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| | | | "Agitator"
"Cage rattler"
"Pot stirrer"
"Pain in the ass"
A rose by any other name....*grins*
Ask any activist, they'll tell you the question we hear most often - "Why do you do it?"
I usually just say, "Because I want to change the world, or at least my little corner of it". What I'm actually saying is, "Because I can't imagine NOT wanting to be part of the changes" I just can't imagine a life of sitting passively on the sidelines and letting life go by without having some input.
This guy gets it *s*
This July 4th, Rebel and Agitate for Change
Saturday 04 July 2009
by: Jim Hightower | Visit article original @ AlterNet
Agitators created America, and it's their feisty spirit and outright rebelliousness that we celebrate on our national holiday.
Are you an agitator? You know, one of those people who won't leave well enough alone, who's always questioning authority and trying to stir things up.
If so, the Powers That Be detest you -- you ... you ... "agitator!" They spit the term out as a pejorative to brand anyone who dares to challenge the established order. "Oh," they scoff, "our people didn't mind living next to that toxic waste dump until those environmental agitators got them upset." Corporate chieftains routinely wail that "our workers were perfectly happy until those union agitators started messing with their minds."
In each case, the message is that America would be a fine country if only we could get rid of those pesky troublemakers who get the hoi polloi agitated about one thing or another.
Bovine excrement. Were it not for agitators, we wouldn't even have an America. The Fourth of July would be just another hot day, we'd be singing "God Save the Queen," and our government officials would be wearing white-powdered wigs.
Agitators created America, and it's their feisty spirit and outright rebelliousness that we celebrate on our national holiday. I don't merely refer to the Founders, either. Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, Ben Franklin and the rest certainly were derring-do agitators when they wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, creating the framework for a democratic republic. But they didn't actually create much democracy. In the first presidential election, only 4 percent of the people were even eligible to vote. No women allowed, no African Americans, no American Indians and no one who was landless.
So, on the Fourth, it's neither the documents of democracy that we celebrate nor the authors of the documents. Rather, it's the intervening two-plus centuries of ordinary American agitators who have struggled mightily against formidable odds to democratize those documents.
America's great rebellion didn't end with the British surrender at Yorktown. It was only getting started -- and the rebellion has moved through such great forces of agitation as the abolitionists and suffragists, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, the Populists and the Wobblies, Fighting Bob La Follette and Huey Long, the Square Deal and New Deal, Mother Jones and Woodie Guthrie, Rachel Carson and Ralph Nader, Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez -- and on into today's continuing fight for economic fairness, social justice and equal opportunity for all.
Without agitators battling in politics, on the job, in the marketplace, for the environment, on Wall Street, in education, for civil liberties and rights, and all across our society, democratic progress doesn't just stall, it falls back.
The Powers That Be -- especially America's overarching corporate and political forces (often the same) -- give lip service to democracy, but tend toward plutocracy, autocracy and kleptocracy. They prefer (and often demand) that We the People be passive consumers of their economic and political policies. Don't rock the boat, stay in your place, go along to get along -- be quiet, they urge.
Be quiet? Holy Thomas Paine! How could freedom-loving, democratic citizens shrink into quietude, especially when the Powers That Be feel so entitled to run roughshod over us? Even a dead fish can go with the flow. We've got to be livelier than that.
July Fourth is a time to enjoy fireworks, flags, hotdogs, ballgames and such -- but it's also a time to remember who we are: agitators!
It's not easy to stand against powerful interests. Sometimes it's lonely, and you get to feeling like the guy B.B. King sings about: "No one likes you but your momma, and she might be jiving you, too." It's not easy, but having those who dare to stand up is essential if our country is ever to achieve our ideals of fairness, justice and opportunity for all.
And when the establishment derisively assails you as an agitator, remember this: The agitator is the center post in the washing machine that gets the dirt out.
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Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the new book, "Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow." (Wiley, March 2008) He publishes the monthly "Hightower Lowdown," co-edited by Phillip Frazer.
http://www.truthout.org/070409A
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| | | | and i am an activist, because I believe El Jeffe is bad for America.
I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue! - Barry Goldwater |
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| | | | Belief doesn't make you an activist.
Bitching and whining about everything someone you don't like does, just to be bitching and whining, without ever presenting any solutions, does not make you an activist.
There are three kinds of people - those who watch what happens, those who make things happen, and those who wonder what the hell happened.
Those who MAKE THINGS HAPPEN - THOSE people are the activists.
Getting off your ass and ACTIVELY WORKING to change things - THAT makes you an activist.
Anything else just makes you part of the audience.
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| | | | yes well, i can guarantee you i'm doing more than just waiting to get my mommy's printer fixed.
I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue! - Barry Goldwater |
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| | | | SlutPup (7/5/2009)
yes well, i can guarantee you i'm doing more than just waiting to get my mommy's printer fixed.
WTF??? *LOL*
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| | | | Um, when last we visited this topic, you were waiting to get your mommy's printer fixed so you could start faxing people....have you gotten it fixed yet?
I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue! - Barry Goldwater |
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| | | | Bless your heart, sweety, you're getting posters mixed up again. No biggie, I'm sure it happens to all of us as we age. *s*
Now focus dear...
I'm not the person you think I am.
I'm the mom in Tennessee whose son recently graduated from high school.
My "mommy" lives over an hour away in Alabama. I spoke to her this morning and she didn't mention anything about having printer problems, but thank you for your concern. *s*
Now...is there someone we can call that can come stay with you until you start remembering again?
Do we need to contact your doctor about your meds?
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| | | | KestrelBrighteyes
Posted Thursday, April 30, 2009 3:16 PM
Member
*s* I forget sometimes that most of y'all at the Pork don't know me.
Sweety, I'm a political activist, and have been for most of my life.
So what do YOU think? *s*
Yes, I've sent letters, I've made phone calls, I've signed petitions, I've sent email - although not as much (YET) since he's been President as when he was Illinois Senator running for President (after all, he's only been President for 100 days) If we can fix this printer that my mom was going to trash, I'll have a fax machine too - and faxes are much more effective than email - same with letters, and to some extent, phone calls - it's the "sheer volume" thing.
The aides that work in my Congress Critters' offices probably recognize my name now, I've sent so many letters to them. I've met my Representative and had the chance to talk to him face to face on more than one occasion - and I let him know when and why I voted for someone else in the last primary. (He won anyway *shrugs*)
I work individually and with different groups - Velvet Revolution, CAF, Vote Vets, Democracy For America
to name a few. I'm on email lists from the offices of Barack Obama and several of the more active Senators and Representatives, plus I'm on email and snail mail lists for a multitude of progressive newletters and reports.
And yes, I write to Republicans as well as Democrats. We have to hold ALL of their feet to the fire on the issues. Some respond, some don't.
So yeah, I've let the President and my Congress Critters know how I feel, on a multitude of subjects.
So..what have YOU done? Besides going from topic to topic to whine about those of us taking action and posting about issues, I mean?
http://www.the-pork.com/Topic883971-48-1.aspx?Highlight=fax
Yeah so like I said, have you gotten your mommy's printer fixed yet?
I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue! - Barry Goldwater |
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| | | | OH! *laughin* Damn, I completely forgot about that!
Well, it scans and prints. Not sure if hubby and son ever got the fax thingy working, I'll have to ask them when they get back in town.
In the meantime, it's against my nature to just sit around and wait for anything *s*
But again, thanks for your concern *s* |
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| | | | | Leave it to some hack from a conspiracy-theory website to come up with such an absurd meaning for the Fourth of July. |
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