Snippets about: Activism
Scroll left and right !
Speaking Up About Gender Fuels Progress
To make progress toward equality, we need to start speaking up about gender issues, even when it's uncomfortable. Point out when women are being marginalized or held to different standards. Ask managers what they're doing to advance women and hold them accountable. Share stories of bias from your own experience. Simply stating the facts can be a powerful catalyst. The more we discuss these dynamics openly, the more we can change them. Staying silent only preserves the status quo.
Section: 1, Chapter: 10
Book: Lean In
Author: Sheryl Sandberg
There Is A Great Work To Be Done
The good thing about everything being so fucked up is that no matter where you look, there is great work to be done.
- Derrick Jensen
Section: 4, Chapter: 28
Book: Meditations for Mortals
Author: Oliver Burkeman
Focused Care In A Crisis-Filled World
In an age where you're asked to care about everything with maximum intensity, the most effective approach is to pick your battles and focus your concern more deeply.
Rather than having 50 million people care seriously about an issue for six hours, imagine distilling that concern into 3,000 people who make it a primary moral concern for a decade.
This means:
- Choose one or two issues to focus on deeply rather than taking on the emotional burden of dozens
- Don't feel bad about setting these boundaries - it allows you to fight your chosen battles more effectively
- Remember that living inside the news feels like being a good citizen but often paralyzes real action
Section: 1, Chapter: 6
Book: Meditations for Mortals
Author: Oliver Burkeman
Ron Finley's Multiple Paths To Impact
Ron Finley began his career as a successful clothing designer who created collections sold in major retail stores across America. When recession struck and stores stopped calling, he unexpectedly found a new passion. Frustrated by living in a food desert where it was "easier to buy street drugs than organic tomatoes," he started growing fruits and vegetables on the strip of land between sidewalk and curb outside his house.
When cited for gardening without a permit, Finley fought back with a petition that ultimately changed Los Angeles law. His TED talk sparked the guerrilla gardening movement, positioning urban gardening as a revolutionary act against broken food systems. Today, his once-simple garden teems with pears, oranges, figs, pomegranates, and even banana trees.
Interestingly, Finley's gardening fame opened new doors for his fashion career, showing how multiple interests can strengthen rather than dilute one's impact. "I didn't go from fashion to gardening to being a humanitarian," Finley explains. "As a gardener, I was already a humanitarian. When I'm designing, I'm still a gardener. I'm still creative. This is about freedom. It's all already within us."
Section: 1, Chapter: 2
Book: Tiny Experiments
Author: Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Teresa Prekerowa's Courageous Example in Nazi-Occupied Poland
Lesson 8: Stand out: Resist the pressure to conform and be willing to take a stand for your principles.
As a young woman in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation, Teresa Prekerowa faced a harrowing situation - her family lost everything, her father was arrested, her uncle killed, and her city lay in ruins. While many focused solely on self-preservation, Teresa thought of others. She took great risks to smuggle food and medicine to Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, and later helped a Jewish family escape. Teresa quietly defied the Nazis by upholding human decency. Her individual actions may seem small, but they took tremendous courage. Even under the pressure of conformity and terror, Teresa stood out. We must aspire to such moral strength.
Section: 1, Chapter: 8
Book:
Author:
Be Aware To Change
“We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.”
Section: 1, Chapter: 10
Book: Lean In
Author: Sheryl Sandberg
Henry's Phoenix Moment
Although Henry worried he'd aged out of school, with support from Partners In Health he found a place at a secondary school where he excelled. He made friends easily and enjoyed the academic work. He wasn't just able to catch up to his peers; he earned admittance to the University of Sierra Leone, one of the nation's most prestigious institutes of higher learning, where he is now a second-year student studying Human Resources and Management. "Education is the most important thing," he told me once. "Not just for me, you know, but also for the nation."
Henry not only managed to return to school; he also started making online videos on YouTube. Sometimes, he makes videos of him dancing with friends. He also runs a channel for Isatu where she shares traditional Sierra Leonean recipes. In the years since his recovery, Henry has also become a TB activist with a special focus on raising money and attention for Lakka.
Section: 6, Chapter: 22
Book: Everything is Tuberculosis
Author: John Green
This Changes Everything: Strategies For The Climate Fight
The climate movement can learn valuable lessons from the Blockadia struggles:
- Highlight the local, human impacts of fossil fuel extraction to mobilize communities
- Don't just say "no" to projects, but propose sustainable economic alternatives
- Emphasize love of place, family, culture and the desire for self-determination
- Build coalitions across unlikely allies, from Indigenous groups to ranchers to labor
- Use every tactic available, from lawsuits to civil disobedience to electoral politics
- Directly challenge corporate power rather than relying on ineffective market schemes
- Connect local fights to the global struggle to avert catastrophic climate change
Building a broad-based movement willing to take bold action to shut down fossil fuels and demand a just transition is the only way to match the scale and urgency of the crisis.
Section: 3, Chapter: 9
Book: This Changes Everything
Author: Naomi Klein
Mindset And Social Issues
A growth mindset can be a powerful force for social change:
- Many societal inequities stem from the fixed mindset belief that certain groups have innately lower abilities. A growth mindset reveals the role of systemic barriers and unequal opportunities.
- The fixed mindset creates a culture of judgment and blame toward disadvantaged groups. The growth mindset emphasizes potential and focuses on creating supportive environments.
- Students from marginalized backgrounds often internalize societal fixed mindset messages, believing they are inferior. Teaching them a growth mindset can unleash their confidence and drive to succeed.
- Growth mindset interventions have been shown to close achievement gaps between racial and socioeconomic groups. Fostering a growth mindset on a societal level could reduce prejudice, increase social mobility, and create a more equitable world.
Section: 1, Chapter: 8
Book: Mindset
Author: Carol Dweck
Bedaquiline Patent Battle
Phumeza Tisile, a TB survivor, along with her friend and fellow TB survivor Nandita Venkatesan, filed a patent challenge in an Indian court asking the government to reject efforts by the pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson to extend their patent on the drug bedaquiline.
Bedaquiline is a powerful medicine in the fight against MDR-TB, but was far out of reach for most people living with the disease, because J&J charged $900 for a single course of treatment in poor countries and $3,000 in middle-income countries. After negotiations and protests, J&J backed down, allowing generic bedaquiline in most countries. As a direct result, the price of bedaquiline dropped by over 60 percent almost overnight.
Section: 6, Chapter: 22
Book: Everything is Tuberculosis
Author: John Green
Matroreform: Motherhood as Resistance
A growing movement views motherhood as a site of potential empowerment and social transformation rather than inevitable oppression. This approach, sometimes called 'matroreform,' encompasses several strategies:
- Establishing community groups like Mothers Talking and Mothers Uncovered that center maternal mental health and experience
- Creating platforms like Parenting Decolonized and Untigering that challenge oppressive, authoritarian parenting models
- Organizing politically through movements like the Marshall Plan for Moms to advocate for structural change
These initiatives share a common thread: recognizing that motherhood can be 'a kind of creative rebellion' that teaches children to challenge harmful systems. As scholar Andrea O'Reilly argues, patriarchy resists empowered mothering 'precisely because it understands its real power to bring about a true and enduring cultural revolution.'
Section: 5, Chapter: 13
Book: Matrescence
Author: Lucy Jones
