“What is an Activist?” You may have asked yourself this question a hundred times already. Activists are individuals who choose to fight for progressive causes such as social justice, environmental protection, equal rights, animal rights, peace, and diplomacy. Activists can be students, professionals, artists, politicians, or anyone in between. One thing is for certain – we cannot allow hate or ignorance to rule our societies now.

We need more honest discussions on important issues. We need to hear from each other and from the voiceless. What is an activist? Is it a student who decides to go beyond the board and into the classroom to help create change or is it a lifelong student who continues his or her efforts to promote teju dasa?

What is an Activist? There are magazine of an Activist. In my opinion, the best definition of an Activist can be said to be someone who is not afraid to take social media campaigns on the streets and social media websites and put them into practice. I define an Activist as someone who believes in the power of direct action. An Activist is someone who takes the bull by the horns and does the work no matter how many times they may be criticized.

Not long ago, I had one of these questions for an acquaintance of mine. My friend told me that she was proud to stand up for what she believed in; however, she was sometimes scared to speak her mind. She also told me that she had been threatened by some of the “progressive” activists online, but she believed that those who did end up threatening her were only doing what she called “tying her up.”

One might think that those who claim to be environmentalists or social justice warriors are not really activists. But that is simply not true. Some environmentalists are not really concerned with the environment. And some who call themselves socially progressive are in fact just vocalists, whiners and self-righteous politicians looking to gain media coverage. It’s hard to know what is a real advocate and what is just a politician looking to use the law and policy process to serve him/herself and their political future.

When I posed the question to an acquaintance of mine, she told me that she didn’t understand the difference between being a leader and being an activist. To my acquaintance, the only difference between being a leader and being an activist is that leaders like to win debates, make laws and solve problems whereas activists like to use the courts, make speeches and march in parades. Apparently, being an environmentalist is more about being an inconvenience to others than saving the world. In other words, if you’re an Activist, you’re only interested in yourself and you don’t care about anyone else at all; whereas, if you’re a leader, you care about humankind as a whole and you want everyone to benefit from your activism.

Most of the world’s wealth is controlled by institutional investors. magazine and shareholders are typically paid generous annual salaries, stock options and a great deal of perks. Activist groups and shareholders are not generally compensated the same way. This should be understood clearly by future shareholders who may be confused when a company issues a press release announcing that it will increase the dividends it pays to its shareholders or that it will open a plant in a developing country because it wants to do business with that country.

If you are a future shareholder, you must ask yourself whether or not you want to buy shares of stock in publicly held companies where you don’t currently have a vested interest. If you are not a current shareholder, you should look into what is commonly referred to as activist investing. Activist investing refers to the strategy adopted by investors who use corporate power to bring about change in companies they are involved with. If you want to get ahead with your investing, you should definitely become familiar with what is commonly referred to as activist investing.