OpEdNews - Page 2 of Article: Fighting Burnout: An Activist's Lament

Read Brad "BradBlog" Friedman, who's been on top of the voting scene for quite a while. Sign up for Daily Voting News http://www.votersunite.org/news.asp* Contact me for a copy of the DVD Invisible Ballots. I'll even throw in the companion piece I compiled on the developments since its release. Give some of your time. Start slowly by simply passing along articles that you receive on the subject. That's the easiest way to ease yourself in. Then, volunteer a few hours a month by making calls, becoming a poll worker, and/or writing letters to the editor and your elected representatives. Anyone with interviewing skills should contact me. I have plenty of potential interviewees. You can hone your skills as you go. Each step that you take leads away from complacency, on the one hand, and despair, on the other. Doing nothing is simply not an option. Doing nothing guarantees that that's exactly what we'll have when we're done a big, fat nothing. No democracy. "Elected" officials who don't represent their constituency and don't feel accountable to them. A government run amok. Look around you. How long can we afford to travel down this path?

Get busy. You'll be glad you did. You'll meet fascinating people along the way, and you'll sleep better at night. Activism is the best antidote to insomnia I know. When a small number of individuals are doing all of the heavy lifting, it's virtually impossible not to burn out or just collapse from the sheer weight of the burden. But when the work is shared, we can keep each other going and inspired, and the possibility of success is greatly increased.

Imagine a giant tug of war with the electronic voting machine vendors and their lobbyists, the complicit state and federal governments, the silent political leadership, and the criminally derelict press on one side. Only the combined efforts of multitudes of outraged citizens stand a chance against that preponderance of power, money, and influence. If you were ever considering throwing yourself into a cause, please let me know if you can think of a more worthy one. Democracy is what our founding fathers fought for, and what we have tirelessly defended across the globe. Unfortunately, the fight is now going on right on our own shores. We need your help and we need it now.

Thanks for listening. I feel better already!

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*A sampling of websites to peruse: BradBlog.com, Black Box Voting.org (Bev Harris), ElectionDefenseAlliance.org, Solarbus.org, VoteTrustUSA.org, VerifiedVoting.org, OpenVotingConsortium.org. Read OpEdNews! And there are many others. The more you read, the more you'll know. One good site will lead you to another. There are a lot of people out there doing good things. Support them. We're all in this together!

You can show your support for what I'm doing by making a tax-deductible contribution to my lending library project through
www.IHCenter.org/Groups/CitizensForElectionReform.html. If you'd like to read other pieces that I've written: http://www.opednews.com/author/author79.html

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