Activism!

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On Friday I wrote about activism… the Inside and Outside games. Today I want to delve other types of activism. I want to state up front, the is no one right way to be an activist and sometimes a broad approach is best.

There are many logical steps for activism… first rule is what is your target? What are your goals… to get heat in an apartment building or to get legal protections for a minority. They require to different approaches. Would you close down a city because a landlord hasn’t gotten the heat fixed? Or would a better tactic be a sit-in in the company offices?

So let the method be determined by your goals. Maybe is a city passes a law saying trans people have to the bathroom of their birth gender. Well maybe some good methods might be something like they used in the civil rights movement. In the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro North Carolina where the police came in an arrested the protesters… but there was a line of people who would take their place when they got arrested. As the police arrested one person another came in and sat in the “White’s Only” counter. Maybe that might work with us… a line of trans women going into bathrooms where they are arrested. Or another tactic might be have all trans guys go into women’s bathrooms. (Have all trans guys go into women’s bathrooms in the Texas state capitol. Have one trans guys in each bathroom.)

So in this case…
Target: State legislature.
Goal: Blocking anti-trans legislation.
Method: Having a trans guy in every women’s bathroom in the capitol.

So there is an article in the New York Times in the article, Transgender Activists Question the Movement’s Confrontational Approach they write,

Now, some activists say it is time to rethink and recalibrate their confrontational ways, and are pushing back against the more  all-or-nothing voices in their coalition.

“We have to make it OK for someone to change their minds,” said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of Advocates for Transgender Equality. “We cannot vilify them for not being on our side. No one wants to join that team.”

They cite tactics, especially on social media, that became routine for devoted backers of the movement: Attempts to police language, such as excising the words “male” and “female” from discussions of pregnancy and abortion; decrying the misidentification of a transgender person as violence; insisting that everyone declare whether they prefer to be referred to as he, she or other pronouns.

There is room for all views, there is no one right way. There is room for radicals and there is room for those who want to go slow, but… but there no room for those who deny our existence and limit our rights.

Your homework (Hey! You didn’t think that you get off scot-free? Activism means work!):

• Read the first two chapters in the Community Tool Box
• Read Rules for Radicals

I created a tag for this series… “Tool Box” where I will write tips to becoming an activist.

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