What’s needed today is sustained outrage at the powerful, by those with the time and resources to express it.

Low-key activism

The word Activism has been overused. Mostly because of the media, we usually associate this term with images of an isolated group of people making crazy things in public to get attention. The media will interview the most sectarian individual of the group and then you, distant spectator, end up having negative feelings about the practice of activism in general. I’m not saying those events are useless but many actors know very well how to cleverly reverse the situation and radicalize a movement. They focus the attention on the methods to discredit the message and occult the substance. When you see so much energy being patronized, you unconsciously think that nothing else could ever make a difference. The best excuse of people for not taking action is to think that their small inputs will not make any difference or that someone is already campaigning harder for that cause. I don’t blame this cynical thinking because, yes, it’s hard to be heard but not doing anything gives even less chance to make a change… Don’t count on others if we can’t already count on you. This is why I like to read about this idea of ‘’low-key activism’’ as Kai Brach defines it. Nothing revolutionary, just little actions that are already accessible to anyone but that we call activism : like sending an email, signing a petition, donating money, etc. It doesn’t have to take a lot of individual efforts to grab attention, it takes a mass and targeted citizen mobilisation.