Thursday, August 8, 2013

A Quiet Rebellion

What do activists look like?

They show up at rallies, right? Get arrested? Know what it's like to lose teeth and bleed on the pavement? Lose custody of their kids because it was worth it. Grow their own food, scream insults at people who use petty city laws to close down clinics so that a woman who finds out what's inside isn't a baby, but instead lacks 90% of it's brain and both of it's kidneys? Maybe they are the people who march around insisting GMO be banished forever and for all time, amen......yesterday. And of course they risk EVERYTHING (because the cause is all that matters, right?) to file class action suits, etc. If they lose the house, the job, the clearance - well they are RIGHT with a capital R so who cares about all that.

They think ALL law enforcement is brutal and uncaring. They have either been pepper sprayed or they just know this next demonstration it's going to be the dogs and the firehoses. And ALL juries are rigged. And if you've never been convicted of something? Heck, you are just a wannabe! If you don't earn a paycheck from someone actively bucking the system and making sure thing stay fair? You aren't serious about it. Not really.

That's what they look like, right?

Maybe.

Maybe they are the people who insisted that Zimmerman be tried in a court of law. By the simple tactic of calling their law enforcement personnel, and their representative, and signing online petitions, and letting overseas friends know what was going on.

Or maybe they just are that person who seems pretty white bread, but doesn't drink water in front of their Muslim friends during Ramadan.

Who has a garden so their kids know where food comes from, and hates Japanese beetles that eat nearly all of it....but lets the rabbits eat most of what survives. They don't dump poison on their vegetable patch, but doesn't refuse to speak with those who do.

Whose children not only get a mehndi but know about dowries and why some families don't educate or even keep children of the "non-desirable" gender. Everyone knows about the mehndi. Almost nobody knows what the kids know about some kids not going to school - or being sold for labor - and that a good monsoon year and cheap rice is something to be happy about, not for themselves, but for others. Their kids don't know about the fact that infanticide, human trafficking, child soldiers, and other horrific things exist....yet. But they will by the time they are adults.

Maybe it is the person who doesn't support gun control laws. Not because they want a heavily armed population, but because they are cynical enough to know that if people want a gun, they will get one. Very few people know that their children don't play unattended at the home of one of their friends (age 6) who owns and regularly practices with her very own firearm at the range with her daddy. Most of them don't know this little cherub-cheeked neighbor owns her own gun, can read at age level, but is nowhere near enough to read even the simplest gun safety brochures yet.

Maybe they are the person that you call when you've been date-raped, and you don't have cash, or insurance, and you need someone to help you get what you need, fund it, and hold your hand while you go through it, and makes sure you don't bleed to death, and who will take anguished phone calls at 2am about what happened. Who will grieve with you, rather than shame and blame you.

Maybe they were right behind you at Chuck E. Cheese when your child fell, almost tripped you, and they gave him a handful of tokens and an understanding smile.

Maybe they were the person who smiled at the busboy and treated him as a person, rather than a thing, and taught their children to do so, too.

Maybe they were the person who pretended not to see their fellow diner smile when they said "there is only one race - the human race." And thanked them for teaching their daughters how to say butterfly in Arabic when they explained where they were from (Sudan) and where Sudan was.

But they aren't really activists. They are just wannabes, interested in stirring up trouble.

They should just be quiet and leave it to the professionals.