Politics & Power Quote by Studs Terkel

Activism, in Studs Terkel's telling, isn’t a costume you put on for a march; it’s the plain fact of doing something. The definition starts almost comically small - "Someone who does an act" - a tautology that doubles as a rebuke. Terkel is side-eyeing a culture that treats politics as identity branding, where having opinions substitutes for participation. His language refuses grandeur. He drags "activist" down from the pedestal and plants it in the everyday, where democracy actually lives or dies.

The sly move is how he frames activism as a civic expectation, not a heroic exception: "In a democratic society, you're supposed to be an activist". Supposed to. That phrase carries both moral pressure and disappointment, like a teacher reminding you the assignment was never optional. It's also classic Terkel: the populist historian of ordinary voices, suspicious of elites and of spectatorship. If democracy is a shared project, then opting out isn't neutrality; it's letting other people steer.

Then he lands on the unglamorous example: "a letter written to an editor". Not a viral post, not a charismatic leader, not a celebrity fundraiser - a letter. The point isn’t nostalgia for print. It’s a defense of small, legible actions that enter public life, leave a record, and risk rebuttal. Terkel is arguing that citizenship has muscle memory: you build it through use, and you lose it through abstraction.