You are to critically reflect on what you have learnt about social change and social justice, through working collectively as an activist. This section of the report must be supported with a minimum of 3 academic references.
I have attached a group reflection that will give you an idea of the social change action i did, that is asking for the above. I want 400 words please.
Through the theory and the application of our own experience, we have explored the effectiveness of our social action project as a group. Even though our time was limited in accomplishing our aim and goal we were satisfied with what we have accomplished in the given timeframe. Our goal was to end offshore detention for people seeking asylum in Australia and aim to create social movement in closing offshore centres due to the mistreatment and violation of human rights. Falzon (2019) suggests “building our movement and making the movement speak to the people who are deeply harmed by neoliberalism”. This is why we considered our research as a group to be a significant part in building our social action plan that captures the attention of people to recognise this issue that affects many men, women and children. Although closing offshore detention centres movement is not new, our intentions were to add to the social movement by supporting and involving ourselves through dialogue, research, petitions and letters. The process of the project changed over time, as a group we discussed to achieve and narrow our ideas down. Furthermore, the effectiveness of our social action has impacted and influenced others to support our social movement. The strategies our group implemented involved by doing an online and in person petition to close offshore dentition centres. One other strategy method we used was sending all our research to state our concerns in a letter to the senator of the greens NSW, Marheen Faruqi. As a group we wanted to use someone who has political power in order to push for a change (Alinksy 1989). We chose her because she has years of political knowledge about asylum seekers and inspired from lived experiences and displays successful acts of resistance (Fridell 2013). Through these issues we were able to expand our knowledge as a group by researching human rights, policies and procedures linked to Australia’s asylum seekers. As well as the participation in the ‘justice for refugees’ protest that took place in Townhall. This led our group in listening to people with lived experiences through the exchange of their stories. In addition, we believe that our social action has left an impression during the in person petition which created connection and great influence through dialogue (Frieire 2000). The nature of our dialogue has left people reflecting about the traumatic realties many of these asylum seeks face on a daily basis and the lack of action from the Australian government. As our first encounter of activism our group had a lack of experience and knowledge on achieving social change. Through theory and group research we have gained a better insight to remobilise and re-strategies when confronted by barriers. As a team each member had a task to do such as having face to face group meetings which helped with our progress. In the future, there are few things we would consider doing differently as a group such as to be further productive in group meetings and discussions. Although, we did meet as a group, nonetheless, not every member could participate in every meeting because of other commitments. During this process we could have been more organised and planned more effectively if we utilized the opportunity by taking the in-person petition to the protest to get more signatures. From this experience we have learnt that planning, researching and executing a social action takes a lot of time, courage and passion. We have come to learn that we were not as passionate as we could have been due to having minimal knowledge that could have lead this social action project towards greater success. Reference Alinsky, S 2010, (1971) Rules for radicals: A pragmatic primer for realistic radicals. Vintage. NY, pp 4-164 Falzon, J 2019, Empathy is more useful than fear in the fight for progress, The Guardian, 4 July, viewed 1 October 2019, The Guardian Archives database Freire, P 2000, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 50th anniversary, Continuum, New York, pp. 44-79 Fridell, G 2013, ‘Introduction-politicising debt and development: activist voices on social justice in the new millennium’, Third World Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 8, pp. 1492-1496, viewed 17 October 2019, EBSCOhost Academic Search Complete, 10.1080/01436597.2013.841389.