I'd have a lot more respect for activism if so much of it weren't basically reactivism.

Back in the day, the big Cause here in the Twin Cities was Honeywell. Honeywell was a local corporation (the headquarters were just a few blocks from my house) that manufactured, inter alia, cluster bombs. The Honeywell Project was determined to stop them.

Now, cluster bombs are pretty despicable. So the Project mounted demo after demo: civil disobedience, yadda egalitarian yadda. The pattern quickly became predictable: another demo, more arrests. Over the years, the Project spent tens of thousands of dollars bailing civil-disobedients out of jail. My friend Stephanie, ever the pragmatist, observed that if the Honeywell Project had used all that money to buy Honeywell stock, maybe they could actually have accomplished something.

Once a Big Name activist witch flew into town for one of the demos, and gave a public lecture the night before to psych up the non-violent troops.

We'd met several times previously, so I went up afterward to welcome her to town.

"Are you coming to the demo?" she asked eagerly.

Activism is a luxury. The demo was scheduled for 10 o' clock on a weekday morning.

"Um, no," I told her, a little amazed at the different worlds that the two of us inhabited. "I'll be at work."

The story has a happy ending, kind of. Eventually, H-well stopped making cluster bombs—but only (of course) after there was no more money in it for them.

Sigh.

Demos and actions are for beginners, the opiate of the Left. Do you know who I really respect, though?

Community gardeners. They're the ones making real change in the world.

Now that's proactivism.