Question N

I believe a good activist is someone who understands that they are not always going to be met with flowers and smiles. Although people enjoy and certainly appreciate when people listen to them, its not always going to happen, in fact it won't. We talked about people who have privilege are blind to it and they can feel a lot of guilt towards those who are being oppressed and as a result they become defensive. A good activist needs to be hard, someone who can handle negative attitudes and words and someone who is not all rainbows and sunshine all the time. I have found that there is something to be gained with tough love. Not abusing people, but chances are that some will cry, I mean social justice is not easy. It shouldn't be, if it was then we wouldn't have any isms to be concerned with because everyone would be all about rainbows and sunshine...so, a good activist needs to understand that the world is not always a lovey dovey place, which is why they need to be hard, not cold to people. I associate a effective, positive change agent with someone who is nice, has a sense of humor, is passionate about humanity, and someone who can "live simply, give more, expect less" -which is just a quote that I love and also think is something that people should live by, in general. In respect to being passionate about humanity-I always think of MLK, he said, "A man who won't die for something is not fit to live," and when it comes down to it, I believe if a person is going to combat any of the isms they should have that passion because if they do not then the consequences could be more than they could handle. I'm not saying that if one does go against an ism that they will be hurt or in the worst case actually die, but with a lot of these isms there is tremendous emotion and sometimes a lot of hate. I admire MLK because he was so articulate and I feel like he knew things that would not have been apparent to the most genius people. I also admire his strength and his passion. I admire Bell Hooks for her devotion and her demeanor. I like the video "Visionary" because it  doesn't have a real tone to it. I like videos where one can get the facts. I enjoyed the "Activism" video because it demonstrates the "hard" personality that I referred to earlier. People have to be willing to stand up to oppression.