Ken Smith posted recently, continuing to riff on musical performances (here, being on Ed Sullivan) and also remembering his posts on Pete Seeger, and relating them to acts of activism. In the recent post, he notes how people go to concerts and are more disposed to spend money on things related to the concert/group they heard. As consumers, they already know how to spend money on things that they want. For a performance by a musical activist, there should be information/flyers/greeters at the end to communicate about “how to affiliate with others and help move the issue forward in our civic life” (my idea) (quote from Ken’s recent post).
For any issue, there are people for it and against it. Attending a concert where an activist performs could be considered an act of activism, but (as Ken Smith says) if there is no follow-through, the momentum/energy of the event fades away. So – what to do about it? Here, I think some distinction should be drawn between the person who is already an activist and a person who thinks they want to be an activist, but are not sure what to do. If a person is an activist, and is not having much success in promoting an issue or cause, perhaps one of the ideas from my Activism in Atlanta post is appropriate (find the organization that is already working on that problem). Hillary Rettig, in her book “The Lifelong Activist“, has an entire section on how to be more successful in pursuing activism ( the full text of the book is available as a free PDF). In a November 2022 post, Ken Smith lists 6 areas of what he calls the “activism toolkit” that could also apply here.