How Dare You?

Are You An Activist? Or Are You Just Branding Yourself an Activist?

In case you didn’t know, you don’t get rich by being an activist. It’s the most thankless job on the planet because 99% of your time is fighting one way or another for other people’s rights, and the people you’re fighting for, are too tired to fight for or with you.

So it’s a thankless, piss-poor job but it has to get done because that’s not only the democratic process, but our human tribe is so huge that we need to have leaders we can believe in.

But when our leaders turn on us, then where do we go? What do we do when the people we believe in, shame us for being poor when in reality they are the reason that we are so poor, to begin with?

So many of my fellow and sister writers write about this topic, across the Medium.com spectrum, and yet so many of you are confused as to how one can go from thriving one moment, to barely surviving the next, largely and most importantly because it hasn’t happened to you.

You can be swirling along perfectly fine one moment and the next thing you know that small swirl starts to turn into a tsunami and there’s nothing you can do but hold on and hope you don’t die in the process of whatever is coming.

So when I hear that other writers are shaming my friends for asking for help to make it through — especially when that help request is directed at so many in our audience who read our work for free, I get really fucking frustrated.

We provide thousands of hours of free content for our readers, and we ask for help because we need it not because we want to be asking for help. Do we think that our readers — if they are able — should pony up? Absolutely, but if you have thousands of followers who support you and your brand, you don’t have the right to be shaming those of us with smaller followings.

We’re working just as hard sometimes twice as hard to survive as you are, so show a little bit of grace and if you choose not to share our work, then choose not to share it, but know this: If you choose to comment on how we should be working harder, or doing things that we’re already doing, then I remind you, there’s nothing you can say we haven’t already said to ourselves.

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall, The Loud Mouth Brown Girl