Emergency Out of Service

Holy crap, you still have a 12-hour workday for pennies on the hour? Wow, that must suck.

Wait, there aren't any regulations concerning the safety of your food? Wow, that'll put a damper on your life expectancy.

Hold on, you mean you live in an openly segregated society? And it's still illegal to be gay? And you don't have an endangered species list? And industrial pollution makes your water undrinkable? Sounds like you could use a few activists.

Nope, the types of activists you are hinting at are long gone, part of history and may never return. Today the term activist hides racists thugs demanding someone else's stuff.

The activists that worked on behalf of labor were socialists (like, ACTUAL socialists, as opposed to the Democratic Socialists we have today), and often used violence to achieve their goals.

The activists that secured food safety standards engaged in vicious press tactics, some violence, and were often socialists.

The activists that fought segregation shut businesses down, broke laws, and some engaged in violence. A good many of them are still alive and fighting.

The activists that fight for LGBT equality are still fighting, because there are areas of the country that still have prejudicial laws.

The activists that helped create the endangered species list are still fighting, because the current administration and Congress are trying to gut it at this moment.

The same can be said for environmental activists who tackle pollution (see: Flint now has clean-ish water).

The term activist can mean a wide variety of things, but the ones I'm talking about do still exist. They are working hard, against a wide variety of problems, and sometimes that work involves marching. Sometimes it involves peaceful protest. Sometimes it involves scathing journalism. And though I do not approve of it or think it is the right way to do things, sometimes it involves violence. Categorizing all activists as racist thugs demanding someone else's stuff is a rash oversimplification of activism, attributing the actions and ideas of an incredibly small number of radicals to an incredibly large number of people.

I imagine you would bristle at someone calling you a racist, homophobic, undereducated, sweaty neckbeard, simply because you use this site. There are those around here that do fit that description, but they aren't representative of everyone.

Today's activists resist powerful government and industry interests that seek to pad their own pockets. Today's activists advocate for education and health care, and a more fair tax system that doesn't bribe the richest Americans to stay in America. It's a little bizarre to assume that all of a sudden all the activists are evil. You may just have a fear that someone rising up out of a lower place than you is going to take over, and that's just not the case. Pro-lifers are activists, too. Activists usually go to bat for the people who are the most oppressed, and you may think that's "black thugs", but really, most are decent people, as, I'm sure, you are as well. And if you vote, that's activism, too.But you are certainly entitled to your opinion.

I think we are talking about different types of activists, the meme was about the ones using "social justice" as an excuse to burn, rob and attack. Or men like Sharpton that made spreading hate and racism a business. i could go on but I think you will get it. I am against anyone using an agenda to attack and not work towards a solution. I don't know a single community that was made better by removing 1st responders, I know some that forced ER's to close, some drastically cut down the numbers of firefighters and police which causes businesses to close and crime to grow. I doubt that was what the so - called social justice warriors wanted.

I understand how your experience does raise some serious issues about positive and effective activism vs. a knee-jerk impulsive response to something that angers. I am responding to some who see all activists who hold a different view as worthy of ridicule. I try my best to keep opinions about issues and why there's a need for change. Thanks for your thoughtful reply. :)

If we could sit down and talk vs short discussion on line I would think we would quickly find common ground, activism is a part of growth, rioting in the streets is not worthy of the name. There are plenty of issues where I could see us standing side by side, cheers.

Indeed. It is refreshing to humanize some of those responding back and forth.

True, although I still don't know what to do when I have two people hating on each other on one of my memes. I just steer clear and wait until they are done.

That's when you "pick your battles" as they say. It's also not "your dog in the fight" either. Usually I only chime in if I think I have a good meme with a point, or at least something random to maybe diffuse the situation. But you get to a point where there are so many, you should probably go back to making funny or non-topical memes or just go do something else. Like I'm doing...ha!

I have no idea who they are.

I don't believe in censorship but also don't believe just because you can build a statue that you should also get to place it where ever you want. Like all things, most issues should be a team effort.

Yes. I think we get so caught up in what frightens or annoys us that we forget we live in a country with ideals of justice and freedom, and a system that allows for more people to have a voice than in most countries. And with the statues, I do think that maintaining them in a public government area and having to have taxpayers pay for them isn't fair. A private entity could pay for a museum or have them erected on private property. It's so important to get along in spite of what we think about what others think. It keeps us strong!

They only want to help themselves, to other people's money.

You mean the activists?

https://i.imgflip.com/2fy6py.jpg

Google what the Southern Baptist's did after Katrina. FEMA and all the national response plans can't operate without the churches. As with most things, more help comes from individuals than the government.

Absolutely agreed!

True and they do but not on the same scale, most Christian churches have response units prepacked, personnel on stand by and already trained. Some do have atheists that go with, usually specialists. I always liked the way they came and went without the bragging the big charities demanded.

All true but I should have been clear, not the church on the corner, the response teams work at the national level of each denomination. You can see for yourself. The anti organized religion movement scares me because I have seen the work the churches do and without them people die. Google will show you more but this is just a drop in a large bucket, the same teams often work overseas and without fanfare.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2005/09/02/september-2-2005-hurricane-katrina-faith-based-relief-efforts/12722/

You hit on an important points there are plenty of non religious groups helping when they can. The key difference is size, training and frankly the funding. Every disaster America has ever responded to would have been impossible without religious groups, which btw might have been designed to help their own but I have never seen a one of them turn anyone away. The media does a good job of showing them at their worst but I have seen the other side and the real story is in the numbers, with tens of millions of believers finding even a few hundred bad apples would be a very small percentage. The other important point is they do not get funded by governments, the red cross and others do. In the end most everyone with a love of humanity work because they are driven the religious just prepare more. Even then it is western based religious that go international others like Islam only help their own people.

It is not as simple as that, they helped who they could with what they had, they didn't have the resources to work outside their communities so did what they could. It is a size issue, I have never seen an Islamic soup kitchen for example. The bigger charities can help more and have a longer reach.

People in our church, including my husband, have taken weeks off to serve in disaster areas with Mennonite Disaster Service. There is always work to do, and never enough volunteers or finances to get to everything. It is very rewarding work, which I was able to also do a few years back. I worry about Puerto Rico, as it is much more expensive to travel and help there.

Don't read into my explanation, Muslims help inside their community, as do smaller Catholic and other churches. Inside the US and internationally western religions do more, no because Muslims are slackers, they just don't have the reach, in Islamic countries groups like the Red Crescent are everywhere. Location is everything. One thing that worked against the people in Katrina was poor national help, many times removing resources from religious groups already in place and leaving them worse off.