If I Weren’t an Activist

Editors’ note: This piece is from Nonprofit Quarterly Magazine’s fall 2024 issue, “Supporting the Youth Climate Justice Movement.”

If I weren’t an activist, I would be an artist. Growing up, I loved to paint, to make nothings into somethings. To sit outside and color, and reimagine a world where the sun was beaming down on my skin. Art made me feel like I could escape reality and be in my own world. I felt at peace. Not how I feel when fighting for basic human rights. That doesn’t feel peaceful. That feels draining, that feels exhausting, that feels tiresome. It feels like I am fighting to be seen. Fighting for the basic necessities of life. The things that feel like they should be a given. Have human rights really become a privilege? Maybe they always were a privilege. Maybe human rights are just abstract, a figment of my imagination, sort of like the artwork I did as a kid.

I think the thing we forget about most as activists is that we’re not just fighting for our communities, we’re fighting for ourselves, too. We too are a part of our community. We too are energy burdened. We too are struggling to pay our rent. We too are suffering from the job market and dirty drinking water.If I weren’t an activist, I would also be an architect. I love houses. When I was a kid, I used to sit in my room and draw pictures of houses. Every New Year, my mom would help us make vision boards, and mine was filled only with big beautiful houses. Access to shelter is a basic human right, though I’m not sure I thought of it that way when I was a kid. I think I just simply loved houses. I organize rallies and protests advocating for safe, healthy communities, speak in front of thousands of people stressing the urgency behind equitable community engagement, beg my utility company to stop raising our energy rates, but really, I can’t help but think about how I would rather just be in my room drawing pictures of big beautiful houses. Does this make me sound selfish?

If I weren’t an activist, I would have more time to spend with friends. They wouldn’t refrain from calling me, because they would know I have time to talk. I’ve lost a lot of friends in this movement. I’ve dedicated over a decade now to this work, and of course everything comes with sacrifice, but everyone needs friends. I had a friend contact me once and tell me that she doesn’t call me because she knows how busy I am. I’ll never forget that she said that to me. Activism is lonely. You guilt yourself because there’s always something that needs to get done, so you push everything else to the side…and sometimes that means friends, too. I think the thing we forget about most as activists is that we’re not just fighting for our communities, we’re fighting for ourselves, too. We too are a part of our community. We too are energy burdened. We too are struggling to pay our rent. We too are suffering from the job market and dirty drinking water. We too need a support system.

If I weren’t an activist, I’d probably have weekends that were filled with joy. I’d go to festivals, go on weekend trips to visit friends, and just spend time doing things that I love. Activism doesn’t bring me joy—at least, not anymore. I feel anxious, exhausted, frustrated, and burned out. This is because activism doesn’t have boundaries. The movement doesn’t care if it’s after five o’clock in the evening, or if it’s the weekend, or that you booked a vacation four months ahead. Activists are expected to give our all every day no matter what, because we are fighting for something that means so much to us. I think one might argue that activism lives rent-free in the back of our heads. The work is never done, no matter how simple the ask, even if it’s “basic” human rights. Why do we have to fight so hard for human rights? It seems so simple, but it’s really not.

If I weren’t an activist, I’d probably be a really good cook. I love to cook. It takes the stress away. I’d probably host dinner parties with friends on random Tuesday nights, everything color coded, bringing out my best dinner plates. I’d probably pick my own fresh herbs in my backyard garden, too, and make the most complicated bread dishes from scratch. Even writing about this possibility feels peaceful. But I’m no chef, I am an activist. I pledged to be an activist. No one forced me to do it, but would they still look at me the same if I stopped being an activist? Would they say I gave up on my community, on myself, on the fight for human rights? I’m not sure I could take that sort of criticism.

If I weren’t an activist, I’d be healthier. I wouldn’t be as stressed, overworked, burned out, or experiencing physical ill health from sitting at a desk all day. It’s true: two years ago, I developed a cyst from sitting at my desk for 10 or more hours a day. And that’s not to say that people who aren’t activists don’t endure hardships in life. Activism is definitely not the most labor-intensive pathway, so forgive me if it sounds like I’m being facetious or complaining a lot. It’s just that I don’t know if I knew what I was getting myself into. I never planned on being an activist. I wanted to be an artist, or even an architect, or maybe a chef. But would I have truly been fulfilled in those roles? Would I have wound up calling those exhausting and tiring too? I don’t think I’ll ever get to find out. But my point here is that people should not have to work so hard, fight so hard, beg so hard, for basic human rights. In a perfect world, human rights activists wouldn’t exist.

I didn’t want to be an activist—my lived experiences made me one.

But the world ain’t perfect, and I too still exist.

So, I suppose the question you have for me is, If you wanted to be an artist, and if you wanted to be an architect, or if you wanted to be a chef, then why are you an activist?

Growing up on the west side of Detroit gave me a lot of insight into life. I vividly remember spending my summers outdoors, running up and down the streets of my neighborhood with all the other kids on the block. This was my first exposure to the environment, and I think it is what most contributed to my love for the outdoors. I remember capturing lightning bugs and playing with pill bugs, aka roly-polies, which we referred to as rollie-pollie-ollies. These outdoor experiences metamorphosed into my love for animals. In fact, I remember watching an old television show, when the Save The Polar Bears commercial came on. This was a commercial well known by us millennials. I would argue that this commercial was my generation’s first exposure to the concept of climate change—aside from Al Gore, of course. The commercial taught me two major things: 1. that polar bears were at risk because the ice caps were melting; and 2. that you could adopt a polar bear. I never learned who was behind that commercial strategy, but I’ve never felt more persuaded in my life. This commercial inspired my whole life’s trajectory.

I thought to myself, How can I stick up for the parts of our earth that can’t stick up for themselves? The plants, the trees, the insects, the polar bears. They had no way of communicating with us humans. This was the day that I set out to speak up for the ones who were unheard. Little did I know that my path would shift even further. I would soon come to find out that the same outdoors that brought me so much joy as a little girl—the same outdoors where I played with all the other kids on my block—was actually killing us. We were being exposed to toxic chemicals in the air from our proximity to automotive plants and incinerators. We were consuming water pumped through pipes full of lead. We were surrounded by trash and liquor stores, and robbed of green spaces and farmers markets full of fresh fruit and vegetables. I didn’t want to be an activist—my lived experiences made me one.

After discovering these things, I couldn’t imagine going on with life as I had been. I just couldn’t. It wasn’t right, and I had learned too much. Who else was going to do it, and who was I to sit on information like this? I felt a sense of responsibility to myself, my family, my community, and the generations to come.

I could have been an artist, I could have been an architect, I could have hosted dinner parties on Tuesday nights or even become a chef—but I became an activist.