What Advocacy Means to Me

     I’m sure my grandfather borrowed and paraphrased this from someone else (probably Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Martin Luther King Jr. or Desmond Tutu) but he often said, “A just man who watches an injustice and does nothing is, himself, unjust”.  For this assignment and a few others, advocacy seems geared toward rallying people to a cause and to action in your cause.  And your cause is generally a perspective that something is wrong and needs changing.  While I understand this as the point of the assignments, advocacy, for me, is a call to action for me personally.  If you’re not driven to pick up the effort yourself then how can you hope to rally others to the same cause?  I’ve not often thought of advocacy on a scale beyond what I can accomplish alone.  These assignments have given me tools and a vision to take my advocacy out to others when I need to.

The Archbishop Desmond Tutu said “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” (Tutu).  The entire point of advocacy is to elicit change.  While its easy to have an opinion, its much harder to voice that opinion and rally others to your side.  It can be frustrating and lead to an angry demeanor when you feel you are failing to get your point across.  When faced with resistance, its important to remember the words of Nelson Mandela.  He said, “Don't raise your voice, improve your argument”. (Mandela).  This can be achieved by a better understanding of your audience.  If you can say what you want to say the way they want to hear it, you’ve broken through the first barrier in advocacy, convincing.

The persuasion of your audience seems tougher.  For me, the hardest part of persuading for your cause is knowing what format is best suited to relaying your point.  This decision has to be effective enough to get people to join you.  Is it a website, an article, an app, all three?  For this exercise, I’ll be doing the website and I hope I’m able to show others how important my topic is with words, pictures and ease of navigation.