"Activism": Not the same as politics

48 Hills

The problem with this kind of "activism": The hunger-strikers and their supporters start thinking that it's all about them, not the issue they were supposedly demonstrating about in the first place. Activism turns into political narcissism.

If you can't elect a mayor and a majority of supervisors, why would the mayor let himself be bullied by your militant minority into doing something he doesn't want to do?

Tim Redmond and the Bay Guardian left made a similar mistake on homelessness more than ten years ago when they acted like Food Not Bombs was the same as having a policy alternative to Gavin Newsom's Care Not Cash when it was nothing but political theater. 

Demonstrations and political theater are not the same thing as politics, which is why city voters, over the opposition of the Guardian left, passed Care Not Cash in 2002 and then elected Newsom mayor in 2003.