the lazy man's activism.
this week, i wrote part of the feature piece in arthur focusing on the (RED) campaign, which i mostly think of as a pretty ridiculous "solution" to a hugely complicated problem, which is largely due to western consumption habits, which this model only encourages. but that's besides the point.

so i was opening my email account, i saw a link on a sidebar, you know, the ones that usually say "britney and k-fed break-up" and "5 tips for a great relationship." this one read "activism made easy."

silly me! here i was thinking that activism was hard work, frustrating situations, facing impossible odds but sometimes making small, important gains. MSN can tell me how easy it really can be!


isn't a huge part of activism is the fact that it is not easy? that the reason there are activists is because you have tried to regular ways, the "accepted" ways of working towards creating a political or social change. i'm all for encouraging more people to be critical and to take a more active part in their lives and advocating for important social change, but this just seems to be fueling white guilt, in my opinion. oh, you poor white middle class woman, with your s.u.v, don't worry! if you change your lightbulbs to energy efficient ones, you can feel better about yourself! and instead of buying that green ipod you wanted you can get that red one and save the poor africans!

i guess my biggest concern is just about the effect this kind of "activism" will have on real grassroots activist organizations. when i watched "an inconvenient truth" i just got really uppity that this white man in a suit will be the one credited (by and large) for opening people's minds to an intensely serious problem. what about people like vandana shiva? what about grassroots activist groups all around the world that are in need of funding? what about the hundreds of documentaries that were made by independent filmmakers and will never be seen? will their efforts and their devotion go unnoticed because the great Al Gore showed us the way first?



it's just frustrating because i know this is not the right answer but i don't know what the right one is. i was going to title my article "the lazy man's activism" but it wasn't very p.c. it was just too funny to read that article after writing mine this sunday/monday morning.


today at lunch, jill stavely, dwayne, sara and i discussed how really, the world is just fucking wasted. the world is really drunk, and we are the alcohol. people like sara, jill, dwayne and i, who recycle, don't drive, and try to be reasonable consumers are beer-sized people. corporations are like absinthe or straight vodka and crazy shit. so the world is getting drunk off of us and the world is fucked up. a tsunami is the world farting, "whoops, there goes 3 000 people," and a hurricane is the world barfing, "sorry florida i'll clean that up later," and so on and so forth. we just need to kill people so that the world sobers up.

humour is the only thing that lets me deal with this reasonably.



i had a crazy day today!
i called my parents after i spoke briefly with the douche-bag minister of education (of ontario). the more politicians i speak to the more i hate them all. fuck the party line bullshit, tell me what YOU think and what you think your government can do. fucking bullshit about making university more accessible? you're telling that to a bunch of student reporters who probably have over $100,000 (aka YOUR ANNUAL SALARY) in debt and who aren't even finished their studies. dude, chris bentley, stop blaming everyone but yourself. take some responsibility.

when a student journalist asks you if it's right that they are $20,000 in debt but has worked full-time every time she is not in school and works part time during 80% of her studies and she still can't afford to feed herself and probably will have a really hard time finding a decent job once she's done, you don't give her a bullshit answer like "well the NDP and the Cons fucked it up and we can't change history!"

somebody asked him how his govt was making education more accessible and he went on and said "WE RAISED THE AMOUNT OF OSAP you can get" which is basically saying "WE'RE PUTTING YOU DEEPER INTO DEBT, PLEASE THANK US FOR THAT."

as you can tell, i was a bit cranky after that.
i need to leave this office, what am i still doing here?!



on a completely random note, it makes me happy when i find typos and mistakes in big publications (i find at least one every sunday when i read the toronto star) or in big websites, like the product red manifesto. see if you can spot it.