Reflection on Activism

1) Social movement should enrich people's life. Because being committed to social movement and activism often means sacrifice in terms of time and energy, or personal relationships - however people rarely get anything back that will be satisfying.

In terms of my personal experience, I find the meetings often quite long and boring. The supposedly interesting discussion is basically dominated by uniformity of views. I tried a few times to ask questions but almost never felt that my questions are being answered - what often happens is people bring up things that are irrelevant, and then go on and on. The most depression aspect for me is I always feel I'm simply assigned to a passive role of following whatever the organisation has decided.

2) Talking about a bunch of adjectives (values or ideals) alone are not enough. Social movement need to build institutions based on these values.

I am often frustrated by the lack of any concrete positive action. Certainly we have protests and demonstrations etc. - but I think these are negative/passive actions - it's about what we are against - not what we are for.

And I'm sure lots of people have similar experience - when you ask them: so we all know what socialists are against, capitalism/globalisation/war in Iraq etc., but what are we for? What are we doing that will bring changes. The answer is often that we want getting rid of capitalism and we want a workers' state in my opinion really amounts to saying nothing, or I will be told just join the demonstration - meaning we will protest and wait for changes. Sure, this will bring changes - but I in no way feel empowered both as an individual and as a group.

3) Related to the second point, it's almost always focused on telling people the terrible state of the world. Of course, it's important to know what's happening. But on the other side, there is simply a shortage of things people could do to change - so you need a vision as well as ways to actively work toward its realisation.

So I'm very much interested to know your experience - do you identify with the said problems? And what's your general thought on activism in terms of problems and what can be done to improve?