How to Be An Activist Without Being An Idiot
Start by questioning your own logic and knowledge
The world, to put it bluntly, is not black and white. Nor is it only pro-Palestine or only pro-Israel. Or even Trump v Harris. Effective activism is activism based on reality, not just passion. Because effective activism is activism that causes doubters to think there may be another way to see things.
In other words, you have to know and enter their world and respect it. It’s easy to scream slogans mindlessly because you are angry. I know, because I’ve done it myself as a very young protester during the Vietnam war, a pretty obviously black and white issue. At least to me, a young teen who could not see any reason for us to be there.
But if I was going to change minds, which is the goal of activism, you have to make sense to those minds on some level and that requires common ground. You are not going to change minds by simply telling people they are wrong.
Or yelling at them or turning large groups into a monolithic enemy. By claiming something like ‘all Jews are bad because of Netanyahu’, you descend into the same level as your worst adversaries.
I realize that right now, with the extreme polarization we see from Trump and Vance, where there is zero acceptance of the validity of any…
