideas and resources.
In essence, we need to approach the issues of our time with stubborn hardheadedness. White-collar activism can only go so far. We need to add a revolutionary component to our methods.
I’m not advocating a return to the drug-induced euphoria of earlier movements, bur rather a more calculated and innovative approach to protest that borrows from what the late radical Abbie Hoffman (of “Steal this Movie” fame) called “monkey warfare” – clever political stunts, rather than petitions and pleas.
That said, let’s not set out to levitate the Pentagon.
We stand to gain if we keep it sharp and simple.
Leon D’Souza is a senior majoring in journalism. Comments can be sent to leon@cc.usu.edu