Neologism

Here's a photo of my friend Dwight Ozard, who passed away last month. The picture, courtesy of Neil McGillivray, is from Dwight's days as a youth minister in London, Ontario. In his defense, I'd point out that this was in the '80s, and a rock-'n'-roll mullet was kind of hip for a youth minister at the time.

Songwriter/columnist John Fischer wrote a nice remembrance of Dwight on Rick Warren's devotional Web site (following an earlier entry on Dwight's battle with cancer).

Here's something else you should know about him: Dwight Ozard coined the terms "slacktivist" and "slacktivism."

The otherwise reliable "WordSpy" offers its definition of "slacktivism":

slacktivism (SLAK.tuh.viz.um) n. Activism that seeks projects and causes that require the least amount of effort. —slacktivist n.

They list as the "earliest citation" a 1995 appearance of the term on Usenet. But if you dig out a program for Cornerstone '94, you'll find listed a series of workshops by a duo from the recently launched Prism magazine on the topic of "slacker activism." Dwight shortened this to "slacktivism," which at the time I thought sounded corny (I came around eventually).

We didn't really like the whole slacker/Gen-X thing. That kind of TIME-magazine, pop-sociology, generational generalization drove us crazy. We used to marvel at the way that these trend-spotters would tell you that Gen-Xers are ironic, then in the next breath interpret a phrase like "here we are now, entertain us" at face value. They seemed to think that "slackers" were numbly detached with a soulless irony, but that the use of the term "slacker" itself was utterly sincere. Dwight had some cool riffs on this topic, including one about how people caught up in illusions tend to think that anyone who isn't must be disillusioned. (It sounded better when he said it.)

But Dwight had also noticed something strange in the evangelical subculture we were trying to reach.

Many of the same people who had previously disregarded younger voices — which, for this crowd, meant anyone under 60 — were now desperately trying to understand "Generation X." The same people who had ignored us when we put on our good suits and ties became eager to hear from us once we put on ripped jeans and flannels.

Neither of us actually owned a flannel shirt — we had to go out and buy them.

"Turn your cap around backwards," Dwight told me.

"Who am I, Jerry Grote?" I said.

Then he'd quote Gramsci, or the Apostle Paul, or both, to the effect of "I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some."

And it worked. Sort of. We might have gotten nowhere with the argument, "Your church should recycle because it's the right thing to do." But we succeeded with the argument, "Your church should recycle because it's a good way to reach out to Generation X."

(I'm afraid I couldn't refrain from mischief. I had one earnest fellow convinced that Richard Linklater was Art Linkletter's grandson. "Slacker is kind of a 'Kids Say the Darn'dest Things' for the '90s," I told him. Which isn't entirely untrue.)

So that was part of what inspired our "slacker activism" series. The other part had to do with being ticked off at Tony Campolo.

Tony is a great guy. He's an immensely entertaining and inspiring preacher, and he walks the talk — running a variety of social outreach efforts in Philly, Camden and Haiti. In 1994, Dwight and I were writing his daily "Wake Up America!" radio scripts, and we loved doing it.

But Tony also was (and is) prone to the occasional "you kids today …" rant. These were often about the '60s, and how much more dedicated people were back then to The Movement, and how you kids today never even bother to march on Washington anymore. And we were kind of tired of it.

So we decided to do a series of workshops on the kinds of things "kids today" were doing. We'd gotten to know dozens of so-called slackers who were doing impressive and world-changing stuff. Stuff that we thought, frankly, stood as a challenge to an older generation of activists who seemed a bit like they had been coasting since about 1972. And so, in response to one too many y/k/t lectures, and as a way of flipping the bird at everyone who embraced such sweeping, generational stereotypes, we decided to call that series "slacker activism."

The "slacker-activists" we held up as heroes tended to have a chastened view of what they might be able to accomplish. They weren't after magic-bullet solutions and they weren't chasing after utopia. They didn't even seem convinced that the world could be changed. But they were going to try — even if there didn't seem to be any way their meager supply of loaves and fishes could mean much to this hungry crowd.

That's what we meant by the term back in 1994 when Dwight first used it. This usage, apparently, didn't catch on — as this Wikipedia entry shows. And I kind of had both definitions in mind when I picked the name for this blog (not realizing that I'd have to spell out this tricky portmanteau word every time I gave somebody my e-mail address).

But anyway, credit where credit is due: Dwight used the word first.

He was a slacker-activist in the best sense of his word. And I miss him.