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For New Grads, Activism Doesn't Pay the Bills
Liberal Youths Are Selling Out to Pay Their Debts
No one goes into a career in activism thinking they'll make the big bucks. In fact, most people who enter socially conscious fields have reckoned with the reality of sacrificing meaty paychecks for fulfilling work. Recent college graduates, however, are finding the trade-off simply untenable as they slide deeper into a pit of college debt. And they're getting little help from the progressive movement.
Writing for In These Times, Adam Doster reports that by neglecting the economic plight of recent graduates, progressive leaders and activists are missing out on the "opportunity to utilize the ideology, size, and energy of the post-graduate generation." Doster notes that "college tuition has outpaced family income for the past 15 years," forcing more students to take on the financial burden themselves via loans. The average college graduate accrues nearly three-and-a-half times more debt than their counterparts did ten years ago, according to figures Doster cites from the Center for American Progress.
For graduates fresh out of college and saddled with exorbitant loan payments, a career in progressive activism can mean anything from years of sacrifice to near financial ruin. Among the few accessible jobs for progressive youths are those offered by large canvassing campaigns. Doster references the work of Dana R. Fisher, professor of sociology at Columbia University and author of the book Activism, Inc., who found that the canvassing industry -- a backbone of progressive, grass-roots outreach -- is exploiting young canvassers. Since the late 90s, Fisher says, many progressive campaigns have been outsourced to intermediary organizations, which focus on the "bottom line" instead of building local connections and developing the leadership abilities of their young employees.
Adding to the barriers, Doster finds that lefty think tanks primarily offer unpaid or low-wage internships in expensive cities like New York City or Washington, DC. With no prospect of financial sustainability, it's no surprise that these career-building paths usually attract wealthier applicants, while thwarting the bids of minorities and economically challenged graduates.
To be fair, as Jamilah King of Wiretap magazine points out, "many socially conscious organizations are run on paper-thin budgets that don't allow them to offer stipends to their interns." And King acknowledges that entering the job market while balancing one's financial burdens and social conscience is a difficult task. Yet there are some feasible options out there, and King points young people to them with a short list of available opportunities that allow graduates to put their progressive passion to use doing socially conscious work, without going broke in the process.
Go there: When College Ends, So Does Activism
Go there, too: Work for Change
Related Links:
- Private Loans Deepen a Crisis in Student Debt
- Who Cares?
© 2007 The UTNE Reader
19 Comments so far
Show AllAND it's NOT these young victims' fight; the Bushist bullies are the Boomers' burden to bury.
Nice alliteration Vic!
Activists and progressives need to organize into cooperative buying arrangements to make scarce currency go further-- food co-ops, housing co-ops, health care co-ops, etc. Progressives with jobs but no time, should be better funding progressive activists who have time but no money.
The conservanazis have found a great way to keep the poor and middle class youth from protesting: Keep them in debt, just like their parents.
Imagine if we had a social safety net as in Gravels flat tax where everybody gets a refund and has medical coverage.
We would be free to help in the community or volunteer to give back and fight fascism.
Indebtedness is no doubt a way to prevent the masses from rebelling!
I'd love to quit my corporate job and do something more 'activist' in my life. Something that has a better impact on the world than just making my corporation a more efficient money maker. But I've never seen any left wing group offer anything like an opportunity to do so. All I see is these same no-pay or very low-pay intern type jobs that seem to only be an option for trust-fund kids who don't need the money.
Even worse, I once saw a job that seemed to be attractive, fit my skills, seemed to be a place where I could maybe have a positive impact, and it only involved a 50% cut in pay. I applied for the position willing to make major changes in my life for a chance to have a better impact on the world. But, I wasn't even considered because I hadn't demonstrated a 'commitment to activism' by working for years in no-pay jobs that you'd have to have a family trust fund to even survive in. You can throw stupid names like 'boomer' at me, but for a kid from Appalachia who wandered down to Atlanta to make his own way in this world with no money and no connections, none of this has ever been an option to me. Sorry, but sheer survival comes first. No trust fund kid would ever understand this. But someone else who's been homeless on the streets of Atlanta would understand it perfectly.
All of which means that the lefty organizations are doomed to remain elite little groups of a few salaried people living off the contributions they hustle out of people who work for a living, and some trust-fund kids who don't have to work for a living. It doesn't have a prayer of growing into a movement and developing the talent needed to truly change the world. But they seem happy as long as they can con enough people into donating such that they keep their salaried activist jobs. Explains a lot about why these groups are all so incredibly ineffective.
On the Republican side, they have wealthy backers that are willing to fund their organizations to the level where they really can be a real job and career that actually allows someone to live in our expensive cities. This is where the right wing develops their talent. And if you check the resumes of their up and comers, often they come from these groups. There are wealthy people on the left too, but none seem willing to do the equivalent.
Here we can take a cue from the Buddha's Eightfold Path. Namely: Right occupation. One needn't necessarily be an activist, nor expect that activism pays sufficiently. But pick a neutral job at least: some branches of government service, education, the arts, etc. And do activism in your spare time, on the sly, etc.
It's not lack of money that might kill activism but, rather, the expectation that activism must have money in order to succeed. It may well be that the best forms of activism are totally unrelated to money, but instead operate on a barter, volunteer, or other economic basis.
a great article
and another great comment by COMarc
COmarc: "There are wealthy people on the left too, but none seem willing to do the equivalent."
I think it's a matter of the pathological drive on the right (versus the general apathy on the much larger left).
This happened to me just yesterday. I was approached by a Greenpeace activist trying to gain new members. For only $2 a week, I could join their group and help pay for those rafts you always see attempting to hijack whaling ships. Not my first choice in progressive organizations, but that's aside. The real story is that I found myself explaining to the guy, "No, not now, maybe in a few years when I have some money." I felt like a sellout, of course. But that $30,000 student loan (and it's interest) needs to be fed all of my excess money. By the time I'm 50, I should be free. Where will the progressive movement be at that point?
I work for an NGO/Nonprofit. I love what I do and I belive what we do as an organization makes a tremendous difference. However, I can only work one more year for this organization. Grad school loans, the cost of purchasing a home, and costs associated with babies and starting a family make it financially impossible for me to continue working at this organization. Its really sad.
If you want money, power, and prestige--you gotta sell out. The Corporations rule. There's no other way. They want your body and soul, your yes and your no. And you won't be able to retrieve it in the end after having acquired material success. Of course you can have a C average and, if you sell your entire self and become a papier-mache Mephestophles, you can be President. You gotta give up all personal principles.
However, if you give up body, property, reputation, and position, you still have opinion, aim, desire, and aversion. Is it worth anything? Not, as we used to say, on the material plane. It's a vocation that requires as much spiritual strength as any monk or nun in any religion. And you embrace being impoverished. There's no glamor in attacking whaling ships or saving the environment. You are scorned and ridiculed and left to rot on the dungheap of civilization. But nobody plays king of the mountain for the top of the dungheap. And you're free.
For me, give me liberty or give me death. Join the War Resisters' League and die free with me.
I've felt thwarted for a long time by the non-profit conundrum. NP budgets are hard-won grants, so paying interns is a hardship; not paying interns gets NPs a staff full of people who rarely have a clue about the problems of the folks they're trying to help.
Paul B. offers a very constructive suggestion - find a neutral job and 'activate' as one finds opportunity. As a cashier, I see LOTS of people in the course of a day. Great place to do GOTV work ;)
One bright note: ACORN is a grassroots org that pays its organizers a living wage with benefits. The training wage is tighter, but it's only for a month. I have an interview next week...
Hasta democracia,
Peach McD in Durham NC
ps. Shoulda known the byline would be UTNE. That mag likes to portray itself as hip-smart-liberal, but read closely and the articles are all about how to rationalize accommodation to the status quo, and the ads show how to enjoy sustainable prosperity. Just more cleverly disguised corporate whores.
Working for something you believe in is reward enough for a time, but eventually it wears you down. Over two decades of working as a full time activist for no or little pay left me divorced, unable to pay medical bills, and embittered at the movement. Not because they didn't pay me a salary, I never expected that, and I don't think taking on the corporate, capitalist model is the way to go. What left me with the bitter taste is that so many people are eager to encourage you with words, but are unwilling to put in the little effort needed to take the weight off of those who are doing all of the work. If more would share the load, then we could all be part-time activists and have a life too.
Why can't the left create something like the evangelical christian churches have done, where they help each other with childcare, counseling, employment, housing, you name it? I find it hard to believe in the so-called forces of social change anymore.
COMarc and the rest of you make great points. There has to be a reason why conservatives exist, and making money is it. The problem as I see it, is that unlike other species who can only hoard so many resources, money lets a few humans hoard without limit, until they rule our entire planet. As Gravel points out the Swiss don't have that problem. They have one of the highest per capita incomes in the world thanks to direct democracy, where the people are the lawmakers, not Big Money. Its a systemic problem that requires changing the corrupt system of representative government itself.
I wish I could find work for some sort of organization that truly benefits society. But those jobs are hard to find and don't pay well.
I don't think I've ever had a job that I truly loved. In fact, I've worked for some companies that imo deserve to crumble to the damn ground. But I think in a way that alone has been a learning experience for me. I've gotten to experience first hand as a thinking adult what capitalism does to the average person. I'm in the trenches so to speak.
"By the time I'm 50, I should be free. Where will the progressive movement be at that point?"
You will then realize that, in paying off your student loans, you now have not a cent saved for retirement, (besides the pittance social security will pay), because your capitalist bosses don't even offer retirement plans any more.
Consider non-military related federal govenment work - they always lots of job openings out there, many serving good purposes, meeting Buddhist "right Livlihood" criteria (the other 7 steps up to you) and they:
1. pay good salaries,
2. have a generous retirement plan,
3. A good union (AFGE) - and even if non-union, many agencies still actually _require_ a collectively bargained contract!
4. none of that preposterous "ethic" of everyone keeping their salary, (arbitrarily assigned by the bosses), secret - exposing the phonyness of their claims that labor is a "free market". In the US government, the uniform GS pay scale covers all positions - no arbitrariness and favoritism, and there is vastly less pay-inequality than in the private industry.
5. The First Amendment still applies at your workplace - you can't be arbitrarily fired just because the boss doesn't like your politcal views. And it follows from this,
6. None of the arbitrary "employment at will" common in private industry - the boss must have documented cause under specific rules before you can be fired.
So give it a look, go here:
http://www.usajobs.gov/
PJD
Civil Engineer
Dept of Labor - MSHA
Paul Bramscher sez:
It's not lack of money that might kill activism but, rather, the expectation that activism must have money in order to succeed. It may well be that the best forms of activism are totally unrelated to money, but instead operate on a barter, volunteer, or other economic basis.
*****************
Dig it! This idea that Progressives need Bill Gates' and George Sorros' billions to counteract the billions of dollars on the right is the fatal mistake of trying to play their game which we are gauranteed to lose.
Our advantages are:
numbers
There are more of us than there are of them.
If everyone who is disgusted with the Iraqi war and Bushco put a sign on their rear window proclaiming, "They lied to me, They lied to you, They lied to the Troops--Impeach Gonzalez first, Cheney next, and then Bush" how long do you think impeachment would remain "off the table"?
The same amount of time as everyone else--24 hours a day.
Is it worth 30 minutes a night, several nights a week, to canvas your neighborhood and pass out a three-fold brochure? You could make up tee thing yourself on a computer with a word processing program and a printer and then get it copied for pennies a copy at a local store) explaining why we should have a government run, single-payer, health insurance program like trhe rest of the developed world whoser general health and life expectancy exceed our own.
How long do you suspect that your local congressman or woman could continue to take pharma, HMO, AMA, or insurance company money and not be called into account for their actions? It just might perk up those otherwise poorly attended, infrequently held, and bland as unflavored yogurt "town meetings".
Host viewings of such important videos as "Sicko", "Why we Fight", or "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death" just released. Have several neighbors over, fix some snacks, and have a discussion on what you have just seen.
None of what I have mentioned above requires much time or expense and all of it can make a difference. Or do you want to wake up next year at this time and still see things as unchanged as they have been for the past 6.5 years? If not us then who, if not now then when?
I am a recent grad-- pissed off and ready to uproot the system right now. Alas, I need a meal, maybe two.
Here is to hoping I can make it through grad school and become a teacher, activist on the side.
I do show the movie "The Corporation" to any of my very, "diverted" if you will, friends. Then its back to Dancing with the Stars, Real World, or whatever. Ugh I will keep trying.
I love my job. I get to spend 40 plus hours a week teaching young teens to think for themselves and to make choices that will affect the world in a positive way.
The downside: I have to work 20-25 hours a week at a second job to survive.
I don't blame the organization I work for --they just don't have any money.
I wonder every day if it would be better to sell out at a decent paying job and do activism on the side. I worry, though, that a life spent in a job I hate would leave me with enough mental energy to do any meaningful activism.
It is a crappy decision to have to make.