Marching to the beat of a different drum

Activism used to be all about what was wrong. Now, from executive suites to department stores, "new activists" are showing us how to get things right.

Marco Visscher and James Geary | May 2008 issue

Elena Simons, commander-in-chief of Amsterdam’s Buyer’s Army, certainly knows a media event when she organizes one. The department store raid is just one of several initiatives from her organization Bold Women, which sports some 160 members across five Dutch cities. Retailers who carry little or no organic, free-trade or animal-friendly products are periodically encouraged to do so—via some comical military manoeuvres by women in green army uniforms and pink berets.

On the Bold Women website (stoerevrouwen.nl, in Dutch), members exchange tips about socially responsible stores, brands and restaurants. After all, as it says on the site, “Women like shopping, fashion and fussing together.” That’s more important than ever, say the site’s authors, because these women, through their purchasing power, can affect their own environments and the welfare of those in other countries. “We’re eating away at the foundation of our structure,” Simons says matter-of-factly, referring to the developed world’s unbridled consumption of natural resources, “so we shouldn’t be surprised if we’re seeing that structure starting to collapse.” Simons thinks it’s high time to save the world, and her efforts to do so have earned her the moniker “Wonder Woman.”

Simons is more than a one-issue wonder, however. In her latest book, modestly titled All the World’s Major Problems and Their Solutions: Join In! (only available in Dutch, but you can read more about her work at fungagement.org), she addresses everything from poverty to war to environmental pollution. She prefers to call herself a “social inventor” who wants to “have fun with society.” She seems to be doing a good job of it. Simons once took a group of people on welfare to an upscale Dutch neighbourhood with a basketful of gifts—including flower bulbs and homemade pies—to thank the wealthy for their generous contributions to the tax system that pays benefits to welfare recipients. That, she says, was fun.

And Simons isn’t afraid to tackle serious issues with her tongue planted firmly in her cheek. In 2003, when the integration debate had reached the boiling point in the Netherlands, Simons published (in Dutch) Fun with Muslims, in which she detailed her excursions with Muslims to amusement parks and shopping malls, complete with illustrations of Barbie dressed in a headscarf and Ken sporting a beard.

In late 2004, when many people in the Netherlands were seeking revenge for the murder of Amsterdam filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Dutch-Moroccan radical Muslim, Simons enlisted St. Nicholas—the regional equivalent of Santa Claus—to surprise the Muslim community. During Friday afternoon prayers at a mosque in the town of Hilversum, St. Nicholas’ helpers filled the worshippers’ shoes with little gifts. “It made my day,” Simons remembers, “when I heard that an older Islamic gentleman said this was exactly the type of gesture they needed just then.” St. Nicholas was even invited to drink tea at the mosque with the imam.

“Social themes we get all heavy about and consider complex need a dose of happy energy,” Simons says. “Opinions and heated debates are useful for clarifying a problem, but positive action will solve it. Pleasure mobilizes people and creates an atmosphere in which problems aren’t so problematical.”

Simons may still seem extreme to some, but more conventional versions of her witty, provocative approach can be seen in filmmakers like Michael Moore (Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, Sicko) and Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me). Even comedians like Jon Stewart (The Daily Show) and Stephen Colbert (The Colbert Report), though hardly activists, deploy sarcasm and satire to make important political points.

As progressive author and radio commentator Jim Hightower says, “They realize Mister Humour is our friend. If you get people laughing, they will relax and are more willing to listen. Poets, comics and artists have always been able to communicate more effectively with the public than politicians, academics and businessmen. Humour is the key to unlock the mind.”

Humour may unlock the mind, but does it solve any problems? Not according to Kalle Lasn, founder of Adbusters, the Canada-based global network of artists and activists “who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age.” Lasn is amused by the new activists, but not inspired. “If all we do is make fun, we’re going to lose. We need something more to stand up against mega-corporate capitalism and media control. We need more than just pranks.”

Lasn prefers good old-fashioned righteous anger and indignation since that, in his view, is what gets things done. “The problem with too many parodies, spoofs and pranks is that they trivialize the matter. We’ll have to wake up to the fact that we are living in a dangerous time with climate change, an endless war on terror and an epidemic of mental illnesses. If all we do is produce and forward nice videos, I wonder how much good it’s really doing. You hear about a prank, you forward it to a friend and in the end hundreds of thousands of people are laughing and clapping their hands in glee. Nice, but what exactly did we achieve?”

Lasn—who devotes space in his organization’s magazine Adbusters both to entertaining parodies on our popular culture and to solid essays—believes “We on the left must ask ourselves what went wrong. We must rethink our strategies from the vantage point of a defeated force. We must poke our heads outside the old lefty box and come up with some big new ideas like true cost markets, demarketing and carbon neutral culture as well as powerful new strategic frameworks like culture jamming, paradigm shifting and meme warfare. After that kind of deep rethink, maybe we can start having some fun again.”

Yet the new corporate activists don’t think old-fashioned outrage achieves much. “The world has moved from the ‘There’s a problem!’ agenda to the ‘What do we do about it?’ agenda,” says Australian Paul Hohnen, political director of Greenpeace International from 1993 to 1998. “That takes a new kind of activist. Chaining yourself to a tree belongs in the awareness-building phase, but we’ve entered the solutions-building phase where this kind of treehugging might be counterproductive.” That’s why Hohnen and others think a more business-like—maybe even (gasp!) corporate—approach works better.

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