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By Steve Shagwell.
John Walsh lived a pretty normal, white-collar life. Then, in 1981, that life was turned upside down by the kidnapping and murder of his 6-year old son.
In an interview with Washingtonian, John Walsh stated: "It’s more than a job; it’s a passion. Someone destroyed my life 26 years ago and murdered my beautiful son, and I do believe you fight back."
He wasn't kidding. As The host of the TV show America's Most Wanted, his face became synonymous with crime prevention. In addition, he has been involved in legislation and political action. Without going into details, John Walsh has definitely been a strong influence in child safety and crime prevention.
Obviously, John Walsh is a different kind of activist than me. His work often finds him collaborating with law enforcement, while mine often finds me working opposite them. He is able to work within the system more than I am, due to the lack of offense his activism causes the Government. He obviously trusts cops, and I obviously don't. In fact, I don't think we have very much in common at all, period. Don't get me wrong, he's a good man and I respect him, but I consider him naive about law enforcement and we are completely different people.
There is one thing we share though: we are both responding to a tragic event in our lives.
You see, people don't just decide to be an activist because it will be fun. Activism is not fun. It takes time away from enriching one's own life and it can be draining-physically, mentally, and emotionally. I myself would rather be making art, chasing girls, learning foreign languages, pursuing an education, and throwing back shots of Jagermeister with my band-which I don't have because I don't have time anymore. Oh, and I would really love to give the new Assassin's Creed game a play-through. I have never seen folk-metal gods Eluveite live, and was looking forward to catching them when they came through town (Anna Murphy is my all-time celebrity crush)-but I was in Ferguson instead, supporting the weekend of protest. And don't get me started on missing Arch Enemy and Kreator-two of my favorite bands ever-on the same bill last week, because I was preparing for Ferguson solidarity actions in my town. That hurt. But when forced to chose between the two, it became a matter of my pleasure versus my ability to sleep at night. So, no contest.
In addition, there is the fact that I have placed my freedom, my health, and my safety at great risk. Seriously. Look up what has happened to a very disturbing number of people who dared to demand Government accountability (SPOLIER ALERT: dead and/or framed). I am at a loss to figure out where anyone would see the fun in that.
Yet, I am okay with all of it. Because I had a very traumatic experience that left me disturbed and enduring great physical pain on a daily basis. I was then denied closure by the system, and so I seek it on the street and through this site. It woke me up to something that was taking place and knowing it was happening to others made it impossible to sleep at night. When Ferguson became a national incident, I couldn't sit by anymore. In addition to my concern for the citizens of Ferguson,watching news of that that military deployment unfold on my Twitter set off every trigger available to my diagnosis of severe PTSD. And so I had to fight back, or go insane.
Along the way, I learned that I had been an unwitting accessory to systematic racial oppression that I thought had been corrected by the civil rights movement-and that really bothered me. And as the protesters in Ferguson stood their ground against government entities hell-bent on protecting their extortion racket, they captured my heart, my mind, and my imagination. I simply had to stand with them however I could.
Activism generally isn't something you do because you want to. It's something you do because you have to. Granted, there are a few bored attention whores out there doing it, but most of us have seen or experienced something that changed our reality forever-usually for the worse. This is our way of confronting our demons. Or maybe this is our way of taking back power from something that took it from us. It could even be our way of finding sleep at night, sleep that has been disturbed by an exposure to the suffering of others.
You can belittle activism all you like. You can slander the activists currently challenging the government all you want. We're not going to stop. Especially me.
Do you get it? No? Well, you don't have to. But while you enjoy your Jersey Shore reruns or whatever, I am out here fighting to stop what happened to me from happening to you. I don't need a medal, or even a simple thank you. What I do need-the only thing I need-is for you to make an effort to understand me, as I have made an effort to understand those on the opposite side of my fight.
This is why I'm an activist. Maybe things will get to a point where you can't take it either, and I'll see you in the streets. I'm pretty sure it's going to get worse before it gets better, so I'm thinking I will.
I'm looking forward to it. In the meantime, now you know why I'm an activist.
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