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| Suffragette being arrested in 1914. (Image taken from The Independent. PA Wire/PA Images) |
The title of this post are Ghandi’s words, quoted by Rebecca Solnit in her book “Hope in the dark”. Each era has its own, specific causes, while, at the same time we can observe and feel the development of others, coming from further back. Solnit reminds us that the stages identified by Ghandi unfold slowly and also that “Effects are not proportionate to causes – not only because huge causes sometimes seem to have little effect, but because tiny ones occasionally have huge consequences.” (p.61).
I have been thinking about the way activists of different causes are seen and treated nowadays. When I wrote a chapter for the book “The activist museum” (edited by Robert Janes and Richard Sandell), I remember opting for the definition of activism as it appeared on Wikipedia, since the dictionaries I consulted at the time often gave it an aggressive, violent tinge, which left me unsatisfied. Aggression or violence are not absent, of course, but they are not the only way of being an activist. Remembering an interview by John Berger, listening is an act (and in my mind, this is where activist actually starts, at being able to listen).
