MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL, WHO IS THE BIGGEST ACTIVIST OF US ALL?

By SHAGORIKA EASWAR

The Activist is a new CBS show five-week reality series hosted by Usher, Priyanka Chopra and Julianne Hough in which six activists will team up with public figures to forward meaningful change in one of three areas – health, education, and environment.

According to Deadline, “Activists go head-to-head in challenges to promote their causes, with their success measured via online engagement, social metrics, and hosts’ input.

Its official site describes it thus: One thing seems more clear than ever. Planet Earth is a singular village, demanding if not relying on individual engagement. From the Global Citizen movement comes an awe-inspiring look at what can come of it. The Activist pairs advocates from the worlds of health, education, and the environment with famous figures in a series of competitions that’ll take the winners – and their ideas for seismic world change – to the G20 Summit in Italy.

Others eschewed the gobbledegook and panned the premise in simple language.

The Guardian called it a “tone-deaf” show with a crass choice of format and ill-qualified judges.

In The Quint, Pratikshya Mishra asked if activism was a commodity now.

An activist is someone who campaigns to bring about political or social change, often at great personal cost.

Merriam-Webster defines an activist as a person who uses or supports strong actions (such as public protests) in support of or opposition to one side of a controversial issue.

It is interesting to note that most of the activists we feature in Desi News – be they environmental activists or those fighting to empower women and children or protect elephants – shy away from calling themselves “activists”. They are just following the dictates of their conscience, doing what is right and just.

Another reason why many activists prefer to work quietly is that their work often puts them in dangerous situations and endangers their family and friends. A simple google search of activists jailed for their work will reveal a long list. People who’ve been threatened, thrown into jail, tortured, killed. And this happens all across the world.

So much so, that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada recently launched a new stream specifically for human rights activists.

An excerpt from an IRCC press release:

“Human rights defenders are people who, individually or in association with others, nonviolently promote or strive for the protection and realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms at the national or international levels.

“Human rights defenders face persecution at the hands of both state and non-state actors, including arbitrary arrest, detention, threats, torture, enforced disappearance and assassination.

“The work of human rights defenders is essential to promote and protect the human rights of people around the world. Too often, they put their own lives at risk to denounce injustices and hold the powerful to account.

“Our country has a long and proud tradition of providing protection to those at risk.”

As a global leader, Canada welcomed close to a third of all resettled refugees from around the world in 2020.

The dedicated refugee stream will provide a safe haven for human rights defenders at risk who are fleeing persecution in their home country.

Canada will become one of the first countries to offer a dedicated, permanent pathway for human rights defenders, and will resettle up to 250 human rights defenders per year, including their family members, through the Government-Assisted Refugees Program.

The government of Canada will work with Front Line Defenders and ProtectDefenders.eu, alongside other Canadian and international partners, including the United Nations Refugee Agency, to identify human rights defenders who face security risks and are in need of resettlement, and to find solutions for human rights defenders in need of protection. This will include a particular focus on people at heightened risk, such as women, journalists and LGBTQ2 human rights defenders.

“The vast majority of human rights defenders seek to find ways to continue doing their critical work inside their countries,” said Andrew Anderson, Executive Director of Front Line Defenders. “However, in some extremely dangerous situations, human rights defenders are forced to flee their countries and seek asylum for safety. These defenders face unique protection challenges and this new initiative will hopefully serve as a lifeline for some of these courageous individuals who have risked everything for their peaceful human rights work.”

“We all need to support human rights defenders to exercise their right to defend rights in their communities, but we also owe them practical protection in those dire situations when they cannot return to their countries,” said Gerald Staberock, Chair of the Board of ProtectDefenders.eu and Secretary General of the World Organisation Against Torture.

Yes, the activists on the show will get a platform that will expand their reach. But how will the contestants be selected? Based on their social media profiles and the number of followers? What about the countless activists who don’t post updates of every breath they take?

And are the judges really the best suited for the job? Yes, again, they raise the profile of the show. Unknown activists doing phenomenal work wouldn’t get the network the same viewership, but some things should be sacrosanct. Who picks the winners of the Nobel Prize? Or other prestigious academic excellence and industry awards? Not big-name movie stars but qualified, invested peers.

To reduce activism to a circus is more than just tone deaf, it’s wrong.

It might provide the chosen few with prize money that will help the cause they espouse, but as Jameela Jameel tweeted, “Couldn’t they just give the money it’s going to take to pay this unbelievably expensive talent and make this show, directly to activist causes? Rather than turning activism into a game and then giving a fraction of the much-needed money away in a ‘prize…?’ People are dying.”

But if I were wearing my cynic’s hat, I might say that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. This hoo-ha has garnered the show much publicity – attention that genuine activists the world over can only dream of for the causes they risk their lives for.