Arm Chair Activism –
More good than you’ll ever know

The age we live in today is an age where every single person is more powerful than they have ever been before. A single social media status, tweet, question and petition now has the ability to change anything in this world – and all it takes is for one person to start it all.

‘Arm Chair Activist’ – “one who does the work of an activist through various forms such as social media”. It is the same thing that got Occupy Wall Street off the ground, the same thing that has and is making Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard more reliant on the day-to-day Prime Minsterial approval ratings than any other Prime Minister before them. The same thing that has made every person who holds power or authority sit up and take notice.

Arm Chair Activism also has the ability to unknowingly change the lives of people all around you, some you know, and some you won’t.

For roughly the past four years there has been a steep rise in the support of the LGBT community by wider society. Marriage equality in particular has taken a large place in people’s hearts, no matter what their orientation may be. In short, standing up for gay rights is now something that everyone is fighting for, regardless of their situation.

Younger members of society have taken it upon themselves to aim to leave a positive mark on their time in history. Gone is the stereotypical teenage university student whose only care is beer and X-Box, who inadvertently flies under the radar of society. Gen-Y’s are beginning to come to terms with, and are taking a firm hold of, the power they have to change the world, and they are throwing themselves whole-heartedly into their new role as the architects of the future.

It now seems blindingly obvious that if Gillard or Abbott don’t legalise same-sex marriage, Gen-Y and wider society will fight to replace the leader of their country with someone who is more in tune with society’s vision of the future.

Whilst the unfortunately named ‘approval rating’ for the right to recognise same-sex love (as if love needs society’s approval) through a wedding is sitting at 54% (with 33% opposing), the uncounted sub-eighteen year olds will definitely have something to say about that.

Through every like, retweet and share, the social media army is rising, and every fight they are tackling will have its moment in the light.

And every, like, retweet, share lets the young person fighting internally with themselves know that we support them, and that we are battling for them.

Our arm chairs are now our seats in parliament, and our keyboards the magnifier of our voices – fighting, screaming, demanding that we be heard.

It might not happen yet, but we aren’t in power yet.

Our results may have not yet been reached, but they are listening.

We have the power, and we will leave our mark.

…But what would I know, I’m just a kid.  

image: http://raashidriza.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/of-activism-armchair-activism-and-cynicism/activism3/