One of my duties at the GSC is tabling on the West Mall to promote the Center and all of our services. While tabling yesterday, a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party came over and gave me one of his "news" papers and proceeded to give me his opinion on the war in Iraq for 10 minutes. The news paper was pretty typical stuff for a progressive activist; cheaply made, bled black ink, sprinkled with the words "war crimes" and "genocide." Oh, and you can't forget about the always present "Bush = Hitler" comparisons.

One of my problems with a lot of activists, especially those on the anti-war side, is that they try to take people to rung 6 on the ladder, when they'd probably reach a lot more people if they started at a more logical place, say the beginning or something.

It's sometimes assumed that people are not only political conscious, but have read the same things we've read. If you go up to people with flyers calling George W. Bush a war criminal, it's going to be off putting to a lot of people. It's off putting to me and I find there to be a lot of truth in that claim.

You have to start people at the beginning, which in the year 2007 means showing people how the war directly affects them in their daily life. You have to show them how it affects their wallets, how it affects their future in terms of finding jobs and living in a country with a sound economy. You have to show them how it affects people their age.

A co-worker of mine said that you have to make the idea you're selling seem like they thought of it, instead of it being shouted to them as they're trying to make your way to class. It's the first rule of salesmanship.

I also think you should look like the audience you're trying to reach. It's all good and well to be a free-spirit with long dread-lochs and a red Che Guevara shirt on, but as I said earlier, you have to begin people at square one. If you look like the audience you're trying to reach, they're going to be a lot more willing to listen to what you're trying to say. Sad, but true.

One of the great things about "The Matrix" is that the freedom fighters operated under this model. They first spoke with people about the basics, not initially revealing too much about the truths they believed in until the person was ready to hear it. Can you imagine how ludicrous it would have sounded if Morpheus had gone up to Neo, or Mr. Anderson as he was called at the time, and said, "Look, you're living in an artificial world, a world that only exists in a computer program, which you're plugged into by the way." You start at the beginning, which for most people is just planting the seed of knowledge that there is this whole other world outside of their own, and that this world deserves proper analysis and critical thinking.

my two cents for this friday