Words of wisdom from Mike McCloskey

I just got back from hearing the venerable Michael McCloskey give a brief talk promoting his recently published memoirs, In the Thick of It. McCloskey was our second Executive Director and, in one capacity or another, has basically spent four decades at the forefront of the movement. He is the only person I can think for whom "venerable" seems the most appropriate adjective. A real class act...

During question and answer time, he was asked what advice he had for the next generation of activists. In response, he said that, when he was getting involved, he was taught the following three rules of lobbying:

1. Know what it is exactly that you want

2. Identify where the power to give it to you resides

3. Tailor-make your strategy to each case

McCloskey feels that this third rule, in particular, has been lost in recent years. We have a tendency, he suggested, to focus a lot on numbers now -- how many doors did you knock on, how many tabling events, how many media hits, etc. In his time, they measured themselves by one standard: did we win?

In contrast to this, another famous enviro was arguing on a listserv yesterday that the Sierra Club should maintain a strict policy stance that we aren't going to make headway on and is actually hurting some of our other efforts because "lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for."

That sounds great and all, but I think it has a lot to do with the numbers game that McCloskey objects to. Think about the radical socialist groups from the college you went to. What did they spend all their time doing? Handing out newspapers, right? It doesn't really matter when you went to college. ALL radical socialist groups hand out newspapers, because the revolution isn't coming any time soon, but at least they can educate people. There is something to be said for this. In the long-term, educating people IS important, and having short-term indicators of success is a good way of getting some grasp of your impact.

But, the thing is, if the newspapers didn't work in 1998, and they didn't work in 2002, why are they going to work in 2006? This, in my view, is a crucial reason why the American Right keeps winning over the American Left. Karl Rove may be evil, but he's VERY GOOD at what he does. And that third lesson is what he does. He tailor-makes strategies to win victories. Meanwhile, we hold mostly the same tabling events and press conferences we always have. "Hey, let's have another march, that worked once."

Hearing from McCloskey was inspirational, and I heartily recommend his book to any of the progressive-types who read this. He is one of the true elder statesmen of the movement, and it seems that his greatest message to us is, "know what you're trying to get, then be creative in figuring out how to get it." Words to live by...

cravings and other updates

I've been craving two things for the past couple of days:

Spare ribs and Tenley.

Independent of one another, come on people...

I have a decent explanation for the one. Having been pretty lazy for the past year or so, I started exercising in earnest this week, and along with that made some changes to my diet. I think I probably haven't been getting enough protein. Give me another month and a half and I'll be in shape, I mean it.

As for the other, I really don't know. Last night at the bar, I even had to hand my cell over to Dave Faris. I will not, I repeat, NOT start drunk dialing again. [As an aside, it has been verified that, somehow or another, I manage to be uniformly endearing when I drink and dial. It's a gift.] Made it through the bulk of today just fine, but as night set in, there it was.

Understand, this isn't pining. I don't want to get back together with her. I honestly mean it when I say we're done. But regardless, I can't shake it. I keep seeing reminders of little things and, frankly, it's starting to piss me off.

In other news, I've "found" some great music recently. I've been listening to a lot of Whiskeytown, Old Crow Medicine Show, and Iron & Wine. Yes, I realize that everyone else knew about these bands 2 years ago. But no one ever tells me anything.

Oh, and I lost my entire online bankroll in the past two weeks. It happens. I've decided to start small and slowly rebuild. This is definitely one of those times I'm glad I didn't decide to make it a full-time profession.

That's pretty much all the news. Oh, the MCSEA reunion was great, thanks to everyone who made the trip...

MCSEA anniversary/some old nicknames

Sometimes you just know it’s going to be a good day.

I was in a meeting all day today. Governance Committee reports. Usually that’s not exactly a good sign. But today is special. Today is different. Today is an anniversary.

Ten years ago today, I was in another meeting. Ten years ago today, around 15 high school students gathered at my parents’ place. Ten years ago today was the first meeting of Montgomery County Student Environmental Activists.

There are two things I’ve done in my life that I am really, truly proud of. MCSEA was the first. Neither of them could have been accomplished alone, and the community of incredible friends I encountered is part of what I take pride in. During the year and a half that I headed MCSEA, we protected wild places, killed highways, made the air in Maryland substantially cleaner, and generally demonstrated that political power belongs to those who TAKE it. Along the way, all of our lives were changed, at least I know mine was.

Incidentally, the other accomplishment I’m proud of is developing the SSC’s training department, which relied on lessons learned through MCSEA and stories told about MCSEA to teach and inspire other young people to start their own MCSEAs (my favorite was always the group Emily Cikanek wanted to start in Chicago, which would have been named “Chick-see-ah.” Awesome.). In a very real way, I am a Board member of the most influential environmental group in the country as a direct result of that meeting ten years ago.

So my point is, it’s a good day to be alive. I’ve been slipping out of the meeting now and then to call old friends and wish them a happy anniversary. That’s been fun too. Next weekend will be the 10-year reunion. That will be a ridiculous-good time.

To mark the occasion, I’m starting a new blog where I’ll record the story of MCSEA: mcseastory.blogspot.com. It ought to be of interest to Sierra Student Coalition-types, and it will be a good repository of the teaching-stories I’ve used over the years. I’ve written an outline at this point, but it will probably take six months to actually get it all written down. There’s a LOT to say.

And because this is a day of celebration, I thought it might be entertaining to list some of the nicknames I’ve earned during my ten years in the environmental movement:

1.Davo: this is the correct spelling. Dave-o is incorrect and a punishable offense. I don’t know how this started, but it’s been by far the most endearing. The funny thing is that it’s role-specific. MCSEAns and SSCers always call me Davo when we’re talking about environmental or organizational matters. But if we’re just shooting the shit, somehow I revert back to just Dave. I’ve always thought there was something particularly cool about that.

2.Mugwump: The best, the crowning achievement-nickname. When we started MCSEA, I was the “chair.” We also had an executive committee, and after a little less than a year, we agreed that the excom should have its own chair. So what should we call my position? Briony looked up “leader” in the thesaurus and, along with all the usual suspects, there was “primate” and “mugwump.” Now, understand, back in high school I had long hair and a shaggy beard. People regularly mistook me for a certain lord-and-savior. So I immediately made it clear that they were NOT calling me primate. Everyone got grins on their faces and I knew what they were thinking. “Here’s the thing, guys: when we go lobby our state senator, I’m not gonna say, ‘I’m Dave Karpf, and I’m the mugwump of MCSEA.’” So I became Executive Director and everyone started calling me mugwump.

On a related note, 6 months later a bunch of us were watching “Naked Lunch” after one of our meetings. The group included me and my high school girlfriend. If you haven’t seen this movie, I don’t recommend it. It’s about as twisted and confusing as a film can get, and it doesn’t have any of the redeeming qualities of the book, as far as I know. Anyway, you’re introduced early in the film to a weird typewriter/alien creature called a mugwump. Weird. And when you type on it, a weird liquid oozes out of its antennae, and this liquid is a strong hallucinogen. Weirder. This leads up to the moment, late in the film, where one character says to another, “yeah, nothing beats mugwump jism.” Everyone fell silent, slowly turned around, and stared at me and my girlfriend. I didn’t know either of us could turn that shade of red. The end.

3.The Tool: This is a short story. At the 1997 Vermont summer training program, Sage Rockermann and I were in charge of giving the “intro to the SSC” talk. This was on Thursday night and everyone was exhausted. In retrospect, not the best time to go over an org chart. Anyway, Sage has explained most of it, and I’m noticing this glazed look in peoples’ eyes, so I break in and say, “look, you all came here because you want to make a difference for the planet. And everything you’re learning this week, the campaigning and media and all… it’s like you’re developing a toolbox you can use back home. And all of this structure, the whole SSC, are just more tools for your toolbox.” Sage was standing a little behind me and, like it was planned, added in, “I don’t know about you, Dave, but I’m nobody’s tool.” A bunch of punkass MCSEAns were in the audience. That nickname followed me around at conferences for two years. Jerks.

4.Oldcore: The point of this story is that SSCers are mean. It was the 1999 Virginia summer training, I was director at this point, and all of 20 years old. These are high school trainings, so that’s still ancient you know. All week, people keep using the word “hardcore.” “That’s hardcore man, right on,” all over the place. And just once, I use the term. One of the MCSEAns, can’t remember who, pipes in, “Dave, man, you can’t say hardcore… you’re oldcore.” I was 20. By the time I was 22, this had become “ancientcore.” And when I graduated college, Tom Hale said that I was “pre-school.” As in, there’s new school, old school, and Dave. Dave is from before there WAS school.

5. Dave Karpfffffff: I’ve never understood this, and I’ll send a check to anyone who can explain why it’s so funny. My last name has a silent “f” at the end of it. It’s pronounced “carp,” like the fish. The folks at envirocitizen always loved to call me “Dave Karpffffff” and got a huge kick out of it. More disturbing is I was later told that they even did it while I wasn’t around. Why is this funny? Better, I’ve always thought, was the time both I and John Kamp attended a conference (Kamp took over as SSC Trainings Director after me) and, knowing that the SSC trainings guy had a silent f at the end of his name, our nametags read “Dave Karp” and “John Kampf.”

"So how have you changed?"

I've been thinking a lot about lost connections recently. This Thursday will be the 10-year anniversary of MCSEA's first meeting, and with a reunion planned for next weekend, I've been spending time tracking people down for the event. That's gotten me thinking about all the other people who mean the world to me, and yet, somehow, I haven't spoken to in 2 or 3 years.

One thing I've decided is that the standard question, "so what have you been up to?" just isn't good enough. I don't want to know what's been happening *to* the people that matter to me, so much as I want to know how they've *been.* New hobbies and exciting jobs are the things you tell someone about on a first date, they don't really mean as much for long-lost friendships. A better question, the one I think I'm going to start asking, is "So how have you changed?" I haven't seen you in 1, 2, maybe 8 years. We used to be close, we used to really *know* each other. More than how you like your job and your new relationship, what I wonder is how the time has affected you, how you've grown, and what you think of it all.

Too deep? I hope not. This isn't the type of thing I'd ask of an old acquaintance, anyway. It seems to me that it was easier to develop strong connections with people when I was younger. I think this may be a general fact of life, rather than one of my particular neuroses. If you can't talk like this with your old, close friends, can you with anyone?

So that has me wondering, how have I changed since MCSEA? Sad to say, but I think a lot of the changes have been for the worse. Looking back on my MCSEA days, what strikes me most was the depth of my commitment. I believed in protecting the Wild and I believed it down through my marrow. That gave me stronger convictions than I have today. It gave me a ridiculous work ethic which I only wish I could still manage (~30 hrs/week on the organization, plus school, music, and the occasional bout of homework).

It's not that I lack those convictions today, but as I've learned more about politics, I've become less of a radical and more of a pragmatist. Years of studying leadership development and organizing have left me wondering if real fundamental change is even possible, and it's left me bitter about a lot of elements of the movement. We have justice on our side, but the opposition doesn't just win because they're better funded -- sometimes they also play a lot smarter than we do. And, of course, a couple of SSC-related calamities shook me to the core. When you put yourself completely into any one thing, you rely on that thing for your self-worth. The struggle over me becoming national director hurt, maybe more than any other single event in my life (Tenley included). And after the Trainings position didn't work out, I couldn't help but withdraw a bit.

There are some nice changes too. As great as MCSEA was, there were a lot of leadership skills that I, um, substantially lacked. I've gotten better with many of those things, and I've developed a lot of skills that are useful on the Board and elsewhere. And I'm a more well-rounded person than I used to be. Between Sierra, academia, swing, and poker, I live in so many different worlds -- and play such distinctly different roles -- that it can be difficult to keep track. Being well-rounded means, by definition, that you don't possess a singular, driving devotion. Whether that change is a good thing or a bad thing... well, I guess it depends on who you ask.

Oh, and one way that I haven't changed at all: I'm still just as awkward around girls as I ever was. Most of the time, at least. Maybe by the time the 20th reunion comes around, I will have figured that out...