When I was a boy, I fell in love with Star Trek: The Next Generation. My dad, utilizing a strange new website called Netflix, was able to rent DVDs for a few days at a time. Incidentally, each DVD had four episodes, so it was here that I developed my ongoing tolerance of binging in roughly 2 hour increments. I loved all the characters out of this 1980s sci-fi space opera (Wesley notwithstanding), but most of all I loved Captain Picard. Patrick Stewart's moderate, diligent, and philosophical character inspired me to try to rise above the temptation of ignorance. He is still a model I think of when I ask myself if I am handling things maturely.
This mindset followed me into college, an atmosphere enamored with activism. My relationship to the world of activism, much like Ariana Grande, has been walking side to side. In my first year of college, I was initially very eager to immerse myself in the cool waters of activism - in my deeply progressive college community, it is a baptism all are expected to submit to sooner or later. By the end of my first year, my enthusiasm had diminished - in fact, my own portfolio of Odyssey articles begins during this phase, so early readers of my work likely got the impression that I was a grumpy conservative huffing and puffing my way through a liberal environment.
The truth is, I've been increasingly on the fence in recent months. Domestic upheavals like Donald Trump's election have nudged me away from inaction. Now, I think back to Captain Picard and try to imagine him standing in a crowd with a picket sign... but perhaps I am wielding too obvious an expectation. Bodily protesting is perhaps the lead guitarist of protest culture's band, but every music fan already knows where this metaphor is going. There are other instruments involved in this process. Alongside bodily protesting, popular figureheads hold the mic, while protest art plays base guitar and incremental change sets up the beat on drums.
Now, Captain Picard never struck me (or anyone, I suspect) as a guitar god. Yet, I could see him hidden away in the second row, a base guitar or a drumstick in his hands. This is where his subtlety, his diligence has its specific strengths rewarded. And so, he partakes in the protest in a less visible way... but no less important.
To conclude this metaphor, this is how I will protest in 2017 - I am not the sort of person who feels that putting my body in a crowd of angry people and yelling at a building accomplishes anything. I don't begrudge anyone who in fact see's such an action is legitimate and worth their time - but in an age where our president-elect has bragged about sexually assaulting women and casually throws around nuclear policy ideas on Twitter, now is not the time to shy away from protesting at all just because the most visible and popular side of it is disagreeable to me. I choose to protest through writing articles like these because this is where my strengths lie, just as others may find the creation of protest art, music, or literature to be what fulfills them. At the end of the day, I believe it is only through a nuanced, multi-faceted system of protest that real change can be achieved peacefully.
