The United States is still keeping human beings in cages. Flint, Michigan still does not have clean water.
Civilians are still being killed and written off as casualties.
No human belongs in a cage. No human should ever go without safe drinking water. And no human being deserves to have their life written off as a casualty.
Yet we let these things happen anyway.
They fall out of our media cycle as people grow weary of hearing the same stories of the same tragedies over and over. Fresher news comes along and pushes problems off the front page, shrinking their coverage until people forget about them altogether.
And it’s so easy.
It’s so easy to forget when we are caught up in our lives, like with our tests, jobs, dates, plans, errands and appointments. They bubble in the forefront of our minds until they’re boiling loud enough we can’t hear the sound of human beings in cages.
But this does not excuse us.
Privilege does not negate our duty to improve the lives of others. In fact, it amplifies it.
So often, when something is on the front page, it’s all we can talk about. Media coverage can spark donations, protests and congressional contact. But as a story grows stale, the media moves on to find new content. We should not.
The media jumps from news cycle to news cycle. But human rights violations don’t cycle. They just are. And as long as they exist, we’re responsible for working to fix them. The news tells us about current happenings, informs us initially, but it’s not CNN’s job to make sure we have a notification about immigration every day. It’s our job to pay attention, to remember, to do something, to make sure that the next news notification about immigration is a positive one.
Activism is not always going to be easy. Activism is not always going to be convenient. But if we cannot put aside the time to help in situations like these, where is our humanity?
A culture of convenience, of fast food and frozen dinners, has trained us to avoid anything inconvenient, anything that might take time. Changing the world won’t always be a fast and easy Instagrammable moment. We’re going to have to make ourselves uncomfortable sometimes. We’re going to have to force ourselves to make time to make the world better. Whether that be in community service, volunteering, fundraising, donating, educating, protesting or any other activity, it needs to be done.
I challenge you to take five minutes of your day every day this week to do something. It can be anything. It can be something you’ve always wanted to do, it can be something you find as a Google result after you finish reading this. Just do something that helps someone else.
