The Last Last Sunday?
As we were setting up for an early Last Sunday gathering, a longtime participant in local progressive politics asked me, bluntly, "What's your agenda with this?"
I offered the event's mission s
She smiled, explained that she knew our public line, and instead wanted the "real" agenda. Sorry, no hidden agendas, I said. Her response: "I don't believe you would do this without an agenda."
Skepticism about political motives is understandable. Nevertheless, Eliza Gilkyson (a singer-songwriter), Jim Rigby (Presbyterian pastor), and I (professor/activist) concocted Last Sunday with the goal of ma
After a run of Last Sundays (held at Saengerrunde Hall on the last Sundays of the month, from November 2006 to April 2007), we have taken a break, to assess the experiment and evaluate feedback. And we've concluded the project was a great success and a huge failure.
The success came in presenting relevant information, provocative analysis, and good music to audiences from 300 to 500 people, on subjects ranging from race relations in our largely segregated city to
The failure was that we didn't help the audience become more than an audience, during or after the event, but in that failure were useful lessons about contemporary politics. The following observations are drawn from written suggestions after each event, conversations with people at Last Sunday, and comments during the discussion at the final gathering in April.
Common in progressive circles is the imperative to get beyond "preaching to the choir." Last Sunday showed the problem with that truism. There is no choir – if by "choir" we mean organized people facing these cascading crises with a coherent ideological framework. There is a disparate group of liberals and leftists with some common policy goals but no common analysis. At Last Sunday, we weren't claiming to have the grand plan but simply suggesting that extensive conversation that challenges the conventional wisdom is necessary.
A few questions sharpen this point: Is corporate capitalism compatible with real democracy? Can we continue to believe (or pretend) the Democratic Party is a vehicle for progressive politics? How many who opposed the invasion and occupation of
Raise those questions in left/liberal circles, and it's clear that the members of the choir are singing from dramatically different hymnals.
While avoiding apocalyptic fantasies, we wanted to confront not-so-pleasant realities: The U.S. economy is a house of cards built on deficit and debt, in our so-called democracy the majority of people feel shut out of policy formation, the Iraq war is not a break from post-World War II U.S. history but merely a particularly disastrous episode, white supremacy and patriarchy still structure our hierarchical society, and the "normal" operation of our society undermines ecosystems' capacities to sustain life. Living comfortably in the midst of unprecedented first-world affluence feels like being a drunk wa
Views vary widely about how dire the situation is and what that means politically and emotionally, as was captured by two comments during the final Last Sunday discussion. One person asked whether this kind of political engagement couldn't be made more fun, a comment that drew both applause and sighs of frustration; another responded that problems this serious shouldn't be papered over.
No one suggests that political work – even addressing the grimmest realities – must be depressing. There can be joy in struggle. After the final Last Sunday, a young man told me that he wasn't put off by the blunt talk. "This is one of the few places where I hear people tal
If our systems are unsustainable in economic, cultural, political, and ecological terms, how do we make confronting that "fun"?
A common complaint about Last Sunday was that it focused too much on problems, not solutions. That marked another split in the audience between a) focusing on short-term actions to influence public policy and b) thin
Consider the dual problems of oil – we're running out, and burning what's left accelerates rapid climate change. A demand for solutions that would allow us to maintain our lifestyles can lead to the corporate boondoggle of corn-based ethanol or the hazy illusions around biodiesel, instead of confronting a troubling reality: There's no viable alternative to petroleum for an unsustainable, car-based transportation system. So what are the realistic "solutions," other than to radically curtail the way we move ourselves about? The fact is that we can't go to some of the places we now go and can't do some of the things we now do.
Sometimes truly facing a problem is to recognize that it has no solution without a dramatic refashioning of the context in which we try to solve it. Some at Last Sunday found that depressing; others said they felt a sense of relief.
Rigby anchored Last Sunday with talks that always managed to bring together the disparate threads of each event. Drawing on secular philosophy and theology – avoiding dogma and doctrine – he came back, over and over, to a basic point: We may be decent people, acting compassionately in our daily lives, but when we live in unjust hierarchical systems, being decent day to day isn't enough.
No matter what the specific topic of any Last Sunday, we tried to keep this in the foreground: We live in an imperial society structured by a predatory corporate capitalism, with identities shaped by white supremacy and patriarchy, in a technological fundamentalist society dominated by the faith that we can invent our way out of an ecological crisis.
Rigby provided Last Sunday's prophetic voice, in the Old Testament sense of the term, not predicting the future but calling out the corruption of the society while maintaining faith in humans' ability to reach down to the better part of our nature, past the greed to the core of a common humanity. Individual responsibility means not simply doing the best one can in the world we're given but being willing to take risks to change that world.
This kind of political and spiritual program attempts to suggest a general direction, not dic
And we must keep tal
The consensus at the end of April's gathering was that Last Sunday should continue. Less clear was how that will happen, how the gathering should be structured, and toward what end a permanent Last Sunday might be directed. There are difficult questions unresolved, most notably whether the event could become more inclusive. Although the program from the stage was diverse in racial, ethnic, and gender terms, the audience was disproportionately white, middle-class, and older. Could Last Sunday become a space that reflects all of
Last Sunday was an ad hoc project that remained fluid; various people pitched in to handle the organizing tasks. We deliberately didn't create a new organization or build a new web site, opting instead to use the communication tools of the
The options? Last Sunday could remain ad hoc but with broader participation, or a formal group could be created to run the event. Or, of course, the event could end its run, giving way to other forums. The original conveners don't claim to know the best route, nor do we want to claim ownership. The event demonstrated people's interest, and now the task is to figure out whether that interest can be translated into ongoing community.
Jensen is a journalism professor at the
For a PDF file with the five talks Jensen gave at Last Sunday, go to