What is
After developing gradually, as projects do, Protect Our Activists became real enough in 2019 to acquire its name. With the mid-2020 launch of the POA website, the project moves up a notch on the reality scale, beginning to take up actual space in the world (at least, cyberspace).
Protect Our Activists’ realness grows as it further connects to the activist community.
We’re building and moving forward. Keep up with our progress by subscribing!
Protect Our Activists calls on the activist community to join us in exploring the realities of activist life in the belly of the Beast we’re working to transform, and in promoting full and fair portrayal of activists in fiction. Our goal is to foster a climate of greater understanding and safety for all those who take on the risks of pursuing a just society. In thinking together with a wide range of activists, we seek to understand diverse aspects of the activist experience and pool ideas on how to create a better environment for the folks who risk themselves to step out into the public arena–whether the local streets or the world stage–to speak up and take action for justice for all.
We feel that enhancing understanding among ourselves regarding our own nature and experience as activists, and calling for fuller and fairer representation of activists/activism in popular consciousness, are necessary to creating a more welcoming and safer climate for activists and our communities as we engage in this indispensable but risky work.
Protect Our Activists Activities
Writing and publishing: Individually and collectively, on the reality|fiction continuum, with Juliana Barnet and others at POA:
Children’s books: Neighborhood Novelists books including Zombie Elementary, The Imagination Club, and a new virtual Neighborhood Novelists book project in coming in 2020.
Other works of fiction featuring activists by Juliana, in progress: Margaret’s Big Family and The Educación of Julia.
Research: Participant-observer research, participatory research.
Ask Activists project–interviews and discussions with diverse activists.
Life in the Liberated Zone virtual visits –and hopefully someday soon we’ll be able to return to real life visits as well.
Fiction Featuring Activists List.
Fiction Featuring Activists and Activist Stereotype Scrutinizer Review Guide (we’re working on the name…).
Workshops:
SOOP-stories of our people (adults).
Neighborhood Novelists collective writing by children dealing collectively with issues that matter
Fiction Featuring Activists writing and reviewing group.
Website: Conveying ideas and work through this website is a major activity in itself, as it is in most endeavors, but one which generally remains in the back and out of sight. However, since one of our topics is Everyday Activist Life, and another is our own journey as participant-observers of our reality and process, we will on occasion focus attention on our website construction process and other behind-the-scenes activities.
