Tag: activism
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The Story of the Righteous Few, Exhibit #1: “a very solitary journey”
A friend just brought this meme to my attention: I’m elaborating on problems with the (relatively new) concept of activism and also about the story of the righteous few in my manuscript. For now, here’s an excerpt concerning the latter (from my chapter in AK Press’ book We Are Many): Too often we get stuck in a story…
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dissent and resignation
With the relatively recent invention of the activist as a special category, non-activism becomes the implied norm. Non-activists—i.e., normal people—are excused from having to wrestle with the content of pertinent political issues and what remedial collective action might be taken, as activism is treated as a distinct realm unto itself—an elective activity in some ways…
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We are people of this generation.
Students for a Democratic Society’s 1962 Port Huron Statement begins with these words: “We are people of this generation…” During a public messaging training that I recently led for a student group, I reflected back to the group my observation that members often referred to themselves as activists — in both internal conversations and external…
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“ORGANIZE” as buzzword
I’m always interested in how some activists throw around the words “organize” and “organizer”. The words are often used as mostly undefined buzzwords. As Matt Bruenig Tweeted today, “If I didn’t [know] better, I’d think some people are in it for social status, and attaching the label ‘organizer’ boosts status.” I think that’s part of…
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Activists in Google’s N-gram viewer
I learned about Google’s N-gram viewer from reading Eli Pariser’s book The Filter Bubble. The tool queries a “database spanning the entire contents of over five hundred years’ worth of books — 5.2 million books in total… [Pariser].” So you can see how often different phrases have been used in print, over many years. I…
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Your relentless political Facebook posts…
Haha. For more on this topic, read: Activists Caught in the Filter Bubble.
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What’s wrong with activism?
Originally published at BeyondtheChoir.org. Over the years I have often been asked how I became an activist. The question of how individuals as individuals become involved in social change movements, fascinating as it may seem, can carry equally fascinating assumptions about activism itself. It may imply a voluntary and self-selecting enterprise, an extracurricular activity, a…
Jonathan Matthew Smucker 