Activists in our histories have achieved great milestones for the rights of many different marginalized groups of people, as well as for the general public. While those so-called milestones may or may not have been very large they still helped to improve the quality of life for a lot of people and have passed on the torch to the next generations to achieve even more in their respective fields. In the film “American Revolutionary The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs”, they talk about the life of Grace Lee Boggs in which she did an amazing amount of work as an activist for civil rights, even doing things as incredible as working with the black panthers, and trying to convince Malcolm X to run for president. It’s incredible that she worked for so much to the point that she spent her whole life doing it, and writing to spread activist ideals late into her life up until her death. She’s truly a very inspiring person, and it’s great to think about the people who she has inspired to activism and the people they might have inspired as well. Something that is touched on in the reading, “How to think like an activist” is how social media has impacted activism across the country. People have access to a lot of information nowadays and they can learn about current events pretty soon after they happen so long as they can get past efforts to keep them hidden which is so often tried by police and government. I’ve seen a lot more posts within the past few years related to activist movements and spreading activist ideals and messages for the betterment of different communities and social problems as well as actions of systemic oppression. Even though this has also brought with it a lot of bad, such as people clogging up important social media channels that people more active in these movements and protests use regularly to find things out quickly and effectively. It’s also a shame that a large portion of those people also made those quick posts and did little or nothing more past that. But I think that with some tweaking to how we use social media as well as the giant problem we have with misinformation and propaganda in this country, social media can become a really great tool we can all use to help and take part in many great movements to combat many problems we and other people have to deal with in this country.
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