The Change Agent

Paul Rogat Loeb wants you to change the world—and he’s not accepting any excuses. You’re just an ordinary person? Fine. Don’t have all the facts? That’s okay too. Think you’re not particularly charismatic or well spoken? Not a problem.

Follow your heart and get involved, Loeb insists. The issue you pick doesn’t have to be the most important or urgent in the world. It just has to be something you think is badly wrong that you could perhaps, in your own small way, help fix.

Loeb’s Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in Challenging Times updates his similarly titled 1999 book, Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time. It’s the latest attempt by the activist since the ’60s to rally boomers and the generations that sandwich them. To show what individuals can do today, he tells stories of the amazing feats accomplished by their counterparts in the past: The end of slavery. Women’s right to vote. Workers’ rights. The end of British colonial rule in India. The end of segregation in the United States.

Loeb’s politics lean liberal, and 2009 was a bit of a letdown for activists of his ilk who expected Barack Obama to push through universal health care coverage, close the military detention center in Guantanamo Bay, pull American troops out of Iraq, act on global warming and call to account Wall Street and banking industry practices. But, Loeb says, that doesn’t mean those who crave change should feel discouraged—and his message isn’t for liberals only.

“The involvement in our democracy is larger than any single political perspective,” he says, encouraging everyone to stay involved in causes they believe in. He also says it’s critical for people to listen to their opponents, be open and find common ground.

He spoke with the AARP Bulletin about this and other passions.

Q. What did you discover when you updated the 1999 edition?

A. I was surprised by how much had changed in 10 years. The first edition came out before September 11, before the Iraq War, before the dot-com collapse and the most recent financial woes. Most Americans were paying little attention to climate change. That’s the ultimate issue of our time, and I wasn’t even thinking about it. We’re living in really challenging times. Of course, there have always been challenges, but what we’re facing now is huge.

Q. What’s the mood of the country right now?

A. The degree of vulnerability that people are feeling is enormous. The bottom is falling out of so much that we’ve been counting on. For the past 30 years, we’ve been strip-mining our economy. We’ve made decisions that favor financial speculation. People are genuinely worried now. They’re scared about their future.

Q. Given that climate, why didn’t you keep the old title, Cynical Times?

A. I certainly did consider it. But I chose “challenging times” because we still have major possibilities for change. When you look at something like health care reform, maybe some people were naive not to expect resistance. You could say, “Well, there’s nothing that could ever change.” But you could also argue that some progress is being made.

Q. How so?

A. You see more willingness of citizens to get involved and take on hard public issues, which is greater now than during the cynicism at the end of the Clinton years. A lot depends on understanding how change occurs. It’s never fast. Take the U.S. civil rights movement. Rosa Parks was active for 12 years and had plenty of frustrations and failures before the moment she refused to sit in the back of the bus. Change is complicated, and it takes a lot of persistence, work and people. You keep working for what you believe in, and if you hit some setbacks, you keep working.

Q. Have you always understood that?

A. It’s a lesson that many of us learn with age. When you have a candidate that runs on hope and then he gets elected and things don’t immediately change, it’s too easy to conclude, “Everything’s messed up. I’m going home.”