Emotional Activism

Emotional Activism

The activists within the civil rights and social justice movements have been successful in transforming America through their dedication, commitment and their ability to harness the type of positive emotions necessary to achieve the type of democratic renewal that they struggle to seek. These emotions and feelings come from being on the wrong side of the unjust and unequal economic systems that those in power have also fought to maintain usually by oppression and violence. It is the sort of emotional reactions that come out of these harsh conditions that influences and causes the types of grassroots democratic activism that have been at the foundation of the civil rights and social justice movements from the beginning. How those emotions influence and how they are harnessed whether in a violent or nonviolent manner are critical to the understanding of the movement and where it is going in the future.

Unjust governmental systems employ a variety of different strategies to maintain the status quo and thus insure the continuation of their power. On a macro or bigger picture scale, these systems perpetuate the continuation of an economic model that only serves to further the divide of inequality among society. On a micro or small time level, these governmental systems can maintain their power over its citizens with the threat of police or military action. Both are effective strategies that have been utilized for a very long time.

The basic economic system of much of the world’s countries enables the most wealthy and powerful to maintain their positions. Accumulating and keeping that wealth is the motivating factor for many of those in power and society’s structure has been set up in such a way for it to be consistently benefiting only them. This power structure benefits only a few but has created enormous wealth inequality and has left much of the majority of the earth’s inhabitants in poverty. Over the years maintaining the status quo of this...