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This is an interesting read and I think extremely relevant right now. These are two of the paragraphs that set up the rest of the article. I imagine it might get political so I posted it here.

 

Action vs. Advocacy

 

"I have had a running dialogue with a guy I know about this topic, and I have been pretty unenthused with his overall efforts to "help" others because he has been firmly in the "Advocacy" camp since he decided to "help" others. I know his heart is in the right place, but watching his enthusiasm for talking about a problem left me feeling like I was dealing with some kind of [BLEEP]-heel car salesman every time we talked. Now, I almost felt bad for the gut feeling I had about this guy... because I KNOW he's a good person and wants to help. He kind of called me out for my lack of patience with him, and I took some time to think about why I was so viscerally influenced by his efforts to do things for others.
 
In America right now we have a HUGE push for advocacy. Awareness is some kind of tag line that people think means "doing good" when truly, advocacy is just talking. It reminds me of the 20th century push to remove production jobs from America and turn us into a think tank/services rich economy. It was as if we were yelling "let those unwashed masses do all our heavy lifting, we invented A/C let's sit in it." Right now it feels like our efforts to "help" others are very similar. We do things like host bake sales, or fund raise by getting companies to donate a portion of their already allocated budget to our charity of choice, or we run in races to "raise awareness". That's totally doing something, right? Wrong."

Been saying it for 25 years. Thank you for posting that.

Yes, it's time to quit talking and start rioting protesting burning shooting taking action, amirite?

Quote:Yes, it's time to quit talking and start rioting protesting burning shooting taking action, amirite?

It is as long as it's civil and peaceful. That's the problem though. Some people, and I'm not categorizing anyone here, cannot be civil. For some reason it's 'better' to be angry than it is to be civil. Apparently it's better for the news.

Quote:It is as long as it's civil and peaceful. That's the problem though. Some people, and I'm not categorizing anyone here, cannot be civil. For some reason it's 'better' to be angry than it is to be civil. Apparently it's better for the news.

Kinda my point, encouraging action is going to get some negative results.

Quote:Kinda my point, encouraging action is going to get some negative results.

I am about ready to take that risk. There have to be some hard-working Americans out there willing to come together for a common good. Instead, nobody does anything - and I am pretty sure it is because they don't know how/where to start.

Quote:Kinda my point, encouraging action is going to get some negative results.

But doing nothing gets no results. Our local Walmart had an incident yesterday where someone sprayed mace or some other nasty gas that made a lot of people I'll and sent three to the hospital. When folks approached management to call EMS and 911 they laughed and said that only happens if employees are harmed.


Many of these folks were angry and upset but almost all of them said they would let someone else call corporate and report it. If everyone does nothing then nothing gets done. If I had been there I would have been up in somebody's business to get the managers reported but I wasn't so there is not much I can say.


People need to stop being bystanders and start being participants.