I hate watching the news! Mostly because when bad things happen I alway feel helpless but stressed out. I figure why stress my self out about something I can do nothing about. That was my old way of thinking about problems that were unfair and unjust, like the war in Syria, or the Haiti Earthquake, that my government didn’t seem to care about.
Then I heard this amazing story about a muslim woman, who after 911 took to a park in her neighborhood with a sign strapped to herself, that read ” I am Muslim, ask me a question.” She then had her husband record the response from park goers. There were many questions. Some about terrorism and other about her feeling as a muslim and so on. She then posted the video on social media and so did many of the park attendees. The video eventually went Viral and landed the women an interview on many major news stations, where she was able to express her experience and injustices toward her and other muslims, post 911.
Getting the word out
This woman did something so simple and small for the purposes of informing her community about her religion. She then shared her action and that action was re-shared over and over again by those who shared her passion.
In Simon Lindgren’s book, “Digital Media and Society, he describes this type of movement as Personalized Politics. Where a personal action from an individual, who is not associated with any groups or organization can take such a small step of protest and through digital media have that step be passed on from person to person, creating a leaderless movement. He gives the Arab Spring movement as an example.
You can make a difference
A person once told me that should stop focusing on my goals so much. I thought to myself this person was “Crazy,” then he went on to say that the problem with goals, is we put too much emphasis on them, when instead we should put more energy into the act that will help us reach our goal. He went on further to say if you want to lose weight, don’t focus on losing weight focus on going to the gym and eating healthy and the weight loss will come.
This is a great example of how we should think about personal activism. Focus on your message or action and the change will come.
- Simon, Lingren, (2017) Digital Media and Society, London
BISMCS 333 SUMMER 2017 