Write, e-mail, and call your elected officials about issues you care about. Let them know you are aware of the decisions they make. Democracy only works when we all speak up.
Many of our problems today were created or at least helped along by our silence. Successful democracy requires all of us to be involved.
Most social justice and environmental organizations have letter writing campaigns on a regular basis. Take advantage of these opportunities to add your voice to the voices of others.
Here's a government website that will help you find out who your elected officials are and how to contact them: http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." Plato
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Mother Jones magazine and the grist website are great resources for me. I also write to famous columnists if I like what they've written. I have written to Leonard Pitts-Miami Herald to ask him to address certain topics. It is incumbent upon us as people living in a democratic country to protest when we see overt wrongdoing! Thanks, Andy, for giving us this opportunity to opine and use our voices for good!
These are some more topics that I think would appeal to people. Let people write about great movies. Who has seen Pan's Labyrinth? Where are the poets? Do you want to share some poetry? I do! I wrote this one day, long before the Darfur crisis. Genocide
Genocide leaves none
To tend to Mother Earth's needs
Souls become barren
That's ,obviously, one of my haikus. I like sparse language.
Here's another topic-people like to talk about books and authors. I love Michael Ondaatje! He has written a new book! I have recently discovered the exquisite language of Arundhati Roy. She wrote, The God of Small Things. She is an incredible writer and courageous in the way she challenges the social ills of today's world. Just keep writing Andy. Write about social issues-any of them!
What does democracy look like? This is what we chanted as 100,000 of us marched toward the Capitol Building on September 15. Democracy looks like 100,000 people coming together holding signs ranging from "Impeach Bush", "End the War Now", to "Free the Jena 6" and the ever present, yet pithy slogan "How did our oil get under their soil?" We were led by the Iraq veterans against the war and joined by groups as varied as Christian Clergy Against the War, college activists, Buddhist monks and young mothers holding anti-war signs while pushing their babies in strollers. I followed a young man who held the United States flag high and let the writing on his tee-shirt do the talking. The words painted on his shirt were: "Just because I'm a patriot doesn't ever mean you have the right to silence me." I tend to like Camus' version,"I would like to love my country and love justice at the same time." I thought of all the times I've been silent while my rights or the rights of someone less fortunate were taken away. Do you know that if we are all silent when these things happen that means we are complicit in the wrong doing? I want to cite a few things that really motivated me and got me on my feet and involved in this march. 1) The Bush Administration issued an executive order authorizing military commissions to secretly try and execute civilians. 2) Foreign citizens have been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay without charge or the right to counsel. 3) False evidence was used that Iraq sought yellowcake uranium from Niger to justify attacking Iraq. 4) We were all deceived about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. 5) Our government launched a war of aggression against Iraq, resulting in the deaths of 5000 Americans and an estimated 1,000,000 Iraqi civilians. These civilians have been referred to a "collateral" or "collateral damage." That implies that our government regards their lives as expendable or that these people simply got in the way. What humanitarian can sit by and swallow this callous rhetoric? Don't you ever ask yourself who the terrorists really are? 6) The Iraqi prisoners were tortured at Abu Ghraib, in violation of the Geneva Conventions. 7)The Bush/Cheney administration has been involved with openly, brazenly wiretapping telephone conversations of American citizens without a court warrant. I'm going to add one more because it is so big and speaks to the existing caste system in America. Here it is: 8) Our government failed to rescue and recover thousands of American citizens after Hurricane Katrina. Last April, when the United States submitted a report to the United Nation's International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Hurricane Katrina was omitted. The State Department mentioned Katrina nowhere in its report nor the racial disparities that turned the disaster into a humanitarian crisis. Can you see why I am marching? Early warning signs of facism cannot be ignored either. If you sense that our government has a great disdain for human rights, the mass media is feeding you the "party line" and you know that there is a great disdain for intellectuals and the arts, then write, march, share your opinions. We are marching. Siyahamba.
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