To community activists
Personally, I hate the term. Community activist. I hate it because it makes a person sound like they're radical, when the motivation that drives them is to restore justice to something that seems unfair or just plain wrong. But that's how the system works. Once you decide to rectify a situation, the only way to do it is to speak up. That act puts you in a lonely place because the first word that comes to people's minds to describe what you're doing is community activist.
If you live in a conservative community, you might as well label yourself a pariah because few people will support you publicly. Success is if someone looks up from their gardening and smiles, before dropping their eyes back to the ground.
But here's the thing about the motivations that drive you: Life under the current situation is no longer tolerable and it causes more pain to pretend that everything is alright, than it is to be ostracized.
So here's my question to community activists:
1) How long did it take before you saw improvement in the situation you were dealing with?
2) Did you have a successful outcome?
3) If you did find success, did it give you the satisfaction you were hoping for? And if so, were you able to resume a "normal" existence, or had the patterns of resistance become ingrained in your personality?
For anyone who wishes to respond, if you can, I would love to hear a synopsis of the community issue you were dealing with.
