Tikkun Magazine, March/April 2010
POLITICS/SOCIETY
The Activist’s Dilemma: Reform or Radical Change
by Allen D. Kanner
The New York Times front-page headline on October 24, 2009, read: "No Einstein in Your Crib? Get a Refund." The article described how public health lawyers threatened a class action suit against Disney in 2009 for falsely advertising its Baby Einstein videos as educational. In response, Disney is offering a refund on the videos. The New York Times called the refund "a tacit admission that [the videos] did not increase intellect." Baby Einstein, which generates $200 million annually, is itself part of a much larger marketing industry that routinely claims, without supporting evidence, that its toys, games, and videos enhance young children's cognitive development.
The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, of which I am a steering committee member, was responsible for exposing the Disney scam. This was easily our most successful action to date. Yet after an initial surge of enormously positive news coverage, we braced ourselves for a predictable response that we knew was on the way. Three days later it came when Whoopi Goldberg, on the popular ABC television show The View, took our campaign to task, saying, "I'm sick of people telling me what to eat, what to watch, who to be," and was interrupted by enthusiastic applause. Disney owns ABC. On its website, Disney posted a letter to parents who were seeking the refund, telling them, "Baby Einstein has been under attack by propaganda groups taking extreme positions that try to dictate what parents should do, say, and buy." Angry letters and emails began arriving, expressing similar sentiments.
Of course, there is a great deal of difference between informing parents of a scam and dictating to them how to raise their children. But when the advertising industry accuses us of being "nannies," it brings up a recurring dilemma of mine. It reminds me that as a member of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, I have chosen the path of reform, not radical change. Reformers work within the system to alter it, and therefore routinely advocate for stricter laws and regulations and more effective government enforcement.
Yet, over the years I have devoted much time to getting the government off of people's backs, be it in regard to censorship, immigration, marijuana, the draft, privacy -- the list goes on and on. Ironically, when it comes to fighting rich and savvy corporations that are exploiting children, as a reformer I turn to the one entity that has some power to stop them, the government. This means more rules and regulations. The rebel within me squirms.
The question of whether major social change is best accomplished through incremental reform or radical action is an old one, but still pressingly relevant. For example, environmental and social activist Van Jones has proposed that the government solve our current economic crisis by subsidizing a "green-collar economy." Large numbers of poor and working class people could be employed to massively overhaul the nation's infrastructure so as to make it environmentally sound. In his book The Green Collar Economy, Jones anticipated that his plan would be criticized for leaving the root of the problem, the market economy, intact. He thought such a radical perspective was "justifiable -- but foolish," and instead suggested we follow the lead of early civil rights activists, whose success was built on incremental change.
In contrast, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, which I also admire, sees the more moderate approach as futile. Specifically, after extensively studying the history of corporations and corporate law, its members concluded that environmental regulations were a trap, since their very existence grants corporations the right to pollute. A more drastic approach requiring fundamental structural changes in corporate and constitutional law was needed. To this end, the legal defense fund has helped communities draft legislation that strips corporations of their right to pollute, as well as many other rights. Based on this legislation, communities have passed local laws that directly contradict Supreme Court rulings. The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund also officially consulted last year with Ecuador as the country approved a new constitution that recognizes the rights of ecosystems to "exist, persist, regenerate, and evolve." In Ecuador, nature is no longer merely property. But treating nature as property is essential to capitalism.
On the personal level, our reasons for adopting a radical or reformist position are worth examining. With its heroic image, the radical stance plays to the ego. It also provides seductive opportunities for venting anger, even when this puts people off. The reformist position is prone to a fear-driven mentality that loses sight of how compromised it can become and therefore misses opportunities for effective, bold action. These individual issues cloud our judgment as to whether, in any given situation, the more modest or far-reaching approach will be most productive.
In my own work, I often choose to speak of global marketing to children as a symptom of capitalism, a system I see as fatally flawed, and as yet another sign that our species is in profound practical and spiritual trouble. By raising these broader issues I risk putting off many who would otherwise be sympathetic to the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood's crucial message. But the larger context looms. Do I remain silent?
Allen D. Kanner, Ph.D., is a co-founder of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (www.commercialfreechildhood.org), co-editor of Psychology and Consumer Culture and Ecopsychology, and a Berkeley, California, child, family, and adult psychologist.
Kanner, Allen D. 2010. The Activist’s Dilemma: Reform or Radical Change. Tikkun 25(2):13 http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/mar2010kanner
