Re: Quebec wall down!

The problem here is in the question. The role of academics in relation to 
activism is not one of advice, but one of solidarity. Academics who preach 
change without taking part in activism are irrelevant, while activists who 
try to change things without an ultimate goal of changing society are 
futile. Both groups need to work together on the same struggles to 
accomplish real and meaningful change in solidarity.

A good example of this is the campaign for workers rights at the University 
of Tennessee-Knoxville. There students, workers, community members, unions, 
and university professors have come together to actively work for improved 
working conditions at the university. Each group adds its strengths to the 
campaign. The campaign would be unsuccessful without the involvement of the 
activists, and would be much more difficult without the involvement of the 
academics. When both activists and academics come together in a common 
cause, the campaign is much stronger for it.

Finally, activists have a lot more concerns and room for dialogue between 
themselves and academics than how to scale a wall or get a fax machine. Many 
activists, particularly student activists, are new to activism and do not 
have a clear vision of how to change society. Partially because of the void 
of leadership from many communities, many of the students have turned to a 
form of anarchism, which is destructive to any kind of sustained movement 
anywhere (my personal opinion here). One place where academics could really 
help out the movement is to engage their student activists and guide them on 
a road to a politics that would give them a vision of how to change the 
world for the better. I think World Systems Theorists are in a much better 
position to do this than almost any other academics.

Erik Loomis


>From: "g kohler" <gkohler@accglobal.net>
>To: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
>Subject: Re: Quebec wall down!
>Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2001 17:58:02 -0400
>
>jon wrote:
>
>I don't see how these
> > protests can be divorced from "scholarly" world systems discourse and
> > analysis.  It seems to me that they make up an integral (and equally
> > compelling--for those concerned with analysis) part of the larger and
> > ongoing discourse within the world system.
> >
>I am in favour of such dialogue between egg heads and egg throwers. Being
>more at home with academia than with activism, I am wondering what kinds of
>questions do activists have for which they would like to have some
>elucidation from academics? For example, the question how to scale a fence
>in the presence of tear gas is a question that an academic cannot answer.
>But what else would an activist want to know? Perhaps, if you are a Third
>World activist, your question may be: How can I get a computer or fax
>machine to better organize my local activities? That is another important
>question, but one that an academic cannot answer. Therefore, my question:
>What would be an activist's question that an academic of the world(-)system
>school should answer and has not answered yet? (This is not a rhetorical
>question. I would really like to know what the major "need to know" is on
>the part of activists, assuming that some activists and some academics 
>share
>a common hope for the future.)
>Gert
>

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