November blog post

What does it mean to be an advocate or an ally?

Tami uses this definition of what it means to be allied: "join[ing] together to advance a common interests or causes." Why is it important to be an ally? According to GLSEN, "allies give us hope and the support we need to keep being ourselves, a seemingly simple idea, is more difficult to accomplish than it sounds."However ally can be a misused term. If being an ally is just being supportive, can everyone who is supportive to a group of people call themselves an ally? So I ask myself, what makes someone an ally. It isn't just retweeting "#BlackLivesMatter." While this is an important movement that is spanning across the nation, but someone is not an ally just because they can tweet. Maybe being an ally means participating in activities that support an oppressed group. This can be participating in protests, or just being there to listen to those that need a hearing ear. 

I think a lot of people are guilty of considering themselves an ally and an activist, but are actually slacktivists, a term that has been coined for the Twitter and Facebook active people that don't actually do anything beyond reposting articles. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as "actions performed via the Internet in support of a political or social cause but regarded as requiring little time or involvement, e.g., signing an online petition or joining a campaign group on a social media website." However, there is something to be said about people reposting articles, retweeting hashtags, and getting the work out there to potentially hundreds of people. But then I think about all the people that are reposting and retweeting, and imagine what could be happening if all those people were taking action. 

Advocacy is defined as "a person who publicly supports or recommends a particular cause or policy" by the Oxford Dictionary. However, I don't think this definition is really encompassing what it means to be an advocate for an oppressed or marginalized group of people. Advocates want to make an impact, and by publicly supporting a cause or policy are they really making an impact? for some people I'm sure that can be the case, but for many of us lower profile peasants, I don't think that holds true. Time online magazine offers up the idea of "immersing yourself" in the issue. Become familiar with it and dig for more. 

To me this all comes down to being educated about the issues at hand. Become educated about how to get involved, how to effectively help. Everyone who wants to be an ally or an advocate has the opportunity to educate themselves. 

http://ideas.time.com/2013/10/20/how-to-be-an-effective-advocate/
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/advocate
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/slacktivism
http://everydayfeminism.com/2013/11/things-allies-need-to-know/
http://www.glsen.org/learn/about-glsen
https://www.csusm.edu/sjs/documents/beingally.pdf