Can you be an Activist and not know it? Look at your reflection in the Activist Mirror!

If an activist is somebody who spends all of their waking hours working for social change where does that leave the rest of us?
One doesn't have to devote every hour of your life to activism to be working for a better world.
Citizen activism is a way of seeing and being in the world. That basically means caring for other people and for the environment and doing something about it.
People all over the world are learning the hard way that somebody must be minding the store. Sadly, people with power will abuse their power if nobody is watching. And they will do what they can to limit the power of citizens.
And some people limit their own power; they renounce any involvement or engagement with the powers that be or the community they live in.
Citizen activism requires a variety of skills and outlooks. And the success of the work depends on how effectively the different activist types work together.
Several decades ago, Bill Moyer, a social movement scholar, determined that activists were generally one of four basic types:
1) Citizens describe a vision of what the world should look like and why; This helps keep us centered on what really matters while helping to people withstand rebuff assaults to that vision.
2) Rebels are usually out front of the rest of us. They put issues on the agenda and they force us to acknowledge the gap between where we are and where we ought to be.
3) Change Agents help facilitate dialogue with the public and those in positions of power and help cultivate new public understanding.
4) Reformers generally work within the system using institutional means of getting and maintaining real change. They help maintain important laws and work to bring new ones into existence.
We developed the Activist Mirror to help people think about what their own roles in relation to public issues. Based on the user's responses to eight brief questions, the Activist Mirror presents them with the role that best describes them. The mirror also presents four patterns from the Liberating Voices pattern language project.
There is no one correct role. All four roles are needed for any social progress and people with all four roles must work together.
Anybody who helps us solve our issues together in a thoughtful and inclusive way is an activist of one sort or another. Whether they know it or not.