Activism has molded almost every aspect of our lives today. Just think, if it were not for activism there would still be racism, sexism, slavery, work abuse, and so on. Activism is society’s way of constantly improving upon itself. It brings focus to an issue in society. It is the first, and arguably most important, step in the process of reform. Wendy Syfret, an author who wrote about activism, illustrates this process of reform by citing the suffrage movement. In “How to Think Like an Activist” she states,” U.S suffragettes organized one of their most famous parades in Washington DC on 3 March 1913 – the day before the inauguration of President Woodrow Wilson. Seven years later, the work of those protesters ( and thousands of others across the country) led to the ratification of the 19th amendment, awarding women the right to vote.” ( Syfret 10). As shown in this example, activism is almost always the first step to action. A movement like the suffrage movement would not have achieved its cause if no activism was done. Activism educated the public of the issue at hand and simultaneously let the public, and the government, know that they were not happy and would not remain silent. And while activism still serves the same purpose, there are some new modern methods to it now. Online activism for example. With online activism, many times more people can be reached than with a single march. Social media has flipped the world upside down in so many ways, this being just one example. With social media, you can even target like-minded strangers to join your cause simply by using the algorithm correctly. You can bring awareness to any cause regardless of your location. Take the crisis in the Middle East as an example. If it were not for social media, we would not know the severity of the situation out there. The media rarely ever covers the situation, and when they do, they do not cover the full scope of it. However, with social media, we can see the stories of the people out there. We see pictures of the scene and faces of the people that lived through it. No other form of media can compare in this regard. In “How to Think Like an Activist” Syfret states,” Clearly, activism has always relied on the voices, vision, and energy of individuals to inspire and drive social change.” (Syfret 3). She summarizes why social media is the best platform for activism right here. It is able to reach the most voices compared to any other method of activism. After reading Syfret’s article, I watched the video “United in Anger”. It was a video on the AIDS movement. After watching it, a gained a new understanding of the significance of an activism platform. In the early stages of the AIDS epidemic, there was little to no coverage of it. President Reagan even refused to mention it. This critical time could have been used to gain an understanding of the issue at hand. But instead, ignorance seeded bigotry. If social media existed during this time period, lives easily could have been saved and many LGBTQ stereotypes may have never developed.

Patriarchy is a significant factor of society, specifically American culture, as we have been led primarily by men for as long as we can remember. Like oppression, sexism, racism, and discrimination, patriarchy is deep-rooted. Patriarchy can be described as a social system designed to ensure a male figure is always at the top, always the lead. Because society was structured and founded on this foundation of beliefs, patriarchy is ultimately the blueprint that leads to other issues such as racial and gender oppression. The fact that America has never even had a female president is a prime example of patriarchy and oppression, especially since all but one of our presidents have been both male and white. Such patriarchy often flows into our homes where families are traditionally dependent solely on the father to provide and act as the head of household, while women traditionally take on different roles such as cooking or cleaning. This ideology of life goes back as early as the hunter-gather era and is applied in some homes today.

Though it is in our nature as civilians to blame everything on a system, we often forget that we as civilians are the very ones contributing to the upholding of such systems. For example, Allan Johnson writes, “we also avoid taking responsibility either for ourselves or for patriarchy. Instead, ‘the system’ serves as a vague, unarticulated catch-all, a dumping ground for social problems, a scapegoat that can never be held to account and that, for all the power we think it has, cannot talk back or actually do anything”. In other words, as a society, we implicitly enable such ideologies by applying them to our individual lives, whether that be looking to men to do the heavy lifting or relying on the eldest woman in the family to prepare dinner every night. Through the lens of racism and oppression, the same concept applies. To be oppressed is to be limited as you must endure the unfair burden of the abuse of power. People of color, specifically Black people, experience oppression firsthand as they have the disservice of participating in institutions that conspire against them. Whether that be prisons where people of color are disproportionately incarcerated, or places of work where the natural state of Black people is frowned upon as certain hairstyles are socially deemed unprofessional, or schools where Black boys and girls are underrepresented in the curriculum. Although such flaws in the system directly impact people of color, the oppression is so deeply engraved into our society that everyone is affected. Audre Lorde, a Black lesbian woman, states, “I must battle these forces of discrimination, wherever they appear to destroy me. And when they appear to destroy me, it will not be long before they appear to destroy you”. People of color certainly reap the effects of such systematic cruelty; however, those higher up in the hierarchy are too impacted as they benefit from the system due to simply being a male or, in this case, obtaining significant privilege due to their whiteness.

Although we are currently in a stage of revolution as women are far more encouraged to take on leadership positions and more often white people are becoming allies of their Black counterparts, there is still much work to be done to reverse these systems America was founded on.