Activism
One of the strongest labels that make up my self-identity is that of an activist. Activism is intentional action to bring about social, political, economic, or environmental change. It is important because most people want life to be different than it is: they swear at newspaper headlines, or mutter darkly about the country going downhill... and then they content themselves with complaining and carry on as usual. Activists try to change the status quo that they are unhappy with.
Someone once said to me that “activism is pointless because the people at the top don't change anything unless they want to”. I would reply that the darkly named “people at the top” change things when they feel their position is threatened, and it is an activist's job to make them fear if they do not act, action will be taken. Activism never changed anything? Activism is the only thing that ever changed anything! How can you receive something unless you ask for it?
This is not to say that every activist is obliged to stand outside the gates of No. 10 threatening anarchy until they get their own way. There are many, many people who are quietly changing the world, through art, through teaching, by any means necessary to get across the message that another world is possible. And I think when you look at what the world was like a thousand years ago, the pace may be slow, but we are getting there.
Everyone has their own favoured areas of activism, though most people move around over time. I've have attended protests and meetings for everything from peace marches to students in Iran to the American spybase at Menwith Hill, and they've all been interesting to greater or lesser extents. But there are things that I am interested in more than average.
Drug law reform
The efforts to stamp out drugs began 150 years and have proven absolutely disastrous, expensive, and just plain stupid. You cannot stop people taking drugs and by handing over the control of a global trade that is third in size only to oil and arms to criminal cartels; you fuel all kinds of terrorism and gang activity, destroy communities, spread disease, criminalise millions of otherwise law-abiding people and generally waste hundreds of billions of dollars on an unachievable goal set down by moralists who use fear instead of evidence.
It is not drugs in and of themselves that are the problem – it is the Prohibition of them. All drugs should be legalised, controlled and regulated, and only then will we be able to start making inroads in drug-related crime and health problems.
In 2008 I joined Students for Sensible Drug Policy UK, but resigned from the Board in 2010 because I felt that SSDP UK was not focussing on drug law reform. In March 2011, I co-founded the Re:Vision Drug Policy Network with the intention of mobilising young people to speak out against the drug war on their own terms.
Further reading:
The Transform Drug Policy Foundation - Contains some excellent basic literature on why we need drug law reform and what alternatives we could have.
You can also read my posts on drugs on my blog here.
LGBT rights
Yay, I can marry a woman (or a man). That doesn't mean I am not still discriminated against for my sexuality. People tell me that sexual liberation has happened, that no-one has a problem with being lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans anymore. Really? Then why are so many of my friends still estranged or hated by their parents? Why do we use "gay" as an insult?
I am thrilled to bits that since the days of Oscar Wilde we have reached the point where some gay couples can walk down some streets holding hands. But we still have gay kids being beaten up, we still have the media viewing bisexuals as promiscuous and untrustworthy, and one in two trans people will suffer domestic violence in their lives. We certainly aren't there yet.
Further reading:
Trans and Judaism: Inclusion from the Perspective of Several Jewish Movements - An essay I wrote as a piece of coursework on a friend's relationship between his gender identity and faith.
Cuts and tuition fees
In May 2010, the Liberal Democrat and Conservative Parties formed a coalition government, under whom we have been living ever since. They have passed laws to raise tuition fees to £9,000 a year, to privatise the NHS, to reduce benefits, and to make 500,000 people redundant from the public sector. I have very little else to say other than that, whether you believe whether the cuts are necessary or not, that choosing to cut the benefits system on which desperately poor people are dependant to survive over, say, the drug war (£13 billion a year), tax evasion (£12 billion a year), or bailing out the banks (£850 billion and counting...) is a choice, a choice to pursue people who have no money to pay for the lifestyles of people who have everything.
Fight.
Further reading:
UKUncut - Devoted to raising awareness of tax evasion by wealthy individuals and corporations.
National Coalition Against Cuts and Fees - Campaigning against cuts in education.
Death to the Liberal Democrats! Or, Why the Coalition is Going to Kill People - A blog post I wrote that kickstarted my campaigns against the cuts and the lying hypocrites who persuaded me to vote for them so they could bring them in.
Local Exchange Trading Schemes
LETS - Local Exchange Trading Systems or Schemes - are local community-based mutual credit networks in which people exchange goods and services with one another without the need for money. In September 2010, I started bring people together to found a LETS in Manchester - one had previously existed in the the 90s, but had eventually died out.
Our current mission statement: "Our vision is of a mutual credit system that one can exchange good and services within an alternative currency system that is accessible to everyone without regard to their income, assets or situation, where the barrier to participation are as low as is practical." If you would like to get involved, or would like further information, please visit the website at ManchesterLETS.org!