Advocacy

It is easy to define. Difficult to practice. It purports that the current system needs improvement and what we need to do to achieve this improvement. This makes it contentious from the start.  

Advocacy is celebrated with rose-colored glasses in history books but challenged and condemned in the present by the powers-that-be.  

In the historical context, advocacy is heralded as progress—humanity’s triumphant march towards utopia.

But in the present? It is messy, it is ungrateful, it is often violent. It brings out the worst of humanity’s need to subjugate and maintain the status quo: the dystopia we see in movies but somehow cannot see when they walk out of the theater.  

So where is the line? When does the brutal present become glorified history?  

How do we advocate for the best future for the most people within the systems of today?  

There are many answers, many paths, but the biggest challenge is taking that first step on the path, whichever it may be. A reflection, a perception, an idea…that transforms into a vision whose scaffold is built into reality by the players and powers of the current paradigm we must operate in to enact lasting change. 

With advocacy, we gain more voices and patrons at the table. With advocacy, we gain new perspective and inclusion. 

With advocacy, we change the world. One history chapter at a time.  

Will you pick up the pen to help write it?  

Or watch on as it is written before you to reflect the vision of others, without your unique insights as a fellow character and reader of this extraordinary book.