In his alleged rant yesterday, dirkster asked how it was that we as a community could get focused around specific issues. It's a decent question, one that I've asked more than once.

Sign the damn petition. That's how we get focused.

But while I certainly wouldn't want to take away from the concrete forms of activism we aspire to, I also don't want to deny that the act of being a community is itself a form of activism. I found this bit from Walter Brueggemann while hunting around for something else last night:

Elaine Scarry wrote a book entitled The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. The book is in two parts. The first long part is a description of torture. Her thesis is that when governments or movements torture people they never do it in order to obtain information. They do it to unmake persons so that they cease to exist as identifiable agents. The most remarkable thing about Scarry's book is that the second half, partly informed by the Bible and partly informed by Marx, claims that the only counter to torture is speech. As torture unmakes persons, so speech makes persons.

That's what we do here. We make persons, or make them whole. It would be better on the issue of torture if we were a forum for torture victims to speak out, but that's actually not strictly necessary. By providing a platform for speech at all, we strengthen the community against torture. Because it's not strong communities that torture, but weak ones, dominated by authoritarians and cowed into silence.

I don't want to overstate the importance of that form of activism, but it's something, incremental as it may be.

So keep talking - and sign the damn petition.