January Blog Post

A sentence that really spoke to me in the readings for this month was from Between Speech and Silence by Russo.The sentence is half her words and half a quote that she is looking at, "The practices of being aware of not knowing , of stepping back, of committing to being “in conversation, not dominance, with range of relational knowledges” (Alexander, 2005, p. 109), create new possibilities for transforming feminist movement building that undermine, rather than entrench, existing power lines". This first part of the quote is telling the reader to take a step off of the podium and listen in to what is being said around you. Its so easy especially when you get rilled up about an issue to step up on to a podium and rant about what is wrong and right and then when the other person gets the chance to talk all you're thinking about is what your gonna say next and you are not really a committed to being in the conversation. When we are genuinley committed to the people around us and are invested in actually making change we are able to transform movements because activist groups like these are filled with people who think that being loud and speaking is the way to show of dominance. In reality if you keep filling that group with more loud people who only wanna talk about their problems and not listen to others then your only entrenching yourself and validating the behaviors and beliefs of the group instead of making positive changes.
For the past few months my Facebook feed has been filled with extremely long posts about political matters regarding, Trump, feminism, immigration, race, LGBT, DAPL and the overall state of our nation. As the women's march happened this past weekend my social media feed was full of pictures and lengthy posts proclaiming to the social media world their views on this matter. I had a mixed result of opinions from both conservative and liberal parties. In the comments section their were also long comments explaining their point of view and why the other person was "wrong" or the other person would explain their point of view in the matter and state how they agreed with them. Overall people like to talk, especially on social media where you don't have to see the other person face to face you can type back and forth your views on the matter. What I saw online wasn't any different from what Russo was stating in that sentence in her article. Whether you agreed with the person or you didn't there would still be a lot of talk on the internet but no conversation. Nobody was really interested in what the other person had to say. If you agreed with the persons views then you could like it with and emoji and if you didn't agree with them then they would get into a long argument in the comments section. Another way this highlights Russo's point is that like a face to face conversation you can skim read/hear the other person and get the general idea instead of having an invested conversation on the topic. If people would actually read or listen to what the other person would say then there wouldn't be 9 posts from different people explaining the same view, people could actually begin to make change towards what they wanted.
I believe that this concept is very important and applicable today. Everyone in the class is at the age where we can vote and because decisions made in politics now will directly impact our futures in a few years we want be involved in theses types of activist groups. What is important to understand is the power of active listening. Listening spurs more ideas and creates more knowledge, understanding, empathy and tolerance. As we go out into the real world and get involved in political groups communication is the key to success and as Russo stated we don't aways need to speak up to be an active in a conversation, listening to the other person is just as if not more powerful than talking. This concept doesn't just regard activism and politics it also translates into relationships. When you and your friend, family member or love interest stop listening to one another and just become talking heads then you grow apart because you aren't able to understand the person, grow, and make necessary changes.