#rob kall

I'm burdened by and blessed by (at the same time) a broader experience with the surprises that are involved in social change. You know, often activists think that they know how social change is going to happen and they quarrel over Path A versus Path B--working in side or outside the system, etc., etc., etc. In my experience things happen strangely. For example, no one predicted this era of revolution. How could Mubarak of Egypt have collapsed in 18 days after being propped up with billions of dollars for 30 years? What lesson do you draw from that except unexpected things happen? And it's even possible that whole governments, whole regimes, whole presidencies--I saw it twice in my lifetime--will collapse over night if the pressure is right and the circumstances are right. [...] People do need to think rationally about what they want to do and make their choices but don't give up in the belief that systems can be challenged and fundamentally altered in surprising ways. [...] I think it's a matter of organizing people power against the pillars of the policy. [...] It's no one tactic, it's really the pressure on the pillars of the policy that makes the policy eventually collapse. --Tom Hayden, co-founder of Students for a Democratic Society