14 Days of Freedom: Day 2

I pride myself on my leftism. I'm young, so I haven't been to many protests; I spent much of my life as a capitalist sheep, so I haven't spoken up much. I plan to change that. I want to march in the streets - fight, if that's what it takes.

The people (or should I say sheeple?) around me seem rather disturbed by this course of action. Ostensibly they fear for my safety - really, I think they fear for my sanity and their social standing (for the record, I'm the sanest and happiest I have ever been, and I don't give a fuck about the society game).

If standing up for basic human rights, if standing up for what I think is right - as should be possible, nay desirable and encouraged in a free and humane society - means that I risk anywhere between arrest and death (while people aren't dying in the UK yet, people in other countries are), I'll stick my neck out and risk arrest and death. Someone's got to do it, after all.

Someone once remarked to me "Call me old-fashioned, but I think a life should stand for something" - well, as old-fashioned as it sounds, I agree with him. I do think a life should be lived doing something or fighting for something, not wasted inching slowly along the passage of the system. Such a life isn't a life at all: I know that much, for I've lived that way - and found it sorely wanting in things to keep me there, to say the least. Now I live life as an anti-capitalist, leftist, protester, blogger, tweeter and part-time thinker, and though it's more difficult and, even in the so-called free world, more dangerous, it's more worthwhile.

Wake up. Life is not worth living without freedom, without being able to sustain oneself, without being able to dissent and protest, without being able to have a say in running one's own life, without basic human rights. That is why I go out on the streets and sing and camp and protest. That is why I am perfectly willing for my friends and family to treat me like a stranger when they find out about my political beliefs. That is why I am perfectly willing for a nice, polite, upper-middle-class girl (me - well somewhat anyway) to be arrested for speaking my mind. I will not bury my head in the sand. I will not stand by while people are killed and governments take away our inalienable rights, because I care enough about humanity to risk a little to take back the things that make humanity worth sustaining.

Nobody should be trying to avoid this. We are in this together, and we're perilously close to losing all hope for a free and humane society. Wake up. Take your place in the struggle. Do something. Yes, it's risky, but if we don't - one day we'll wake up and find that unless we live our lives in fear of a government that doesn't even leave us the shirts on our backs, we'll be disappeared or tortured or even killed. That day is already within sight, and doing nothing or pretending that it'll never happen won't keep it from coming. Resisting and protesting, no matter how dangerous, has a ghost of a chance of changing things - which is better than doing nothing at all.

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