Activism

[PerditaPickle]

Which of you is an activist?

What is/are your cause/s?

How did you get into it?

What form does your activism take?

How are you feeling about your activism &/or your cause(s) at the moment?

What do you do (if anything) to keep from being burnt out?

Is there anything else you want to add?

My own responses in a reply, in due course.

[PerditaPickle]

Q.  Which of you is an activist?
A.  I'm usually more of a slacktivist, but have picked up the activist mantle on a few occasions recently.

Q.  What is/are your cause/s?
A.  Conservation of the environment is my main one.

Q.  How did you get into it?
A.  I can't remember!  I've been into the notion of environmental conservation since I was quite a small child, about 10 years old or so I believe.  I guess I picked this up originally from kids at school, probably those with older siblings.  I think the earliest actions I took were things like letter writing campaigns and things.  Would've been so much easier with email!

Q.  What form does your activism take?
A.  As mentioned, I'm usually more of a slacktivist these days as a general rule, due to a chronic health condition, but I've been on a number protest marches, and I've been on strike from work numerous times in the past too (usually over pay &/or conditions, but the most recent one was protesting against austerity, generally).
Recently, immediately after attending the climate strike on 20 September, I took part in one of Extinction Rebellion's local 'die-ins', which was very exciting but not something I'll probably make a habit of since there's just a chance (albeit small) that I could get arrested during something like that, and that'd be extraordinarily bad for my career.

Q.  How are you feeling about your activism &/or your cause(s) at the moment?
A.  Disillusioned, worried, and frustrated.  I've been putting in a lot of effort lately, borderline making myself ill by taking on too much.  But there's still a tiny kernel of determination somewhere within me - I'll keep at it albeit that I might have to scale it back a bit for a while.

Q.  What do you do (if anything) to keep from being burnt out?
A.  Well, nothing so far.  I definitely need to.  And scaling my involvement back a bit probably needs to be step one, frustrating as that is for me.

(And finally, it probably would have been sensible to include a reminder of the political discussion guidelines in the OP, so better late than never, here it is: https://ecauldron.com/forum/political-discussions/political-discussion-guidelines-14640/)

[Edit: corrected a typo]

[Krasnopol86]

Which of you is an activist?
I'd like to be, but officially there's nobody to organise with as it's a topic that's not too interesting there, and officiously, I'm a bit lazy

What is/are your cause/s?
Environmental policies, through a change of political system.

How did you get into it?
By looking at our world and at how it works.

What form does your activism take?
Talking to people about what I want and why. Sometimes it works, sometimes not...

How are you feeling about your activism &/or your cause(s) at the moment?
I'm more and more invested in it, but I think it's a lost cause. We may be flailing our arms about how we should have done something for the planet 20 years ago, we won't change anything. Politicians still belong to their lobbyists, and the people in charge will just move and get themselves somehting like one of these Berlin houses, in a city that will by then be like Mediteranean cities today, they'll be unaffected.

What do you do (if anything) to keep from being burnt out?
What can I do?

Is there anything else you want to add?
... It's better not to say that in public.

[SunflowerP]

A Reminder:

Hi, Krasnopol86, Just a quick note:  Please remember to leave the quote code (the part inside square brackets) intact when you're quoting.  It makes the discussion easier to follow, and it's required by our rules. The reason we require quoting is not so much for the quoted text, but for the trackback link provided by the code. There are a number of ways you could have done this in your post, but probably the easiest is the one PerditaPickle used when responding to her own OP: cut the text out of the quote while leaving the code in place (a quote with no text is fine), then paste the text under the quote box to reply to each of the questions. This isn't a formal warning, just a reminder. No reply is necessary, but if you have questions or need clarification, please feel free to contact a member of staff privately. Thanks! Sunflower TC Forum Staff

[Altair]

Which of you is an activist?

Me, definitely. It's in my personal motto, right here on this page: "Fly high and make the world follow".

That second part means it's my obligation to act to make the world closer to my lofty ideals.

What is/are your cause/s?

A. Queer Equal Rights
B. Racial Justice
C. Environmentalism
...and D. Liberal/progressive change in our political system, in the service of the above (and other) causes

How did you get into it?

Family trait. Both my parents were civil rights activists; the joke in my family is that you're not a Cooper until you've been arrested at a protest. (One of my proudest moments of my adult life was when my dad and I were arrested side by side at a protest about a particularly egregious act of racial injustice here in NYC.)

What form does your activism take?

Both personal choices and community engagement, in a lot of different ways. (At 56 years old, I've had a lot of years to tackle a lot of different efforts.)

Community engagement:

--Yes, protest actions (i.e., marches, demonstrations, civil disobedience)...but if you think they're #1 with me, you'd be wrong. They can have an important effect when carefully targeted and planned, but I fear sometimes that they end up being political masturbation: You feel good about yourself, but you haven't really accomplished much. (Ditto "Facebook activism"; I. Will. Not. Sign. An. Online. Petition. It lets people think they've made a difference, when they've actually done squat.) So I'm at least as much if not more in favor of doing the boring, actual, incremental work to make change happen. Such as...

--Political work. Contributing $, time, and sweat to political efforts that will help bring about change. Most recently I took a few vacation days to head down to North Carolina to canvass for a Democrat in a hotly contested Congressional district where the Republican was a Trump acolyte and the author of that state's anti-trans "bathroom bill." (Sadly, we lost that one by a hair.)

I fought for decades to flip the NY State Senate from Republican to Democratic control; we finally succeeded last election, and immediately progressive legislation started to become law in this state, as if a dam had burst. Years ago I joined a delegation of ordinary voters traveling to Albany, the state capital, to lobby our representatives for same-sex marriage; we eventually won that one, too.

etc.

--Civic organizations. Odds are if it's worth doing, somebody's already got an organization for that, and you'll get farther doing it as a group. I'm proud to say I'm very active in NYC Audubon, working to improve NYC's environment for both birds and people; we just introduced a bill to the city council requiring the use of bird-safe glass in new construction (NYC sits on the Atlantic flyway, and migrating birds can't see the glass of our skyscrapers and smash into them), and it stands a good chance of passage.

A lifetime ago I was very active in the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), back when they were an NYC grassroots group and did more than just throw an annual fundraising awards gala. Back then GLAAD actually fought to get positive representation in the media; today, in a world where news anchors are openly gay, Moonlight won the Oscar for Best Picture, and dead cats can't be swung without knocking the rainbow off the head of some queer character on a TV show, I feel like the media war is largely won.

Personal choices:

I consider this a form of activism too: what we do in our daily lives. Being out as a queer person is perhaps the most important activism any LGBTQ person can undertake. (And in some parts of the U.S. and the world, quite dangerous.) Aside from NYC Audubon, personal choices are where most of my environmental activism comes into play: recycling, energy conservation, biking/walking/using mass transit, growing native plants, and lately, cutting way back on beef.

How are you feeling about your activism &/or your cause(s) at the moment?

Like most of the Left, beleaguered and depressed. I read the new stats on how North American bird populations are down by almost a third, across all species, in just my lifetime, and while it confirmed what we birders already knew, I still wanted to weep. (I think Trump rolled back yet another environmental protection that same day, or nearly so.)

What do you do (if anything) to keep from being burnt out?

Try to take the long view. And eat chocolate.

Is there anything else you want to add?

Send chocolate. Please.