So a friend & I were texting the other day about protesting. He was telling me about the people who got mad over the gorilla who was shot after a kid fell into the gorilla pit at the Cincinnati zoo. He was saying how people are going way to crazy over the shooting of the gorilla. Well if you watch the video you will see the gorilla meant no harm to the kid and was actually trying to play with the kid & protect him. Gorillas are actually gentle creatures but like most animals are made to look big and scary. Now, of course, I do see both sides but do I think the gorilla should have been shot? No there are other ways of detaining an animal.
Anyway, after we talked about this my friend said he thinks protest are out of control & that it gets nowhere and creates chaos. I then watched a YouTuber who made a video on the Trump rally in New Mexico. He said he thought the anti-Trump railers were wrong for getting violent and making New Mexico look bad. That they don’t accomplish anything.
All of this got me thinking about protest/activism what that means & when people are taking it too far.
I just recently watched a pretty good video on what being an activist means & the difference between being an activist and an advocate.
To be an activist you believe down to your core being something is right or wrong and you go to a great length to change or fix it with such means as protesting. Advocating means about the same thing only you don’t go to the ends of the earth to change something you just simply believe that it’s something people should get behind.
Now protesting as I said is an effect of being an activist for something & there are several forms of being in protest or a protester. First off there are the peaceful protesters who will have marches, sit-ins, meetings, send letters to their government, sign petitions, write songs, poems, essays, speeches and social media posts/YouTube videos etc. Then you have the most aggressive protesters who might do what peaceful protesters do but take more aggressive action like riots, rallies, and in extreme terms resort to violence.
I feel that all protesters in this day & age have become jumbled together in one pot and made to believe that all protest are bad. Take for example when the Baltimore riots happened. Nobody knew that the protest started with a perfectly safe peaceful march until some kids decided to come start braking & taring up their city. Then when the mainstream media got there they only saw the rioters and that became the headline. Same happened in Ferguson and Mike Brown’s own parents didn’t want anything crazy to happen.
People today just think that protest has just gone too far and that we’re just supposed to protest everything. Now in our politically correct 21st-century world of the Internet people are more sensitive than ever which I get. But people did you realize that almost 90% of what you see on your social media feeds or Google has been going on forever it’s just being hyper blown up due to stories & videos on the Internet. Back in the day you only saw this stuff on the mainstream news (and only a small amount of it) but now you see it everywhere and everyone has an opinion on it.
On a personal level, I have always thought that protesting is a good thing when done right. I am an advocate of peaceful protesting but when certain things happen at a protest I might not condone that behavior but can sympathize with those people. I grew up knowing that righting wrongs whether culturally, racially, religiously, politically, socially, environmentally or whatever is important. To care for those with no voice and to be able to help them in anyway I can whether through spirit, protest, or just getting the word out on their cause. I consider myself both an advocate and an activist on many different issues and causes going on in the world. That’s just how I grew up to be first off educated on the issue but then help fight anyway you can.
Do I think protest have become overblown and protesters are going crazy? Not all but yes some protest are going a little crazy like take those crazy vegan protesters who try to through that down your throat. Now I think more power to you if you decide to be a vegan but to force other people to watch your videos or listen to your speeches on the evils of meet in such a forceful way is the wrong type of protesting. To demolish your own city to get the point across to the police to stop killing unarmed black people is wrong too. I get why you guys do it and the thought behind it I get but the actual action I find to be stupid.
The right way to get people to listen to you is to calmly explain to them in an educational yet personal way. If your protesting something that you personal have a connection to then tell people that. I also get that this does not always work and not everyone is willing to listen to what you have to say but the way I see it whether they listen or not you will have got your point of view out there and helped make even a small difference. Without protest in the world, some of the biggest cultural, political, racial, genders, environmental, etc. would never have made strides in their fights.
Anyway yes, protest can get out of hand at times but I don’t feel that protesting, advocating or being an activist of something is a bad thing and it should continue in this world till all the injustices have been rectified.
Till Next Time…#FightThePower
