Grassroots

Symbols Into Action

Rhetoric shapes reality. What we say, how we say it is always going to be important. Those symbols function as means to serve our daily life. It shapes and allows our brain to fixate on a specific image and substitute that image or symbol for the whole movement. This is what activists attempt to do when they do things like protests.

 

The best example is the anti-choice protestors that show pictures of fetuses most often miscarried, or aborted in late term abortions, that are particularly gruesome. This is a means of re-ordered the hierarchy of social symbols so that when you think of abortion that is what comes to mind. And granted it is effective, if someone were to be asked, “Do you want to save a baby?” the answer is probably yes. Yet that question does not give you the full picture. Do you want to save a baby? Yes… that baby can be saved by alternate means. Is it appropriate for the baby to be brought up in a household with a teenage mother who did not graduate high school?

 

Especially given the teen pregnancy rates and that teen pregnancies are most often attributed to premature births, low birth rates, and a higher rate of birth defects. Post birth those babies are more likely to suffer from learning disabilities, and are than more likely to repeat the cycle than anyone else.

 

What do we do? This is the thing that bothers me most often with academia. Theoretically, concepts are easy. Is oppression bad? Yes. Should women have rights to their bodies, should they have a voice? Yes. What does that mean? What does that mean for a teacher who has half of the girls in her class becoming pregnant?  What does someone in his or her day-to-day life do? There seems to be a few strategies post the theoretical phase that someone can do. They all center around two concepts, reclaiming ones voice, and education.

 

Reclaiming Your Voice: The first step to reclaiming your voice is realizing that it is gone in the first place. To acknowledging the power structures exist, and those power structures should be re-manipulated into something that is livable for everyone. Creating a livable lifestyle or a space where discourse is allowed to flourish while still somewhat theoretical is unique and important. Because voice is where our identities are shaped, when we are able to speak out ideas and thoughts and imaginations and allow that to flourish in a manner that is unique and truly real. Voice is something anyone can use; it is the epitome of daily resistance. Changing the words you say, posting in a blog, speaking out against the daily oppression that you see. This is all around the central thesis that you must question the norms, and question those norms to such an extent that they become uneasy and begin to bend.

 

Education: Education is arguably a manifestation of reclaiming your voice but it is more than that it is building networks, recognizing we are all one community and building upon that. That we are feminists but more importantly humanists. That we need to have a future that is bright and shining not weighed down with the chains of our pasts or the chains of patriarchy. The War on Choice is that at its most basic principle is a war on equality, gender equality, and feminist equality whichever you choose. That at its most basic principle is humanist and fair and just. It is not a question about what God you believe, or when a child becomes a child it is a question about what ideologically is right. Yes, theoretical applications are key to bridging the gap between academia and grassroots but what happens next? What are we going to do to change this?

 

Every generation has a long struggle with rights over our bodies, not just woman, but every disenfranchised group from the Tuskegee experiment to biological testing on Native Americans to abortion. When does it stop? When does the populous recognize that everyone is effected by these things? When we do we recognize we are a community and that community must stand for something greater than the individual. I do not mean that last statement in terms of utilitarian calculus but in terms of community and recognition of what is truly important.

 

Each right at it’s very base is created by the concept of voice. And that is why language is important, everything, revolutionary and the starting point. That is why Audre Lorde is right. So…where do we go from here?

 

Mission: Action. What is action to you? Are you an activist? What does being an activist mean? What does it mean in the context of War On Choice?