And this disconnection induces some to become highly involved and to interact fantastically well with one another, even having their own supportive subculture, but to lose touch with others who become long distance spectators, watching the action, or detached from it entirely. I speak every so often at college campuses and there this division is perhaps easiest to see. The activists look entirely different, have different tastes and preferences, talk different, and are largely insulated rather than immersed in the larger population beyond. The situation exists in communities as well. Lots of factors contribute, of course.
None are easy to precisely identify much less correct.
Still, one that is relevant here is that over the months since Seattle dissent has come to mean for many looking on, traveling long distances, staying in difficult circumstances, taking to the streets in militant actions involving civil disobedience and possibly more aggressive tactics, and finally risking arrest and severe mistreatment. This is a lot to ask of people at any time, much less at their first entry to activism. Consider people who are in their thirties or older, and who therefore often have pressing family responsibilities. Consider people who hold jobs and need to keep them for fear of disastrous consequences for themselves and the people they love. The irony in all this is that the efficacy of civil disobedience and other militant tactics is not something cosmic or a priori.