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April 30, 2006
Oh, That's a Good One
Given this, I think I should reconsider the Orwell Awards.
A long-running effort by the Bush administration to send home many of the terror suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has been stymied in part because of concern among United States officials that the prisoners may not be treated humanely by their own governments, officials said.
Posted by zeynep at April 30, 2006 11:38 AM
Comments
This is just a general request for some advice from fellow activists, those who are relative beginners like me or those with decades of experience.
To years ago while at university I really woke up to the state of the world and why it's in the mess it is. Ever since I've been really interested in human rights, current affairs and so on... It's a similar story for at least some I'm sure.
Well, I dedicate what for most people is a lot of time to it. An hour every day is spent reading the news, an hour plus reading books/reports, anything up to an hour writing letters etc. I go on protests, sign up to campaigns and have a full-time job plus all the other daily routines.
In short, Monday to Friday is just eaten up completely by my desire to help people suffering from human rights violations and trying to understand situations so I know how best to act in order to mitigate them.
Trouble is, not a single one of my friends could seemingly care less. That's certainly too harsh, of course they do care that torture happens and that Haitians, Palestinians, Colombians, whoever... are crushed down, tortured or killed. But in terms of time put into it, most do virtually nothing.
At first when I realised that they weren't as 'interested' (for want of a better word) as I am, I tried to get them interested by trying to bring conversations around to it if an opportunity presented. But someone seemingly implying that you ought to be interested in something gets annoying quite quickly. Plus most people don't want to talk about that kind of stuff as it's 'depressing'. Of course they are right, it is hard to read about human rights violations.
So I quickly gave up trying to thrust such matters into peoples' faces.
I then thought about joining a group to meet like-minded people, but there are only two local groups to me (a lcoal Amnesty group and a local CND group) neither of which got back to me.
In short, I am finding it increasingly hard to keep the motivation going. I am finding my activities quite isolating socially. Whereas my friends are all spending their evenings watching TV etc. and then subsequently chatting about last night's programmes at work etc., I am left out in the cold because I have spent the evening doing what I mentioned above.
Sometimes I feel like jacking in my activism, joining a hundred and one sports clubs (and meet a whole bunch of new people in the process), watch TV all evening and thus make myself a much more interesting person.
I just cannot decide if a) My interest in human rights is sensible (surely not the case) b) My interest in human rights and current affairs is over the top.
So my questions to fellow activists are:
1) Could you provide a rough indication of how long you spend on human rights/current affairs throughout the week?
2) How do you maintain your interest in activism when no one around you seems to care?
Posted by: Zippee at May 7, 2006 04:13 PM