Here's Why You Need To Be An Activist—Right. F*cking. Now.

Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk. One of the disappeared,

Ok, so I get it—you’re not an activist.

Or, at least maybe that’s the way you’ve always felt.

Perhaps you don’t see yourself in a street with a sign yelling slogans, shouting through a bullhorn on courthouse steps, wielding your social media profile like an independent news outlet, or standing at a school board meeting elevating your voice to rise above the jeers of your hateful neighbors.

These things might all feel miles outside of what you’re comfortable with and I understand, empathize, and respect that, I really do.

But here’s the thing friends: too f*ckin’ bad—it’s time to get comfortable with the discomfort.

Activism is no longer optional for good humans in America and here’s why:

People are disappearing… today… right now.

In the very state you live in, if not the very community, there are people who quite recently were there but no longer are—and not because they chose to leave.

They are college students taken from the streets in broad daylight without cause.
Fathers rounded up, beaten, and jailed without due process.
Legal residents rejected at airports and sent back to places they no longer call home.
Foreign spouses of citizens unlawfully detained and harassed.
Families taken from their homes and businesses with no warning.

These are not hypotheticals to be postulated. They are not fantastical fodder for theoretical political conversations. They aren’t exaggerated examples of worst-case scenarios that will likely never materialize. They are the here, now, real-time subtractions of this brutal regime.

These are beautiful, original, unprecedented flesh-and-blood human beings whose presence has been removed simply for the color of their skin, their nation of origin, a rally they may have attended, a paper they once published, a class they taught, or a comment they posted.

They are the disappeared—and unless you and I show up now, there will be many more who will join them: more classmates, best friends, mothers, teachers, favorite uncles, little league coaches, and church members. And soon, these will not be spread out and distant stories we can dismiss as aberrations, they will be commonplace terrors that we all have front-row seats to. And eventually, someone we know and love dearly will be one of the disappeared, though it should not take that to move us from complacency to urgency.

Since these removed and erased human beings are without a voice now, we who still have ours need to speak for them.
As they cannot stand and fight for themselves, we owe it to them to fight in their stead.
Since they have involuntarily disappeared from this place, if we imagine ourselves to be people of faith, morality, and conscience—our voluntary presence is mandatory in response.

Again, I truly do understand that many of you have an aversion to confrontation; perhaps some severe social anxiety, a sincere desire to keep the peace, a feeling of fear for your safety, or maybe you just don’t like to be seen as an asshole.

All I can tell you is, in every case—it’s time.

With all love and compassion, I loudly say to hell with our comfort level, anxiety be damned, and f*ck whatever excuse we’d propose as to why we aren’t the kind of people who are activists.

It’s time to put on our big kid pants and find our outside voices.

Right now, at this place and time in the 250-year history of this grand-and-threatened experiment in Democracy with so much quickly going sideways, being an activist simply means being a human who values other humans enough to get our hands dirty, push through our apprehensions, discard our egos, and brave the bruises and scars that will come—because as bad as any of that might feel, at least we’re here to feel it.

You may not see yourself as an activist right now, dear friends, but to be an inactivist right now just simply isn’t an option.

Since you are here, stand strong and speak loudly for the disappeared.

And do it now.

Note from John: I do understand that personal safety, job security, and social connections are real issues. In. the comments, let’s crowd-source ways people can step into activism, regardless of the barriers and pressures.