you’re doing activism all wrong and it shows —
here’s why:
We live in the humid climate of rampant hate crimes that gutter us waist deep in poorly written infographics ripped straight from pre-made Canva templates. We regurgitate it all in our story-shares and retweets for all of it to feel like faux-allyship, and, even worse, substantial advocacy. Sharers even stress over the fatigue of it. It’s nonsense, but I am at fault too: I am a coward.
I didn’t know what to do anymore and it felt like hell.
I left the United States because of the Trump administration. I admit, this sounds satirical. I was a part of a bad joke, but when I finally moved abroad, my anxieties lifted. I stopped biting my fingernails and let my cuticles heal after insistent biting. At the time, race issues rose, tensions tenser, and my microaggressions moaned into migraines. I lived paycheck to paycheck in a city I could no longer afford. I didn’t know what to do anymore and it felt like hell.
I felt like the only thing left to do was the one thing you’re not supposed to do: be not yourself. Of all selves, I chose James Baldwin. For him to move to Paris at the height of the civil rights movement was perhaps noble, but for me, it was a tactic I knew all too well.
In times of high anxiety, I leave places unnoticed. Weddings, funerals, house parties, the occasional date. To move my body from circumstantials to new environments clears a path towards clarity. Because when you’re outside of your own jaded walls built on years of mundane workweeks, you remember what home is, you remember what home was, and you remember how the times aren’t different, but how you carry the times from the past to your present tense conjure moments of self-reflection.
Had she saved a life that night? A day before? Could she have saved a life the next day?
This was difficult to do when Breonna Taylor leapt from life to death in her subconscious, in her own bed, restful innocence, yet twenty blind and scared-white shots flew through her home, eight of which held her body in a prison of senseless injustice. Had she saved a life that night? A day before? Could she have saved a life the next day?
And now, I see the elderly thwacked down and hard and dead. For Asian Americans, respecting our elders is what roots a strong family tree, and to see them knifed down or slammed into sidewalks, I couldn’t help but feel helpless, can’t help but think of my own mother and her safety, her life a thread now in a still pandemic-heavy world.
Businesses have changed. The way we support things, financially, cancelling, people as profits wiping brands clean from the face of the earth because of their lack of support or their blatant racism. As people wanting the bare minimum, enough was enough, and all of this stems from driven frustration.
As we process information even quicker, we fall back on our laziness and impatience to rely on infographics to tell us everything we need to know, whether or not the information has been researched. We are no longer doing the research ourselves and, in the end, that hurts us as critical thinkers.
This hurts us in the long run. Without critical thinking, we no longer know how to share opinions, we no longer know how to talk to each other. People tend to repeat information that appeals to their own interests. When this happens, we create echoes of echo chambers, no longer talking to vary viewpoints, but to affirm what we already know, to refuse to learn anything more. This is what created the great divide between Democrats and Republicans, this is what makes us so easily upset. This is what reverts us back to infantile behaviors. Reject this. Fix this. Do more. This is the last straw.
Beyond a share on your story, consider these actions:
- send a DM, reach out
- ask about the well-being of others
- create conversations
- spread tender love and care
- make people feel safe.
In the thick of it all, we’ve largely forgotten how to build communities. It seems that the only time we ever know how to be loving is in loss. Think 9/11, New York, strangers hugging strangers, scared tears on unknown shoulders. America, I think, only knows how to love its people when it’s too late, when the body is a home for a grave, and not the other way around.
I’m asking you, please, change the way we approach activism before we lose another person, a part of America.
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