Whac-a-Mole Activism Pt. 1 - How to manage all the Calls to Action (CTAs) that are streaming into your social feed
Whac-a-Mole Activism Pt. 2 - Look past the distractions of the Executive Orders and other White House activity to see the real agenda
Whac-a-Mole Activism Pt. 3 - Find your One Good Thing and do that to the best of your ability
Today and tomorrow, we're going to revisit the idea of how we individually can best use our limited energy and resources to mount a strong collective Resistance that is sustainable and effective. So here you go:
Whac-a-Mole Activism Pt. 4 - Focus On Just a Few Topics
I was an avid reader as a young child and interested in just about everything. A trip to the library was a treat, and books and educational toys were at the top of my Christmas list. At one point, I professed my goal to "know everything about everything!"
Suffice to say that at age 50, my childhood aspiration of being the ultimate omniscient being has not come to pass (though I admit I am pretty good at trivia games). One thing that I have learned is that if one is to be effective, it helps to specialize.
That's a big lead-in for a simple idea. I'm sure that, just like me, your email box is overflowing with CTAs and information from groups and your Facebook and Twitter feeds are swamped with articles. I'm also sure that you are a caring compassionate person who is concerned about many of the issues that are affected by legislative, executive, and judicial actions. At my Solidarity Sunday meeting, we try to give some air time to the various issues that we all care about, but that list is very long:
- Standing Rock
- Cabinet appointments
- Medicaid/ObamaCare
- Election reform
- Voter suppression
- Trump Industries conflict of interest
- Protection of Muslims
- Immigration rights
- Climate change
- Opposition to 100 Days Agenda
- LGBT rights
- Racial justice
- Reproductive rights
- Criminal justice reform
- Flint, Michigan
- Environmental issues
- Women’s rights
- Equal pay
- Oligarchy / Capitalistic control of gov’t
- Designation of sanctuary cities
- Black Lives Matter
- Midterm elections
- Supporting our current members of Congress
- Non-violence training / Self-Defense
- Gun Control? / 2nd Amendment
- Public education
- College costs
- Employment / Working class
- Freedom of Press / Misrepresentation in news
- Healing divisions in our nation
- Better understanding of Trump voters
And that's just a brainstorming list. There are so many things to care about that it's very easy to get overwhelmed. And there you are playing Whac-a-Mole once again.
If you spread yourself thin by trying to be knowledgeable about everything, your knowledge will be a mile wide and an inch deep. Most if not all of the issues in play right now are complex and require us to use our critical thinking skills. Memes and clickbait news articles are essentially intellectual junk food, and you need a healthy balanced diet of information.
So what do you do?
Quite simply, you need to focus on two or three topics and dive deeply into those. While you might truly care about public education and rising college costs, it's okay to invest your energy into learning about sanctuary cities and immigrant rights. The continuing water crisis in Flint, Michigan may bother you deeply, but it's okay if you are more called to criminal justice reform.
So next time you see an interesting article come your way, decide how much time you want to invest in reading it. If it's related to one of your chosen topics, then go deep and do what we teachers call close reading. If it's outside your focus area, then it's fine to skim/scan the article (or even skip it all together).
The key thing from here is to be self-aware as to the depth of your knowledge before spouting off your opinions on a particular topic. For example, someone suggesting that people in Flint, Michigan just need to move to another city clearly doesn't have a good understanding about what is happening there. Don't be that person.
There are a lot of people in this Resistance movement. None of us can know everything about everything. Become a font of knowledge in a couple areas that call you, be sure to diversify your network so you're connected to experts in the other areas you care about, and trust that we are all pulling in roughly the same direction.
That's all I got for you today.
Yours in Solidarity!
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