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We know this is a stressful time, we hope that our resources are able to bring some comfort in this unstable time. We are experiencing this together!
Taking Peaceful Action
Taking Peaceful Action
Taking Peaceful Action can be harder than one expects it to be, so make sure you are finding ways of making the best of small resources. Many people use expression of art in everyday life, such as music, theatre, digital or drawn art. In the photo to the left, you are looking at a piece of chalk drawing from a protest lead by students at a Colorado University, concerning the ability to enact change, as a student body.
ACTION
ACTION
When you organize a march, walk-out, sit-in, or any other type of peaceful protest, you have to make sure you have the resources necessary to accommodate yourself, others, and people around the area of protest. Your goal should never be one that inconviences parts of the community you stand with.
Example, if you are protesting at a public place, you can wear a mask to keep anyone who must walk this area for necessity or transportation, safe. You can never tell a disability or difference with your eyes, so remember that protecting the people in your community is a part of protest planning.
COMMUNITY
COMMUNITY
Building a community can be seemingly difficult, but we learned this skill through communicating and being present in our community. Going out to eat, or a bar (21 +) and getting to know the staff or people around you. You can also try coffee shops, hanging up flyers, or just saying 'hello' to someone around you in a longer line. You can also meet like minded people at concerts, theatrical performances, or trade events. If you're having trouble, try your grapevine. Your grapevine refers to all of your friends, -their friends, -those peoples friends, etc. You can see how many people you reach on social media as well, but we do recommend social media not be a soul gathering site, as it can poorly affect mental health.
GUIDANCE
GUIDANCE
Looking for guidance in the community can be tricky and sometimes dangerous. We want to make sure that when we do seek guidance we know who we are getting the advice from, and that healthy boundaries are set. We know that grooming can occur when younger individuals seek adivce and guidance from elders in the community, so make sure its a person, or people, that you can trust. You can also read, and get in touch with guidance in those capacities. It's also never a bad idea to make sure the guidance source matches up, or has some logistical reason with a lot of your other research, etc.
We know that times are hard, and taking activism by the hand to make change is intense sometimes, so make sure you have people there for you!
How do I prepare myself for protests? What are the best tips for me to avoid any severe injury or arrest?
What does Activism look like? What parts of your daily life reflect Activism opportunities?
How do I organize my friends and community members? How do we build a mutual aid relationship?
How should the community we have organize ourselves to help eachother and be present at protests, or organize them ourselves?
How do I form my community? How do we form understandings and regulate a healthy relationship?
How can we support our planet and climate change actions? Are there ways to use our community's resources to reduce our carbon footprint?
Things you need to idenitify before performing or participating in Activism/ Protests?
Things you need to idenitify before performing or participating in Activism/ Protests?
Belief System
Belief System
Before Participating in any form of Activism you should always know the truth behind the organization! You want to make sure that you agree and understand what you and others are there together to protest, etc. This can look like believing everyone should have equitable rights and resources, or agreeing with the right to privacy. You have to question what you want from the government and the community around you.
It's important to know of course, that the things that apply to you may not apply to everyone and that is okay! See how your past and present have brought you to this set of understandings with your community. There are some things that may seem unimportant or obvious, but are reiterated due to issues with upkeeping that resolution. For example, if you are unsure as to why its important to discuss the history of activism and protest, that may be because you aren't aware of the lives lost particularly in the name of the form of activism, especially when it comes to the black community.
Willingness/ Accessibilty
Willingness/ Accessibilty
Sometimes there are going to be barriers to events that may not always be obvious. We all have different experiences in society based on several things, which can cause us different experiences when trying to create change. We all can always participate, but we aren't meant to! All people have different health and ability when it comes to being in a protest. This means that to keep our communities safe, we make sure to work together to take up space in different ways.
Some people have work they have to go to or they starve, some people have identities that could get them hurt more easily than others, some people have children they have to be parents too, some people can't risk the mental health toll that some protests can take. This is why it is so important to think outside of the box on what your community can do together, to bridge the accessibility barrier, as well as accommodating the range of things that make us unable to participate.
Safety and Reasonable Questions
Safety and Reasonable Questions
Ask your community members reasonable questions, and make sure you are giving space for each person's life story to exist. Often we boil ourselves down too much and we don't share our true potential. This can be due to the situation at hand or the seemingly never-ending chaos that ensues everyday. Let yourself talk about what brought you here, and remember the impact new people and new representation of community have on this life we lead together, not alone. While all of us lead our separate lives in our separate towns, we only have each other in community.
Safety is important, and getting to know those around you is a large part of this! But make sure you have come prepared with safety knowledge about not only activism but predators and social situations. Protests usually are a great bonding opportunity, but we do not ignore the presence of predatory behavior regardless of the time and place!
Systems of Oppression: Built through the continued societal uplifting of the social constructs that protect and empower the oppression and the discriminatory and violent practices associated with them.
Oppression is a way of keeping specific people- defined often by social constructs- that lower social status, lateral policing of identity and behaviors- based on a desired appearance or behaviors, creates inequities that create a skewed social dynamics and impact all people. Whether or not we believe it, there are identities we carry that we may never know due to our ability to feel safe in expressing those identities freely in our current society/community. That pressure to behave and express your identities in a certain way, is part of the oppressionary systems themselves. We may feel pressured in participating in specific systems in order to keep or gain social power; sometimes our identities make it so that we fit more 'in' or 'out' of the system even with our expression of self being true. That doesn't make the identity we hold inherently bad or good, but instead that society has assigned attributes and experiences to those identities without our consent or space for personal definitions of identity. We all hold identities that oppress us, but the way in which we participate in oppression of others, defines the true motivations of a person when it comes to their identities and their appearance.
Protest: A form of actions& behaviors that suggest/tell a group of individuals how they could be doing things differently-typically for the betterment of access, equity, equality, autonomy rights and/or treatment in facilities of work.
When this is done in peaceful, non-violent forms of action, we consider it to be a peaceful protest. Many philosophers have aruged back and forth as to the necessity of peacefulness in protest. For our involvement in activism -and our influence on you to do so- we are strictly discussing or influencing for peaceful, legal, protest.
What is Precariousness?
What is Precariousness?
Precarious:
“Precarity (also precariousness) is a precarious existence, lacking in predictability, job security, material or psychological welfare. The social class defined by this condition has been termed the precariat.”
Precarity is a good gauge to use when looking at visible and non-visible identities, because we are gauging the level of danger for a given identity based on different situations. While some people may carry identity privileges, it does not take away from their precarious identities, or the impact they may have in someone’s day-to-day life. When discussing identities and power struggles, utilizing the lens of precarity can help us to navigate complex intersectional scenarios.
What is Equity?
What is Equity?
Equity as a concept differentiates from equality in that it is a way for us to view the necessity of not having equal support for each person, but rather finding the way for everyone to have equal access to the support they may need to meet their basic human needs and have access to the spaces and resources necessary for human spiritual health. A goal of equity is to acknowledge how the trades that we make of our energy for a common goal, may not always look equal, but have similar weight to each person and their ability to contribute. Equity is a large piece to understanding the best ways we can create more accessible spaces, as well as essential to addressing various kinds of power imbalances relating to hierarchies of race, class, citizenship, sexuality, assigned gender status, ability, and more.
Are ways in which we have structured our society to cater to a specific kind of format for us to run on; even-though, it may be an unspoken and interpretable format per se.
Are ways in which we have structured our society to cater to a specific kind of format for us to run on; even-though, it may be an unspoken and interpretable format per se.
First we must understand what kind of systems we are looking at?
Patriarchy has been founded on the preconceived notion to sex differences at birth and assumed placement in breeding or procreation for future generations, and the assumed placement of a labor source or provider. While this notion has been getting very old by this time, we have let it up hold several households and leave many spending years in emotional aguish over their true wants and the systems' need to stay alive. If men are home bodies who take care of the young, as their female partner have a larger corporate jobs that provide for the family you are actively breaking this norm. However, don't misguide your sense of praise for breaking away from the norm. The praise goes to those who also teach their children not to rely on a specific sex or gender to provide for emotional needs etc. There is a lot in this world that caters to the male ideology, but in many ways it dis-serves the male population the most by inappropriate expectations and emotional strangulation. This does not negate that the tole the Patriarchy has put on AFAB people and/or women is unattainable by most, and has caused death, abuse, and manipulation in the name of gender superiority. Sexual domination has always been apart of this historical fantasy, but the patriarchy uses this assumed domination to abuse and silence women all the time. Rape and abuse culture is an egregious act and it's important that we take the energy to deal with our biggest predators in the community.
However our systems journey does not lead us just to Patriarchal Systems, but also Racist Systems that further upheld the white male agenda for power and profits. We saw this throughout the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, Fugitive Slave Laws, Emancipation Proclamation, and Jim Crow Laws that have only evolved in their ability to access black communities and gerrymander their counties. Racism has many different ways of manifesting itself in the psychology of white individuals. Racism is something every white person faces, because our environment inherently works for us. It makes sure that we are safe; instead of fearing us and therefore endangering us. Racism and Slavery gave white men with power the ability to control and manipulate the ways in which voting and many other forms of freedom were withheld. Black Communities have faced the most extreme of attacks in our nation's history. It's our job as people today to combat our learned racism and other social systems, so that people can be in this place of freedom with the feeling of actually feeling safe, protected, and free to do so as they please (with reason).
There is more research being done to finish this page, please be patient with us.
There is more research being done to finish this page, please be patient with us.
If you would like to help us write about commonly silenced areas or personal experiences you may have with these topics, contact us at thisisactivism2023@gmail.com or fill out our Comments page. We want our website to be a continuous growth of knowledge to share with each other in a positive way. There are so many things we don't talk about and we should!
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