I just finished writing an article titled "good things that happened in 2016" which as the title implies, is a list of some good things that people might not have known about that happened in 2016. I wrote this article because the news, media, and my Facebook timeline is just covered with all the bad things that are going on 2016. One of my opening sentence in that article was " Just like in life, a lot of times the bad times over shadow the good- so people are tending to focus on how terrible this year was." Well I changed my mind, and I deleted that article. We shouldn't focus on the good things in 2016, we should recognize them sure, but we should really be focusing on the bad things.
"But the bad things makes me sad!" Good point reader, bad things do make you sad, but more importantly the bad things that have happened in 2016 should make you angry. Instead of seeing something on your timeline or on the news and just walking away from it, or ignoring it because it makes you feel sad, mad or down, try just feeling that emotion. Sit there and just feel sad, feel angry. After you've just sat there and you've felt all that anger and sadness about the event that has flashed on your timeline or the news, start thinking of ways you can be proactive in this situation. If you just ignore the sad things that happen in 2016, history will just repeat itself.
I'll give you an example of this. When I fist saw what was going on in standing rock I was sad, I felt empathy for the people of the Sioux Tribe , I felt anger. If you have been ignoring the news like the plauge, here's the shortened version: The government wanted to put an oil pipeline right through native american land, and if the pipeline leaked it would ruin their water supply. This pipeline was originally supposed to run through a bigger city, in North Dakota, but they were afraid it would leak- so they chose to run it through Native American land. I was upset, but I'll be the first to admit my knowledge of Native Americans really only went as far as what they taught us in school. So I had to do my research. I started looking up the history with this pipeline, I went to talks held by people from the Sioux Tribe, I went to rallies about the pipeline, etc. I learned what was going on and I got involved. I could have easily just ignored what was going on, or ignored the news in general, but nothing will change that way. No, I can't single handedly fix all the bad things in 2016, but me getting involved won't make anything worse. Educating yourself, going to protest, donating money, educating your friends about it, might only make a small change, but at least it will make a change.
There has been many terrible things that happened in 2016: a homophobic, racist, sexist, xenophobic, reality star got elected president; a white rapist who happens to be good a swimming got a joke sentence; there has been a fear of refugees, a predominantly low income city's water supply was contaminated and not fixed, and the list go on. The thing is, a lot of these bad things are based on years of systematic oppression of certain people, 2016 isn't the first time minorities are being screwed over, or the first year awful things has happened. What is changing is people, especially young people are becoming more aware, they are making their voices heard, and fighting back. We have to focus on the bad things, so we can stop history repeating itself, so we can stop these bad things from happening again and again. We have to change the system.
We are not going to change the way the system works by ignoring bad things. Pick a terrible thing that is going on that you feel passionately about and fight. Learn about what is going on, learn about the history, talk about it, go to protest, run for an office, donate money- there are plenty of ways you can get involved.
