By Josh Joh-Jung
New Organizing Project blogger
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(Photo Credit: apaforprogress.org)
What up ya’ll? Things been crazy over the past week, I mean midterms are here, Steve Jobs passed away, and ya’ll in Cali pass a state version of the DREAM Act. So just a lil recap is all. Now lets me and you talk turkey, yeah?
So when we hear the words ‘social change’ what do we typically picture? Probably things like huge rallies, ‘fight the power’, put yo’ fists up, sit-ins, and all the images that are reminiscent of the civil rights movement. Or Filipino and Mexican farm workers marching across California for better treatment and better working conditions screaming ‘Huelga’ right?
And sometimes we see folks willing to get arrested as a statement of the inequality between those with power and those without. Willing to put their bodies and/or their livelihood on the line. DREAM students and many other undocumented immigrants proclaiming their status while risking deportation. The Montgomery bus boycotts that started as a protest to the city’s racist segregation policies on their public transportation systems and helped spark the civil rights movement.
Now I’m not gonna lie and say that everything in America is perfect now and these past protests have solved everything because that’s obviously not the case. So what can we do to make it a better? It all starts with each new generation of youth. It starts with us like every other movement before. What will your kids say about you? A person who sat on his butt reading some homies’ blog and did nothing? Or that you were someone who stood up for what was right and said ‘I must do something now.’ What will they say?
