The words revolution and revelation are only separated by a difference in two individual letters, but they could not be further apart definition-wise. Saul D. Alinksy, in his book Rules for Radicals, argues that people’s minds need to be fundamentally changed before any effective revolution can happen – in other words, revelation precedes revolution. Robin Kirk drove this home with one quote that especially stuck with me – “10,000 deaths is a statistic; 1 is a tragedy.” She talked about this in reference to how likely people are to act after a horrific event like a school shooting. This realization makes me heartbroken, but I have come to accept it – if we expect people to change, we have to tell them a story that really hits hard. If we manage to affect people so deeply that they have a revelation, then we can start a truly large revolution.
With our sustainability project — trying to dissuade West Union vendors from wrapping utensils in plastic and from using non-compostable utensils — we know that we might not succeed because vendors have (and will continue to have) a monetary incentive to order plastic-wrapped, non-compostable utensils. However, if we can cause fellow students to have some sort of revelation, we can succeed in dissuading them from using the plastic wrapped utensils. To achieve this, we will be trying to encourage others to live plastic free for a whole day, and we will call the event April three plastic free (it rhymes!) We want to educate people on how easy it is to live plastic free – they just have to make conscious, self-aware decisions at every meal. We will provide them with a (infographical) guide on what to do in difficult situations, like when the only option is something plastic-wrapped. We will also try to educate them on how bad non-compostable utensils are for the environment and how to compost better. Hopefully, we can tell them a gruesome enough story about environmental damanger that will cause them to want to change. This is the driving force behind a personal revelation that will lead to a less plasticized Duke.