in4apenny

I am responding to something other than what the person actually said. People like myself (and the countless nameless faces who actually stick their necks out) have been screaming about this to people who metaphorically can't see or hear, for decades, only for them to be the "holier than thou" one trying to look for hypocrisy or hatred in other people who've done more than them. Why focus on idols like Trump and Co when they're just symptoms of the greater problems - capitalistic greed/corporate irresponsibility - and then after listing our many years of efforts to fight it and then say "Yeah but what did you do to stop Trump and Musk specifically?" That sort of nitpicking, missing the forest for the trees attitude is what angers me so, it's proof of how blind people are to the realities of what it means to be in a democracy. "If you want a democracy, you have to be a player."

Thank you. I just want to add that they saw all that and said "just looks like protesting" as if personally helping organize action against the coal industry using grassroots techniques to some small success is "just protesting," or raising money for disabled people in community "not much apart from protesting." The gall, from someone who probably hasn't been to even a measley protest. And yes, I am saying protesting isn't enough, speaking from someone who's done it for 14 years. Waving signs does fucking nothing. It disrupts nothing. You have to put your bodies on the road and your safety on the line like we did.

making them feel bad for not doing enough.

If you feel bad for not doing enough that's on you.

Started in 2003 when I was 13 and would fundraise at middleschool against the war in Iraq.

Somewhat prioritized political literacy and critical thinking as a young lad, though I was lofty and idealistic in those days I was at least trying to do something. Genocide in Sudan and watching Schindlers List when I was 13-14 also fueled that fire.

Got extreme at one point, friends and I used to attack-on-sight Nazi's and KKK every chance we could get, in some cases endangering their lives. I cooled off that stuff and attended the Occupy protests in 2011, was one of the 800+ people that got herded onto the Brooklyn Bridge by police and mass arrested. Did you hear about that one?

2013 I (naively) worked for Greenpeace for a few years, alongside environmentalist charities and activists in the SW Pacific (New Zealand, Fiji, Australia). Got there with $15 to my name after hitching a ride on a sailboat, ended up dressing up as an Orangutan in the boiling Australian sun and making police chase me (they never did catch me.) Worked with the Wilderness Society, worked alongside Bob Irwin (Steve Irwin's dad) on the Fight for the Reef campaign to protect the GBR from getting dredged for coal shipping (our campaign successfully delayed them for a year, after which they dredged a world heritage site anyway.)

Since then I worked small, working with various charities from deaf kids to blind persons, attending every protest I could physically attend. A recent diagnosis of Graves Disease has put me on my arse for a while, but despite that I still stood up to the pogroms in the UK, using my body to block protestors from bricks. A brick hit my bad knee too, but i'd take a million more.

Does my resume satisfy you? Now lets see your card, what have you done?

If you're trying to understand an artist then you've already failed.