What is a real activist? When I usually think of one, I usually think of active protesting. As a child, my parents were constantly involved in demonstrations and protests. There was a lot of shouting, marching, fundraising, and meetings with government officials. Thus, when I think of activism, I automatically equate the word with what I saw growing up.

Todays discussion about activism gave me a better sense of what activism could mean. For example, I realized that protesting is just one way of being an activist. Some activist might never protest, but are behind the scenes organizing the event. This is still activism. Other way of activism could be quiet protesting. In other words, people could be activists by quietly and peacefully working against their opponents. Such an example is Gandhi and the Salt March where people quietly boycotted the British colonial government by harvesting their own salt. Though violence did result from this action, the activists were not initially rioters, but peaceful activists. In this way after reflecting over the definition of protesting, I realized that there are many ways to be an activist.

Today’s discussion has made me understand that the definition of an activist can be very complex. While individuals have their own simplified definition of an activist (like myself), I realized that it is important to understand that there are many different versions of activism. Like many words, it is not a good idea to oversimplify definitions, especially those that could lead to conflict. It is good to keep a flexible definition of words like activism… But wait, this is hard to do, since simplification is the nature of how our brain works. Therefore I find that  it can be difficult to find the balance between the two different ways of thinking.