You Gotta Fight... For Your Right... To Organize!

Last Wednesday while I was at SFSU, packing a week's worth of classes into one day, I saw this great flier that went a little something like this:

"10,000 Students have already been turned away from CSUs!

Student fees have raised 135%!

All around the world, students are rioting in protest!

What are we going to do about it?

Come attend an organizing meeting!"

Now that's a battlecry I can get behind. In fact, it's been shown through the ages that asking people to attend organizing meetings is by far the quickest route to revolution.

In fact, some of you might be reminded of this Margaret Mead quotation:

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens, (arguing over what to do next and falling asleep in a boring meeting) can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

Truly inspirational. And most people don't realize that Paul Revere's real message was:
"The British are coming! Let's hold an organizing meeting next Tuesday to show them we mean business!"

The real travesty here is that history has given short shrift to the power of organizing meetings and over-emphasized the value of waking people up to arm them against an incoming attack. Foolish, foolish historians...

I, for one, violently hate meetings. I'm trying to think of the worst meetings that I've ever been in...

Oh. Got it. Like most Best and Worst things, you'd have to go to Malaysia to find it (home of the worst fruit, the best transportation, and the Best/Worst way to spend seven months of your life). Okay, it's story time:

So at our second month in Malaysia (exactly one year ago), a bunch of the ETAs were in Kuala Terengganu and Anna's host sister had invited us all to have lunch over in her kampung. I don't know if any of you have ever heard of a proverb about "free lunch" and "no such thing as a," but it might have applied here. Before the lunch was a political rally, which I think fits into the category of organizing meeting since it satisfied the three main requirements of a meeting:

1. You can't leave.
2. It's incomprehensible.
3. It makes you wish you were dead.

I have no idea how long we were in this packed, sweaty room, wedged in between 80 portly Malay women in colorful potato sacks. I think it was around an hour and a half of actual clock time, so in subjective time, it was roughly three days. Three days filled with a woman shouting in Malay that was almost entirely lost on us, except when she said cognates like "Israel" and "America." Extrapolating just a little bit, I don't think the phrase that came next was "are awesome."

The only thing that kept me sane was being able to make mat saleh (white person) jokes with Mike and text them to each other.

The jokes:
Q: What do you call a white person who eats a lot of lettuce?
A: Mat salad!

Q: What do you call a white person who's going to hell?
A: Mat not-saved!

When we exhausted the possibilities for puns we began to make elaborate plans to escape the meeting.
Ideas:

I call another Mike on the cell phone. Mike leaves to answer it. = One ETA saved.
One ETA fakes a choking fit and two ETAs go to help. = Three ETAs saved.
We all just leave. = All ETAs saved, but political organizers offended.

Eventually (as the second hour was approaching and no end was in sight), I decided to stand, raise a polite hand to The Screaming Pundit in the front and shimmy my way through the aisle and out to freedom. When faced with the choice of freedom or another minute inside the meeting, the other ETAs followed suit... with the exception of Sarah and Anna who were stopped as they were about to get out by The Screaming Pundit saying, "please don't leave."

Luckily, they too got a reprieve a second later when The Screaming Pundit changed her mind and excused them to eat a plate of fishy noodles, fishy curry, and fishy fish with the rest of us. We were so euphoric to be out in the fresh air and free that even the food tasted good.

See? Organizing meetings can make you appreciate what you took for granted and can make bad food delicious. They truly are a power that can change the world.