By Alex Lloyd George
During your time at Brown, you were heavily involved in student activism —most famously with this suicide pills event — can you describe your thinking and approach to protest during your college days?
[During my college days] Reagan had been elected twice and there was a lot of apathy, as is often the case with politics. So we had to think of new ways to try to get students engaged in this issue. I felt that many of the traditional tactics that activists would use on campus were seen as boring and ineffective by students, so my approach — after trying all those tactics during my first few years at college — was to try to think of ways that might stimulate the students to pay attention more, so that’s really what led me to the suicide pill referendum.
Could you possibly speak to what you hoped would be the results of the suicide pills ballot?
I hoped that, number one, the university would actually stock suicide pills. I thought it be a very strong statement and really a popular response to the reality of the situation at the time, which was that we were facing suicide. At face value the referendum was for something I personally wanted. But, more important to me, was to help stop the arms race, in our small way. I was hoping that more people would become aware of the severity and gravity of the problem and would get involved in stopping it. The ultimate goal was to, hopefully, encourage more student activism.
During your time at Brown, in an event similar to the recent protest in which former NYC Police Commissioner Ray Kelly was shouted off the stage, students staged the citizen’s arrest of a CIA recruiter. Do you recall that event or could give any comment on it?
As always, I think it’s important for people to get involved. Personally I would not engage in a citizens’ arrest or try to shout down a speaker. I think it can be fair to stage a protest while someone’s speaking, but to try to stop [the speaker] from talking – that’s too much for me. However, the citizens’ arrest was a different formulation. These people thought they had a legal obligation to arrest that speaker and pay the consequences – that’s an act of civil disobedience. I certainly respect the tactic of civil disobedience when people are prepared to pay the consequences. That’s clearly a time-honored tactic and a very important part of our ability to protest. So, at the time, I took [the protesters] at their word. I understood that they felt that this tactic was warranted in that situation and that they were prepared to pay the consequences and so I supported them in that respect. I did not myself feel that was justified for me, personally, at that time.
You were quoted at the time of the suicide pills referendum as saying that because the New Curriculum makes students take responsibility for their education, it attracts the kind of students who protest and take responsibility for greater issues as well. Do you still think this is the case?
I still do. I think the New Curriculum definitely attracts the kinds of people who want to change the world. To me it makes a lot of sense that [Brown students] are trying to do things in new ways, in a sort of entrepreneurial way, which really [lead them] to think about problems beyond Brown and yourself. The ability to make classes to study problems gives students space to find different ways to solve those problems and then put their solutions into action.
After Brown you went onto be a campaign director for Greenpeace as well as work for the Natural Resources Defense Council. How would you say that the activism you pursued as a student impacted the activism you demonstrated in your career?
It really launched me into my career as an activist and writer. I became very interested in the power of the news media to effect social change and eventually [wrote] a book about how to use the media for grassroots activism, called Making the News. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go into communications when I left Brown but it was very clear I wanted to be an activist. So I started off working at the Natural Resources Defense Council — I’m sure I got the job actually there because my director there had read about the suicide pills story. I decided I didn’t want to be an environmental lawyer and after that I was lucky [enough] to get a job at Greenpeace where I could really focus, not exclusively but to a large extent, on using media to spotlight problems and inspire social change. That’s what I did for a number of years. If you follow the environmental movement, [you know that] Greenpeace essentially publicizes issues more than it is in the trenches of solving them. After five years of doing that, I became a communications consultant. It all comes back to the suicide pill referendum really.
In reference to your book, Making the News: A Guide For Activists and Nonprofits, what advice would you give to college students now such that they can maximize the effectiveness of their protests or movements?
I start from the perspective that there are many ways to contribute to social change and political activism. What’s important is to start with something that [you] feel is right for [you]. I think students in particular have a chance to experiment with new tactics and attention-grabbing campaigns that are more appropriate and even more effective coming from students. So my advice is to try to find creative and new ways to spotlight and effect social change to the greatest possible extent. That’s really where students have an advantage. They’re able to engage in creative stuff and get away with it, more so than a typical citizen group. So I really would encourage students to pursue that kind of protest.
Do you think that student activism has changed since your time at college? Do you think at least in the perception of the media that student activism might be making a comeback or might be still in decline?
My perception is that there have been waves of more activism and less activism since I left in 1986. Right now it seems there’s more interest in political activism then there was when I was there, but that’s maybe because I focus more on these things than other people. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t say that students are completely apathetic. I happened to be at Brown last month: It was an incredibly rainy day and still there were people trying to promote [cancer causes]. I was very proud of that. I think there’s always going to be apathy and it’ll come and go, so it’s always important to try to confront that [apathy] and get people involved.