The ice bucket challenge was taken as emblematic of “slacktivism,” the derisive term for cheap ways to feel good without doing anything meaningful. Critics point to Internet campaigns, the Stop Kony movement and the ice bucket challenge as merely symbolic ways for young narcissists to preen without actually achieving any change.
But now we have evidence that the ice bucket challenge may have worked.
Scientists studying A.L.S. have reported a breakthrough that could lead to therapy, not just for A.L.S. but for other ailments, too. And they say the money raised in the ice bucket challenge was crucial.
.. The ALS Association says the ice bucket challenge raised $115 million in six weeks, and many participants have become repeat donors. Google also reports there were more searches for “A.L.S.” in 2014 than in the entire previous decade.
You Can’t Compromise with Culture Warriors
By no means are social-justice warriors always wrong. But they are untrustworthy, because they aren’t driven by a philosophy so much as an insatiable appetite that cannot take yes for an answer. No cookie will ever satisfy them. Our politics will only get uglier, as those who resist this agenda realize that compromise is just another word for appeasement.
“Everything is problematic”: My journey into the centre of a dark political world, and how I escaped
As an activist friend wrote in an email, “The present organization of society fatally impairs our ability to imagine meaningful alternatives. As such, constructive proposals will simply end up reproducing present relations.” This claim is couched in theoretical language, but it is a rationale for not theorizing about political alternatives. For a long time I accepted this rationale. Then I realized that mere opposition to the status quo wasn’t enough to distinguish us from nihilists. In the software industry, a hyped-up piece of software that never actually gets released is called “vapourware.” We should be wary of political vapourware. If somebody’s alternative to the status quo is nothing, or at least nothing very specific, then what are they even talking about? They are hawking political vapourware, giving a “sales pitch” for something that doesn’t even exist.
LeBron James Shows a Growing Willingness to Take the Lead on Social Issues
It was not lost on some that when James first expressed his opinion about Sterling, it was in Charlotte, N.C., where the local N.B.A. team is owned by Michael Jordan.
As the league’s singular star throughout the 1990s, Jordan also personified the shift away from the activist athletes of earlier generations toward those less inclined to say anything that might offend sponsors, a bountiful new source of income for top stars. Jordan cemented this standing when he explained why he did not stump for a Democratic candidate who was running against the North Carolina senator Jesse Helms, who opposed a national holiday for Martin Luther King Jr.: Republicans buy sneakers, too.