Activism 101
I participated in my first public protest march aged all of eleven years old in Dublin city. There is a photograph of me in an earnest white aertex tee-shirt, my favorite brown shorts, mousy straight hair scraped back in a low ponytail. I have a long pale clear face and look taller and older than I am, thin but smiling tentatively. My mother had died of cancer two years previously and my father had recently dropped dead of a heart attack. I went with my sisters who were pushing their toddlers while wearing hippy Indian style dresses and chanting loudly. I think I may have had a sign. The march was organised by the Campaign against Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and was to protest against a nuclear power station that was being negotiated for Carnsore Point. I didn’t know much but I knew it was wrong for our small island to join the nuclear ranks.
There were over ten thousand people on that march through Dublin. It was thrilling, united and powerful. It ended in St. Stephen’s Green Park and as the day was wreathed in sunshine the crowd picnicked, sang, lolled about in happy groups, smoked weed and reveled in the day. That afternoon went down in my family lore as my nephew (he shall be unnamed) who was a burly two year old very fond of breast-milk and not undemanding in his thirst, pelted up to who he thought was my sister reclining in her Indian dress and pulling down her top in glee suddenly realized in horror that it wasn’t his mother. There were wails (his) shrieks (hers) and huge laughter as my sister finally located her panicked child. There was no power station built. Relentless human pressure won the day. Read more about this campaign here.
Later I went on anti-apartheid marches, pro-choice marches (to be heckled by tiny wizened women in black waving photos of bloody fetuses) and later in my life helped organise anti- Monsanto educational marches, activist plays, climate change and anti-fracking demonstrations and activities in South Africa. I’ve never been in danger. Tending to paint banners or find creative, funny, pertinent ways to get the message across and all this included children. They have a say and an absolute right to participate. At a Fracking meeting in KZN I arranged for a mini-bus load of youngsters from the nearest primary school to attend. They had made posters and it was a fascinating if odd learning experience for them with farmers and hippies roaring insults at the beleaguered environmental assessment agency and oil exploration representatives. One elderly local man rolled his eyes and whispered to me ‘ I wonder who bussed the kids in? What a circus, such a silly idea’, when I turned to him and explained that I had arranged it and that citizenship should never just be for the white and privileged he turned away. They had after all made posters and knew what the meeting was about, he hadn’t bothered.
Watching the visibility of Greta Thunberg and the rise of Extinction Rebellion has been both a delight and a heartbreak as the urgency of grassroots hands on responsibility is so necessary and yet many people turn away from it. There is only us. Nobody is going to change unless each of us changes. My learning from all of these wonderful, tragic, beautiful and hopeful protests is that incremental shifts can make worlds of difference. I wish upon you the power to say YES to all the ggod stuff and a resounding NO to the crap.
