At Sunday's Occupy Metro Detroit meeting, we had an inconclusive discussion about how much personal information should be shared with others in the group. The occasion for this discussion was the question of putting one's name, address, phone # and e-mail on a spreadsheet to be shared. Of course, anyone could choose to put only as much information as they cared to share. some chose none. Some chose only name and e-mail. Others went for the full Monte.
At one extreme is the attitude that it's all public information anyway. If you are at an Occupy meeting and some government agency wants to know who you are, they will soon have all the information listed above, and more, whether we like it or not. Therefore, by not circulating the same information among ourselves, we are only hampering communications within our own group.
At the other extreme is the attitude of wanting to control the information about us that others have. Thus, a few trusted people may have everything including a home address; others, only a phone # plus e-mail. We might want the group organizer to have only an e-mail address, with the understanding it is not to be circulated and that mass e-mails be sent by way of the "BCC" line.
That is, some people are nervous about a list with their name on it, saying they attended a given meeting or are a member of the group. They think there may be negative consequences at work or with friends and neighbors, if it becomes known. And it is all too easy to copy an electronic list.
Here's a fact about participating in a political group: In order to show up on a street corner holding a protest sign or handing out leaflets, you have to be in a public place. People can and will take pictures. If any authorities from local police to Homeland Security are interested in identifying you, they probably will.
You can't put a sign on your lawn or a bumper sticker on your car without people noticing. You can't honestly talk about a political issue without revealing to friends and family which side you are on. The only way you can keep this sort of thing a secret is to take a completely passive approach toward political issues.
If you were a passive person, you would not be at an Occupy meeting, or any other kind of political gathering. Participating straightforwardly in small-d democratic actions requires each one of us to take a public stand. We are in fact exposing ourselves to potential allies and potential opponents.
In theory, we do not do this in a voting booth. Ballots are supposed to be secret, though many of us doubt that they are. Many of us also doubt that they are counted accurately - but that's another discussion entirely.
Being any sort of political activist requires each one of us to come out of the closet, so to speak. We put signs in our yards, bumper stickers on our cars, buttons on our shirts, political hats on our heads and on occasion, put our bodies on the line. We act in public.
There will be opposition. We can't control how violent that opposition might get. We can only control how violent or non-violent we will be. The political issues of equality and democracy are serious. As we get closer to winning, we can expect some degree of violence directed our way. At least, that was true of the abolition movement, of the labor movement, of the civil rights movement, of the anti-war movement and every other serious attempt to extend and defend human rights.
Of course, this does not mean we will be personally safe from violence if we simply refrain from political activity. Any day's news coverage shows how impossible it is to be safe from violence. A ten-year old sleeping in bed at home can be shot in the head, and has been.
The point is, we are in a real political struggle to see if our government will be controlled by corporations or by human beings, and we are not going to be finished by, for instance, this fall's election. We are going to be dealing with issues of inequality, injustice and a failing economy for the foreseeable future.
Governments at every level (federal, city, state, school district, etc.) can be used to alleviate the impact of crises, to help us adjust to a failing economy. They can be used to prop up the institutions which caused the crisis by forcing austerity programs on the rest of us. Which way this goes is determined by who controls those governments.
In this context, isn't it a little silly to worry about getting a few more scam e-mails or annoying phone calls if a list with your name and number on it is copied by the wrong people? That sort of thing is a reasonable concern for an internet group that discusses model trains. If the group can't or won't keep your information private, then the consequences of dropping out of the group are very small.
Our only real choice is between participating in the public arena or letting our opponents win. Considering the stakes, the consequences of letting the wealthy and powerful do as they please, we are going to have to take public stands for quite a while.
Maybe a few super-genius hackers can participate anonymously. For the rest of us, anonymous is not a realistic option, even if we put on a Guy Fawkes mask now and then.
Art Myatt
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