My article “Griftivism: How Activists Profit off Your Empathy” has been published on The Black Sheep, a US-based publication for those who “refuse to fit the mold when it feels like a cage”. My thanks to co-founders and editors Salomé Sibonex and Joseph Klein for taking the piece and for their excellent editorial input. Please visit The Black Sheep and consider supporting their vital work!
My first exposure to what I now call “griftivism,” a hybrid of grifting and Critical Social Justice activism, occurred in the arts. It was 2020 when—in my role as managing editor of literary journal Verity La—I became embroiled in a social media cancellation precipitated by backlash to the publication of a story some deemed racist and sexist. The ensuing moral outrage razed our “little magazine that could” into internet infamy, where it remains strung up, replete with apologies, hanging its masthead in shame.
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