Individual Activism - Seven Points from an Activist Extraordinaire

Our friend and fellow activist (indeed, the most active activist I know!), Anthony Marr, will soon be leaving on his 7th Compassion for Animals Road Expedition (CARE-7). Anthony has dedicated his life to activism on behalf of the voiceless ones: non-human animals, children, future generations of all species.

He is a speaker every year at the Animal Rights Conference in the USA, and in 2009, he made a presentation entitled Individual Activism. Below are the 7 excellent and eloquent points that Anthony made.

1. The Power of One: One activist standing in the rain for 10 days is more powerful than 100 activists holding a one-hour protest in the sun.
2. Where you can lead: If you have no leadership quality, you would not be an activist. There is one thing among the millions that people can do in which you are the best. What is it?
3. Go where no one has gone before: Do what no one has done before. Media will cover you if you do something that has never been done there before, bearing in mind that something new anywhere is new only once.
4. Go where angels fear to tread: Do what no one dares to do — physically and spiritually. You need not be an outlaw to be brave. You can work within the law to change the law. Treat restrictions as challenges to your ingenuity.
5. Choose your enemy with compassion: Do it for justice, not for vengeance, and certainly not out of cruelty on our part.
6. Live for your cause. Be its instrument on Earth: You will live on in the difference that you will have made.
7. Save the Earth for her own sake, and our children and all creatures, for their own sake: An individual human has the potential to be an individual planet-saver.

"The rest is all up to you," he concluded.

You can watch Anthony Marr's speech, Individual Activism, on video.