{"id":176589,"date":"2021-01-11T12:00:43","date_gmt":"2021-01-11T12:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=176589"},"modified":"2021-01-06T03:58:41","modified_gmt":"2021-01-06T03:58:41","slug":"what-is-activism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/01\/what-is-activism\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Activism?"},"content":{"rendered":"

4 Jan 2021<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What is activism?<\/p>\n

For 30 years, I have asked myself that perennial question.<\/p>\n

Now that a New Year has dawned, I must ask and answer it,\u00a0again.<\/p>\n

Activism is Conscience, triggered by acute pain,<\/p>\n

The pain of witnessing and living the state of the troubled world.<\/p>\n

Activism is Heart, pumping empathy for \u201cthe wretched of the earth\u201d,<\/p>\n

From genocide victims of China, Myanmar, Sudan and the Middle East<\/p>\n

From refugee babies and black\/brown toddlers literally washed up on the affluent shores of Europe<\/p>\n

From asylum-seekers of the other Americas and their caged children, separated by the rich America of white-settlers<\/p>\n

From Myanmar migrant workers in semi-serfdom across ASEAN, being framed as Covid-spreaders<\/p>\n

From destitute working-class whites and criminalized Black Lives pitted against one another<\/p>\n

From 1.5 billion Muslims demonized in the gaze of paranoid states and racialized societies.<\/p>\n

And my list of human wrongs goes on and on and on.<\/p>\n

Activism is Disgust, erupting against empty rhetoric of human rights.<\/p>\n

Activism is Rage, against Injustices rechannelled.<\/p>\n

Activism is Principles, being lived.<\/p>\n

Activism is Scholarship, socially engaged.<\/p>\n

Activism is Intellect, politically applied.<\/p>\n

Activism is Art, inspired by humans in pain.<\/p>\n

Activism is Self, making connections.<\/p>\n

Activism is Individual, acting in solidarity.<\/p>\n

Activism is Humans, building communities and locking arms.<\/p>\n

Activism is Brotherhood, universalized.<\/p>\n

Activism is Sisterhood, pursued.<\/p>\n

Activism is Love, shared.<\/p>\n

Activism is Energy, recycled generations after generations.<\/p>\n

Activism is Way of Life, Mode of Existence.<\/p>\n

Activism is Hope, communalized.<\/p>\n

Activism is Vision, humanized.<\/p>\n

Activism is Kindness, randomized.<\/p>\n

Activism is Humanity, sensitised.<\/p>\n

Activism is Community, striving to\u00a0end inhumanity, injustices, exploitation, and oppression.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A Buddhist humanist from Burma, Maung Zarni is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>, former Visiting Lecturer with Harvard Medical School, specializing in racism and violence in Burma and Sri Lanka, and Non-resident Scholar in Genocide Studies with Documentation Center \u2013 Cambodia.\u00a0Zarni s the co-founder of <\/em>FORSEA<\/a>, a grass-roots organization of Southeast Asian human rights defenders, coordinator for Strategic Affairs for <\/em>Free Rohingya Coalition, and an adviser to the <\/em>European Centre for the Study of Extremism, Cambridge. <\/strong>Zarni holds a PhD (U Wisconsin at Madison) and a MA (U California), and has held various teaching, research and visiting fellowships at the universities in Asia, Europe and USA including Oxford, LSE, UCL Institute of Education, National-Louis, Malaya, and Brunei. He is the recipient of the “Cultivation of Harmony” award from the Parliament of the World’s Religions (2015). His analyses have appeared in leading newspapers including the <\/em>New York Times, The Guardian and<\/em> the Times. Among his academic publications on Rohingya genocide are <\/em>The Slow-Burning Genocide of Myanmar\u2019s Rohingyas (Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal), <\/em>An Evolution of Rohingya Persecution in Myanmar: From Strategic Embrace to Genocide, (Middle East Institute, American University), and <\/em>Myanmar\u2019s State-directed Persecution of Rohingyas and Other Muslims (Brown World Affairs Journal). He co-authored, with Natalie Brinham, <\/em>Essays on Myanmar Genocide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is activism?
\nFor 30 years, I have asked myself that perennial question.
\nNow that a New Year has dawned, I must ask and answer it, again.
\nActivism is Conscience, triggered by acute pain,
\nThe pain of witnessing and living the state of the troubled world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":165795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[229,444,1243,1779,517],"class_list":["post-176589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-activism","tag-nonviolence","tag-nonviolent-action","tag-nonviolent-communication","tag-solidarity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}