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The things to remember are that that we outnumber them and that everything they have comes from us.Revenues for the government and profits for large corporations come from the purchases made by small consumers. Every time you spend a dollar, a certain percentage of it is funneled to the pockets of the rich and to the war profiteers. Since big corporations and the rich don't pay taxes, everything the government has comes from foreign loans or from us.
But most of us who are low income don't really believe that we can have an impact through our purchasing power. Besides, we have little or no discretionary spending -- everything we have goes for necessities. The fact is that we do still have choices, even when purchasing necessities, and that the decisions we make, when aggregated with the decisions of millions of others, can stop the war machine. Here are a few suggestions:
1. Try not to buy food at supermarkets or big box stores. There are probably weekend farmers' markets and swapmeets where food is sold near you. Sometimes the prices are slightly higher, but in many cases they are actually much lower. If you have to buy name brand foods, check to see if you can get them at a 99-Cents Only store. These goods are fresh and, other than the fact that they sell for 99-cents each, no different from what you'd pay more for elsewhere.
2. If you have a car, buy gas at CitGo whenever you can. You can find your nearest CitGo here: http://www.citgo.com/citgolocator.jsp If there isn't one conveniently near you, see if you can buy gas there at least once out of every four or five times you fill up. Later on you may be able to do it more frequently.
3. If you're working, think seriously about making major career changes. If you earn a certain taxable amount, you might be able to have just as much income by taking a right-livelihood job for a non-profit organization that pays less and is therefore taxed less. Why work at something that's just a job when you can be working for a cause you support and have no real loss of income?
4. Rethink your rent or mortgage. The housing bubble has started to burst. Most of us really have very little choice about where we can afford to live. But that doesn't mean we can't remain open to opportunities such as shared housing or cooperatives. This is a bit like dating. There may be many choices available that don't fit, but if you keep your options open you may eventually come across one that does.
5. Freecycle. http://freecycle.org/ Find your local freecycle group and sign up. One person's trash is another person's treasure. Sooner or later somebody on freecycle will be giving away exactly what you want and it won't cost you a dime. Clothes, furniture, appliances, electronics, you name it. Somebody just upgraded, got a new one as a gift, or bought a new one, and is giving away their old one. And look around--you probably have stuff you bought ages ago and never use that somebody else really needs. Once you start freecycling, you'll never stop.
6. If you make small donations to political parties or large environmental groups, don't. Instead, donate to election integrity groups fighting to defend our vote, like http://velvetrevolution.us/ to peace groups like Code Pink http://www.codepink4peace.org/ or to defending environmental activists like Jeff Leuers http://www.freefreenow.org/ (If you don't understand the importance of defending environmental activists, go back and read Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s 2004 book, "Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy.")
7. If you subscribe to cable TV, cancel it. Anything worth seeing that is on cable tonight, will be viewable online at http://youtube.com/ for free by tomorrow. You'll have more time to read opednews and keep up with the issues you really care about.
8. Make use of your public library's reserve and interlibrary borrowing services. The small fees involved are a huge savings over buying new books. If you do buy new books, when you're through reading them donate them to whichever of your local community colleges has the smallest library budget.
We can lobby our legislators, protest in the streets, but there is no guarantee that the war will stop. But the minute we stop supporting it, it is over. It is our pennies that, added together and funneled up to the rich, comprise the bulk of their warbucks. We have the power to change whatever we spend from warbucks into pennies for peace.
Here are some excellent research links you can use in making personal decisions:
http://www.endgame.org/links.html
