freemarket activism

most of my friends in Berlin who could be called activists sustain themselves by applying for grants from the E.U., collecting Hartz4 (unemployment money), or working a job (as bartender, masseuse, whatever). most of my friends in the U.S. who could be called activists work for nonprofits and so are paid a salary to fight for justice. the way this plays out is that in Berlin more people are invited to join the struggle for safe queer spaces or noncapitalist exchange or nazi-free streets; in the U.S. the people invited to join the struggle are those paid to organize it and those being organized. there is a broad swath of people who fall outside those lines and so see themselves as superfluous to the struggle ("it's not my job"). not that relying on EU grants is really that different from relying on Ford Foundation grants but-- professionalizing activism still seems contrary to popular struggle & collective liberation, dubious as those goals seem day to day. maybe the corollary of "none of us is free while some of us aren't" is that a struggle waged by some is lesser than a struggle waged by all.

other isshas w the nonprofits.