The Everyday Activist

by Michael Norton

From unplugging your mobile phone charger at night, to eating seasonal food, and pledging to take fewer flights, there are countless small things you can do every day that won't take much time or effort. The beauty of  "everyday activism" is that, taken together, lots of people doing lots of small things can change the world. Whether you have two minutes or two years to spare, The Everyday Activist is a treasury of motivation and ideas. Be inspired. Kick apathy by reading true stories of people whose simple efforts have made a huge difference. Identify the problems that you care about, at a local, national, or global level—and find out how you can go about tackling them. And if you are motivated to really let your imagination fly, feel empowered by the 60-page Action Guide that's jam-packed with advice on how to get organized, and how to take your ideas to a waiting world that really does need your energy and creativity.

Genres: Nonfiction, Environment

192 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2006

Reviews

[Doug Lewars · Rating 3 out of 5]

*** Possible Spoilers ***

This consists of 365 suggestions by date for activist activity. Since it's not easy to come up with that many activities many of them are rather trivial or repetitive. For example 'read something' was fairly common. Go to such-and-such website was another. So while I have some doubts that this would be of much use to activists, it is quite useful for writers. Consider. Major plots - the kind around which a novel can be created - are pretty easy to come up with; but minor ones are more difficult because they have to be relevant to the story being told and that eliminates large numbers of possibilities. If you take a look at each page in this book and use the topics rather like a word-association test, then you can generally come up with some sort of activity. List it in a spreadsheet and when you need something to happen, take a look. You'll probably find something that can be used or modified to meet your needs. As a result, I found this book quite useful.

[stinaz · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting pulp format - a profile a day of an organization or action you can take for the common good. Some interesting organizations and ideas, but just a light touch on what to do to be an "activist." More some ideas for further research - still a nice overview of a lot of different options. But many of them were also quite extensive in terms of actions. Not quite a step by step "everyday" but rather an idea for each day of the year to follow up on - at your own request.

[Umar · Rating 2 out of 5]

A little naive on how powerful activism is but carries the right spirit and diversity on activist issues. If you want to change stuff, you need to get to the root of things- but if you want to some way to do something good, go for this one.

[Eliot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slightly preachy, but very useful and insightful

[Alana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gave me so many ideas that i am going to steal. Hopefully it will also spur some of my own <3