Finding Meaning in Politics: When Victims Become Activists

Abstract

Victimization is often associated with increased political participation, and victims are influential political actors in many countries around the world. Yet for victims, activism is costly: they tell and re-tell painful stories, face searing criticism, and work to exhaustion—all at one of the worst moments of their lives. So why do they do it? Based on ethnographic research with Families for Safe Streets, a group of victims-turned-activists in New York City, this article advances a new explanation for victims’ participation in politics. I propose that for some victims, meaning-making is an in-process benefit of activism. My inductive research suggests three ways victims find meaning in politics. First, through their activism, victims can re-conceptualize the losses and harms they have suffered as policy problems, rather than random, inexplicable events. Victims may also seek to help others by changing laws to prevent similar tragedies from recurring, and some victims see their activism as a way of fulfilling important obligations to their communities, their families, and their deceased relatives.