Birth of an Activist?

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,

Nothing is going to get better. It's not.” 

― Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

Jason was angry today -- very, very angry, almost incoherent with anger. After getting him by himself, I asked him what had made him so incredibly angry. To my surprise, his list of triggers was not made up of personal injuries but was instead centered around one basic core grievance: He felt helpless in the face of all the problems in the world. More particularly, he saw his friends and family hurting under various inequities and was hurting at his inability to do anything to make things better.

I looked into his sad face.

I listened to his hurting voice.

I heard his loving heart.

And I asked: Of all the things that bother you, which is most important?

Oops.

I think I may have started him on the road to Activism.

He told me that he was upset about the issue of businesses sending work AWAY from our state to right to work states -- about people losing jobs because businesses were more concerned about their bottom lines than about the people who worked for them -- about the deliberate attempts to destroy unions,  and keeping people at limited hours so that they didn't qualify for benefits. 

And then he said: But I am just a kid -- there is nothing I can do about these things.

And I said: You are wrong.

You can become educated about the issue -- you can read up on it, you can talk to people who are involved. And when you have become educated in ALL sides of the issue, you can write, you can speak, you can STAND for something.

His eyes lit up.

His anger vanished.

He jumped to his feet.

"NOW!" he shouted, "Let's start NOW!"

"Where do you want to start?" I asked.

"I need a notebook and lots of pens." He told me, "I need to write EVERYTHING I learn down."

"Then we need to go to the library. I need to talk to the Reference Librarian."

We have his notebook. (It is ENORMOUS -- 'because I am going to keep a timeline of the history of this thing' he tells me.) He has A LOT of pens.

We are going to the library today -- inbetween Tae Kwon Do lessons.

Sigh. What have I done?