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A couple of weeks ago I emailed a former student who I knew came from Minneapolis. Without going into too much detail, I know this student to be an ardent activist and a promising writer of depth and sensitivity, and I wanted to reach out, check in, and offer whatever support I could offer, even if that was just a listening ear. We exchanged a few messages and an aborted attempt to arrange a phone call. In the process, I learned that they were wrestling with a big decision: to return to NYC and continue in their MFA in fiction writing, or to remain in Minneapolis defending their neighbors against deportation and resisting an authoritarian regime. I never found out the specifics of what’s kept them busy over the last several weeks (it really has only been weeks, not months), as I haven’t heard from them since.

But I’ve continued thinking about their dilemma. I was even, at first, relieved not to have been called upon to offer advice in the face of such a decision. While I’ve counseled many students on whether to leave a job or an unsatisfactory life in pursuit of the MFA, rarely has it been quite so urgent and pressing as for this student in this moment. I’m quite sure that in such an instance, my role would be to listen and act as a sounding board; I’m confident that whatever decision this student made was the right one for them. Still, I want to share some thoughts I don’t often see posed in discussions about these decisions, in the hopes that it might help others.

On the surface, this decision appears to be between action and inaction, activism and education, politics and art. Staying to fight or fleeing to comfort. It is tempting to get philosophical. Sometimes the best education is that found in a life of activism. Sometimes the strongest action to take is no action at all. And we are all familiar with at least one meme-ified Audre Lorde quote about the inseparability of politics and art. It is also tempting to complicate the choice, to deny its either/or-ness. But to deny the urgency of this choice in this moment is to deny the intelligence of this student, and maybe all students. Even though student-activists have seen many repressions and defeats in the courts these last few years, they remain one of the few bright points in American politics. They’ve studied the history. They know what happens when no one acts, when no one stays to fight. They’ve maybe even already tried writing about this. So why not stay and organize now and save the writing for a later date, when the work has been done and it’s waiting for an interpreter?

This is a fine choice. A good choice. One I’m glad many people make. I would certainly never counsel anyone against making this choice. I would only introduce one additional piece to consider, especially for the student of fiction who aspires to write their own novels and stories about the political struggles in which they participate, and that is to consider whether or not you know what your aesthetic vision is in relation to your political one.

I know this sounds trite. But it is vital. Without an aesthetic vision—and by this I mean not just what you will write about, but how you might go about setting it all down in form and language—it is easy to become gobbled up by the literary marketplace-cum-capitlist-digester of radical movements. Publishers love to take a story about land defense or marches on Washington or civil rights activists and stroke it and smooth it out until it loses all its sharp edges and becomes the perfect commodity to seel between two covers. Political movements become climaxes in a narrative, they become the selling points mentioned in jacket copy, deks on a book review in the NYT. And sure, if your goal is to participate in political movements to provide fodder for a future writing career, then that’s all fine. But most student-activists I know would sooner admit to having voted for Kamala. Their passion is real and true. They want to see the world change, and while right now that change requires physical presence in the streets, eventually it will also require a sophisticated understanding of literary and political movements past and present, and how they resisted (or didn’t resist) cooptation by a publishing marketplace that recycles the struggles of the past onto the IndieNext List.

Any student of history must also be a student of propaganda. They are familiar with slogans and military recruitment posters and maybe even a novel or two as the most obvious examples of what is generally understood to be media produced by and for the state to cultivate widespread, mainstream support for their policies and worldview. The more literarily inclined might also, by this point, be acquainted with the role of the CIA and its anti-communist activity in the funding of MFA programs and literary journals throughout the latter half of the 20th century. MFA programs certainly don’t have a track record of producing politically astute writers. But they do give you time that most people won’t end up giving themselves to figure out their aesthetic vision. (And they can give you a front row seat to the kind of work you don’t want to write, a highly underappreciated aspect.)

I’m not advocating for MFA programs. Take this advice on the most abstract level possible: stay and fight or sit and write. There is also a third option that usually goes unsaid: stay and write in the place where one finds oneself, and ground your aesthetic vision in the constraints of the place where you are. The only combination of words that is difficult for most people to pull off is “fight and write.” And my whole contention here is that writing about the fight is important and necessary and it might take more preparation and practice than any old blog post flung out on the internet.

While writing this post and realizing how shallow my own understanding of the propaganda of the past is, I came across a video of the Agitprop train, a train sponsored by the Agitation and Propaganda wing of Russia's Communist Party in 1917 that was filled with artists and printing presses and sent to all corners of that expansive country to spread the good word of communism through art. They also sent people to teach illiterate peasants to read and write so they could understand the message, and some cars were filled with motorcycles and cars to reach the more remote outposts. And I guess my point is, you can make art on the government-sponsored Agitprop train, or you can be out there drawing your graffiti on the side of a train car late at night to carry your unsanctioned views to people you’ll never meet. But without an aesthetic vision, you won’t get to make the choice for yourself.