Only Activism Can Save Us
Become the noun by doing the verb.
In the last 100 years, the average life span has doubled. We first started measuring life span in the 1600s, and until the middle of the 18th century, the average lifespan was 35 years. In other words, I would have died 20 years ago and my teenagers would already be half way through their lives. I’m still having trouble wrapping my mind around these facts. All I could think was, I have not accomplished nearly enough in my life as it is and I was planning on another 40+ productive years!
What did not surprise me was the role of activism in expanding longevity. We know that vaccines, better hygiene, clean water, and antibiotics have all played a part in improving the human condition, but we don’t stop to think HOW they changed the world. No idea ever changes the world without people implementing the idea.
Activists change the world. Your actions change the world.
Change requires active engagement. Without activists, the idea of vaccines stays in the lab, not in billions of arms over hundreds of years. Without activists, adding a few drops of chlorine in drinking water would not have drastically reduced typhoid, city by city. Without activists pushing for the pasteurization of milk, harmful bacterium, diphtheria, typhoid, and scarlet fever would have continued to decimate the population.
It’s not just disease, social change only occurs with the concerted efforts of activists, almost always over the course of multiple generations. Activists fighting on the front lines, mentoring and inspiring the next generation, then passing the baton, but always keeping the end goal in sight. It took over 70 years of concerted activism for women to get the vote - and 173 years after that movement began, women still aren’t equal under U.S. law. It took over 110 years to outlaw child labor.
Social change takes time. Decades, even centuries.
It can be frustrating to see how relatively little each individual activist has accomplished, yet when we stop being activists, bad things continue to happen, or we slide backwards. The slave trade from Africa to the Americas and European colonies existing for over 200 years. In theory, slavery ended in the U.S. with the Civil War, yet as the great Jack Weiseman said, “The South lost the war but won the peace.” Systemic racism is alive and well, in part, because the activists lost steam after the end of the Civil War. Historians can argue about whether it was exhaustion from the war, political expediency, economic rationale, or ingrained racism on both sides that didn’t really want full equality, but the outcome has been clear. By abandoning activism, racism continues to this day, with significant and damaging disparities by every measurement - education, health, incarceration, social mobility, home ownership, wealth, income. It’s not slavery as defined before the Civil War, but it’s not anything close to equality, because activists didn’t keep pushing to win the peace. Fortunately, the next generations of activists realized what was happening and stepped back up, during the Civil Rights movement, and with #BlackLivesMatter, guaranteeing that change will happen, even if it’s too slow.
Activism requires action. Not just hoping things will get better, that someone else will take care of the icky stuff. Not giving up the fight without passing the baton. Not thinking that just because you’ve made your stand, everyone must see the wisdom in the change and the angelic chorus will sing.
Every activist has days when being an activist seems brutal and pointless, when the barriers are high and the goal is obscured. When you are seeing more failures than successes, remember Martin Luther King’s words, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” That said, with all respect to Rev. Dr. King, I’d amend the phrase to say that we must all bend the arc towards justice. Actively. With force. With intent. Just as you can not bend an iron bar by hoping and asking nicely, bending the bar requires intentional action. Bending the arc of the moral universe must be an intentional and active choice, because as history has shown us, the human race only continues to improve because we take action.
With Mother’s Day fast approaching, I’d like to end by recognizing the most fierce activists out there, the mothers. And by ‘mothers’, I mean every woman who has ever birthed, adopted, nurtured, encouraged, supported, or protected a child, because there is no activism more radical than raising children to be responsible citizens of our world. In fact, research has shown that grandmothers - the mothers of all our mothers - are key to our species surviving and thriving. Activism in the most primal sense, passed down through the generations, ingrained in our genetic history, passing the baton.
Ellen Burstyn said, “When you mother a child, a relationship is formed. You become the noun by doing the verb.”
You become the noun by doing the verb.
There is no better definition of an activist, for any of us.
To be an activist, act.
This is my first Mother’s Day without my mom. My mom taught me to be an activist. When I’d say that to her, she dismissed it, said she hadn’t done much, hadn’t done enough. I disagree. My mom had me marching for the Equal Rights Amendment when I was 13. She and my dad renovated low-income housing in the 70’s. I remember learning traditional games from nurses visiting from the Philippines, whom my parents hosted through programs encouraging cross-cultural understanding. Into their late 80’s, my parents were still participating in ‘Great Decisions’ to learn about the world, to engage, to understand. My mom spoke out about injustice - she got angry, passionate, emotional. She refused to ‘not see’ what needed to be changed or think it wasn’t her problem. I definitely get my ‘I’m writing a letter’ and ‘let me talk to your manager’ style from her. And she was an activist mother in the ways of the best of mothers - unconditional love and support balanced with teaching and boundaries. She actively mothered. When she became a grandmother to my children, she flew across an ocean to help me out, leaving my dad for the first time in almost 50 years, and then flew back again 3 months later to help me move countries with a newborn and a toddler. These are the acts of an activist - and the very best of mothers.
And so I am an activist, and will be an activist until my last breath, as my activist mother taught me to be, as the activists in my family have been for centuries - determined to improve ourselves, our families, and humanity. I will become the noun by doing the verb.