{"id":1134,"date":"2019-09-23T08:31:09","date_gmt":"2019-09-23T06:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.woydt.be\/blog\/?p=1134"},"modified":"2023-12-12T19:16:00","modified_gmt":"2023-12-12T17:16:00","slug":"activists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woydt.be\/blog\/?p=1134","title":{"rendered":"Activists"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img class=\"size-full wp-image-4151 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.woydt.be\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/street-art-Girl-band-Aid-the-street-1054x1200-1.webp\" alt=\"\" width=\"60%\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.woydt.be\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/street-art-Girl-band-Aid-the-street-1054x1200-1.webp 1054w, https:\/\/www.woydt.be\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/street-art-Girl-band-Aid-the-street-1054x1200-1-264x300.webp 264w, https:\/\/www.woydt.be\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/street-art-Girl-band-Aid-the-street-1054x1200-1-899x1024.webp 899w, https:\/\/www.woydt.be\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/street-art-Girl-band-Aid-the-street-1054x1200-1-768x874.webp 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1054px) 100vw, 1054px\" \/><br \/>\n&#8220;&#8216;The problem with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.woydt.be\/blog\/?p=163\">politicians<\/a> and political activists is that they are trapped in their own little bubbles.&#8217; If there\u2019s one complaint that defines our age, it\u2019s the accusation that those involved in politics are too removed from &#8216;real&#8217; people. The trouble is, when political activists show that they have the same concerns as everybody else, the complaint gets turned on its head. &#8216;But that\u2019s not a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.woydt.be\/blog\/?p=580\">real<\/a> person, that\u2019s a political activist.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>So it was with the confrontation last week between Boris Johnson and Omar Salem, the father of a sick child at Whipps Cross university hospital in London. Much of the debate about the confrontation has been less about Johnson or the state of the NHS than about Salem being a Labour <a href=\"https:\/\/www.woydt.be\/blog\/?p=371\">party<\/a> activist.<\/p>\n<p>What if he is? Isn\u2019t that a good thing? An expression of an activist facing the same <a href=\"https:\/\/www.woydt.be\/blog\/?p=386\">problems<\/a> as experienced by &#8216;ordinary&#8217; people? Of an &#8216;ordinary&#8217; person whose experiences are part of the reason he is an activist? Salem\u2019s experiences are no less real, his anger is no less valid, because he is an activist. To insist that &#8216;ordinary&#8217; people cannot be activists is to insist that people\u2019s experiences and anger only matter when they <a href=\"https:\/\/www.woydt.be\/blog\/?p=159\">suffer<\/a>, but not when they <a href=\"https:\/\/www.woydt.be\/blog\/?p=166\">challenge<\/a> the problems they face or organise against them. &#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>aus: Kenan Malik: Boris Johnson\u2019s confrontation: don\u2019t lose sight of the real story, The Guardian, 22.9.19, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2019\/sep\/22\/truth-will-be-lost-if-messenger-becomes-the-story\">im Internet<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Abb.: ?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">09\/19<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;&#8216;The problem with politicians and political activists is that they are trapped in their own little bubbles.&#8217; If there\u2019s one complaint that defines our age, it\u2019s the accusation that those involved in politics are too removed from &#8216;real&#8217; people. The trouble is, when political activists show that they have the same concerns as everybody else, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woydt.be\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1134"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woydt.be\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woydt.be\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woydt.be\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woydt.be\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1134"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.woydt.be\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4152,"href":"https:\/\/www.woydt.be\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1134\/revisions\/4152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woydt.be\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woydt.be\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woydt.be\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}