Voting for a mainstream candidate, signing petitions, discussing your view with aqaintances and forwarding info to aquaintances don’t count.
Political action, moving house because of a local policy, joining a picket line or demonstration, writing letters to the editor, running for office… all these I’m interested in. Views you express in the way you do your regular job can also be mentioned.
I’m just wondering how much weight people give their opinions over in the other thread.
Anyone who tries to discuss an expressed view will be slapped with a wet haddock.
Would working on a presidential campaign count? Ron Paul has a good number of extreme beliefs, not all of which I subscribe to but many of which I do. I’ve helped collect signatures to get him on the Virginia ballot, as well as edited and distributed informative literature on him and his views. I hang out at the campaign headquarters on the weekends sometimes, stuffing envelopes or working on spreadsheets or cold calling prospective voters. And I’ve donated a decent amount of money to his campaign.
I travelled from Chicago to Atlanta to volunteer for the Jim Martin campaign in the runoff election against Saxby Chambliss. Partially because I really wanted to give President Obama a filibuster-proof majority, but mostly because I was so offended by the Chambliss ads against Max Cleland that compared the quadriplegic vet Cleland to bin Laden. I kind of hold a grudge about shit like that.
I was student at KU when the Missouri side was strictly segregated. I would join students and go Kansas City and integrate public functions like the ballet, which I hated, but integration was risky and risk was fun.
Things I got arrested or otherwise locked up for speaking out for, doing guerilla PR, or participating in civil disobedience for:
gender identity / sexual identity (freedom from limited pigeonhole categories)
right to refuse treatment (psychiatric patients)
right of homeless people to participate in program planning (homeless services)
Walked picket lines, went to demos, participated in sit-ins, sat up all night stuffing envelopes, etc (but didn’t get locked up for it):
equal rights amendment
grad students’ right to unionize on campus (teaching assistants / research assistants)
opposition to invasion of Iraq (2001)
raise awareness of quality of psychiatric drugs, side effects, et al
oppose policies of American Psychiatric Association (nothing about us without us etc)
oppose patriot act, loss of civil rights in US
oppose de facto censorship of student newspaper and radio station (generic)
ALSO: placed hundreds of calls to registered voters for MoveOn.org (Kerry v Bush 2004)
AND: created petition complaining about teacher behavior towards students and circulated it with goal of going to the principal and school board (6th grade, 1971)
“Drop Bush, not bombs” march against the war in Iraq. However, in Europe, not going to those marches was an “extreme view”. So it shouldn’t really count
Other than that, I usually just email politicians and the like with my complaints. I emailed the University of Utrecht and the marathon organisation when they paid non-Dutch winners less. They were actually pretty sorry.
None of this is very extreme, is it! I need to up my extremist-activism
I tried to get Oklahoma to abandon the state and federal constitution and instead follow Sharia law, but eventually the state government got wind of it and put a stop to it.
Mainly because I was angry over a land mogul’s scheme to break up the surrounding wooded areas to put condos on an unstable hillside, requiring the whole city to provide him with streets and water and fire protection.
But then I went over the prior years public meeting records and discovered that most of the mayor’s time was spent deciding things like where supermarket parking entrances should be located and what to do about kids drag racing down the road out of town.
When another candidate filed that held my position on the hillside development, I just didn’t file the next piece of paperwork and my initial filing faded away.
I also volunteered heavily for Howard Dean and ran a petition drive to keep arseholes from re-writing the Iowa Constitution to ban same sex marriage. I participated in numerous anti-Iraq war protests. I ran a precinct caucus.
On a local level, I ran for county Secretary of the local party (but in a huge county) at 18. I also prevented a convicted felon union goon from becoming the party chair.
I’ve marched for nuclear disarmament and refugee rights. If I could find a group that was campaigning to just abolish the immigration system altogether I’d certainly lend them my support, but as it is I think I’d have to start such a group if I want it to exist, and that’s a little beyond me. One step at a time…
I joined a year long occupation in a native american land dispute, and in another separate occupation where vigilantes were actually shooting at us. I worked for the national organization for women and feminist women health centers when operation rescue fanatics were making it difficult for women to come into the clinics (even when they were coming in for pre natal care - they were being called baby killers…etc. Also this was at a time when the threat of bombings and shootings (by pro-life fanatics) was very high.
I was a high schooler at the first chicano moratorium, and I have participated in anti war protests and worked in homeless shelters.
I was working for a huge Fortune 500 company that brought in a new CEO a month before Christmas and the very first thing she did was announce layoffs. Then immediately after announcing layoffs she started sending out stupid crap (key chains, water bottles, etc.) to all the employees to boost morale. I was so pissed off that she was willing to fire a bunch of people 2 weeks before the holidays to save money but she wasn’t willing to stop spending money on stupid, useless crap that I quit my job with less than a week’s notice and packaged up all the stuff she had sent out to everyone and sent it back to her along with a letter telling her just what I thought of her priorities. I hope my not being there saved someone else from being let go but somehow I doubt that.
I became an active member of the Political Party for Animal Rightsin the Netherlands just as soon as it was founded.
I have helped with campaigning, by doing practical stuff like organizing local campains and being the central point where people could pick up posters and flyers and leaflets and picket signs.
I also was a part of the provincial thinktank, co-writing the political election programme for the provincial elections.
The election after that, I even was on the electee list. I wanted to be far down the list, because I would have to give up my job if I actually got elected.
I have instigated several action in my workplace, from using organic dairy and eggs to setting up research grants for animal friendly catch neure and release programs for feral. stray and roaming cats in nature reserves. Right now I am working on a plan to organize clean-up campaigns of plastic debris on waterbanks. While that is part of my job, I put in way more effort then is necessary.
In college, I was a member of an active chapter of the John Birch Society (1980-84) & a donator to the Moral Majority, campaigned for Reagan & Christian Right causes in 1980, & participated in campus debates on abortion, nuclear arms, US-USSR relations. Around 1989, I joined in an attempt to relaunch a local JBS chapter but after a year realized I just was not that extreme any longer.
At one time, it was the belief that I should have the right to vote despite not being White. For that I took part in protest marches, and was shot at (not hit), whipped, water-cannoned and tear-gassed for my troubles.
Nowadays, it’s the belief that capitalism is wrong and social anarchism is better. And there, again, I’ve marched as well as taken part in public debates.
While pregnant.