I was thinking about being an activist while I was milking this evening.
When I was in college, a friend of mine and I joined a newly formed group. We called ourselves the "Gay Rap Group". We got together once or twice a month to discuss current events, to lend support to each other, and to just have a few laughs. One of the things we did was create "The Gay Rap Line", a single phone number wired into 5 different houses, one was mine. We took turns answering the phone 24/7. There was a few who came out by calling, a few travelers who wanted to know about the gay life in our small town, one that called to say they was going to kill himself, and many, many religious nuts who called to threaten our lives, or call names. Some of those calls still haunt me to this day. At that same time I had a straight housemate. He had at least 2 to 3 different women in his room every week. The screamers I really hated... Oh, he is a minister now... LOL! In my room I printed the The Gay Rap Newsletter, a couple of the others wrote the stories, I printed it. My straight housemate never ever suspected.
I then moved to Denver. Met other people, and we created another small group whose purpose it was to get a gay pride parade in Denver. There was 5 of us, we got the bars to let us have special dances, which we got part of the income, I created the logos, we had them printed on t-shirts, and buttons and sold them. And with donations from the gay businesses, and individual persons, we got the permit to have a "march" down Colfax to the civic center for a quick speach, then on down to the Fox Hole bar where we set up booths for the vendors to sell their wares. After the second year, we where kicked out by another group who had better support. That ended my involvement with the community.
Was I an activist? No, not in my thinking, if someone would have told me that, I would have denied it, it would have probably scared the dickens out of me. To me I was just helping, doing something that needed to be done.
Point? Do what you think needs to be done, and you will be an activist without trying.
Doug