Unlike what some might think today, sitting behind your laptop and virtually taking part in movements and even up-risings is not a lazy and cowardly thing to do. Many activists feel frustrated by the number of people showing up to a protest when they compare it to the number of people reacting to the event they shared online. However, they always forget that, nowadays, there are more people on the internet than on the streets. There are more people reading blog posts, messages and emails than reading signs and flyers. Let us not forget that the Arab Spring was first blogged to the internet before it then became a reality.
Writing activism is a refuge for introverts who do not feel that comfortable to go to the streets and shout mottoes. It is a refuge for young women who live in conservative societies and who are not socially/culturally allowed to go out and take part in protests. It is a refuge for young boys and girls who have a say in whatever the hell is happening in their worlds. We always tend to forget that there are those who are too afraid of their parents or spouses to put their names on the writings their share. There are even those who keep their writings to themselves, or create fake accounts on social media, or keep their original accounts but block family members.
Perhaps writing is not as efficient as leading protest events, shouting mottoes, holding signs, getting arrested while fighting the good fight, etc. But there are voices that need to be heard, and those voices have the power to change the public opinion radically, but peacefully. Many activists are today on the streets because they were once influenced by the online writing of their peers or by literary activist book writers of the previous generations.
The writing process itself allows people to practice the art of effective persuasion and to organize their thoughts and feelings about certain events, in order to create rhetorically-built texts that will later provoke thought and action.
So, WRITE!
Write to other activists, to politicians, to public speakers, to educators, to the media. Write to the power holders of discourse, and become a power holder of discourse!
Write for youth, for immigrants, for women, for children, for people of color, for the poor, for justice, for peace. Write for Humanity!
Write For Humanity 