Today’s BEDN is activism.
I don’t feel I can do this topic justice with just 25 minutes left in the day.
I have a lot to say here you see, but there is a danger that once the blue touch paper is lit, I’ll go off with a bigger bang than any Bonfire Night firework!
Many years ago, some idiot on the interwebz said, in around 140 characters, that I was a bandwagon jumper who just loved ranting about the latest thing.
I can’t recall why we’d got into this spatt, it was someone I’d had a pretty average twitter relationship with for sometime. I suspect I disagreed with something she’d tweeted.
She was wrong though (as peoole on the interwebz so often are!) The problem with me, if you can call it a problem, the older I get the more inclined I am to see it as a super power to be nurtured, is that I feel things deeply and passionately. Injustice of any kind ‘girds ma loins’ (please say that in a strong, R rolling, irnbru stylee Scottish accent).
I have been a very vocal, some have said militant, activist in the past. I was a founding member of a political organisation that is still gives short shrift to powers that didn’t ought to be.
I created a postcard campaign that, freedom of information requests showed, rattled the government.
I took my eldest children to a select committee meeting, where we fought the corner for working class families who home educated.
I was a member of Greenpeace back in the day, went on walks for the whales, supported a hunt sabbing boyfriend though I never went myself.
I’ve spoilt my ballot, non apathetically refused to vote, argued the reasons why on social media.
I’ve railed against certain charities whose ‘ethics’ aren’t very ethical. I’ve given talks, I’ve written posts, I’ve questioned when questions weren’t politik. I’ve blown the whistle on underhanded behaviour that was brought to my attention.
All of this has made me quite unpopular, but as I said in the post about acts of rebellion, I have to be able to live with my conscience.
Nowadays though, I mostly just want a quiet life. I feel jaded and defeated and exhausted by banging my head against the brick wall of a society that seems to give no fucks. So now, I’m a self activist. Doing what I can in the hope that it’s true what they say about the way to change the world is to change yourself.
