Despite the honor that comes with activism, the task is not for the weak. Activists have had to endure verbal ridicule and sometimes physical violence from people who either do not understand the depth of their cause or blatantly do not care. Activism has evolved over the years to accommodate these challenges by adopting the most effective praxis for each cause. Fred, Daniela, Letitia Gomez, Paul Chatterton, and Bo Fals are some of the activists whose work we have studied in the past three weeks, as will be discussed in this essay.
Fred began by talking about what was going on in his community and the devastating tragedies arising from of the pandemic. I remember him discussing the insecurity I the community, even for children under the age of seven. He also said the government was not helping much either, for instance, the government was supposed to send two districts food but most people never got the food. When he went over this I was truly shocked because I realized how ignorant I was in such matters. Fred’s message overall was communal encouragement and cooperation. They are all there for each other and have each other’s backs. Fred also talked about the rise in mental health issues following the pandemic. Although, Fred and several other activists began counseling sessions to solve mental health problems, the governmet and community is still ignorant of its effects.
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Daniela’s message about the importance of rage is a vital criticism of the way societal expectations constrain activists from actualizing their goals and verbalizing their emotions. Even within activist organizations, there is pressure to protest in specific ways that are seen as “respectable” and/or “acceptable” when humans are in fact unique and nuanced individuals who are justified in protesting in the way they see fit. For instance, in the decade’s long history of activism for racial justice in the United States, the establishment has continually shifted the goalposts of what is considered acceptable. In the 1960’s and 50’s, Martin Luther King Jr. was vilified as a radical whose protest delegitimized his words. Now, MLK has been whitewashed (his more socialist and anti-capitalist beliefs are completely ignored) and framed as the epitome of peaceful protest, ironically allowing today’s establishment to condone protestors once again for not “acting peacefully or respectfully enough”. Thus, the vilification of rage is a method of dampening the radical imagination and activists should strive to actualize the potential of their emotions.
Gomez is one of the earliest Latino/a queer activists at a time when the LGBT movement was primarily white, and the Latina/o was predominantly heterosexual. Being a woman too, Gomez was triply a minority since she was also brown and queer (Gomez et al., 2015). The intersection of minority groups, that is, women, lesbians, gays, transgender people, brown people, and occasionally even black people, presents the problem of division and misrepresentation. With the united effort, Gomez et al attempted to provide better conditions for underrepresented groups of minorities, such as transgender women identifying as bisexual or gay men living with HIV/AIDS (Gomez et al., 2015). According to the article, the theory of change is to appeal to the human side of people by allowing them to hear the firsthand experiences of minorities through first-person narratives. The idea is to use these personal stories to trigger social movements. In presenting a humanly front, social movements cease being just that, but rather a group of actual human beings who have endured suffering because of things they have no control over.
Chatterton’s theory of change is almost similar to Gomez’s; after all, their goals are similar. Chatterton writes about a protest against climate change where activists blocked a road then attempted to speak to the drivers. Through these conversations, Chatterton understood their point of view and then explained the activists’ perspective. According to Chatterton, one mistake most activists make is perpetuating the idea that there are two ideas to the matter, and the only way to implement change is to win over everyone to their side. Chatterton and the other activists had to be patient and wise while replying to the drivers to avoid implying it was a two-sided fight. To those who called them hypocrites for using the very things they protest against, Chatterton tries to show them how impossible it can be to escape using oil or the internet, but there are other ways to reduce one’s carbon footprint (Chatterton, 2006). To those who lamented against the loss of income, Chatterton tried to argue that the large corporations, along with toxic capitalism, were at fault there rather than the activists because they had made such drivers slaves of the meager wages they provided.
Fals discusses the dangers of contentment with the status quo, mainly propagated by the negative connotation around subversion. According to Fals, subversion is viewed as the disruption of the accepted social order, without regard to how the order in question affects certain groups of people. His theory of change is that people should take things in context rather than stubbornly opposing change (Bo, 2011). They should at least attempt to understand why activists protest against certain matters them put themselves in their shoes. In doing so, Fals, not unlike Chatterton and Gomez, believes that activism will cease being a fight between two groups of people, but between society and oppressive social orders.
My theory of change is that the best way to implement change is to find common ground between activists and people who do not identify as so. Although the approach borrows much from Chatterton and Fals, it stems from the realization that sometimes societal opposition against activism might cause more harm than the social injustices themselves. Participating in activism may help alleviate suffering for most people, but it also comes with a cost; some activists have lost their lives and others their livelihood. Although it is a significant risk, much of the freedom we currently enjoy is due to the struggles of earlier activists, meaning we owe it to coming generations to provide better conditions for them.
References
Chatterton, P. (2006). “Give up activism” and change the world in unknown ways: or, learning to
walk with others on uncommon ground. Antipode , 38 (2), 259-281.
Bo, F. (2011). Subversion and Social Change in Colombia.
Gomez, L., Quesada, U., & Vidal-Ortiz, S. (Eds.). (2015). Queer brown voices: personal
narratives of Latina/o LGBT activism . University of Texas Press.
