Chanel’s write-up of the documentary “Better This World” lead me to listen to this episode of This American Life.   (The Etgar Keret story at the end broke my heart.)  Both the documentary and Act Two of the This American Life episode “Turncoat,” tell the story of Brandon Darby, a famed activist turned FBI informant.  It’s hard not to want to shun Darby for informing on two young men that admired him.  Many activists seem to believe that Darby goaded Bradley Crowder and David McKay into escalating their plans for the protest of the RNC convention, rather than dissuading them from turning violent as he could have done in his role as a mentor.  It seems clear from the This American Life interviews that even if his intention was to discourage violence, his words and actions had the opposite effect: the young men felt they had to prove themselves to him through a demonstration of force (which they never went through with…)

What struck me about this story are themes I often encounter in my own life.  What do you do with good intentions and the desire to make real changes happen?  What do you do when the fire dies out of an ideology you once believed in and touted so fervently?  How do you gracefully outgrow ideas or politics?  What happens when the movement you’re part of moves too fast in the wrong direction?  How much is ego a part of our activism?  Does revolution have to be violent?  Is violence ever in anyone’s best interest?  Who can you trust?  Is working with established institutions who are part of the problem always a betrayal?

It’s a complex story with grave consequences.  But I see myself somewhere in there.  Do you?