My roommate recently showed me something online, and what he said got me thinking. He told me “social justice warriors probably hate this.”

What does that phrase even mean, “social justice warriors?” I decided to look up what it meant on Urban Dictionary, admittedly not the best source for  information, but this is what I found: “A pejorative term for an individual who repeatedly and vehemently engages in arguments on social justice on the Internet, often in a shallow and not well-thought-out way.” These people do not “necessarily strongly believe all that they say, or even care about the groups they are fighting on behalf of.” They do it to be popular.

So how do these people make social justice look bad? After all, protesters all over the world use the internet to organize and rally support. Social media was a huge force in the Arab Spring protests that eventually toppled regimes. Using these networks at home has created huge firestorms around net neutrality, which recently forced the FCC to adopt net neutral protocols. Using mass media has always been in the toolbox for enacting social reforms. Social reformers like Martin Luther King Jr. are regarded as heroes. Hamline even offers a Social Justice Major, evidence of its influence in academia.

Yet the words “social justice” have become dirty words in common discourse. They symbolize relatively lazy, bandwagon efforts to raise awareness, and nothing else. The KONY 2012 campaign comes to mind with this kind of social justice. It brings to mind people from Greenpeace harassing you to save the whales or something. These campaigns raise awareness of the issue but do not address the root causes of the problem. The argument then asks “What’s the point if nothing real is being done?”

  Then there are people who see social justice as rabble-rousing, people who see protesters in the streets or online and wonder why these people can not appreciate the life we already live. They then, ironically, mount their own social media-based campaigns against the other efforts.

The problem with this kind of thinking is that we already appreciate the life we live. It is  hard to argue this point when people in the streets are already taking advantage of their First Amendment rights to peaceful assembly. We just see how it could be improved. Is it really wrong to use the internet to promote a cleaner earth? Or is it wrong to start an online petition for the release of a wrongly convicted person?

The biggest challenge is in turning awareness into real action, and it starts with a demand. Remember the Occupy movement? It brought income inequality into the mainstream political discourse, and then sat around. The protesters didn’t really ask for things to change. They thought that change would happen with awareness. You need to make that happen! It doesn’t just come up when people know about an issue. People do not just start marching on Washington because they saw something online. There needs to be organization, a willingness to take risks, maybe even get arrested for civil disobedience. This is what separates a successful protest movement from Occupy. There was no real plan for what happens next. Its good to have a slogan like “We are the 99%” but you need to have a plan to make your movement last. Peaceful civil disobedience is a good way to make that happen.

The three major monotheistic religions all have beliefs in social justice, from tikkun olam in Judaism to zakat in Islam to Christian sects like Methodism and orders like the Jesuits. And this is only scratching the surface. Across religions there is a belief in the world and society being more just and peaceful. This is not a radical belief.

Yes, there are radical, violent, and overzealous actors for change, and unfortunately they do hold some sway in some circles. But they are a very small minority. I believe that until there is true social justice, there will always be people who want to see change and will protest for that.

Am I social justice warrior by that definition? Sure I am. I think that you are, too.