Status Quo Disruptor
I received this in an email over the weekend from a prospective customer:
Hi,
I am interested in the 37″ display, and thanks for providing the prices. Most of the other annoying website do not clearly state what they are trying to sell!
From the start, I’ve wanted to be as transparent as possible about pricing. In the digital sign industry, it turns out, this is a big differentiator, as everyone has a contact form or phone number to call to get pricing info and it takes a song and dance to get what you need. For small networks (1-20 signs) a lot of places won’t even return your call.
I know this because we’ve done quite a bit of research on our competitors’ pricing and it is like pulling teeth. We have pricing info for 22 of our competitors that we haven’t signed NDAs or anything for — I’m tempted to publish it all online in a nice, searchable format, although that would probably result in a maelstrom of angry emails and cease and desist letters headed my way. I don’t see the benefit to doing so. There’s no need to cause waves unnecessarily.
Although…it would be fun… Have I ever mentioned that I played in the activist crowds in my early college years? (Featured at right is a poster I created for a meeting I helped organize on my college campus.) I went to a couple big protests and such, which quickly turned me off to that worldview and way of creating change, it’s not for me. But left me with the desire to disrupt the status quo.
Well, actually, that desire is probably more genetic/cultural than bred by college activism. A dose of Mennonite/anabaptism + a pinch of entrepreneurial drive + a mischievous gene or two = a slightly-over-developed desire to disrupt the status quo.
Ok, wow, this blog post just got a lot better. I was digging through my computer archives for a photo of Eric-the-college-protestor. Unfortunately, I was in college pre-affordable-digital-cameras/social media photo-sharing, so I don’t have a lot of photos of myself at protests. However, I did find several gems. One is an outline I wrote about Goshen College, where I was attending at the time, entitled “Goshen College > Goshen, Inc.?” It’s essentially all about how I saw my college becoming a “giant corporation,” with concentration of power, corporate structure, centralization, no living wage, etc. ALL SUPREMELY EVIL THINGS in my mind at the time.
Even though it was just 10 years ago, I’ve changed a lot. A LOT. Wow.
The second gem you can read below: an op-ed I wrote in December of 2000 about a protest trip I helped organize to the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia (now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). I contacted the military and scheduled a trip for our group onto the Fort the day before the big protest to hear their side of the story and actually dialogue, something that ruffled the feathers of the protest organizers, as it got media coverage and took away from their.
Man. Even when I was being an activist I was being disruptive…against the disruptors. I guess I can’t get enough. Good thing I’m in the startup business…
My op-ed follows below the fold.
School of the Americas Op Ed
Eric Kanagy
I don’t consider myself a protest kind of guy. I watched and read media coverage of recent demonstrations in Seattle, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and Los Angeles with some skepticism about motives and methods. But I do have my moments.
In November 1999, I committed a federal crime, with 5,000 other protestors, by illegally crossing onto the Fort Benning, Ga., property—an act punishable with a $5,000 fine and six months in jail. We were calling for the closure of the U.S. Army School of the Americas.
Students at Goshen (Ind.) College, where I am a junior, have participated in the Fort Benning demonstration since 1997. For a decade, the annual rally organized by the School of the Americas Watch group has included a nonviolent vigil and a symbolic funeral procession onto the military base, attempting to grab the attention of the nation, the media and politicians who hold the purse strings for this government-funded program. Conversation with the “enemy” is not part of the plan.
I had heard the stories about the place the SOA Watch calls the “School of Assassins.” Latin American graduates, including several dictators, have been charged with applying the school’s teachings to the raping, maiming and killing of indigenous people in their home countries in recent decades, including the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the 1981 slaughter of hundreds civilians in El Mozote, El Salvador. In September 1996, the Pentagon acknowledged that the SOA had used training manuals advocating torture, extortion and assassination.
As a Mennonite and a pacifist, I can neither accept nor condone these actions. But something about this portrayal of the SOA really bugged me—it seemed the rallies revolved around emotions associated with horrible things that happened more than a decade ago. The line bordering the school’s property was a good three miles from the actual buildings. The line dividing protestors and school officials felt even wider.
Yelling at the SOA and committing civil disobedience year after year has brought about some much-needed changes in the course materials and the administrative structure of the school, which is changing its name to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. But questions nagged at me, even as I chanted and sang protest songs in 1999: Who and what was I really shouting about? Where was I directing those shouts? At their roots, how did my actions differ from the violence and disruption that accompanied other demonstrations?
It seemed there should be other ways to work for change; ways in which we take the time to truly understand the other side. Shouldn’t real dialogue—listening, not just yelling—be a part of any protest?
This year, I wanted to hear the other side of the story—the side the SOA Watch did not represent. Before we left Indiana, I called an SOA representative to set up some time inside the base for our entire group. The school official seemed surprised to hear from a protestor, We expected a basic tour of the grounds, but received much more.
Our welcome came from the school’s commandant, Col. Glenn Weidner, who began a discussion that included professors, military personnel and Latin American students, not to mention many of their family members—quite a bit more than a five-cent tour.
The conversation between the military representatives and 50 college and high school students lasted more than four hours and touched on religious beliefs, just war theory, Mennonite ideas about pacifism, Jesus’ teachings and the role and philosophy of our military after the Cold War. There we were: a group of anti-war, anti-SOA protesters sitting with military personnel from all over this hemisphere, talking to each other and, perhaps more importantly, actually listening. The miracle still amazes me.
I left the School of the Americas with a deeper understanding of its role and philosophy. The school is a real institution with real people who have real views. SOA leaders believe that spreading democracy by its means throughout Latin America is a vital role that it can and must fulfill.
The SOA was no longer purely evil in my mind. It was, well, real.
The next day, I sang, chanted, and yelled for the closure of the SOA. Despite our cordial conversation and diligent debate, my fundamental opposition to the military institution and the ideals it is built upon remains. There are nonviolent, effective alternatives to the use of force. Too often, those alternatives are ignored in favor of rapid justification of the taking of human life as a means to an end.
Standing outside the Fort Benning gate this November, I finally felt I had a real right to protest. I understood what I was opposing and I had talked with the people I disagreed with. When you know your adversaries personally, It becomes harder to find your screaming voice, but my new knowledge empowered me to stand up against philosophies or practices I could not support.
As I looked onto the base, my eyes linked with those of the lieutenant colonel who had set up our meeting. We both smiled and waved. At that moment, I saw him, in his standard issue camouflage army uniform, as few in the crowd of 10,000 saw him—not as the faceless enemy, but as a man who I both respect and vehemently disagree with.
Our conversations narrowed the three-mile gap between us, helping both of us see that we are similar people living in the same world regardless of which side of the line we stand.
