Anna Spargo-Ryan: On Activism

Author and commentator Anna Spargo-Ryan's essay, On Activism, speaks to her lived experience of online activism and authenticity, and is reproduced here exclusively.

By Anna Spargo-Ryan

Culture

Author and commentator Anna Spargo-Ryan's essay, On Activism, speaks to her lived experience of online activism and authenticity, and is reproduced here exclusively.

By Anna Spargo-Ryan

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After Donald Trump was diagnosed with COVID-19, Twitter made a sweet but false announcement: they had always said they didn’t tolerate threats to someone’s life on the platform. In fact, even just wishing for someone else’s demise had always been against the rules.

The @TwitterSupport account was instantly flooded with replies. Had Twitter even been on Twitter? Messages from women, people of colour, queer people, disabled folk and many others flooded in.

Anna Spargo-Ryan is the Melbourne-based author of The Gulf and The Paper House, and winner of the 2016 Horne Prize. Her work has appeared in The Big Issue, Island, The Saturday Paper, Meanjin, The Guardian, and her new book, a nonfiction work on mental illness, is forthcoming from Picador.